At today’s Radio and Internet Summit in Florida, a range of speakers shared good ideas for radio stations to make their Apps better.

Apps are growing fast as a way for stations to get into new devices and back into the pockets of listeners.

Where people used to carry a portable radio in their pocket, these days they carry a mobile phone and listen to radio on that. With this comes new functionality, which a range of speakers at today’s summit suggested radio stations could take more advantage of.

Some of the suggestions included:

1. Don’t just have the app connect to your station’s own twitter, facebook and email accounts. When a song is played make sure your app can allow your listeners to tweet to the artist or connect to their facebook page, while the song is playing. Listeners will become more sticky to your app if they can interact with their favourite artists via social media through your station’s app.

2. Put social media engagement portals on your app and link it to show prep and content that the announcers use on air. This is being done effectively on many websites, but has not been integrated into many radio stations apps yet.

3. Put a shazam-like song matching function into your own radio station app.

Another interesting fact mentioned at the conference: In America people interact via social media twice as much on the weekend as they do during the week. Are your weekend announcers making the most of social media as effectively as your main weekday team?