Which Websites Should You Mention on the Radio?

I mentioned yesterday that I would post another link to the blog of BBC staff member, James Cridland. Yesterday he was discussing the use of personal Twitter accounts by radio presenters. Today the topic of discussion is websites.

James says:

If you’re BigtownFM, when was the last time you promoted your rival SmalltownFM on your station? Not just mentioned it in passing, but actively promoted it? Never, I’m guessing. So it’s odd, isn’t it, when stations allow competing websites to be promoted on-air: because they’re doing exactly the same thing.

Your website earns you money – a fair amount, probably. It’s also the right place to send your audience to interact with your talent: it’s a controlled space, and one where you can also communicate other things about your station – your big competition on breakfast, your latest new signing.

Yet, if you allow your presenters to bypass that by telling their audience that the best content is on YouTube, or their own Facebook group, or – heaven forfend – their own website address, then your listeners never get to see any of your own website. And your presenters are, effectively, promoting your competition. It’s removing revenue from your business at a time when you can’t afford it; and damaging your best and cheapest marketing tool.

To fix this, you need to do three things:

If you want to read what those three things are then head over to James’ personal blog and see what you think of them… and I hope he doesn’t mind these automatic links that appear as comments on his blog when I like to it!

Its definatley important for radio stations to follow these “rules”, no matter how large or small they are. They are rules that I personally support and would like to see in action on Corinium Radio: whether the rest of the team agrees with that is another matter.

Tomorrow, I’ll tell you my personal views on James’ blog post about e-mail addresses.

PLUS: If another member of the Corinium Radio team is reading this, we do have a dedicated weblinks page which can be used for posting any weblink related to our programmes. If you are a member of the team & would like to submit your link then you can e-mail it to me on fred.hart@coriniumradio.co.uk. I’ve been meaning to bring up the topic of the links page for a while.