Strategies for Keeping Your No-Staff Radio Website Engaging

No matter what business you’re in, keeping your website fresh and engaging is crucial to ensure returning visitors. We talk to radio stations of all sizes, including those as small as the owner and maybe one other person.  Regardless of size, keeping your radio station website fresh can be simplified with the right strategies and tools. Whether it’s automating routine tasks, harnessing the power of your audience, or cleverly repurposing content, there are numerous ways to maintain an active and appealing website with limited time and resources.  Here are some ways to keep your site updated with limited or no staff…

1. Understand the Power of Automation

Automation is your best ally when you’re a one-person team managing a radio station website. By utilizing various automation tools, you can ensure your website remains updated with minimal manual intervention. These tools can help schedule posts, automatically update your site with relevant news or music charts, and even manage social media interactions. With automation, you can focus more on content creation and less on the mundane aspects of website management.

Examples:

• Content Schedulers: Using social media managers like Buffer or Hootsuite to schedule weekly social media posts. Or, set it to pull from your website RSS feed automatically.
• RSS Feeds: Import an RSS feed from sources like ABC News or United Artists Pulse Web Content to add fresh news to your website. If your entire day is syndicated, perhaps a show or two allows their affiliates to import their blog posts.  See our previous episodes on RSS feeds for more details.  Do not display RSS feeds that link offsite.
• Social Media Tools: Automating website post sharing on social platforms using tools like Zapier.

2. Use a Content Calendar

A content calendar is an indispensable tool for any website manager. While this may take some time to map out initially, it acts as a roadmap for what to publish and when, helping you strategically plan your content around key events, promotions, and station activities. This foresight keeps your content organized and ensures a consistent flow of posts, keeping your audience engaged and your website lively. Setting up a content calendar can transform your approach from reactive to proactive, making your workload more manageable and your content more impactful.

Examples:

• Daily/Weekly Themes: Monday – Pet of the Week, Tuesday – Business of the Week, Wednesday – Listener’s Choice, Friday – New Music Spotlight.
• Calendar Tools: Utilizing Google Calendar or Trello for visual planning and reminders.

3. Embrace User-Generated Content

Incorporating user-generated content is a smart way to keep your website fresh while building a stronger connection with your audience. This approach provides a steady stream of new content and actively involves your listeners in your station’s online presence. There’s a wealth of content waiting to be tapped into. It encourages listener interaction and significantly reduces the content creation burden on you.

Examples:

• Listener Interaction: Accept music requests, local events, obituaries, “swap shop” listings, and prayer requests.
• Interactive Content: Conduct polls about favorite songs, shows, or even local events/businesses with results featured on the website.
• “Best Of (Your Town): If you can include multiple polls on your website or forms with multiple options, you should consider doing a “best of” campaign. We’ve had guests on this podcast talk about how they’ve implemented “best of” campaigns to give you some guidance on that.

4. Repurpose Existing Content

Leveraging content you already have is a time-efficient way to keep your website updated. Repurposing content saves time and provides your audience a different format to enjoy your radio station’s offerings, enriching their overall experience.

Examples:

• From Audio to Text: Transcribing popular interviews into blog posts.
• Sports Schedules: Local team schedules is content that you don’t have to create from scratch. It can easily be copied/pasted information.
• Visual Content: Creating photo galleries or video montages from station events.
• Listener Highlights: Compiling snippets from listener calls into a regular “Listener Voices” feature.

5. Build a Community of Contributors

Developing a community of contributors can significantly ease the pressure of content creation. By inviting guest bloggers, collaborating with local artists, or featuring community stories, you can bring a variety of voices and perspectives to your website. This approach diversifies your content and fosters community and belonging among your listeners, further enhancing your station’s appeal.

Examples:

• Local Collaborations: Monthly guest posts from a local music blogger, business executive, tax professional, or food critic. Pick a popular TV show and have a local professional in that same genre publish a weekly review of the show (cooking show, dance show, lawyer, etc.)
• Listener Contributions: Invite listeners to contribute stories, events, reviews, or music-related articles.

Be wary of anyone who is not local and wants to write guest posts for you.  The content often doesn’t match your audience and can be filled with affiliate links that take visitors away from your website.

6. Keep Quick Update Ideas for Busy Days

There are quick and easy ways to update your website, even on the busiest days. Maintain a list to use in case of emergencies.

Examples:

• Daily Features: A quick “Song of the Day” post or station news update.
• Engaging Polls: Simple polls like “Favorite morning show segment?” to engage the audience.
• This Day in History: You can find this day in history archives all over the internet. These can be format-oriented, like what happened in country music history on this day or anything else.  The good thing is that most of the content can be copied from other sources, but please ensure you give proper credit or rewrite the copy in your own words.

Conclusion

A website being updated consistently becomes a destination for your listeners, enriching their experience with your radio station.  If it’s not a destination, then it’s likely a disappointment.  When you have minimal or no staff, updating a website can be very challenging, but it can also be rewarding.  By employing the strategies we’ve mentioned, you can keep your website vibrant and engaging, ensuring that your audience always has something new and exciting to return to. Hopefully, the increase in traffic will equate to more revenue for your station.  Creativity and planning can go a long way to making this happen.