A studio set up with microphone

Internet Radio - Building an audience

Introduction

This is probably the most controversial subject in internet radio broadcasting. How to build and keep an audience. Lets face it if you don't have an audience you are basically talking to yourself for 2 hours, listening to music and sometimes if you are lucky reading out a re-tweet from two weeks ago, which someone accidentally posted on your stations twitter account. Not the most productive use of a radio show. So building an audience is a bit like trying to herd cats. Its time consuming, its frustrating and just when you think you are on top of it, it all goes wrong.

To put this into perspective, commercial stations have entire teams which are responsible for audience building, demographic mapping and focus groups. They then pass this vast amount of data onto there marketing and advertising team, which use it to target audiences and demographics to try and further build the audience. Audiences are fluid as well, they flow. Do not assume once you have a listener they will be there forever, they may have a change in taste, move away, not be physically able to listen any more, and so on. There are hundreds of reasons why you might loose a listener and its important to realise that this scenario is very common.

 

Three basic rules

In Audience building there are three basic principals;

  1. Catch'em - This means entice some one to listen.
  2. Hook'em - Meaning get them interested in the show, engage with them, keep there attention throughout the show.
  3. Keep'em - After the show is over, make them want to return for the next one. When they are listening to the next show, make sure the Hook'em part is fulfilled, making them want to come back over and over again is key.

The three basic principals, however easy they may sound are not. Don't kid yourself, all three are difficult to do.

Catch'em

This is by far the hardest part. If you think the principal "Build it and they will come' applies here you should probably sell your equipment and become a goat farmer. Building it, which in itself is no easy task is only half the problem. You need to let people know you are out there. There are many, many ways to do this but I've found the most effective are;

