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KC 107.7 entered a new digital world with the launch a brand new App. The biggest Radio Station in the Cape Winelands has partnered on a Digital Leap program with Durban-based tech company immedia who have invested R10m to help African media entrepreneurs build sustainable community radio. Read more

We are living in the age of online platforms, and most brands are increasingly seeing the value of having a mobile App as part of broadening their reach and tapping into the new age consumer. Having a mobile app for your business gives you the power to influence how and when your app members consume the content you share with them, and it also gives you the control to protect your app member's data as we gravitate to the age of POPI. Like every touchpoint for your brand such as your website or social media, the app needs a clear content strategy that is aligned to your business goals and objectives whilst staying true to the essence of who you are as a brand. Having an app is an amazing addition to your consumer engagement strategy. That strategy needs a clear and concise content strategy to support it. When this is done right, you will experience an increase in app downloads, app registrations, and member engagement - thus adding value to your consumer engagement strategy. Here's a summary guideline that can add benefit to your own content strategy: 1. Set out clear goals Setting goals is the starting point in any content endeavour you choose to undertake. Having a goal helps you create a foundational structure of where you want to go content wise and how the journey will look. Even the simplest content strategies have set goals - this is what sets the tone, and informs the type of content that needs to be created, thus helping create content that will an impact on your app members. The goals of your content strategy will vary, and might include: Increase the in-app Conversation and Channels member count Brand/app awareness Increase app downloads Increase app registrations Greater user retention rate Increase app member engagement. These are just a few examples — when you create content, bear these in mind throughout, and your strategy will have greater resonance as a result. 2. Clearly define your app target audience One of the most important principles of building a successful content strategy is to know your app members. This forms the foundation of every good mobile app content strategy too. What is important is seeing your app members as personalities for whom you can create tailored content for unique needs and interests. For instance, if your app members prefer a certain social platform over another, you could add that site as a provider on your Smashboard to see and respond to all messages received. Another great way to gain an understanding of who your audience is and what makes them tick is to create surveys geared to give insights into their personality. 3. Write content with a tangible hook As content creatives, we often produce our content with a consideration of the medium on which the content is being consumed. Because the app is on a mobile device, we might assume that most app members are less likely to engage with lengthy blog posts. That assumption is a bit far-fetched because app members or content consumers in online platforms are quite happy to read long-form content via a mobile app if it is engaging. To provide a teaser, share a summary of the article linking to your website so that you can kill two birds with one stone. If you want your audience to engage with the content from the first paragraph to the last word, you need to entice them with interesting content throughout. One way of maximising this would be to add content that is trending in another platforms. 4. Deliver fresh and diverse content As an app content creative, a vital intention is to keep your app members coming back in the app and spend time consuming the content in the app. This means you need to be creative in the pillars you choose to focus on in terms on the content you decide to publish to your audience. The precedence here is when app members keep getting exposed to the same content repeatedly, they become disengaged and, as a result, they decide not to come back in the app or read or listen to your podcast for a few seconds and disconnect from the app. The best strategies lead the charge in diverse content pillars to keep your app members stimulated. The best content strategies embrace a diverse array of content formats to keep audiences stimulated and engaged, and your mobile app’s content strategy is no different. Some of the content pillars you can get started with for your mobile app. Example include: Product sneak peeks: mobile apps are a terrific way to source app member feedback. Offer teasers for new products and invite customer input via in-app surveys. Here you can partner with a potential advertiser to give them brand awareness. Product tutorials: value is key in your mobile app content strategy, and how-to and explainer videos are perfect for delivering that straight to your audience. More on content pillars here: Creating Killer Content Pillars 5. Use metrics to guide and hone your content strategy One of the key benefits of having an app is the fact that it gives you real-time insightful result to report on and, in this case, helps you create content that is heavily consumed. For example, if one live podcast gets more plays, find out what the discussion around that podcast was about and use that as a pillar for creating content. Better yet, use the four most-played content as a foundational pillar for the next round of podcasts you add. If your audience engage heavily with news posts in the news channel, take note of what news content they reacted to mostly and in future instead of just having a post, include a podcast of it and it link on your socials. Lastly, if you are uncertain about how to create an app content strategy, contact us - we can help!

