9ja Radio Online

It’s a thing of pride for me  as a Nigerian living abroad  to be able to listen to our local radio stations online. I see it as a sign of progressive thinking that the owners of these stations have seen it fit to have a presence online. I also find it appealing to be able to listen online. An air of nostalgia wells up within me when I hear the sounds and voices of Nigerian music laced with the international tracks; it is something you don’t get anywhere but from our good old Naija.

The presence of Nigerian radio online is giving the Nigerian Dailies a good run for their money.

This article is a big props to the guys who are going against all odds by putting up these sites online.

As with every good idea, there is always room for improvement. Here is some free advice for the guys who call the shots in these media houses:

*  Traffic is king: whatever you do, you want to drive traffic to your site. This won’t happen by chance. What have other media houses done? Think about this: how about offering a discount to advertisers if they refer people to your site instead of theirs. So what happens when they get to the site? These customers can click on the link from your site to the advertiser’s site.

* Capture customer data: this information is something that is missing in Nigeria. There are a good number of research agencies out there. But the fact still remains that the information they capture is about segments (i.e. groups of people) and not individuals. Who knows? You just might be able to capture enough factual information about individuals to help the public sector database.

* If traffic is king, promotion is the prime minister: again, you have to give people a reason to come to your site. You can do that in collaboration with your advertisers…. example: visit coolfm.us and register to get a free bottle of coke when you buy a yamarita from Tastee Fried Chicken (Oh! Do I miss TFC’s Yamarita!)

One more tip: is it possible that we can do without listening to adverts for more than 15mins at a time. You might want to consider playing 2  3 ads after each song instead of the way it’s done right now … just saying!

If I said any more than this, it won’t be free… I’ll be grateful to get your feedback about what you think our media houses are doing well at and what they can do better.

Care about the customer…And It’ll come back to you!

Greg Ubigen can be reach on greg@ubigen.org or www.ubigen.org