[...] you want to read what those three things are then head over to James’ personal blog and see what you think of them… and I hope he doesn’t mind these automatic links that [...]

I’ll expand on what I touched upon on Twitter. I’m not sure I agree with this thinking. It’s the old way of content provider thinking, that the only way to make money from content is to keep a tight hold on it. We’re starting to move away from that, and people are regretting it.
Whilst I’m sure if you make sure everything stays on smalltownfm.com, you can make small gains in advertising revenue, but longer term it’s probably better to leverage the existing sites and their user bases.
Speaking for myself, I’m more likely to engage if it’s using a medium I’m already on, rather than having to go to smalltownfm.com. If a presenter is giving out a Twitter address rather than the website address, I’m more likely to send a message because I’m already on Twitter, and likely have a client open right then.
With Facebook, especially with a younger target audience, they’re likely to have it open.
Using Absolute Radio as an example, they for the most part direct everything to their website. As a result of that, I don’t think I’ve ever emailed in. They request that people e-mail ‘through the website’. Why? I want to send an email, it’s an internet standard, I have my email client open… why do I have to go to the website?
I think the people who are likely to be interested in other content on the site will follow a link back to smalltownfm.com. Those who don’t probably wouldn’t have stuck around past the content they wanted to see anyway.
Users like familiarity.

I talk about emails next; and I’m certainly not advocating that radio stations stop using Facebook, Twitter et al. However, if they’re going to promote something, they ought to promote their own website, nothing else.

That is, of course, assuming that you see a website as a business. Which, for many commercial radio stations, it increasingly is.

“That is, of course, assuming that you see a website as a business. Which, for many commercial radio stations, it increasingly is.”

Although whether or not they realise it is, of course, another matter.

Of the three blog posts I’ve seen, this is the one I agree with the most; partly anyway.

A presenter’s own Facebook/Twitter/Website address should not become part of the broadcast. Not only because it means anything they say is linked to the broadcast, but it makes tthose without (or even against) social networking sites feel very left out; as though they can’t be part of the broadcast because they don’t use Twitter/Facebook etc.

However I think that website addresses that are part of the broadcast (such as sites that contain extra information relating to an interview that’s been broadcast) can be broadcast on air.

For example, a few years ago one of my friends did an interview about recycling in Gloucestershire; the links to the website “Recycle for Gloucestershire” were broadcast ONCE but also put on the station website: any further announcements about that website directed listeners to our official station website.

Seem to be two categories of “radio” at the moment.

(1) People with small scale, growing audience podcasts tend to have a small web presence (blog) and they really need to take advantage of larger networking sites like Facebook to boost subscribers/listeners by people interacting and using the Share functionality etc. In this case the brand is the podcast and podcaster’s name. There’s no station behind it.

(2) However, I’ve noticed a number of local/”nation”al radio programmes that have stopped throwing in the line about “you can leave us a message on the Facebook group” in the last few months. Seemed awfully trendy and common this time last year, but dwindled now. Big stations have good websites, and I’d agree with you, should focus user generated collaboration on their own sites. And the costs to keep monitoring low levels of traffic on Facebook etc couldn’t be worth the pay back.