Spring Cleaning for Radio Personalities

Spring is looked at as a time for renewal. That's why people do 'spring cleaning' during this season. 

The highly-important Spring ratings period also begins during this season, so I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to share some ‘spring cleaning’ tips with you to handle yourself, to help improve your show and the brand.

 

Don’t always wait on your Program Director to call you, text you, email you, or set up an air-check session to go over your talk breaks. Be your own coach and critic every once and awhile.

 

Air-check yourself and make sure you’re executing the basics

     • Listen intensely you your talk breaks and give yourself some honest feedback.

     • Ask yourself if you’re executing the basics: properly identifying the station, and including the positioner. Are you getting in and out, not talking too much? Are you keeping talk to one thought per break? Are you inviting listeners back to the station? Setting appointments? Creating more listening occasions?

     • Listen for your delivery. Are you talking too loud or too low? Are your talk beds too loud when you talk? Do you even need to use a bed for certain breaks? Probably not for short breaks. Are you too close to the mic? Too far away? Are you popping your p’s?

     • What about your transitions during music sweeps and into stop-sets? Are you stopping the music between songs during music sweeps? If you are stop it. That kills momentum and causes tune-out. What about your transitions into the stop-sets? Any dead air? Are you letting your talk bed play too long after you talk? Stations are venerable at every transition. Do everything in your power to make sure every talk break is a smooth transition, weather between songs or talking into or out of a stop-set.

     • Are you talking over songs? Choking up too much on the end of songs? Some of the best parts and riffs are at the end of the song. Talking over the best part will only piss your listeners off.

Freshen up your talk beds

     • How long have you been talking over that some old bed? Would you use the same bed for every commercial you voice? Imagine how crazy that would sound. Freshen up your beds every spring to insure you have an updated sound to keep listeners attention.

Review your features and your regular content

     • Listen to see if your features sound fresh, entertaining, and engaging. If you were a listener would you turn on the radio to listen to it? Do your feature intros need freshening up (If you have any)? How about the talk beds for your feature? Does it need freshening up?

     • How about your other content? Are you talking about timely issues and news? Are you talking about relevant information for the format?

Check your blogs and social media accounts

     • Is your profile picture on your personality page old and outdated? How about your cover image? Make sure the links to your social media accounts are working. Are they linked to the correct page? Are we missing some accounts you would like to share like YouTube? YouTube is a social media platform and is the second largest search engine behind Google.

     • Look at your social media accounts: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. How often do your promote yourself and the station? Do you share stories from your blog with your friends and followers?

Use spring as a time to renew, freshen up, and critique yourself to get ready for the spring book. Be proactive and make the necessary adjustments. Worry about the things you can control. Do some ‘spring cleaning’ on your show just like you do around your house.

Lj

Communicating in the Communications Business

My biggest pet peeve with radio professionals is our failure to communicate effectively wth each other, and we are in the communications business.

It's not hard.

Here are a few quick pointers on how to be a better communicator at work:

     • Answer the phone when your co-workers call, or return calls in a timely manner.

     • Acknowledge action emails with a simple word like ‘received.’

     • Reply to emails with a simple ‘done’ when a task is complete.

     • When emailing, copy all parties involved when sending correspondence that affects multiple departments and people.

     • Over communicate. No one will be upset. No one wants to be left out of the loop. And if someone feels that they don't need to be on an email chain, they will let you know.

Basically, be responsive, timely, inclusive, and aggressive.

Effective communications is a key characteristic of a good team player and  is a very important factor companies use when considering employees for management opportunities.

Lj

Time Management Training Needed More Than Ever

These days, most stations are understaffed requiring many to take on more responsibility and work longer hours. 

To cope with the increased workload, you have to better organize assignments and your time so you don't feel overworked.

I could easily tell you to start your day creating a todo list and check off each task as you complete them.

I could also lecture you about viewing everyday in several cycles and not one large task.

There are numerous tips and best practices I could share with you and you can definitely Google them. However, I really feel like it's time for the media and entertainment companies to start offering time management training.

Time management is probably the most useful skill an employee can possess to help them operate more efficiently.

Still, don't wait on your manager or company to offer training. Costs could be involved and they may be less likely to invest in this revenue sensitive environment. Google time management tips and find some ideas you can use to help yourself.

After all, time is money. Plus, your supervisor, your team, and you will appreciate the more efficient and effective you.

Lj 

I Don't Have PPM Experience

If you have never worked in a Portable People Meter market, learn about the new ratings currency by studying PPM documentation from Nielsen and your company, have discussions with your peers programming in PPM markets, and practice PPM techniques in your current situation.

Here are a few tips I learned from following the above instructions.

The most important thing I learned about PPM is that the majority of listening comes from primary listeners, so you have to super serve your core, primary listeners, P1s.

It is very important to create more listening occasions. You have to create tune-in opportunities to get listeners to come back often. Those opportunities can be created on-air and off-air by the talent, imaging, social media, and other elements.

While creating tune-in occasions is important, it is just as important to prevent tune-outs. Stations have to get rid of meaningless content unappealing to the target audience, run flawless transitions between songs and stop-sets, and personalities must deliver concise talk breaks. 

Stop-set lengths and placement is also a key factor in managing tune-outs and protecting quarter hour ratings.

Marketing is highly import in PPM because you want your brand to be top of mind and be the first station listeners think of when they decide to turn on the radio.

Finally, don’t react to every drop in ratings. You have to make decisions based on trends not one moment.

This is just the basics and a place to start. The development and growth of the PPM technology will continue to evolve and so will the methods for programming in the PPM era. So keep reading, studying, and learning so that you won't be left behind in our ever-changing industrying.

Lj

Blogging For Radio Personalities

In today’s environment, you have to think as a multi-media professional. You are no longer just a radio talent. This is true for anyone working at any media company. Newspaper Journalists, TV Reporters, and Radio Personalities all have to have a little knowledge of each medium to be successful in today's ever-evolving, digital media environment. You should know the basics of writing, editing videos, photography, and working social media to be at the top of your game and be the best!

Here are a few basic tips for crafting a blog:

Title – The title is a headline, and should state the obvious intent of the article.

Paraphrase – In your first sentence, or even one paragraph, describe the subject, including who, what, when, where, and why. Do not copy and paste content written by another source. That is called plagiarizing, and could set your company up to be sued for copyright infringement.

Link – Link the original article to your blog using the insert/edit link button. When doing so, select “open new window” as your target. Do not give visitors any reason to leave the station's website. Attached the link to words that describe the article. Links attached to words like hear, more, and details are meaningless to search engines.

Pictures – Only use pictures from an approved company sources like Getty Images. You don’t want to use unapproved photos that may cause the company to be sued. And always credit the source, e.g., (photo credit: Getty Images).

Videos – Embed videos into your blog. On an actual video, look for a settings icon or ‘share,’ then ‘embed’ to get the embed code. Once you have the code, you can copy it and then paste the code on your blog.

   

Think of blogging as another method of communicating with your listeners, sharing with them relevant news, events, music, and other occurrences. 

Blogging helps build the station's digital numbers.  It also helps search engines like Google find the station's website, which can also help increase unique visitors and site hits.

Lj