Do You Prep For Your Radio Show Or Podcast?
A radio programmer once said to me every half hour of broadcast should be equal to an hour of prep. Now whilst it’s not literal it is a point of standard that the more you put in the more you or your listener will get out. Whether it is a radio programme or podcast your preparation is of uttermost importance and it’s not just content.
Content Is King
Although content is as such King it’s also about what you do with that content, how it’s presented, why it’s there in the first place and where you got the content from – more on that later.
It’s About Your Listener
Radio stations and great podcasters spend time and money researching their target audience. Not everyone has the money, time or staff at their disposal to understand demographics, tribes, life stages and/or modes of listeners. You can try to understand who your listener is with some simple research and common sense.
Define who your listener is and try to understand their life cycle, paint a picture about what makes them tick, why they get up in the morning. Ask some questions about your listener – Where would they go on holiday? What car do they drive? What TV programmes, films do they watch? What other audio, radio or podcasts do they consume?
Next apply the very same set of questions to your podcast or radio stint, if the answers match you’re probably on to a winner, if not you have some work to do. The idea is brand you matches with brand listener.
It’s About You
Whilst taking into account your listener, content should also be personalised and not just read out of a newspaper or off the screen from a website – make it about you, your personality and have a well thought out point of view. The very best talk presenters always have a view, often created to get you to interact.
Character Traits
You should set up character traits within your show or podcast. Take an A4 page and draw a line, create above the line list that are most important to you and a below the line list that are not so important. Every time you have content understand where it fits within your page of characteristics and make sure you major on those above the line.
Eventually you’ll know what you like and don’t like and let this imprint on your content. You can do this for your listener profile too.
Take Note Content Is Everywhere
One thing to remember is content is everywhere, just be sure to take note of it. It could lead to a great link for your radio show or open up a new niche for your podcast. I continue to have a little note pad in my jacket pocket, one at the bedside table and the iPad – all just in case I get that furtive creative idea, they do happen at the oddest times and you’ll never remember.
Paid For Content
The best show prep services are those that simply provide you with the content and spark of inspiration. I’m not a fan of prep that provides gags at the end of a news liner, they never sound right and especially when delivered by a presenter who didn’t write them – the intonation is often all too wrong. There are however really good gag writer services out there that can write for you and you alone if you need some help with the funny.
Saving Time
It can take up a lot of time to research for the content you need. What if someone could hunt down and create content for you?
That’s what we do at pay4prep, we offer free advice and guidance as well as paid for content for radio stations and podcasters. Our service is by contract or pay on demand. This write up is an example of the free advice we provide with our blog.
One of the corner stones of pay4prep is that we aim to save you time. Therefore we thought we’d provide readers of the Music Radio Creative blog a Christmas gift as a time saver.
Below you’ll find a banner linking to our Christmas Show Prep with a 50% off offer. It is crammed with well researched and easy to use content for radio presenters, producers and Podcasters over the Christmas period. What’s more it comes with several free updates across the festive season. As one of our customers said “I’ve done in 40 minutes what usually takes me 4-6 hours! Thanks again much appreciated”.
So To Recap
Content is king as long as you know your listener and deliver your personality with you and your listener’s character traits in mind, you should also take notes of ideas and use good paid for content that saves you time.
Depending on your reading speed that’s a couple of minutes used up, so further save time and pop over to pay4prep and grab some show prep.
