The power of local radio
Posted on Monday, February 2nd, 2009 at 12:14pm. #
It’s not even midday, and Media UK has had over twice the amount of the visitors it gets in a normal weekday. And that’s even taking into account the Google Analytics delay. No surprise that I had problems keeping the site up – the site’s own fail-whale (yes, it really does have one) appearing with monotonous regularity.
Most traffic to Media UK is search-engine driven: people type in names of media companies, and fairly often find Media UK’s permanent page near the top (rather than media companies’ own, SEO-challenged, pages). By way of comparison, here’s what people were searching for today, and on Friday:
Friday
1 Media UK
2 mediauk
3 magazines
4 Western Mail
5 Clubland TV
6 radio jobs
7 Television X
8 UK magazines
9 Media jobs
10 The Hits Radio
Today
1 Southern FM
2 Invicta Radio
3 Invicta FM
4 Essex FM
5 210 fm
6 2 ten fm
7 Mercury Radio
8 2cr fm
9 2tenfm
10 Radio Aire
Wow, what a difference.
It’s clear that people are expecting local news, local weather, and information like school and business closures, on your radio station website.
Virtually all of the radio stations in the top ten are Global stations, which have a good track record in providing local information in snow emergencies, particularly lists of school closures. And, interesting that nobody knows how to spell 2-Ten FM (though everyone presumably knows how to spell Heart!)
Given that many people are unable to get into work today, maybe now’s the plan to review your webmail and VPN capacity; and, of course, how you could keep your website updated next time. If, of course, it stays up!
Mark
Good post James, interesting to see the rapid analysis of your search terms and how this affected the site.
Not only has the weather brought the entire country to a standstill, it’s been another opportunity to monitor the effect of Twitter and websites in terms of rapid communications and exchange.
Broadcasters and all businesses should be thinking of more dynamic ways to communicate rapidly with their audience, in particular making good use of the web and social media.
There’s been some good Twitter activity today, with people finding new ways to share news/weather, for example the hashtags, e.g. #uksnow, though this in turn may be contributing to the slow connectivity of web and mobile networks today!