How to Dramatically Improve Your On-Air Communications

Note: This blog was inspired by a recent, excellent post by consultant Mike O'Malley. He wrote about something very important, the quality of our communications with the listeners. You can read Mike's original post here.

In this article, I've adopted his topic and added my own thoughts.

Listeners are busy. And they are distracted. Most of the time, they are doing something else, and our station is the background.

This means something about how they hear our promos, imaging, talent breaks, newscasts and all our other content.

So I have a suggestion.

Review your promos, imaging, talent breaks, newscasts and all your other content. Spend some time specifically thinking about how to make them better. Ask yourself questions like these.

· Are you grabbing the listeners’ attention?

· Are you broadcasting as WII FM? That’s the station your listeners’ want to hear: “What’s In It For Me?” radio.

· Are you trying to interrupt their lives to tell them about your concerns, or are you joining one of the conversations already underway in their live? I can’t overemphasize how important the answer to that last question is.

· Are you leading with your point? Don’t expect to get more than about 10 seconds to make it.

· Are you telling a story? All good communications is a story about something people care about.

· Are you brief? You simply must be. Add only what will increase their bond with you.

· Are you focused on the three most common shared bonds between listeners and the radio station? They are shared concerns, shared opportunities and shared feelings. That adds up to shared humanity.

· Is your message consistent with the values, concerns and desires of your station’s “tribe”? In particular, watch for commercials that violate this. Unfortunately, listeners don’t relieve you of responsibility during commercials.

· Are you careful to create more “emotion” rather than more “facts”?

· Do you talk about “why”? Only if you successfully communicate that will the listeners care to learn how to get whatever you’re selling. Whether it is a product, an contest, some upcoming new music or a special weekend of programming, “why” comes first.

This will take some time. That is okay. It is well worth it.

How did you do?

Can you do better over the next weeks and months?

When you listen to air talent, can you now decide more quickly whether they brought something special to their show?

Be passionate.