Snow unleashes digital flow

Breakfast Show producer, Stephen Werner - steeped in the knowledge of his audience - knew that they would want pictures of this unique moment. Working with Ryan O Connor, 94.5 Kfm's breakfast show host, he called for listeners to submit pictures whilst simultaneously activating the Eyewitness News and Ground Patrol teams to get pictures that were more exclusive.

Within the hour, Kfm's Twitter account started to trend and EWN Reporter's Twitter account followed shortly thereafter. Simultaneously, the music site's team was 'harvesting' the photos and placed the best on www.kfm.co.za - a newly designed site powered by one the world's leading CMS.

Within 10 hours, the site had received 450% greater traffic than an average day and twelve-fold up on the average Friday traffic. The content effect rippled across the weekend with three times the average number of visitors hitting the site, mostly to go snow viewing.

Investment, strategy pays off

Far from being a once-off event, this seamless integration of listener insight, momentum, content work across multiple departments, convergence of radio and digital platforms and use of leading technology has become a feature of the group's life over the last two years.

This is due to the investment in people, systems and processes that ensure faultless delivery on client briefs and content production. This competence has laid the basis for a concerted and successful move into the space of converged media offerings.

The main site (www.ewn.co.za) has more than doubled its unique users and continues to maintain an upward trajectory. Today, EWN consistently features in top five results returned by Google for various news stories and most recently pipped Al Jazeera to the No 1 position with its story on the arrest of Al Jazeera's photographer, Adil Bradlow.

The knowledge from EWN has been spread across the business. In some weeks, LeadSA's Facebook page reaches in excess of 150,000 people thanks to a carefully honed content strategy. Talk Radio 702's podcasts are downloaded in their thousands; Facebook posts by 94.7 Highveld Stereo's Breakfast Xpress team are often shared by hundreds of fans. 94.5 Kfm's breakfast team has become adept at turning around user-generated dance competitions, often receiving close on a hundred priceless video entries receiving thousands of views.

Star Power, a phone-app based promotion run on Primedia's music stations in collaboration with Samsung was downloaded in excess of 65,000 times. In January, Primedia Broadcasting launched a Matric Results app - the first of its kind in South Africa - generating hundreds of thousands of views in under three days.

From snow-covered mountains to breaking news, it is steadily creating a skills base and infrastructure to ensure that its content is adapted to deliver its audience multiple experiences across radio, digital and social.