Now it has come to be known as Nkomazi FM, previously accessible only within the Nkomazi jurisdiction, but currently worldwide. Keeping up with the times, this people’s station has just launched its digital platform, which will enable listeners from anywhere around the world to tune in and be part of live shows, entertainment and news. “It’s very simple, really. All you have to do is download our app and follow the easy instructions to tune in anytime and anywhere,” said Makhosi Zulu, the station manager. Read more

There are few local tech inventions that have received international attention, despite an abundance of successful South African tech stories. However, one South African innovation is changing this narrative. Read more

Radio is facing a challenging time. Listener numbers have fallen during the pandemic, advertising budgets have been cut, and streaming is luring audiences away from traditional radio. Read more

There are few local tech inventions that have received international attention, despite an abundance of successful South African tech stories. However, one South African innovation is changing this narrative. Fabrik, developed by SA company immedia, is being used by international public broadcasters to bring audiences into the digital and social revolution. Fabrik has totally transformed and enhanced audience engagement of the publicly funded national broadcaster of the Republic of the Seychelles, the Seychelles Broadcasting Corporation. The Seychelles Broadcasting Corporation (SBC), recognising the need to capitalise on the opportunity inherent in digital transformation, have invested in modernising its offering with a full set of featured mobile apps to support its Paradise FM and Radyo Sesel radio stations. Both apps are built on the Fabrik digital platform, a cloud-based set of tools and applications - backed by Microsoft - that allows broadcast radio organisations to digitise, consolidate, and monetise audience engagement. Derrick Young-Khon, head of marketing, multimedia and corporate affairs at the SBC, says managing fake news during a public emergency like the Covid-19 pandemic has seen the SBC apps deliver tremendous value to citizens, allowing the station to provide listeners with fact-based, objective, breaking news stories from a media source they trust, in real time. “The apps have become the go-to place to get information. Firstly, because it is instant, it is in the palm of our audience’s hands, and the latest pandemic statistics are available on the app with just one click. Second, we give people credible information,” says Young-Khon. Creating cultural impact The SBC also incorporated the Truth, Reconciliation and National Unity Commission (TRNUC) sessions into the apps. The TRNUC was established in September 2018 with the aim of bringing closure to past socio-political events that had negative impacts on many Seychellois citizens. By streaming the sessions, listeners in the country as well as those abroad were able to follow the debates. “What we have provided is not just a service to the public, but to the TRNUC itself,” says Bérard Duprès, CEO of the SBC. Building a more connected and engaged audience In transitioning from traditional media to digital, the SBC already understood that the youth generation were more geared towards mobile technology. “For youths accessing information via radio apps on their phones, without having to tune in on the radio or having to watch TV, the digital route for us as a public broadcaster, is a no-brainer. It has also stimulated citizen engagement, participation, conversation, and the co-creation of content,” says Duprès. The apps deliver live digital streaming with direct access to podcast channels, in-app messaging, in-studio message boards, and social media integration. The consolidated Fabrik platform also delivers proof of play and analytic data where existing content can be seamlessly re-purposed for the apps. The SBC apps currently reach 20% of the adult population of the Seychelles. There is also tangible excitement in reaching the Seychellois diaspora globally, to engage with them in real-time as a truly modern broadcaster. Duprès believes the digital transformation has been game-changing in keeping the public broadcaster at the forefront of positive public opinion. “Not only does Fabrik ensure a direct and immediate connection with our audience, it allows our audience to become co-creators of our broadcasts with us, bringing them into the very heart of our broadcast personality,” he says. The radio programmes are also saved into a cloud archive that serves as a record to all citizens of the Seychelles of their audio cultural heritage. “South Africa can offer game-changing tech innovation for public broadcasters, as proven by the SBC, which broadcasts to a population with a high level of technology adoption. Fabrik has enabled the SBC to realise its imperative for digital transformation to not only compete commercially in a digital era, but also establish itself as the fabric that binds the culture of the Seychelles,” concludes Lumley.

The coronavirus pandemic has shown us just how much humans crave positive, social connection. Throughout various stages of lockdown, we have seen that when people feel connected, they become happier, more engaged and highly loyal. Read more

