In our last blog post we covered some great ways to engage and retain your listeners. In this post we will see how you can attract new ones and grow your traffic.

1. Submit your internet station to Internet radio directories

Internet directories are acting as internet radio aggregators and they are a great way to start promoting your station. There are dozens of free online radio directories where you can submit your station free of charge and reach new listeners for music and shows. The more directories you submit your station to, the higher the visibility. We recently published a blog post featuring the top radio directories to submit your internet radio station and reach new listeners. 

2. Invite guests to your shows

If you are planning to have a show on a specific topic and you know a person who is expert in that matter, you may want to consider inviting them to be part of the show. If they accept, they will most likely want to share the news with their friends who might end up liking your station and becoming regular listeners. So, think of people who have a good social presence and a large following. If the show goes really well then you might even consider giving them a guest show once a month and if that also goes really really well then just offer them a regular spot on your station.

Another great way to attract new listeners is by inviting or interviewing influencers to your show. These influencers could be musicians/bands, DJs, event organisers-promoters, bloggers etc. who are related to the music style that you play or to the topics that you cover and have a large social media following. If your station is community based, then think of local influencers like local bands or musicians. Before you start reaching out to influencers, be sure to have a clear plan and pitch (know exactly what you want to offer them), be patient (as they tend to get tons of invitations like yours), and just be yourself!

To make sure the interview reaches as large an audience as possible, you’ll want to start promoting your interview and show well ahead of time to create anticipation. Don’t forget to ask your guests if they could also share the interview with their audience.

3. Make use of Facebook 

There are plenty of ways to make use of Facebook to engage your current fans and attract new ones. First and foremost, as we mentioned earlier, you might want to consider creating a facebook group so that your members can interact with you and with each other. If at some point your Facebook group ends up having thousands of members, you will have a great channel where you can communicate your news and reach out to all your fans. Also groups with a big number of members tend to be attractive to new members.  After having the group running for sometime, you can identify the most active and loyal users and assign them moderator access. In that way you show them your trust and they feel valuable. 

Also, you might want to become a member of Facebook groups where the demographic of members matches your target audience. Post in the group to let members know about your internet radio station or any special events you might be holding, such as an interview with a famous band or musician. However, it’s crucial not to be seen as intrusive or spammy by over-posting. If you repeatedly post in the group trying to promote your station, you’ll risk being removed by an admin.

4. Run contests and polls

‘Almost’ everybody loves a contest with a good prize. If you manage to get free tickets to popular upcoming gigs to give away to your fans, you could run a competition on your social media channels. A common way to run a social media contest is to ask your fans to interact with one of your posts in order to enter the competition. This way your posts get organic visibility and reach a wider audience. The friends of your fans are likely to share common interests – hence this could be an excellent way to get in front of a larger relevant audience. 

Tip: You can partner up with businesses who would be willing to sponsor the competition and pay you so that they are mentioned as the main sponsors.

5. Blog to get organic traffic

If your station plays a specific genre then there is a lot to write about on your blog. From covering the culture and history of the music, to interesting facts about the genre, industry rumours and exciting stories related to the music, there are so many different topics to talk about. Just be creative. If you have an exciting interview on the type of music you play or the topics you cover then just transcribe the audio and you have a nice first draft. If you do keyword research on the topic discussed in the interview and you amend the text a bit so that you can add those keywords inside the text you will have some more possibilities to make that blog post rank higher in search engines (this technique is called SEO). Don’t forget to optimise the meta title and meta description so that it explains what the post is about. After you publish the new post, be sure to let the world know about it by sharing it on your Facebook page, Facebook group and other relevant forums or groups you are part of.

Also, another clever way to reach a wider audience is to open your blog to guest contributors. You can ask your listeners to submit their own stories and publish them on your blog. Your listeners will most probably want to share the news with their friends and those friends could be potential new listeners of your station!