My friend Ted Randall the other day. He’s recruiting air talent for his flame thrower shortwave station and wanted to know if I was game. It got me to thinking about what I liked best about being on the air.
It was the show prep.
Even before the Internet made it easy, I loved digging into backstories about the artists we featured. I scanned newspapers and magazines for show biz news and information about the things my audience was talking about.
Done right, the host’s role is to weave bits of curated cocktail conversation in between the other elements of the program, hopefully pulling together a seamless symphony of music, entertainment and information that would entice those ears to want to come back tomorrow for more.
We all know those people who seem to find fascinating stuff to share with us on our favorite social media platform. I’m not talking about the political memes and the negativity that often permeates these echo chambers. The people I still follow find things that both inform and inspire. Here’s one of my favorite Facebook curation outposts. Kudos to moderator Jeff Smith for the great job he does there.
In my own humble attempt to entertain you on Twitter in the mornings (https://twitter.com/scottowensshow), the biggest compliment I can get is when someone writes me to say, “I didn’t know that!”
I have sources I trust to give me good stuff to pass on to you. And I’m totally focused on filtering through the noise to find nuggets of information that can enrich your own relationships. I don’t always hit the mark. I analyze the data to understand what things generate retweets and shares, what elicits a comment, and what is worth a run deeper down the rabbit hole.
The the most successful in this space also realize that your “air shift” in the Internet age never ends and the audience always changes. Just like radio, we have our Cumes, the number of different people who tune in to our feed for at least five minutes in an average week and Average Quarter Hour Persons, the average number of people checking in per quarter-hour. I translate that for social media to the average number of viewers per hour. Understanding this calculus tells you how often to post to get both reach and frequency.
You also must be careful not to overdo it. Too much perceived repetition can get you “unfollowed” in a heartbeat.
I love how my friends at Jacobs Media Stragegies repurpose the key message of the day across what we in the biz call “day parts”. It’s ends up enticing you to the same web page (that’s the goal, get em to your site), but with a little different spin each time. Like me, they are data nerds and I can imagine how they deconstruct each post to understand how and why it generated, or failed to generate the desired outcome.
Compare this to how advertisers rotate commercial copy and test various offers until they find the sweet spot. The commonalities you find are the keywords that motivate action. The medium may be different, but the methodology is the same.
When I was learning the trade, I listened to the talent that resonated with me and tried to understand what it was that made them great. My first tentative moments behind the microphone were pretty much ad-libbed shots in the dark. In time, I learned to understand show prep, the science of content curation and the art of purposing my messaging in a way that clicked with a target audience.
As I look back, the drill today is still what it was then. Regardless of the platform, it’s content curation. In any medium, how well you do it determines the success you will enjoy.
Radio imitates life. It is a place where talent comes and goes. The boss never said that you were “yesterday’s fish” until you walked out of the studio for what you didn’t realize was your last show. Today, it’s not a program director or a format change that dictates your future. On social media, consumers rule.
I used to keep a small 3×5 card taped to the locker at work where I kept my headphones. On it was written my favorite Broadcasting Beatitude: Blessed are those who enlighten and entertain. For they shall live to do so another day.
