Promoting your website
Posted on Wednesday, November 19th, 2008 at 6:47pm. #
On Sunday morning, using my Pure Evoke Flow, I listened to a bit – well, nearly an hour – of The Pulse, the heritage FM station in Bradford, Huddersfield and Halifax.
It was an enjoyable listen – a station with a “no-repeat 9-5″ (I’ve heard that somewhere before), a presenter, Darren Kelly, who sounded genuinely happy to be on-air and had a nice way with a caller who came on-air; a movies feature with Richard Murie, and a comprehensive if pre-recorded local news bulletin at 11am. (I say it was pre-recorded… nobody really ends a bulletin at 11.06am by saying “it’s just after eleven”, do they?). Huge great slugs of advertising, one of which pronounced the name of the local shopping centre wrong (oops!), but a good and enjoyable listen, with virtually no music that made me want to switch off, except maybe UB-bloody-40.
Given that I was the person who registered pulse.co.uk back in 1994, I was keen and eager to understand how they promote their website. After all, there’s advertising on it (and local advertising, too). There’s an alluring button marked “podcasts” (well, which leads to a page saying there are no podcasts available); a ‘news’ page which led unexpectedly to an embedded media player with Sky News on it – not the worst idea – and information about presenters and the area. It’s not a bad website, all things considered.
However, I heard no promotion of the website in the hour that I sampled. No production mentioned it – Darren’s sparse links made no mention of it either, or a feature ‘The Pulse at the movies’. Indeed, a text-to-win promotion gave a different website address for terms and conditions (a missed opportunity if ever there was one).
At a time when non-traditional revenue is so important to radio, it’s odd that there’s no promotion of the website at all when it’s so easy to do, and benefits your RAJAR figures by promoting your radio station name (assuming you’ve a sensible domain-name), not to mention the closer interaction with your brand.
“… and that’s the latest – more news on pulse.co.uk”
“… there’s terms and conditions on pulse.co.uk/win”
“… The Pulse at the movies – find out where you can see those films and more at pulse.co.uk”
… and building it into the production only serves to repeat the station name for your RAJAR.
How’s your station promoting your website?
Photo: Phil Woodbridge. Used under licence.
