http://www.talkablelikeable.com/the-story-behind-maybe-its-because-im-a-londoner/

Also, for someone listening at work, firing off an email is quick and discreet. Browsing your station website is fiddly and obvious to your manager or colleagues if they happen to pass by – in some work environments this would be a problem. Also, in some offices access to station websites may be blocked altogether.

I understand your point James, but I would say that if you want to give your audience every possible opportunity to interact and engage, you should give out a simple, short email address with all possible variants accepted. Interaction should be seen as more than just a revenue generator via sms or ad banners – it helps make your output compelling.

(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.

“don’t say anything you wouldn’t feel comfortable being read out by Eddie Mair on the radio!”

The boundary between personal and work is becoming so blurred.

I work for a large telco, very rarely mention it or its products on twitter or blogs. Yet I’m intentional in making sure they (or other bodies I’m associated with) wouldn’t find it embarrassing if I was to “come out” at some point and have to deal with the historic stuff already out there on the internet.

Like your previous relationships, your contribution to the web cannot be swept under the carpet. Something I need to drill into the teenagers at this summer’s Tech Camp!

I’m not sure you can single out presenters as being different from other employees. When I read @jamescridland I read it knowing it’s your personal opinion, but that you’re a BBC employee. (So no swearing before the watershed – oh no, that’s only tv and not radio!) But it’s no different to reading @williamcrawley, a Radio Ulster presenter, who has a mix of promotion and personal stuff on there too.

As for dropping Sky, I probably could – I’d miss a little of the better quality US drama; but I lived with onDigital/ITV digital until it went pear shaped. It probably helps that I buy any movies I want on DVD and have no interest in sports – probably where Sky gets a goodly portion of its subscriber base.

For example, sites that have almost all their pages indexed in Google have barely 20% indexed in Bing.

Therefore Bing is not seeing most of the web.

I wish Microsoft would sort this out – they have millions at their disposal and the brightest people working for them.

Like that interview? tag it with the stick to the left of the steering wheel and download it later to your iPod or phone.

I want to upgrade but feel so bad about getting rid of a perfectly nice monitor.

You can easily bounce a reply back to your listeners telling them what exciting fare you have on the site, how you can look at the webcam, catch up with studio Tweets or whatever.

“Email us via the website” also sounds horrible. And the listener just knows that half the time you have to fill out multiple forms, register or goodness knows what.

Every one of those steps means that I’m less likely to correspond with the station.

Now if you want to limit the number of people contacting you, then this is a fine way. But if you want to make particpiation as easy as possible, then email is the way forward (I’m not saying get rid of the web form of course).

The perception is an email address is personal where as
a form lacks the personal touch that can influence the listeners decision to write or not.

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.