The launch of Power FM 98.7 took place 12 days ago. This new commercial talk radio station has been welcomed as a breadth of fresh air, using Twitter followers as a proxy.
The Power FM 98.7 Twitter handle was registered in March this year. According to Twitter Counter, this Twitter handle had 3K followers on May 28th – this means its following grew more than 5 fold in the last month.
The new kid on the commercial talk radio block launched on the 18th of June, coinciding with Thabo Mbeki‘s 71st birthday. A stroke of brilliance, assisted possibly by strong networks on the part of the station’s leadership, lead to a scoop – an interview with the ex-president himself on the 20th of June on Tim Modise’s Power Perspective. South Africans who follow the news will know that Mbeki rarely grants radio interviews. That interview gave @PowerFM987 its highest number of Twitter mentions thus far.
The spikes in the graph above indicate that @PowerFM987 needs a few more POWER interviews like the one with Mbeki, for it to stay on top of influential Twitterers’ minds.
The usual Twitter suspects – @KhayaDlanga and @Sentletse – drove traffic during the #MbekiPower interview:
Overall, Power 98.7’s broadcasters have played a key role in giving the radio station a fair share of mentions on Twitter, as this map shows:
The thickness of a line between @PowerFM987 and another Twitterer signifies strength of mention relationship. According mentionmapp.com, Chris Vick (of the Power Hour 18:00-19:00 weekday slot), has been mentioning the station the most on his Twitter wall recently.
In Part 2 of this topic, I analyse how @PowerFM987 is doing versus @Radio702 – South Africa’s veteran commercial radio station and much touted close competitor.
