Radio shows must do more to stand out than ever before. Just being heard doesn’t resonate. Being good on the air is just table stakes to get into the attention game. Personalities must excite audiences by being memorable enough to be more top of mind and create talk.

When segments become part of your audience’s conversations, remarkable things happen. Personalities become celebrities with a radio show, not just talent that sounds good on the radio.

Six Secrets To Cause Talk

Here’s how to improve the chance of causing listeners to get excited about your show and become passionate advocates. Use these techniques to cause talk. Find a couple and turn them into strengths.

Find The Emotion: Listener behavior is not logical. Nobody makes logical choices. We make emotional choices that excite us. Content alone has no inherent value. To generate attention, you must get beyond the facts and into emotions. Winning shows connect with core values that have less to do with the topic and more to do with the unique story they are telling. Listeners share stories.

Be Specific: Have you noticed some shows practically beg for audience response and rarely get it, while others sound like the phone rings constantly? The reaction is directly proportionate to how specific your conversation is. Test it with a broad generic question (Tell us your funny vacation stories). Then try something specific (I want to hear your stories about getting stranded while on vacation). You’ll likely have more calls and better stories.

Perform Outside In: Rick Morton (morning show, Z90/San Diego) teases me that my favorite phrase is, “Who cares?” I use this technique to ensure each break passes the “Who Cares” test. Being a show that sounds inside and self-absorbed is bad, but authentically relating to the audience with personal content is good. But there’s a thin line between the two. Plan each segment to start from the outside in rather than inside out.

Turn Up The Volume: Great shows prepare to be great, and to resonate, you must be loud! I’m not talking about shouting or ranting and raving, but about injecting more entertainment value into your performance. Ordinary is ignored. Remarkable is remembered. Shows that cause talk are extraordinary personalities telling extraordinary stories in extraordinary ways.

Vulnerability: Listeners connect with personalities willing to reveal their quirks and flaws. Great shows allow listeners to get to know who they are by embracing things that may be awkward or uncomfortable. This is far more valuable than being smooth and slick.

Branded Content: This is a marketing trick Larry David has mastered. Branded content IS easily remembered and repeated. The creator of Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm has a knack for creating catchphrases (The Soup Nazi, The Marble Rye, Can You Spare a Square) and relatable themes that cause talk. Cleverly branding a phrase inside a segment can be the difference between “that was good” and “That was awesome.“

Conclusion

Radio brands are faced with unprecedented challenges from dozens of entertainment sources. That’s why the scariest competition does not include other radio stations. Successful personalities turn ordinary segments into must-hear moments. Study the techniques on how to cause talk, then work to inspire fans to tell friends and social networks about what they heard on the radio.

How will you become a remarkable personality that earns talk?

Pic by wayhomestudio for Freepik.com.

Tracy Johnson is a talent coach and programming consultant. He’s the President/CEO of Tracy Johnson Media Group. His book Morning Radio has been described as The Bible of Personality Radio and has been used by personalities worldwide.