How Do I Get Started With SoCast?

How Do I Get Started With SoCast?

Welcome to the SoCast family! We're thrilled to have you join our community. This knowledge base is designed to help you navigate and maximize the powerful tools SoCast offers to enhance your radio station's digital presence and revenue. We encourage you to explore the articles within each section to gain a deeper understanding and discover best practices for your brand.

Here's a high-level overview of what SoCast provides:

Getting Started with SoCast

Your journey with SoCast begins with a simple account setup process. A SoCast employee or your company administrator will create your personal account, and you will receive an email from no-reply@socastsrm.com with your login credentials, prompting you to set your password. Once logged in, you'll reach the SoCast homepage screen. New clients go through an onboarding process that includes creating accounts and users, assisting with content and membership imports, and integrating third-party tools like app stores and Google Analytics.

Managing Your Radio Station's Online Presence with SoCast Engage

SoCast Engage provides comprehensive tools to manage your radio station's online footprint effectively.

  • Websites: SoCast offers a premium radio theme optimized for content engagement, tune-ins, and branding. You can customize website settings, including vitals, domains, SEO descriptions, keywords, and add custom header HTML. For website launch, you'll manage DNS changes, and SoCast offers a "white glove service" for assistance if needed. All SoCast websites are designed to meet WCAG 2.0 Level AA accessibility standards.
  • Mobile Apps: The SoCast App is designed to deliver an engaging mobile experience for your loyal fans and offer unique advertising opportunities. It puts your radio brands in the Apple and Google Stores, making them accessible to your audience and manageable through your existing SoCast platform. Mobile app settings allow you to manage formats (News or Music), appearance (branding bar, logo, listen live button colors), navigation, promo screens, and splash pages.
  • Player and Podcasting: Deliver a flawless listening and viewing experience on every device with the SoCast Radio Player. You can integrate your podcasts using an RSS Feed URL in MP3 or AAC format. SoCast's Program Scheduling tools help connect listeners with your station's brand and on-air personalities by displaying show images, descriptions, hosts, and time-slots, integrating seamlessly with the mobile app.

Growing and Engaging Your Audience with SoCast Engage

SoCast Engage helps you connect with your audience and foster loyalty through various interactive features.

  • Contests: Contests are an excellent way to attract new listeners, engage existing ones, build brand awareness, and gather valuable participant data. SoCast features a new contesting system with significant upgrades designed for a seamless listener experience and simplified management. You can configure various entry actions, such as visiting a social link, sharing on social media, playing the radio stream, voting in a poll, or submitting images, videos, or audio links. The platform allows for contest categories, custom settings, and the ability to make contests "sticky" for prominent display. You can leverage forms, pages, polls, and the feature rotator to promote your contests.
  • Social Media Management: The SoCast Social Publishing Tool enables you to compose, schedule, and add links or images to your social media posts. The Monitoring Streams tool allows you to instantly know when your station is mentioned on social media and respond in near real-time to member comments, Facebook interactions, Twitter interactions, and SMS comments, all in one place. You can also utilize a content calendar for planning posts. SoCast supports integration with Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter (now "X"), though Twitter features are currently experiencing issues due to ongoing API changes.
  • Member/Listener Club: You can import your existing member or listener club databases into SoCast. The platform offers a customizable sign-up process and allows you to edit various email templates, including activation, validation reminders, and forgot password emails.

Growing Your Digital Revenue with SoCast Reach

SoCast Reach is a powerful advertising platform designed to help you grow your digital revenue.

  • Digital Advertising: SoCast Reach helps radio sales teams confidently transition to digital sales, providing expert support to close more deals. You can build comprehensive digital proposals and campaigns with various marketing objectives, including Awareness, Consideration, and Conversion.
  • Advertising Channels: SoCast Reach supports multiple digital channels, such as Display Ads, Social Media Advertisements (Facebook/Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn), and Digital Audio Ads (Spotify/Pandora, AdsWizz, Triton).
  • Campaign Management: The platform allows you to upload creative assets in various dimensions (Leaderboard 728x90px, Big Box 300x250px, Mobile Banner 300x50px). You can generate insertion orders and access live reports to track key metrics, which can be segmented by date and exported to CSV.
  • Ad Server Setup: You will learn to set up Google Ad Manager (or similar approved ad managers) to serve in-house ads, sponsorships, or Google AdSense ads, effectively monetizing your site.
  • Mega Contests: SoCast also offers a 2025 Mega Contest schedule with sweepstakes that are automatically included with the ENGAGE Suite at no additional cost. These are great for boosting your database and encouraging audience engagement.
  • Case Studies: Success stories from advertisers using SoCast Reach are available, covering various industries like day cares, law firms, local events, grocery retailers, cruise companies, dental clinics, and colleges.

We encourage you to delve deeper into each section of this knowledge base to unlock the full potential of your SoCast platform!