Congratulations! You Own an International Radio Station!
Your company owns multiple international radio stations. Radio remains the No. 1 medium for consumer media consumption -- more than TV. Take a look at your website. Stunning. Hundreds, maybe thousands of over-staffed meetings have crafted your website and your app. Great graphics, blogs, chat rooms, help desks, contact forms and support. But how does your radio station sound? Every website has audio capability and oddly most companies fail to incorporate audio within their robust digital presence. Creating compelling audio for your app or website is a far less expensive and time-consuming process than building the graphic interface. To make successful online audio, here are seven recommended steps.
1. Engage an audio professional. You hire graphic artists. Hire an audio artist. A radio station or network programmer knows how sound can entertain, persuade and inform.
2. Determine the interests, needs and tastes of your customer and build audio entertainment that will appeal to those passions.
3. Offer two choices. Give your visitor the choice of hearing news of interest to them or stories of interest to them. The "news" must be current and urgent and refreshed several times a day. Stories are less time sensitive but should be regularly updated. Note that the No. 1 podcast in audience is This American Life, which is storytelling. News items can cover your industry as it relates to your customer. These can include information about fresh products, new uses and events in the world that impact your specific customer. Effective stories will reveal behind the scenes life at your company and among your customers.
4. Make the audio content available in a continuous stream and in podcasts. The podcasts should be one click downloadable and catalogued with very sexy descriptions. The audio stream must come up in one click, instantly. Instantly.
5. Give a language choice. Your audio is being distributed internationally. You know the location of your customers outside of the U.S. If your other key countries are not English speaking, offer your audio in the appropriate language.
6. Consider the cost. You could provide a compelling audio service with three freelancers. "Radio people" have never had staffs to rely on. People you hear on the radio are working alone! They are used to writing, producing, presenting, booking guests and running the equipment all by themselves. It’s much more efficient than a graphics squad.
7. Ask for feedback. Give your customer the opportunity to respond to your radio station with audio. Put a mic button on the page or app to record visitor reaction and comments.
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The opinions and points of view expressed in this article are exclusively the views of the author and/or subject(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillage.com/MyersBizNet, Inc. management or associated bloggers.
Walter Sabo
Walter Sabo is a Westwood One network talk show host aka Walter M Sterling. His show, Sterling on Sunday, is aired live Sunday nights at 10 PM-1AM Eastern. Walter Sabo is the Chairman of Sabo Media, a company that offers executive-on-demand services. He has …
