Friday 21 September 2012

What I wish I knew before I started my morning radio show.


 
Producing a daily two-hour morning radio show has many challenges, especially when you’re new to the medium and have little experience at waking up everyday at 5am. one of many skills you need to have is being able to paint a picture in your audience’s imagination, tell them a story that is either entertaining or that provides useful information. You need to be able to execute this skill during every music break. And when you're show is two hours long, you need to prep about 15 talking points which can be quite challenging especially when juggling the rest of your life duties.  You need to be able to conduct interviews effectively, and make them entertaining or interesting and have the skill of being able to bring out the best in the person you are interviewing.

You need to know about the music your playing, know about up and coming artists and concerts that your listenership would want to know about. You must be able to run contests effectively, contests that engage your audiences in ways that’s easy for them to act on. The contests should be interesting enough that they should motivate your audiences to share them with friends. A recent study shows that 92% of people trust recommendations from people they know, which I don't think is a big surprise. For more on this please follow the blog link below.


I know this all sounds like common sense, which in many cases it is, the trick is being able to integrate this into one show that makes your show unique and different, which then should have the potential to build a loyal listenership.

The first thing I wish I knew before I started the Morning Hike is to just relax, practice makes perfect and perfection is the enemy of good. You only know what you know and being honest with your listenership will create trust and help build authenticity for your show. Authenticity is my number one, always be yourself, it's better for you and actually way easier. You don't need to impress people with your music knowledge or charming personality all the time.

The second thing I wish I knew would be to be on social media, and connect with your listeners by having contests where they can interact with your show through Facebook and Twitter.This makes it so easy for your listeners to participate in your show, and is easy to monitor and can be fun for everybody involved.

The third thing I wish I knew before starting would be interview techniques. Practicing and knowing the fundamentals of interviewing cannot only make an interview, but also make sure that the person you interview wants to come back to your show, and feels comfortable in your presence.  Here is a link to the book I bought that when I have had time done some research on how I can become a better interviewer.


Here is a link to the podcast from the Morning Hike. If you haven't listen to it yet then why not listen, if you have I would love some feedback.
  

I will end this blog post with a song. This is just a great track from Billy Bragg & Wilco's album Mermaid Avenue and was released in the late 1990's. I hope you enjoy this track and remember to be authentic when on air, authenticity is the key to developing a successful radio personality.

No comments:

Post a Comment