I've been running two radio shows for a while now and I thought I'd share my expience with the AR community because this really is something that just about any agent can do to generate rediculous local traffic and great inbound links from local community sites.
The first show I run is through Rain City Guide and I call it Rain City Radio. For this site dedicated to the Seattle real estate market, I invite local community members, predominately local bloggers, to talk about their websites, their neighborhoods, and generally explore the influential people in my online community.
The second show I run is through 4realz.net and I call it the 4realz Roundtable. On this show, I've invited a who's who of online real estate technology to talk about issues that we think will be helpful to real estate professionals. I've been running shows on topics like marketing real estate with videos, using technology to help your seller clients, and getting value out of social networks.
Both shows are targeted at providing a regular and interesting conversation with the communities I want to reach... And thanks to the fact that the popularity of each show grows each week, I'm getting wonderful content, engaging my community and earning a stream of relevant inbound links on a regular basis.
And best of all, the cost for running my own radio shows is almost negligible. Both shows are run through a free service called TalkShoe, which manages all the tough stuff like setting up a conference call line, enabling an associated chat and distributing your recorded shows to podcast sites like iTunes. The cost really is minimal. My only financial investment to run my own radio show was to buy a $14 headset from radio shack. (I don't see the exact model I bought on their website, but it was something like this)
AND HERE"S THE KICKER
If you start to get a reputation as someone running an interesting show, the conversations (and the guests!) just keep getting better. For example, in just under 6 weeks, the 4realz Roundtable is now at a spot where I'm going to be hosting a conversation with Lawrence Yun tomorrow. Lawrence Yun is the Chief Economist for the National Association of REALTORS and will be speaking about how the bank failures and troubles at Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae are likely to affect the real estate industry. It will be a fascinating conversation where I'm sure I'll learn a ton of great information! (You will too if you join us!)
And from a website owner point of view, having worked up to having top-notch guests mean I not only get a weekly bump in traffic to my site, but I inevitably "earn" some great inbound links!
If you're active enough in your community where you think you could bring interesting guests to your blog on a regular basis, I highly recommend that you make the plunge and try hosting your own radio show! And if you want to take part in tomorrow's show with Lawrence Yan, then you can listen to the show by clicking the play button on the purple widget on my sidepanel starting tomorrow at 5pm!
(By the way, if you use this widget tomorrow @ 5pm to click through to the 4realz Roundtable TalkShoe page, you'll also be able to take part in the associated chat! I use the chat extensively to get inspiration for additional questions to ask the host, so I highly encourage you to try it out!)
And finally, you might have hear of these types of shows being called "podcasts". Personally, I like to use the word radio show because I find people take it more seriously and as far I your listeners will care, they really are the same thing!
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Hi Dustin, will try to listen in tonight as I'd love to hear what 'he' says. Getting ready for SF trip. I want one of Guy Kawasaki's gift bags.