  1. Submit your station to internet directories - There are literally hundreds of these and choosing the right ones is based off of your target audience, the basic ones like Tunein, Streama, amazon music, etc are a good base foundation, but don't forget your target audience internet hangouts. For example if you are targeting someone who is in front of a computer all day, maybe a specific section of the nerd community, you might want to head over to Reddit, find there sub and start ranting about how awesome the station is to listen to while you are coding away. Equally if you are targeting stay at home mums and dads, you might want to go to there forums, and make sure they know the radio is family friendly content!. One of the advantage is that your station becomes more accessible at the same time. Tunein and Streama have there own apps, and putting it on amazon music means when you say "Hey Alexia play [insert your station name here]" its instantly on in the background and you've caught'em! To help out. here is a cool list of Internet Radio Directories
  2. Use SEO - If you are not familiar with the term, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation, and its a big must. If your website looks like it was build in the 90's, contains broken code, and isn't secure then Google and Bing are probably going to ignore it anyway, if however it looks fresh, modern, is mobile compatible and contains some nice juicy meta tags which make it stand out, then google are far more likely to list it higher up the ladder. Make sure to regularly get it crawled as well, especially if the content changes regularly. Also don't forget to consider back linking to help boast your SEO. There are free courses available out there to help you improve SEO here is an example
  3. Build a social media following - One of the unfortunate features of radio is that its audio based only (unless you are one of those annoying stations which also has a webcam and the audience members get to see you make a cup of tea during music breaks! - FYI don't be that annoying station.). Social media allows your station to have a face, using the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat etc you can post off air photos, and help build a connection with listeners which would otherwise be missing. Here is a good example of how Phillip Schofield became a snapchat success
  4. Cross promote - Very important to understand this sometimes does not work. If you know of another internet station, and often you do, as we are all in this together in a way, why not attempt to strike a deal where by they promote your station and you promote there's. Its important to understand that this needs to be done in such a way as to not impact on your listener base. Often doing this on a station with a different demographic is a good idea, as its far less likely to cause the other station to loose listeners. The principal behind this is that there demographic might know someone in your demographic and recommend tuning in, so word of mouth basically. Like I said though, treat this one with a pinch of salt.
  5. Build marketing campaigns - Who you know is important, and this is where marketing campaigns comes into place. The best being targeted campaigns over email and social media. When I say campaign it can be anything from a monthly update as to up coming events on the station, or a special show with some special guest on. What ever it is, make it relevant and enticing, not mundane and annoying. No one likes getting weekly emails with nothing really interesting in them. There are tools that can help with this such as Mail Chimp - Side note here. Remember if you are collecting personal information you must be compliant with GDPR. I won't go into this here, but its worth noting so you can research your responsibilities when engaging in campaign's involving someone's personal information.
  6. Advertise - Now although this one seems slightly obvious there are several ways this can be done. First of all there is paid advertising, this can be in the form of search engine listings, banners which automatically appear on peoples websites, videos such as Youtube content, and Facebook ad's. All of these have pro's and con's. When engaging with advertising you must always look at the amount of money verses what potential footprint that the advertising platform would cover. If you think that there is a high potential to reach your stations demographic, then the likelihood is that its worth the money. Paid advertising is always a slight risk, as there is a potential you will get nothing for your money, so always research the platform you are intending to advertise on. I find the best type of research is experience. See if you know someone who has used that platform before and ask there opinion.
  7. Physical Advertising - This type can be both paid for and free. The free type are flyers and posters which you can put up pretty much anywhere and get away with it these days, although I wouldn't go putting them up without permission! Ignoring the cost of printing them, flyers and posters are a great way to advertise your radio station, especially if its a community project. Community radio stations seem to invoke a sense of duty in the local community, and if you can catch them through this sense of community spirit and they get hooked, its another set of listeners, with the added advantage of having an existing connection with the station and there presenters. The paid for aspect comes from local news papers and publications. Paying for these however does limit the demographic somewhat, to an older generation and if that's what you are aiming for though, then great! However a word of caution, make sure you include very clear and concise instructions on how to listen, as its likely if your listeners are the type to read physical news papers they are also the type that are used to using conventional radio and not involving an internet connection in the process.
  8. Forums and Groups - I briefly mentioned this in the section about listing them on directory's, but its worth its own mention as it can be such a wonderful way to connect to a demographic. Along the lines of 'Make it and they will come' not working, going out and seeking your audience quite often does work. Go to the forums your demographic hangs out, that can be anything from a sub-reddit about coding, to a forum about knitting. What ever your target audience go find out where they hang around online, introduce yourself and tell them about your show. Personally I have found approaching this from a humanistic aspect gets a lot more engagement, if they know you are doing this as a hobby or as a community project they are far more likely to pay attention. Approaching this like a corporate media giant is just going to annoy everyone on the forum as they will see you more as an intruder, instead of someone who just dropped by to say hi and talk about a project they might be interested in listening to.
  9. Past shows - Going to briefly mention this, posting your past shows on platform's such as sound-cloud (with the music removed!) can help you entice listeners who may have missed the show last time. If they liked the shows content and more specifically the QDC, they are more likely to remember and listen in live next time its on. Why post without music I hear you say? Well the first reason is due to licencing, if you are making it available on demand that's a different type of licence and you would have to pay twice (one for live shows one for listening on demand!), but secondly you want to compress the show into something more concise, that gives a nice overview of what the shows about, but within a limited window, for example 30 minutes. This is likely to be enjoyable without running the risk of the listener loosing interest.
  10. Merchandise - One thing that often surprises me is how many successful home brewed stations have no merch! When you get off the ground and perhaps get a little budget to play with, I would highly recommend getting some mugs, t-shirts, pens, even coasters made with your stations branding on it. They are great for give away's on the show and act as a form of advertising. A favourite of mine is to go around all the local shops and give them all a mug or two. Explain who you are and who you represent. This often leads to there customers asking about the mug, which in turn leads to a conversation about the station and hopefully another listener! Also there is nothing more heartwarming than walking down the high street and seeing someone wearing your stations T-shirt!
  11. Hosting local events - Local events are a fantastic way to engage in the community. People are a lot more engaging at local shows as they are there to have fun, and not just out shopping. These can range from trade fairs, to local community party's, to disco's and so on. If you have the sound equipment and expertise why not volunteer your services to DJ at the event, this not only allows you to engage in the local community but also puts your branding up everywhere. More often than not, the event organiser wont mind if you were to try a feature from your show as well, to further engage the audience. The perfect result being people walking away from the event thinking "That was fun! wonder what there show is like?".

