In a previous blog post, we covered various ways to attract new listeners and grow your internet radio station; one of those ways was to start blogging. If you want to try that out, but don’t know where to start, this blog post is for you!
Why your internet station needs a blog
When it comes to online radio, a blog can be a powerful way to engage and entertain your existing audience but also to connect with new listeners and promote your station. In this post, we’ll discuss tips for starting a blog and creating content that will help your station grow. We’ll also talk about what to write about, and how to keep your blog fresh and interesting. Finally, we’ll provide some resources to help you get started.
1. How to come up with topic ideas for blog posts
You first need to figure out what your blog will be about. One thing you definitely need to do is make your blog relevant to your radio. For example, if your internet radio programming is all about Jazz, it won’t make much sense to blog about Pop. Your blog should be your written representation of your radio station style and content. Here are some ideas about what to write about:
- Music industry news
- Album reviews
- World news
- Industry news and gossips
- Playlists of the month
- Concert reviews
- Interviews with singers and musicians you invite to your shows
- History of music
If you’re stumped for blog topic ideas, consider ideas from your own life. Don’t be afraid to blog about a topic that hits close to home; it’s important to write about things that interest you because this passion will come through in your blogs. There are various online tools that can help you find inspiration and topic ideas on what to write about. Here are five content idea generators:
- HubSpot’s Blog Topic Generator
- Impact’s Blog Title Generator
- Answer the Public
- BuzzSumo’s Question Analyzer
- UberSuggest Content Idea Generator
I’ve recently launched an internet radio station for my Be Now App, focused on guided meditation, sound healing, and meditation music. I knew that an effective way to attract new listeners is through a blog where I would write content related to sound healing, and sound meditation. The first thing I did is to write down topic ideas that I would find interesting as a reader. I also did a Google search to find topic ideas according to what people are looking for in relation to sound healing. I then used Google Adwords’ Keyword Planner to narrow down the topics to the ones which would have potential organic traffic. The idea is that people who are interested in learning about sound healing, would end up on my blog and hopefully would want to listen to the station. I started seeing an increase in organic traffic 1 month after launching the blog.
This post about how to come up with topic ideas for your talk radio show might give you some extra ideas on finding interesting things to write about.
Extra tip: You can use social media polls to ask your fans what type of topics they want to see on your blog.
2. Finding your voice
Finding your blog’s voice is an important step in building a successful blog. Your posts should have a distinct style, and your content should not be boring or copy-and-pasted from other sources. Try and think about matching the tone of your blog with the voice of your internet radio show.
3. How regularly should you post?
Frequency of posting is totally up to you. However, if you aim to have a successful blog that gets organic traffic (which means readers who could become radio listeners) you will need to blog regularly. Aim to blog at least once a week, if not more. Many content marketers who aim for increased awareness blog daily, but you can blog less frequently and still generate traffic and engagement. You just need a content plan (weekly or monthly), write engaging content, and never give up the idea of writing. Trust me, it will pay off the moment that you will see your organic traffic and listenership rising!
4. How to engage your blog audience
You should engage and interact with blog readers through the post’s comments section or on social media. This will help build a following for your blog. Readers always appreciate being acknowledged and seeing a reply from you will give them a reason to be more engaged and comment again in the future. Also, lots of times those comments will give you inspiration for future blog post ideas. Keep in mind that when running a blog, you’ll want to take comments and interaction into account so that you can write blog posts that will generate interest and discussion.
5. Accept guest post contributors
Another great way to engage your audience is to ask them to share their own content and publish it on your blog as a guest post. You can let people know through your radio and website that you are up for guest contributors. Obviously, you can choose what content to publish. No one obliges you to publish all guest content you receive. On your website, create a blog post category for these guest contributions. After getting their post published on your blog, guest contributors will likely want to share this great news with their friends on social media, which means extra exposure and potential readers-listeners for your station!
6. How to build blog traffic
Regardless of how regularly you blog, blog promotion is key for building traffic and engagement. Blog promotion includes search engine optimisation (SEO), blog post promotion on social media, guest blog promotion, and blog post pay-per-click advertisements. It won’t make much sense to create content that no one reads. Therefore, you will need to spread the word about it. You can of course let your listeners know about your new blog posts through your radio show and share your posts on your social media channels.
Another great way to get more views and readers is to join relevant Facebook groups and communities and share your posts there. Finally, you can use platforms like Reddit and Medium to reach a wider audience.
7. How to monetise a blog for online radio
Monetising blog content can be done in a few different ways. You can blog about particular music albums that you play on your radio and link to music play stores where your audience can purchase that album. There are play stores that provide affiliate partnerships to publishers like yourself. You will get a commission for every reader of your blog who clicks on that link and makes a purchase. You could also use blog advertisements to generate revenue through blog visits. You can sign up to Google Adsense and use their service to feature banner ads on your blog and get paid every time a reader clicks on those ads. Here are some more ways to make money from your station.
8.How to take advantage of SEO to bring organic traffic to your blog
SEO is the way to make your website and blog rank on search engines. You can check out this guide to find how it works. The truth is that it’s not that easy to implement a successful SEO strategy if you’re not familiar with the subject and the techniques. However, I wasn’t either before starting my first blog and it didn’t take long until I started seeing a spike in organic traffic on my blog. If you want to take advantage of SEO, you will need to know some basic concepts and ranking factors, and always keep in mind those key factors whenever writing a blog post.
Be sure to make use of keywords and SEO techniques so that your blog posts can be found by listeners online. Here are some blog post SEO tips to get you started:
- The easiest way to find the right keywords to use in your copy is through this simple and free browser extension called Keywords Everywhere. You will just need to search for the topic of the blog post you want to write about in the search engine and Keywords Everywhere will show you monthly search volume metrics right inside the search pages.
- If you want to dive deeper into keywords research and analysis you can use Google Adwords’ Keywords Planner tool, which is also free to use.
9. Use Canva for blog design
Canva is a cool website where you can create nice design elements for your blog, like spot banners. It offers hundreds of beautiful templates to use so that you can create a beautiful banner without having design knowledge. Just sign up for a free account and look for blog graphics.
And there you have it, you are now ready to start a blog to promote your internet radio programme!
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