As you become more comfortable with incorporating Fabrik into your daily workflows, you may have realised the importance of strategic planning around how you're engaging your audience using your app. Your app audience is more often than not your most engaged, most loyal audience and therefore may require an approach to engagement that's different to your other channels! Your app is also packed with unique features and functionality you can leverage to create a memorable experience for your app community and value for your advertisers. As such, we recommend implementing a two-pronged approach to your app engagement that keeps your app top-of-mind, by incorporating events, campaigns or special programming as well as ongoing inclusion in daily programming. Implementing a successful app engagement strategy requires collaboration across all teams within your organisation, so here are some steps on how to ensure you are doing so in the most effective way. step 1: consider your overall audience engagement objectives When creating your app engagement strategy, it's important to keep your overall audience engagement strategy across all your channels in mind. These may be broad directives informed by your overall business strategy such as expanding your reach across all channels, measuring and increasing audience engagement based on specific metrics or building your audience to position and support your advertising offering in a certain way. In terms of formulating that overall audience engagement strategy, we generally recommend considering the following aspects: Growth - what are the ways you're consistently growing your audience by connecting with individuals on different channels who were not aware you existed before? Engagement - once someone has connected with you on one or more of your channels, how are you adding ongoing value to them to ensure you retain them as a loyal follower? Monetisation - once you've grown your audience and are adding ongoing value to them, how are you positioning your audience in a way that it is attractive to advertisers? (If you're uncertain about how to create an engagement strategy, get in touch with us - we can help!) Step 2: Prepare your App Experience to support your Audience Engagement initiatives Once your overall audience engagement strategy is in place, the next step is to configure the engagement aspects of your app to enable the app engagement you'd like to encourage. Conversations and Channels are the two types of messaging groups available within your app that can be configured to different types of engagement, as follows: Conversations are true engagement groups, interactive message groups where anyone who is a part of that conversation can post content. Channels are read-only message groups in which only 'Trusted' individuals (members who you assign the 'Trusted' status, such as administrators or moderators) can post content. Decide what types of groups you need according to key initiatives in your business, and configure them according to the level of interaction you would like. Remember that Contact Us is a Direct Messaging conversation where each app member can connect directly with you via your Smashboard application, or centralised messaging dashboard. When you send a message to all or individual members via Smashboard, your message will appear in that direct conversation only for the individual/s receiving that message. Find out more about how Conversations and Channels work and how you can create and configure them yourself using the Community Centre community management dashboard. Step 3: Consider specific engagement tactics Now that your app environment is ready for engagement, leveraging your app to support your business strategy becomes easier. When thinking about how to effectively engage your audience, consider how to promote what is coming up in your on-air broadcast and what would entice your app audience to keep coming back. There are a number of different tactics you can use that are related to a two-pronged approach of using both events like campaigns, and ongoing engagement initiatives. Ongoing Engagement Regular Features - use your direct Messaging group to let your audience know about upcoming shows or interviews to ensure engagement on your Fabrik-powered live stream, and capitalise on your most popular features by throwing forward to them in the app. Shows - consider adding show-specific conversations or channels for your most popular shows and invite your presenters/DJs to post in them. You could also get listeners involved by asking them to send you their messages or voice notes before the show, to be played out on air. Community Chat - institute a general Community Chat where your community can come together to talk about topics they're interested in! Campaigns Exclusive Content and/or Special Offers - use your app to share content your audience won't be able to find anywhere else, and/or partner with advertisers to offer exclusive deals only available via the app. Competitions - use fun competitions, quizzes and games to give your audience multiple opportunities to re-enter your app. To truly leverage the app experience in ways that your other digital channels might not be able to deliver, consider how to integrate some of these unique features into your execution: 1. Push notifications (or messages that pop up on the home/lock screen of an individual's device) are a great way to invite engagement into the app, and you can configure each of your Messaging groups to either Notify by Default or not. 2. Podcasts - record on-air moments (competition segments, interviews or recurring features) as a podcast, and send a message or push notification to let your audience know there's a new podcast that's been published. 3. Billboards - add app billboards for an additional awareness component around your ongoing programme initiatives and campaigns. 4. Pop-up message group - easily add topical messaging groups into your app around specific events or topics to stimulate engagement amongst your audience. Step 4: Identify & empower key role-players from other departments To ensure the success of your new app engagement strategy, it's important to consider how it impacts your colleagues in other departments. Ask, how does this addition to the overall digital strategy impact other teams and, just as important, how does your app engagement strategy translate into ways that other teams can contribute and win? These initiatives may include training and education on how the app impacts on other departments, and how their own business strategy can benefit from this. Key to this is the continual promotion of the app via the below channels. Programming/On-air - ensure the on-air team are informed as to how they should be inviting listeners to your app, and empower them with scripts and live-reads that can be easily incorporated into their shows. Marketing - empower your colleagues in the Marketing team with information about the app they can share on your social platforms i.e. highlighting app functionality, topical Messaging groups or exclusive content. Promotions - ensure the team/s working on campaigns within your organisation know exactly how to include the app in the execution of campaigns, i.e. using app-based calls-to-action or tracking the impact of the campaign using keywords set up in Smashboard's Campaign Manager. Sales - if you're engaging with the Sales team in your organisation, offer to take them through your new app engagement strategy so they're aware of how to leverage these tactics and benefits in their Sales pitches. Step 5: Report back on your engagement initiatives to obtain buy-in The last step in the implementation of your new app engagement strategy is to let your stakeholders and colleagues know how you're doing! Fabrik makes this easy by visualising all your audience engagement and live-streaming data within the Metrics application, which you can easily access and incorporate into your reporting, to assure stakeholders that what you're doing is having an impact. Further Info Read how to configure Conversations and Channels within your app. Hear from Anice & Jonathan on how to kick-start Digital Transformation in your environment in this Fabrik webinar. In this webinar, Kelly, Bevan & Darren demonstrate the metrics and insights available within the Fabrik platform.

