How to make your online radio popular?

8 Ways to Promote Your Online Radio Station 

How to increase listenership for your online radio station?

If you have already started a radio station by now, you must have realized that starting an online radio  is the easiest of steps. Producing programs with consistency and maintaining good standards is one of the first hurdles that you might run into. But one other and major obstacle that you might be facing is: promoting your radio and gain more listeners for your radio. Here are some basic tips that shall help you promote your radio.

1. Make Your Radio visible on Social Media

Using Social Media to promote your
Radio

If you have not already made Facebook, Instagram and Twitter pages for your online radio station, you should do so now. You should not only be using your personal accounts to be promoting your radio - but make dedicated accounts/pages for your radio station. Invite all your friends to Like/Follow your radio station on these platforms. Then you can promote your shows through these pages. If your content is good, and your friends start enjoying it - soon enough they will share it with their circle of friends, allowing your channel to grow quickly on social media. Though keep in mind one thing - this may take some time but it is a necessary step in allowing your radio station to grow.

2. Put Posters Around Town

Put posters on walls/boards

If you notice, even the most popular radio stations which are known to everyone, still place their ads on billboards, bus stops etc. Then why should we not be promoting our radio station by placing our posters around town? Fortunately there is many place that allow us to place posters. Most cafe's have small community bulletin boards. Many grocery stores also have such boards. In city centre there are often such boards available and open for public to promote their events. Hence make use of these opportunities and promote your radio throughout your town. There are several free apps/websites on the phone (or computer) that allow you to design excellent posters. (If anyone is interested I can share my personal favourite)

3. Give Out Flyers

Give flyers to promote your Radio

This is probably a bit more challenging because it might require more time. But it is well worth it. Prepare a small flyer and distribute it in the busiest spot in your town. The more often you do this, the more people will get to know your radio. If you know of any good events taking place in your town
Again, there are apps/websites that allow you to make good flyers/posters. Keep in mind if you are making poster as well as flyers, try to use similar theme or colour scheme for your design. This helps in branding your radio station. 

4. Advertise on Social Media

To get quick results, advertising on social media is not a bad idea. The ads are relatively cheaper than most other ways. Since your radio station is an online one, it is generally good to promote it on social media. This is even more effective than Posters & Flyers. Because if someone is interested in the ad, all they have to do is click/swipe-up and they are already listening to you live! 

I personally prefer Instagram & Facebook Ads because of the control they give to the advertisers. You can pick demographics, audience, interest and age group etc. If you have an online radio station where you discuss sports - but your ad is being delivered to someone who has no appetite for sports, your money is being wasted. Hence, place your ads smartly. For more details on writing smarter ads, see my post on that.

5. Have Guests on your Online Radio Station

Invite guests on your Radio Show

This is an excellent way to promote your radio station. If you are able to invite any popular guests, it will give credibility to your radio station. However if you invite even ordinary people, but those who have good opinions and can carry out a healthy conversation, that will give boost to your radio station in their circles. An example would be: if you talk about sports on your show, to discuss the injury of a player you could invite your family doctor to elaborate what it means. You could get really creative for this.

6. Making your Radio easy to find through search engines (SEO)

This one is really important. With thousands of radios with similar themes to your own, it might be challenging to have people listen to you. But if the website for your radio is designed well and it is optimized for search engines, it will rank higher when people search on Google or other search engines. I might do a detailed blogpost on this later. But there is enough content online to begin with.

7. Add Your Station to Radio Directories

There are many popular directories where you can add your radio station. Basically add the URL of your radio to these directories. This can result in people searching through those directories and landing at your radio station - but it also helps optimizing your online radio station for search engines. 

8. Produce Good Radio Content

Last but not least, produce good content and make high quality radio shows. If you do all the other steps to bring in listeners but your content is not good enough, the result is obvious. These people will not return to your radio. Read up on how to improve the quality of your radio show?

Using these tips and tricks, I am sure you can make your online radio station reach new heights. If you have some other ways which benefitted you, please share in the comments.
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