Complete your MixCloud Experience using a Chat Room

Just how important is listener engagement to your online broadcast?

The answer: really important! Up to 86% of users return to a website if they feel like they are a member of a community. This sense of community may be developed through the use of group chats, message forums, social networks, or a combination of all of the above.

If you are an online broadcaster using the MixCloud platform or another broadcasting service to produce an online or offline radio show, it may be in your best interests to consider developing a community around your broadcast.

Whether you like it or not, the reality is that your audience likely wants more than just your music, podcast or live show. They expect to engage with you, send in their opinions and feedback, and feel like they are a meaningful part of the show.

It makes sense, of course.

After all, given all of the many options, which radio/DJ station would they rather listen to?
One that only broadcasts the show and that’s it?

OR

One that broadcasts AND lets users influence the broadcast?

Your audience wishes to listen to some great music, a podcast or a live show. They choose to spend their time listening to you. They value their time, a LOT. Hopefully, you respect and appreciate their choice to listen to you and make an effort to fulfill their expectations. But….

• Are you doing a good job?
• Does your audience like what you do?
• Do they have any feedback that could be helpful?
• Will they listen to your broadcast again?

You get the idea! Broadcasting your audio is, of course, a good way to start and initially attract an audience. But if you want to develop faithful listeners, you need to ask yourself those questions in order to best understand how to engage with your audience.

Figuring out how to do this can be tricky, and if done wrong, may make your business look bad. So today, whether you want to engage your audience on MixCloud or elsewhere, we’re going to cover the right way to create engagement for your business, while also highlighting what may not work so well while using the MixCloud platform.

Why Engage Your Audience At All?

When it comes to creating good engagement, there’s one factor that, above all others, can have a huge impact.

The bad news is that it’s not easy. It’s not a sexy “hack” or a silver bullet. It takes work.

But the good news is that it’s simple, straightforward, and it really works.

The single most important thing you can do to develop great engagement is deliver an amazing customer experience. This will make your live broadcast unique and attractive to your audience.

Customers love businesses and organizations that treat them well. Like stated above,  86% of users will return to a website (and make a purchase as well)  if they had a good user experience, as found by Oracle in their Audience Customer Experience Impact Report.

Happy audiences help you grow your business in other ways, too. One American Express survey found that on average, happy customers tell an average of nine people about their experience.

Focusing on your audience experience isn’t just a good idea. It’s absolutely critical, especially if you want to build the foundation necessary to ensure that your audience will say great things about you online.

3 Ways To Engage Your Audience

There are several ways to engage your audience. You may choose one way or a combination of ways. But always stat focused on this question: what is your overall goal?

You want to give your audience a reason to come back to your Mixcloud account or your website. You want to create a sort of community where you are the SUBJECT and center of it.
So how can you engage users?

There are three option that you may consider if you have a website.

• Contact Us Form – This is the basic and proven way to build your audience email list. The best way to do it is to put a form on your web page and ask users to register or to answer a question and provide some contact details.
• Live Chat – A live chat is a one-on-one chat that a website visitor can participate in with you or other employees.  This is a widget that you place directly on your website. This allows your audience to talk directly to you when they are online.
• Chat Room – This is a live chat room where you are the moderator of the room. Your audience will be able to talk in a lobby chat room or in a private one-on-one conversation.

Now, this is all good for websites, but does this information apply when you have a MixCloud profile?

To add a widget to a website, you will need access to the HTML code page so you can insert the actual widget code. However, this is not the case with hubs (broadcasting platforms), so adding a code into MixCloud is not possible. This is common in platforms, as adding code might introduce a major risk to the platform.

So if adding a widget is not possible, how can I engage my audience?

Indeed you are not able to add code to platforms such as MixCloud, BUT you can add URL links to your profile. Just as within a  YouTube description where you can add a URL to your video profile, MixCloud allows you to add a URL to your description. This leaves us with:

• Contact Us Form – Adding it to MixCloud is not possible.
• Live Chat – Adding it to MixCloud is not possible.
• Chat Room service – Adding a chat room URL to your MixCloud is possible.

Because we’ve recognized the impossibility of adding a Contact Us Form or Live Chat, we are left only with the Chat Room option.

Why will adding a Chat Room to your MixCloud platform make you engage more fully with your audience?

There’s no question about it: a chat room is something we have grown very accustomed to. They pop up all the time in websites and apps and we often participate in our own chat rooms by being part of group discussions.

As a MixCloud broadcaster, incorporating a chatroom into your website is very beneficial. It allows you to:

• Engage – You can engage and talk to your audience while they are listening to your music or podcast.
• Get Feedback – Users can provide immediate feedback on the music or show and let you know if you are making the right choices and ask for special requests.
• Talk in Private – You can ask talk discreetly in a private chat to any member of your audience in order to find out if the show is meeting their expectations.
• Call – You can create a meaningful relationship with your audience and put a face and voice to them by contacting them on a live video call.
• Promote – You can promote special offers.
• Announce – You have the ability to make a different announcement when required.
• Mingle – Allow your audience to mingle and talk to each other in a live private chat.
• Create Cohesiveness – You can add the same chat room to your MixCloud, website, and even your facebook page to have a sense of cohesiveness across all platforms.

In order to best incorporate the group chat, you need to know some key points about chat rooms for community building purposes.

Managing a professional chat room requires some understanding.

Using a chat room has some rules. Let’s try to cover the three most common rules you need to follow when you have a chat room for business purposes.

1. Moderate – Never leave a chat room without a moderator. It is essential that your chat is always moderated. It could be you, someone you trust or a power user in your chat room.
2. Offline – When the chat is not moderated, you should put the chat in OFFLINE mode. This will block any option for a new discussion on your website. Instead, a message like: “We are off now, we will be back at 8 AM EST” will be shown.
3. Private Message – You will have the option of allowing private chats. Private chats mean having one-on-one discussions. This includes text, voice, and video (you can set which options you wish to allow and which ones you don’t).
   Now, you should consider this next option carefully.  There are 2 main options with private chats.
   • Allow all – Set your chat to allow private calls between users.
   • Allow admin – Set your chat to allow only private messages between admin and a user. We always recommend this option to our customers as changing it to allow all is only the matter of a click.

Creating a new MixCloud chat room.

So, once you are familiar with the concept and rules, you can begin the process of increasing listener engagement by adding a chat room. It really could be a game-changer for your online broadcast!

Step 1: First, register in the RumbleTalk home page. If you need more information, you can read the getting started guide.

Step 2: After registering, you will go to your admin panel, where you can copy your chat room link (URL). This URL is unique for your chat room. You can distribute it, send it via email and it will be your cloud chat room.

Step 3: Last step, add it to your cloud chat URL to your MixCloud show description.

You are done 🙂