The document covers the design and management of radio station websites, focusing on monetization, information distribution, and case studies such as cbsradionews.com. It highlights the importance of regular updates, effective content management systems, and promotional strategies to enhance site traffic and revenue. Additionally, it discusses the significance of learning from failures and the necessity of creating engaging content for audience loyalty.

1. Design and Management of Radio
Station Websites
Topic Areas
1. Design of radio station websites
2. Operation of radio station websites
3. Case Study – CBSRadioNews.com

2. Molly Stark Dean
 New Media Liaison
 Social Media
Manager
 Social Media
Consultant
 Managing Editor,
Multimedia
Photo credit:
Anne Lise Haugen Anshus

3. Radio Station Website Design
Topic Areas
1. Direct Monetization
2. Information Distribution
3. Portal to More Content

4. Direct Monetization
 Advertising
 Display Ads
 Text Ads (by
Google
Adwords)
 Video Ads (for
video content)

5. Information Distribution
News Content
 Text Headlines
 Hourly Newscast
Player
 24/7 Stream
 Blogs
 Podcasts
Station Information
 Affiliate Map
 Bios
 Ringtones
 Partners
 Content

6. Portal to More Content
 A station website must not only serve as a
destination, but as a portal to your other properties
 It brings people to:
 Social Media, for interaction
 Mobile, for additional monetization opportunities
 Partners and affiliates for link sharing, which leads to
improved Search Engine Optimization

7. Operating a Station Website
 Five “W”s and the “H”
 Who?
 What?
 When?
 Where?
 Why?
 How?

8. Who? (is maintaining your site)
 A site that isn't updated regularly will not get
repeat traffic
 Do you have a staff?
 Probably not as much as you need
 How much can you automate your process?
 Answer: Hopefully, a lot. (More underWhat?)

9. What? (Tools are you using)
 Quality CMS (Content Management System)
 Build your own ($$$$ - Expensive)
 Wordpress (Customizable, but requires significant
technical resources)
 DeDe CMS (Well liked, but not so good for search engine
optimization)
 Discuz (Used by PHPBoard)
 We'll talk more about the CBS Radio News CMS
later this week.

10. When? (is the best time to
update)
 Website use is generally highest:
 During lunch time
 Right after work
 Therefore, it is best to update during:
 Morning Drive, when Radio Stations generally
have the most staff in
 Mid-day following production meetings

11. Where? (should I promote my site)
 Work with your partners (Good link sharing)
 Work with your network
 Search Engine Optimization
 GoogleWebmasterTools
 TitleTag
 Meta Description

12. Why? (do I need to do all
this)
 Remember your goals
1. Direct Monetization
2. Information Distribution
3. Portal to More Content
 Success Begets Success
 A successful station website will help your
station and a successful station will help your
website.

13. How? (do I make this all
happen)
 Learn some basic HTML and CSS design
 Start with a CMS and learn its tools
 Practice, Practice, Practice
 Talk with other designers and websites
 Look at what other stations and websites that
you like are doing. Use their “page source” to see
how they did it.

14. Revenue
 Will not come overnight
 To earn revenue, you need to generate traffic
first
 Web revenue is way behind other media
 If applicable, use your terrestrial revenue to fuel
investment in digital platforms
 Sell all types of ads: text, display, audio, video

15. “Above the Fold”
 Definition:What loads on a page without
scrolling down
 Origin: Broadsheet newspapers fold in half.The
content that you can read without turning the
paper over is “above the fold”
 This should be where your most important
content resides
 Many users will never scroll down on the page
unless the content on the first page is compelling

16. Case Study (CBSRadioNews.com)

17. Key Elements “Above the Fold”
on CBSRadioNews.com
 Rotating News Headline or Promotional Element
(Needs Frequent Rotation)
 Most Popular Stories: Promotes Page Depth
 Most Important Promotional Element
 Advertisements
 Sometimes the a cross-site prescription changes
what you put there

18. Case Study (CBSRadioNews.com)

19. Key Elements on
CBSRadioNews.com
 CBS Radio News Hourly player
 Latest News updated every hour On Demand
 Follow Us Module
 Where you can find us on social media
 Links to our affiliates to promote link-sharing and
improve SEO
 Added value for most committed fans (Ringtones)

20. Case Study (CBSRadioNews.com)

21. Key Elements on
CBSRadioNews.com
 CBS Radio News 24/7 Stream
 A core component of our mobile platforms
 Twitter Feed
 Update hourly with newscast headlines and as
necessary with breaking news
 Links to our correspondent blogs
 More links for partner websites

22. Using Analytics
 What are analytics?
 Analytics tell you how many and how people are using
your website.
 4 main companies offer analytics.
 Omniture
 Google Analytics
 Coremetrics
 Webtrends

23. Core Analytics to Watch
 Visits
 Entire interactions with your site
 PageViews
 How many different pages seen
 Page Depth
 During each visit, how many pages a user sees.
 Click Map (Click Path)
 This give you detailed visualization of where users
are going on your site.

24. Metrics for CBSRadioNews.com

25. Don't Be Afraid to Fail
 CBS Radio News created a separate website for
the 2012 Presidential election
 We created EyeontheWhiteHouse.com in
partnership withTumblr.com
 It was a place for us to put our additional election
content that did not fit on CBSRadioNews.com
 We were not able to generate enough promotion
for it to draw traffic to it

26. Tumblr.com Case Study

27. Google Analytics Metrics for
Tumblr.com

28. Lessons Learned
 Don't expect partners to do your promotions.
 We wasted too much “above the fold” space on a
flashy graphic.
 While our content was good, there was not
enough multimedia content that people were
expecting.
 It requires significant resources to launch a new
venture, so understand how much can be
devoted to it.

29. Benefits from Failure
 This is a new world. Sometimes an experiment
will work and sometimes it won't.
 Inevitably, you will learn lessons from a failure.
 You can test your limits. How much can you
handle while still keeping your primary products
operating?
 Skills on one platform will carry over to other
platforms.TheTumblr CMS taught us things that
could be applied to our CMS.

30. Final Thoughts
 If you never fail, you aren't taking enough risks
to be successful.
 Automate your process as much as you can.
 We'll talk more about that during my last lecture on
CMS. (Content Management Systems)
 Earn your customer's loyalty by creating great
content.
 When you find something that works, replicate it.