Why Your Podcasting Strategy Should Include Your Own Mobile App

With the rise of streaming audio, radio and video services today, there is a lot of media overlap. The same shows and digital audio can be found, streamed and downloaded across multiple services. Movies on Netflix can be found on Amazon Prime, which may also showcase current TV shows that are only offered to Hulu subscribers. The same thing can be said for digital audio. Electronic dance music on Beatport is also part of the massive iTunes Store library, yet iTunes competes with Amazon Prime Music. All this popular content is available to the masses, but what about your content? What about you, the podcaster? Do you know why your podcasting strategy should include your own mobile app?

There’s No Place Like The Top!

The way our audio team and I see content in the world of podcasting is like a pyramid. At the bottom, there’s thousands of podcasters with some kind of content. A percentage of them have created podcasts which bring real value to listeners as opposed to smut, rants or similar. Of those podcasters who bring value, a small percentage of them utilize syndication. (For those who may not know, syndication the process of pushing digital content through a family of web feeds known as RSS feeds. Feeds pull from various channels to deliver mass content to anyone subscribed to those feeds). There are even fewer podcasters who have their own apps to push their content as opposed to relying primarily on syndication. We are one of those few who have invested resources into creating our own app and push our own content ourselves.

Life Improvement Radio (LIR) and its sister channel, Life Improvement Radio After Dark (LIRAD), each have their individual mobile apps. LIR was launched in September 2010 and as a result of growth and popularity, LIRAD was launched in April of 2013. LIR is family-suitable content whereas LIRAD is “mature content for immature audiences.” Each of our apps have a tremendous listener-base of 4 million annual tune-ins. We feel having these apps in place has led to our success in the Tampa Bay market and with good reasoning. There has been a lot of upsets with regard to internet radio stations over the past decade. We are the sole survivor thanks in part to our marketing strategies and loyal listenership and of course our show hosts who bring excellent content to our audiences.

Countless Embedded Mobile App Features

Both apps have the same capabilities that rival many other 5-star music apps available on the Google Play and iTunes App store. Users have the ability to customize push notifications about certain podcasts airing as well as wake up to and fall asleep to their favorite shows due to an alarm clock and sleep timer respectively! Social media feed integrations allow listeners to share content seamlessly with their followers. On-demand playback and stream backup prevent listeners from missing a single beat. 

We have the ability keep an eye on listeners tuning in now and a complete playlist history, which helps us better understand our metrics. Our menus are branded with our logos and easily interchangeable with banner ads and other advertising options. Custom menus in the player allow us to link out external websites. Any radio station could easily see the value whether it came to direct marketing of products and services or even affiliate marketing opportunities.

In a recent fact-finding mission, our staff learned some staggering numbers regarding future mobile growth. As the world is transitioning from a mobile-first world to a mobile-only world, mobile apps will forever reign supreme. As it stands now, apps make up 89% of phone use. “Mobile phone users are expected to grow to 4.7 billion in 2017” and “By 2020, global mobile app downloads will reach 284 billion.” It’s only a matter of time! To check out both our radio player apps, explore below!

• Since 2010 • 4M Annual Listeners • Life Improvement Radio: iTunes | Google Play
• Since 2013 • 4M Annual Listeners • Life Improvement Radio After Dark: iTunes | Google Play

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