The Morning Hike launches a contest.

“The future of work consists of learning a living..." Marshall McLuhan

If you’re like me at all and believe the above words to be true then you would agree with me that it takes time and practice before mastering a skill. This week the Morning Hike has announced that it will be launching the shows first contest next Monday. You might call this initial announcement a teaser. We're doing this in an effort to help promote our new show but also to try and create some interaction with our listeners which will hopefully engage them in a meaningful way.

The contest is simple. It requires our listeners to make song requests through Twitter, Facebook and the telephone. Every time someone makes a request they will earn 1 Hike Mile. The winner will receive 100 dollars and we will be doing a draw at the end of the month. The contest is simple and the “what’s in it for me principle” is the principle of persuasion we used for this contest. The idea was make it easy for our audience to enter and provide them with enough incentive that they will enter more than once.

I have approximately 1 year of experience running contests for a not for profit environmental company under my belt. The best way to learn how to run a successful contest I have found is by trial and error. This will be my first ever radio contest so I’ll make sure to post what works and what doesn’t just in case any of you would like some insight on this subject. Something I think would work well for radio is a photo caption contest. The idea here is to post a funny/interesting picture to your Facebook page and ask your audience to come up with clever captions. This challenges your audience to innovate and get creative and if the prize is right you know people will participate.

That is all for this week. I will finish by playing another song for you. I will also let you know that even though we’ve only been doing the Morning Hike on Red River Radio http://radio.rrc.ca/ for two weeks it feels like two months. It’s a lot of work but if your passionate about radio you will find doing a show of this sort both rewarding and fulfilling. The song I'll leave you with is by the Alabama Shakes, and is off their debut album Boys & Girls. The entire album is great and I would suggest checking it out if you like this track.