CFRN | The Team 1260 | Edmonton | Astral Media | Sports Talk

The Team 1260 is Edmonton's all-sports radio station, making it an obvious choice for marketers and PR people who have products or services related to sport. However, their website is not a particularly way to get your message out. For one thing, I couldn't even find a “Contact Us” link on the site. Sure, there is a “Contact Astral Media” link, but that's to contact the larger media company that owns this and other Alberta radio stations. It's not a way to contact the station directly.

Given the lack of a “Contact Us” link, I wasn't particularly hopeful about finding ways to use the Team 1260's website for any sort of communications or marketing programs. After all, if they don't even list an email address or telephone number, how interactive can they be?

The secret seems to lie in the listener club. At first glance, the station's listener club is remarkable only for it's lack of any content whatsoever. Signing up seems to provide absolutely no value other than the ability to vote in polls on the website.

However, upon logging in to your account for the first time, you will be taken to a seemingly blank page containing little more than an advertisement for ConnectorLocal. This seemingly unrelated company is actually the service provider for the Team 1260's listener club. Clicking on the advertisement will take you to a separate website that, while technically not related to the Team 1260, seems to be used almost exclusively by the station's listeners.

ConnectorLocal appears to use geo-targeting software to determine your location, and serves up only information relating to the city you are located in. As I said, a significant number of the Edmonton-area users seem to be Team 1260 listeners, so if you want to get in touch with that audience, this is the place to do it.

Your Team 1260 listener club login information will allow you to login to ConnectorLocal, which gives you the ability to contribute to the community blog. One need only login to write and publish a blog post on ConnectorLocal—there doesn't appear to be any sort of moderation of posts. However, the business directory (which can also be edited by any user) is moderated, so it stands to reason that the blog must be moderated as well.

To write a blog post, click on the “Blog” link at the top of the page; this will take you to the blog itself. Once there, click the “Submit” button and you will be taken to a page where you can write the post. When you're done writing, click “Save Draft” to see a preview of your article or “Publish Article” to actually publish what you've written.

While the Team 1260's website is seriously lacking in user interaction—there's no contact information, and even the “Community” section is nothing more than links to the websites of various local sports team, rather than a true community section—their audience is plugged into ConnectorLocal. If you want to be in touch with that audience, you should plug-in, too.