The Chicken or the Egg?

Remember  that the Internet is the WORLD wide web.  Providing information about the music, information and entertainment news is not specific to your radio station.  Any of your listeners can type ANYTHING into Google or Bing and find what they are looking for without your website ever being accessed.  Listeners can go around you all day…on the web.

Our goal on the radio is to build stations that are compelling enough so that listeners do not go around you on the air.  You want to be playing the best music for your core.  Your morning show has to be the most appealing, with humor, warmth and information.

Your radio station is built around music, information, personality and promotion.  Your website needs to be built around the same things.  Those are reasons people come to radio station. Those are the elements that have built your brand.  Those are the things you are known for and what the listener expects you to be an expert in.

So why move the listener to the website if we continue to provide all of this information on the air? Because we live in a instant gratification society.  If your listener wants to know the Pirates score they have no intention of waiting for you to give them the score.  If they want to know what the weather will be like this afternoon, they have no intention to waiting around for you to tell them.  If they want to see the new Lady Gaga video they want to see it now.

Yes, they can go to ESPN.com.  They can go to weather.com and youtube.com.  If you talk about entertainment features in the morning does this entice your listeners go to TMZ.com? Interesting, isn’t it, that all of the things that you own on the air are owned by someone else on the Internet?

BUT when you tell them the story about Charlie Sheen’s rant they are yours.  If you add, “we’ve posted Charlie’s latest rant on WVAQ.com” where are they going to go?   TMZ is not in their ear that minute inviting them to their site.  BUT, if we fail to provide that information on our site, the listener will find TMZ and quite conceivably we have lost them forever for Charlie Sheen news.