One of the toughest parts of integrating social media tools into a radio station website is plugging in those tools which listeners actually want to use on a radio station site as opposed to wherever they’re accustomed to using them now.
Just because YouTube is hot, for example, doesn’t mean YOURtube will be hot. Just because I can share photos on Flickr doesn’t mean I’ll want to share them on my favorite radio station’s website. Economy of effort is part of the media economy, so your site will win my web traffic only because you invite it in a way that is unique to you and compelling to me.
And that’s why the new announcement from Philadelphia’s non-commercial (!!) 88.5 WXPN is so interesting. Says VP Bruce Warren:
Today [we] launched the 885 Most Memorable Musical Moments. Basically we’re asking our listeners to contribute to a massive archive of personally important musical moments and historically significant moments. We will make sense of the many thousands of submissions we get for the countdown and playback of the top 885 in October. The next two months, we are in the “share” phase.
Visit the site and the blog you’ll find a growing repository of online shared music experience. This is not for every station, of course, but if your audience is driven by a passion for music doesn’t it make sense to invite their stories and that passion to be expressed on your station’s site?
So many people ask me what they can do to attract more listeners to their websites. And the answer is to give listeners what they want that relates to your station that they can’t get or do as a unified community in any other place.