The internet has enabled us to talk and discuss the topics we are most passionate about. An entire community sprung up online to fawn over recent Netflix hit Black Mirror, and during the recent issue about Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanagh, thousands of commenters, especially on Twitter, huddled over their keyboards and have become keyboard warriors to discuss and debate.

Nowadays, people really become keyboard warriors on topics about politics, religion, and their likes. It would be foolish then for radio station websites not to get in on the act. One of the features of RumbleTalk to address this is to embed a chatroom.

The relationship between a radio station and the listener has always traditionally been one-sided— one talks and plays music and the other listens. There are a number of reasons why this still shouldn’t be the case.

Engage Your Listeners with a Chatroom

If you embed a chatroom into your radio station website, then you can engage with your audience in a whole new way.

Imagine that you are a radio host. Your work is a juggling act, one in which you must pay close attention to the music, the switchboard, and the needs of your listeners. It’s not easy, but you’re doing well—the numbers show that there are plenty of listeners tuning in.

When you call out for song requests, however, very few people get involved. The same goes for callers; usually, there’s no response. What’s the problem?

It could be that your listeners are simply too busy with their lives to phone in. Or, maybe they don’t feel comfortable talking live on air. Whatever the reason is, a chatroom is a perfect panacea for these problems.

When you embed a chatroom, a listener can send a message or request instantly. No queues, no pressure, just instant communication. You can tweak the content of your radio show in turn, and you can immediately improve the show for your listeners, for more engagement either verbally or through your chatroom.

From there, it gets better. Before the generation of smartphones and the internet, listeners were restricted to texts and phone calls; now, they can use a range of media to get their point across. Instead of trying to tell the host a funny story, a listener could send a picture of it in the event that it happened. This could be enjoyed not just by the host but by the entire community, leading to more discussion. There’s nothing wrong with a caller explaining the current political debate, but why not embed a YouTube video, where you and the other listeners can watch?

If this sounds overwhelming, don’t worry. Quality chat rooms allow you to configure them to fit your needs, however, you want it to be.

A Responsive Tool

In the first quarter of 2018, it was found that, from 45%, 57% of online radio listeners are listening to podcasts once a week. This means that, throughout the years, radio station websites still continue to gain listeners. For many, especially the old generation, it is their primary means of hearing the news and learning about the latest issues, trends, and gossip. For a radio station, being on top of those issues is a great asset.

When you embed a chatroom into your radio station website, you can learn more from your listeners than their favorite song of the moment. You discover their pressing concerns, the stories that are burning in the hearts and minds of your audience. You can use this as a strategy to become an indispensable public service in the eyes (or rather, ears) of your listeners.

This is especially significant during a Q & A or a live debate or conference. By inviting the perspective of your audience, you can gain valuable insight into every facet of the issue. Maybe you and your team overlooked an aspect of a discussion that one listener deems crucial. A chatroom enables you to tailor the content and structure of proceedings in real time based on what your listeners want to hear. In doing so, you can build a relationship with your listeners, which brings us to our final point.

Embed a Chatroom and Generate Community

By embedding a chatroom into your radio station website, you lay the foundations for a community to grow.

A group of listeners who sends messages to the host will naturally begin sending messages to each other, creating a whole new community. These people would have previously listened alone. Now, they generate a powerful following for your radio station and its programming that both of you can enjoy. This feeling of camaraderie will have them come back for more the next time you air.   

This, being the internet, debates can sometimes turn ugly. As the administrator, you can communicate directly with any listeners who are being abusive or having a negative impact on the chat as a whole. If they continue to do so, you can suspend them or even remove them from the chat entirely. You will serve as the role model and the rule maker of your radio community.

Embedding Options

Embedding means getting a piece of code and adding it to your website (WordPress, HTML, etc).

RumbleTalk provides 2 types of embedded chatrooms.

• A floating toolbar chatroom, which is an icon on the right or left.
  
• An embed option on a page, where you can copy and paste an embed code on your website.
  
• In addition, you can always get the chat to be full screen using a link that is shared with your audience.

How Do You Embed a Chatroom?

In this section comes a guide of how you can embed a chatroom in your website. Follow these steps for easy embedding.

1. In your new Rumbletalk dashboard, you will see the Embed option. Click on it.
2. After clicking it, a setting for the Embed option will appear.
3. There, you will see the  following settings on embedding a chatroom for your website:

• Width and height
• Floating chat option
• Code for your chatroom
• Instructions

It’s easy, right? Now, you can communicate more with your audience and vice versa.

Of course, you can’t have your eyes on the chat all the time; you have a radio show to run. Not a problem—you can appoint members of your team to act as moderators. They can keep an eye on the chat and ensure healthy discussion while you operate the studio. 

Those are just a few of the excellent reasons to embed a chatroom into your radio station website. It’s important to note that not all chat rooms are equal, and not all of the aforementioned features are available in all chatrooms.

Get in touch to find out more.

Do you want to make your RumbleTalk chat room more fun and personalized? If yes, but you currently don’t know how to do it, here is a quick guide on how you can change your background image.

What is a background image?

A background image is the image you will see in the background of the following chat room settings:

• General
• Users List
• Chat Area
• Text Box
• Dialog Box

Changing your background image

Here is a step-by-step procedure on how you can change the background image of your RumbleTalk chat room when you login to both the old and new dashboards.

For the old dashboard:

1. Go to your account’s dashboard and click on the Settings button at the bottom left corner of your chat room.

 

2. By clicking on the Settings button, you will see all the settings of the chat room in one place. Click on the Design button.

 

3. After clicking on Design, it will drop down to a list of settings from General to Dialog Box, which you can change to personalize your chat room, excluding Messages.

 

4. By clicking on the Background Image option, from General to Dialog Box, you can change the background image of your RumbleTalk chat room.

 

You will see the affected area in the right-hand side of every setting.

 

Here is an example of a changed background image on the General setting. The background image at default and the changed background image are seen below.

 

 

 

For the new dashboard:

1. Now, you can find the Design button at the top of the Dashboard page.
2. Just like the old Design settings, you will now see them when you click the Design button.
3. From there, the process is still the same with the old dashboard, with the Background Image option still on the left-hand side of every Design setting, except Messages.

You can play with the Design setting for your preferred background image in your RumbleTalk chat room in both old and new dashboards.

The RumbleTalk WordPress Members chat plugin is constantly introducing new features. One of the latest additions is the display name feature. It enhances the option for members to log in with a specific name. Here is a quick overview of this new feature and how it can be used.

What is the display name feature?

The new display name feature is an easy way to control what name will show in the member’s group chat.

The name that will show in the members’ chat is taken from the WordPress database. The options are:

• User Name (default) This is the login name of a user.
• Nick Name
• First Name
• Last Name
• First Name + Last Name
• Last Name + First name

How does the new WordPress members’ chat display name work?

After installing the chat plugin, you will see a new black arrow next to the member’s field, simply choose the option you like or leave it to use the default name.

How does the member display name feature work?

As with all plugins, just having access to a lot of features isn’t enough. You need to know how to leverage them effectively to justify integrating them into your membership site. Here is a quick overview of the new feature.

When a user clicks on the member’s checkbox, the plugin is basically activating a code in the WordPress service that connects your WordPress user base with the chat, this can also be done manually if you do not want to use the RumbleTalk WordPress plugin.

From this point, any user that logged in to your WordPress site will be automatically logged into the RumbleTalk chat room. Now the new feature will control what name will show as the username.

The feature was introduced in order to present maximum flexibility in deciding what a username will look like.