This week's A&O client conference call (Opportunities for Radio in 2009) just made the Hear 2.0 blog. (blush!) If you missed it, set aside 45 minutes and enjoy the click as much as A&O clients (like Becky Brenner of KMPS, who he shouts out to at the start) did!
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I'm halfway through the call you posted so this subject may come up later in the call but I want to get it out while it's fresh in my mind.
What I've never understood about radio websites is why we run them the way we do. We send people to our website to enter a contest or to check out a link or check out an advertiser. Why aren't more websites run like the radio stations they're representing. We make appointments with our listeners all the time (The Drive at Five, Favorite 5 @ 9, show elements that run on specific days or times), why don't we do the same on our websites?
In the video game community, possibly the most successful webcomic is Penny Arcade (penny-arcade.com). I started reading sporadically, shortly after they started in 1998. What changed my reading habit from sporadic to regular was when they announced that they would post a new comic and news post every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Now it's in my mind to check it out every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
When I was growing up, people would tell my dad they didn't like his station or they didn't like country. They'd listened a couple times. People had told them it was great but they just didn't get it. His response was, "Here's my challenge to you. Listen for a week. Set your alarm to wake up with up with us for a week. Listen on your way home. If you still don't like it, at least you can say you gave it a chance." I asked him why he told people that and he told me if they listen for week, they make it a habit and they'll keep listening.
We give people a reason to GO to our websites but what do we do to KEEP them WANTING to go back? Why aren't we making our websites a habit? To make sure I wasn't way off, I skimmed through the website and through the "blogs" of my favorite country station (WSIX). I don't see anything that says, "Every Thursday sample new music" or really ANYTHING that makes me want to come back, with the possible exception of the "battle of the music videos" that encourages me to vote to decide who goes on to battle again next week. Also, the blogs read like show prep. Where's the personal feel? I can get "information" anywhere. Blogs are FULL of information I don't read past the headline. Taylor Swift's blogs are 90% nothing but I read them to the end because they're HER take on that nothing and THAT makes them interesting.
Wow, this went on quite a bit longer than I planned. I guess that conference call got me fired up. I WORK in radio. I LOVE country music. YET, there's not ONE country radio website I look at on a regular basis and I think that's pretty terrible. I think we should look at sites like Penny Arcade (voted Time's best website of 2008 http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1809858_1811192,00.html), Taylor Swift's blog and the programming on our own stations and build better websites.
Whew! Thanks for taking a few minutes to read my little rant on websites.
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