Hook'em

So that is the hard part out the way. Well done for getting through all 11 of them. I promise it gets easier from here on in. The next phase is to hook them into staying tuned in. Chances are you have around 30 minutes if you are lucky for the average listener to decide if they like the show or not. This all boils down to a couple of points.

  1. Quality Driven Content. - Read my article about QDC! it explains the basics of how to create a quality driven show. Seriously I cant mention this enough, if the chemistry, the presentation, even the music are not up to standard, listeners will tune out. Getting this right is key to keeping listeners.
  2. Special Guests - Special guests bring with them there own fan base, and make for a great show. I once did a show where a local band front-man was our special guest. It was a brilliant show, and attracted a record number of listeners. After the show the listener figures remained (to the delight of the station manager!)
  3. Interaction and engagement - Engaging with the audience, involves them in the show. Involving someone makes them feel a part of the action, wanting them to keep listening. Nothing does this better than some form of quiz or competition. For our show it was something called the music quiz, where Dan would play 5 seconds of a song and we had to guess what that song was, listeners would be part of the quiz and besides being very enjoyable, it involved the audience, keeping them listening.

Keep'em

Keeping a listener means constant work, it means reminding them when the next show is, it means constantly looking for ways to improve access and it also means not assuming because they are hooked that they will keep coming back. It also means you have to sometimes face the fact that despite your best efforts, peoples tastes change as does there circumstances so as mentioned before an audience is fluid, constantly changing and flowing, which is why when you have a large audience you still need to keep engaging, keep trying to hook more into listening. It is most certainly not a time to sit back and relax!

  1. Ongoing features - Introduce and try out new features but remember if a feature works and is popular keep it! Features play a major role in making a good quality show.
  2. Don't mess with the chemistry - Sometimes chemistry doesn't work, and if that is the case then yes try and fix it! But sometimes it does work! if you have a good team of presenters, that work well together don't be tempted to try and spice it up with someone new, if its not needed. This more often than not, just makes for awkward listening, making fan base dwindle.
  3. Facebook Group - Having a group where you can engage with your fan base even when off the air is great. You can post funny pics relating to a previous show, or even write about something in more detail, which for example you didn't have enough time to talk about on the air. Its just a further means to communicate with listeners and helps build up more of a community around your show.
  4. Ease of access - One thing to remember is not everyone wants to be in front of a computer for 3 hours listening to the radio. If a computer is there already and they listen to it while performing a task then great, but sometimes people just want to sit down with a hot cup of tea and a comfortable chair. Make the station as accessible as possible. This can be done in several ways. Through the Tunein app, through an app the station made itself, or got made or even through Alexa. Even through the website itself via mobile phone (remember it needs to be mobile friendly as a must!). Every time a new method of reaching the station is available, start a campaign to let everyone know about it. The more methods of access you get the more accessible you become, the easier it is for folks to tune in! This is a sure fire way to maintain a listener base.
  5. Contact points - Along the same lines as ease of access, should be ease of contact. If someone wants to contact the station there should be several ways to do so, be this via Facebook or Twitter, email, contact form on the website, contact form on the mobile app and text message. All these methods improve how easy it is to engage with the station, which in turn improves listener retention.

Summary

So that's about it. I've done my darnedest to try and explain a very controversial subject. I'm not saying I've covered everything but at least the basics. If you can Catch them Hooking and Keeping them is a lot easier.

One of the main points you should take away from this and I have repeated it deliberately is that audiences, listeners, fans are all fluid. One day you might get 50 join and then in the same instance you might loose 50. Be prepared for this to be the case when you change something fundamental to the stations ethos or style. Such changes should be kept to a minimum through the stations lifetime, as they really do affect your listener base. Take for example when Heart radio dropped all its regional breakfast shows, which resulted in a massive reduction to the amount of listeners tuning in.

There are things that you should also avoid changing altogether, such as target demographic. If you are going to do that you might as well rename your station (which incidentally is also a big no no!) . Certain changes like that can and will cause listener stats to plummet, and I would think very seriously before you start your station as to your target demographic. That said a target demographic can be quite broad from show to show, especially on a community radio station, where the difference in presenters music taste can be the difference between a car and a carpet.

In the next article I hope to explore how to go about setting up a home studio.