Despite the onslaught of music streaming services, radio can carve out a niche for themselves online by nurturing a loyal, engaged and geographically diverse listener base that can ultimately generate additional revenue, says the team at Fabrik. The team adds that stations will, however, have to overcome their fear of digital and take the leap in order to avoid being left behind. Read more

Every three months, our Customer Success team surveys our customers in both the Radio and Managed Communities industries to get a gauge on the value that Fabrik is currently contributing to your business, and how we can improve our service to you. This is done in 2 different ways: 1. Quantitative information A survey is emailed to each of our Fabrik administrators, i.e. those who have login access to applications such as Smashboard and Echocast. The responses give us quantitative information regarding how our product and services are being received across our base of administrators. 2. Qualitative information Our team also conducts in-person interviews with a segment of our Fabrik client base to gain qualitative insights into how Fabrik is contributing to their success. In the final round of customer interviews for 2020, our team received some interesting feedback which we’ve taken on board and used to iterate our product and service delivery. Innovation In general, our customers scored us 7.67/10 for innovation and found the platform ‘handy and innovative’, noting that the platform is ‘constantly evolving and improving’. Some of our customers felt that the recording workflow on Echocast could be improved and we’ve taken that to heart! A useful suggestion on Smashboard was for a preview of the message to appear when hovering over it. Our dev team determined that this would be a quick (and delightful!) user experience improvement, and have already implemented this functionality to Smashboard. To view all our recent updates, check out our Release log. Adding Value to our Customers Our customers scored us 8.5/10 in terms of how well the platform meets their needs, and 83% of customers surveyed felt that the platform had contributed to improving their teams’ workflows. In specific, one customer mentioned the fact that the ability to remotely access Fabrik’s web-based applications was very useful, and our Metrics data visualisation and reporting tool was specifically mentioned as a feature that makes it much easier to provide post-campaign reporting to clients after app-driven campaigns. Support Our Customer Success team have been working intently to provide our customers with exceptional customer support. We are elated that, in general, our customers are extremely satisfied with the way in which we support them and their app members, scoring us 9.33/10 on our Support provision. Communication In terms of the frequency and quality of our communication, all of the customers surveyed feel satisfied with our current routines around communication. One customer mentioned that they would like to see content in the monthly Fabrik Features Update that is more relevant to their professional services business, so we will be implementing a new monthly newsletter for our PAL communities from February onwards. Propensity for Digital Change Within the survey, we also wanted to gauge our customers' perceptions about their organisations’ own ability to implement digital change and transformation. In general our customers gave their businesses a confidence rating of 7.87/10 in their ability to implement digital change and transformation in their organisations. This is a 10% increase from the previous round of surveys, denoting an improvement which we hope is due to our more robust Customer Success engagement and workshops! Whilst they are eager to embrace change within their organisations, some customers felt that they were limited in terms of time and resources which stopped them from achieving what they would have liked to in the last quarter. While our surveys and interviews are scheduled every three months, you are always welcome to send us any feedback you might have. And as always, we would love to hear of features or tweaks that would make Fabrik more useful for you and your team.

