by: Bob Kernen
Mobile is a great way for your audience to listen to your station, but your app can be about much more than just access to your stream. Here are 5 non-streaming features of your app that you should use to drive engagement with your audience.
1. Social interaction – You can use the app to interact with your audience on social media. Most apps will display your Facebook or Twitter feed, and the best apps will enable your audience to not only read your posts, but post back to you. Why send them to the FB or Twitter app, when they can interact in your own app.
2. On demand listening – Podcasts are a part of people’s every day life. Ask any one of the 1.3M people who downloaded the Serial podcast. Take your content and make it available to your app users to listen to when they want to. Listening to your morning show during an evening workout (sponsored) is a great way to leverage existing content.
3. Upstream – Several popular station apps have features that enable users to record audio and send it to the station to use on air. Why not let your listeners send in their comments and questions this way? Or let them record a song or show intro. Everybody wants to hear themselves on the radio, but now you’re in control.
4. News feeds – Whether you’re a sports station, a music station or a news station, you probably have news content coming in to your website. That same XML or RSS feed can be ported to your mobile app. It’s the perfect way to tie something you’re talking about on-air to more information on mobile.
5. Promotions – Get your users engaged with the promotions they hear on-air by making sure you promote it on your mobile app. It’s the perfect place to give them the details you don’t want to waste valuable air-time on.
