New Year’s Greetings from BIA/Kelsey.

So, the good news.

2009 is over. Thank God.

We head into the New Year severely chastened by the historic revenue declines of the current one. The numbers for 2009 don’t bear repeating. They were several shades of awful.

There are signs of a modest ad economy recovery as we enter January 2010. The broadcast networks are reporting an active scatter market. This makes the network execs that decided to hold back inventory at the upfront look like good market callers. Some of the larger radio groups are reporting a decent December assuming that flat is the new up! Online ad activity is regaining its health as well after a down year on the display side.

Yes I still believe content is King, but knowing which content and tools are best for our listeners is even more important. In a time of not enough money or resources to do all this cool Web and social media stuff, how do we figure out where to start and focus most of our limited resources?

Step 1: Discover where your listeners spend their time on the Web AND off. In order to do that you need to: Conduct research; Listen in on social media site conversations relevant to your station; Ask your listeners to participate in surveys via Website, phone, email and at events; and Pay attention to all of your listener feedback channels. . .

It struck me as I was reviewing my plans for the upcoming Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition in June that there is not a lot of attention on using email to reach one’s customer base in the Conference agenda and session discussions about online marketing. In the not so distant past (which means a year …