If your very life depended on keeping a listener: Would you still put that on the radio that way?
Think about it. How do you keep that person glued to the radio, listening to you?
With People Meter measurement just around the corner, and the technological shift making offering many choices available, it becomes more important than ever not to lose a listener. If they're bored, you've lost the listener. So you can’t be boring, not even for a minute! If we know that listeners leave when they are bored, either mentally, or tuning out physically and their attention goes elsewhere, what can you do?
WHY DO YOUR LISTENERS LEAVE? WHAT MAKES ‘EM GO?
Think about it. Have you ever sat in your car, stuck in traffic waiting for the traffic report to come on? You work in radio. You know when that report is coming, so you wait. Or maybe you're waiting to hear a song title. You want to find out the CD or the artist, but somehow you zone out…the report came and went or the song title came and went, and you missed it? Why? Because it was boring. The person on air did not make it matter.
A misconception: Pace and tempo do not equate energy. Energy does not equate making it matter. Storytelling makes it matter. A storyteller who cares about what he or she is presenting makes it matter. This is not an acting job. If it matters to the person on air, it'll matter more to the audience. Part of telling the truth is being authentic, and genuinely caring about what you are talking about on air. At Canadian Music Week, we gave out the list of the Creating Powerful Radio techniques. (If you would like a copy of the complete list, they're posted at www.creatingpowerfulradio.com and are in the Creating Powerful Radio book.
Here are a few of the points:
A FEW OF THE GELLER MEDIA INTERNATIONAL
POWERFUL RADIO PRINCIPLES:
Tell the truth
Make it Matter
Never be boring
Always focus on: What is in this for the listener?
Speak visually
Use humor
Storytell powerfully
Kill Radio Speak – don’t talk about anything on air that you wouldn’t speak about off air.
Use YOU, talk to one person at a time on air and involve your listener at all times.
WHAT DO LISTENERS WANT?
Some DJs, talk hosts and on air personalities get confused and think Being a Powerful Personality means it’s all about you. But in reality, your audience cares about themselves, not necessarily about you. In personality radio, many get confused and think if you talk all about yourself it'll work. Unless it’s funny. (Humor is the wild card, make a listener laugh and you can break all the rules, because they stay – hoping you'll do it again.)
But powerful radio is not about you, it always works best when it’s about the listener. (While these are your stories and experiences and the topic may have your “DNA” all over it, it works best when you make it about the audience. Why? The personal is universal, but the private tends to be boring. Listeners often feel alone and isolated, and need to a connect and “feel at home” with the person they are listening to on air. The more you “let them in” to who you really are, the better it works. And the audience should feel they know you.
BE YOURSELF
One of the hallmarks of a personality that powerfully connects with an audience: Even if you've never met, you feel you know this person. Every successful on air personality has had this experience in one form or another: A total stranger comes up to them and says: “Wow. You're John Johnson from KXYY? I feel like I know you…even though we haven’t met before…” And when that happens it’s the highest praise you can get. One way to get there is to be yourself, sound like you do OFF air, and be authentic.
This point was hammered home when I was working on a project in England not too long ago — I saw some research on popular UK personalities, and was knocked out… One listener wrote about BBC Radio 2’s top personality Terry Wogan: “When Terry goes on vacation, that’s when my family and I book our holidays, because we don’t want to be in England when Terry’s not on the radio…” That was the “Mt. Everest” of audience research comments. Successful DJs, talk hosts and personalities are like part of the family. When you do it right, the audience should know the names of your goldfish.
KILL “RADIO SPEAK”
Don’t be fake. Kill all that “radio speak!” All those words you only use when you're in front of a mic! Listeners don’t like it when the DJ sounds inauthentic. Be real. It works. In focus groups listeners tell us they hate it when it sounds fake or “And now another topic manufactured to fill a slot on my program!”
KEEP IT REAL: AVOID MANUFACTURED TOPICS FOR AIR
If you find you're digging for “show prep” material using topics or content you'd never talk about off air, ask why? If the subject doesn’t matter to you, how are you going to make it matter to the listener? This is not an acting gig. Make it real and it will connect. People are hungry for authentic connection. They come to the radio to be informed, inspired, entertained, and connected. As mentioned above, with the PPM coming in, combined with the technological shift, and with all of the choices available to your audience to get the same information, music and news elsewhere — now , who you are, the storyteller, matters almost as much as the story.
GIVE THEM TALKABLE TOPICS
Listeners love to hear things on air, then turn off the radio and have ideas and interesting new things to say to other people in their lives. If you can do their “show prep” for them for their day, listeners love it!
FINDING TALENT – HOW TO PICK FAST RACEHORSES
As a consultant, I'm constantly asked by PDs all over the world: “How do you find and hire potentially great personalities? What’s the criteria? How do you KNOW this "racehorse” can win the race?“ I have only one answer: "Would you take a five hour car journey with this person and have a great time?” Because that’s what we are asking the audience to do.. hang out with these people for hours and have a great time! I don’t care how great they sound, if it’s not a person you'd want to sit next to for hours at a time, day after day, why would your audience?
This was reinforced when we in our Geller Media International’s LifeStage Demographics project, focus group participants were asked to name public figures that they felt connected to,(the idea was “ Can you name a public figure, someone you've not met, but that you could imagine sitting down in their kitchen, taking a cold beer out of the fridge and sharing a pizza with?” Who do you feel that comfortable with?) And surprising, the answers were all broadcast personalities.
Your listeners are are also hungry to feel connected in a somewhat isolated world that they find themselves in. To connect and engage more powerfully, talk to one listener at a time, and use the word “you” instead of “We, me, I, us or our.” If you talk to each individual listener, personally, it works. When you use the word “you” it’s like calling your listener by name! (Instead of “"I” or “We have 20 sets of tickets to give away…” try instead, “You have twenty chances to win…”)
Your listeners want to be informed and entertained and have fun. They want new knowledge. If they are alone in room or alone in a car maybe they just do not want to feel alone.
HEALTH, HEART, POCKETBOOK
For years, the Frank Magid study of “health, heart, pocketbook” rules of topic selection applied. Today there is a new one. In addition to health, (personal safety) heart (touching emotion of any kind) and money stories, the newest category is Transformation. How your life as a listener can be better tomorrow than it was or is today because of what you've heard on air. Radio stories and topics showing a listener what is possible. You don’t have to settle for the life you have. It can get better. This rivets audiences. (Think Oprah, Dr. Phil, Home Makeovers, Extreme Makeover, etc)
Finally, listeners all want to feel good. If you can do that, you have that audience completely with you. And if you don’t care, they don’t care. Make it matter!
Reprinted by permission from Broadcast Dialogue Magazine
Valerie Geller, president of Geller Media International, is a broadcast consultant, trainer and coach for on air personalities, and is the author of “Creating Powerful Radio – Getting, Keeping & Growing Audiences” (now in it’s third printing from Focal Press).
Geller works with stations, programmers, news and on air personalities throughout the world to help grow audiences.
Phone 212 580-3385.
Email valerie@gellermedia.com