Among the first parts of Fabrik to be shipped more than 10 years ago, Echocast was created to address a few key challenges in the Radio industry that unfortunately persist even today: the inability of the on-air team to capture on-air moments live; the inability to create and publish podcasts in real time without having to rely on workflows that were too time-consuming or technical; and the lack of quick and easy access to the broadcast programme archive to retrieve pieces of audio for advertisers or compliance. Echocast has since evolved to the point where it has become a vital content management, archival and compliance tool used extensively across our base of media customers. Radio Programming teams use it to capture snippets of audio that they'd like to make available for listening beyond the live moment, as well as to record and store useful content they may need to access later. Content and Production teams use it for publishing and managing on-demand content (either live or immediately after the moment) to the website, mobile app and social media channels. Promotions and Marketing teams use it to publish featured audio content as part of station promotions and campaigns. Technical teams use it for compliance and audit purposes by downloading any audio from Fabrik's cloud archive. As our Media customers across various departments become more reliant on creating and distributing podcasts, we receive feedback every so often about how the live recording and podcast publishing workflows can be improved. Taking into account our customer feedback, Echocast has received a few updates over the last month to enhance existing functionality and add some new features. Here's what you can expect to find in the latest update: Skip & Return to add Podcast Metadata The workflow of real-time recordings has been improved, providing more options and flexibility upon stopping, saving and publishing the recording. This means that, if you're short on time, you'll be able to skip the capturing of required metadata, and return to complete and publish your podcast at a later time. New 'Publish none' Category Setting It is now possible to set a Category's publish setting to either All, Latest or None. This setting impacts what is shown in your public feeds on your website or app, and all recordings, regardless of this configuration, will still be available in your Echocast admin view. While 'All' is the default, 'Publish latest' is useful for frequent, repetitive recordings (such as News, Sport or Weather) for which your listeners might only be interested in the latest recording in that category. When configuring your Category as 'Publish latest', the previous recordings available in your public feeds will be automatically unpublished whenever a new podcast is published to that category. The 'Publish none' setting is useful for podcasts that are required for archival or proof-of-execution purposes, but not necessarily for publishing to your general consumer. This setting is perfect for sponsored audio content such as live-reads or competition moments that must be captured for business purposes but may not be compelling on-demand listening for your audience. And, when used in conjunction with a Preset associated to this Category, 'Publish none' enables a streamlined and consistent recording workflow for your presenters/producers of content. Increased live-stream buffer One of the most important components of Fabrik for our broadcast customers is the digital live stream, which enables your live radio broadcast to be transmitted via your mobile app and website. The way the app or website transmits the live broadcast is that it loads small sections one after the other into the app to make sure that any breaks in connectivity or interruptions to the stream are sufficiently buffered, providing time for the stream to recover from any unexpected interruptions. In order to make your live stream even more resilient to network interruptions, the duration of that buffer has been extended to allow for a better experience when your listener's connectivity is strained, thereby reducing the likelihood of interruptions to the stream. Increased time tolerance of missing audio segments In the past, if there had been an interruption or break in the audio broadcast, Echocast would restrict the ability to request and retrieve a piece of the audio that had been interrupted. This was fairly limiting in terms of being able to retrieve audio from that section - a feature our Media customers require quite regularly. To ensure all audio (regardless of interruptions) is accessible to those requesting it, this restriction has now been adjusted and is more tolerant to periods of missing audio. Once having downloaded that audio snippet from the archive, you can then go ahead and edit or manipulate the audio as you see fit. Reworked Architecture Echocast was initially engineered to solve a few key challenges in the Radio industry more than a decade ago! Since then, Echocast has undergone a number of iterations, and different parts of the application have been worked on and improved at different times. Although the application had been maintained consistently over the years, it had come to a point where some of the back-end code and architecture had grown outdated and required quite a bit of work and time to bring it up to date. After this update, you should find that the Echocast application loads and processes your audio more quickly, and that podcast recording, audio archive requests and manual uploads are more reliable and speedy. Bug Fixes Preset Recordings Recordings configured with a Preset were occasionally affected when the Pause/Resume recording functionality was used. The result was that, when the recording was resumed, the assigned Preset would be automatically and incorrectly cancelled and erroneously saved to the General Preset. Now that this bug has been addressed, recordings categorised with a Preset will record, pause, resume and publish as expected. More Informative Error Notices In the past, when an audio archive request or a podcast recording failed, a generic email would be sent to the administrator notifying them of the failure. The email notification is now more useful, containing more information around the error. In addition, the way technical issues are logged to our Support team has been improved so that we receive more information regarding the issue, allowing our team to be more proactive when diagnosing issues and/or failures. Content Type Validation on Audio Upload Additional validation has been added to the audio upload functionality so that invalid content types are flagged before the podcast goes into a Processing state. Assigning Podcasts to a Blank Category A bug that caused podcasts to be assigned to a blank Category has been fixed. Further Info Watch our webinar about Echocast's podcasting and content management capabilities.