Use your content to connect with your listeners and using storytelling to do it.  Whether you do mornings or any other daypart, you benefit from the following ten basics of storytelling:

• Know your target: Does your story appeal to their interests?

• What’s your purpose in telling your story? The Lund PIE principle says to Prepare, be Interesting, and be Engaging. Your goal is to provide a takeaway for your audience.

• Preparation from show prep or online sources requires you to be believable by knowing your subject matter.

• Sound interesting. Reflect on how you personally feel about your story. You must be interested to be interested.  If you don’t care about the story, why will anyone else?

• Engagement is vital, as having strong content that may resolve a dilemma with opposing views and sound entertaining is vital.

• Edit the details. You want to move forward with your story to maintain interest. Avoid unnecessary tangents and details.  Some of the most memorable stories are relatively simple and straightforward.  “Less is more.”

• Rehearse and play around with it. The best-told stories are told well and have a point.

• Provide conflict: Highlight a struggle. A story without a challenge may not be interesting.  Good storytellers understand that a story needs conflict.
• Provide resolution. You want to reach a clear ending.

• Don’t make yourself the hero. You can be the central figure, but the ultimate focus should be on people you know, lessons you’ve learned, or events you’ve witnessed.

Sharing a great story is like giving your audience a gift because it will stay with them.  Brenda Wong Aoki, an acclaimed playwright, storyteller, and performer, once said, “The best way to reach all people is to go to a personal story.  Everybody is a human being, and everybody can relate on that level.”

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John Lund is President of the Lund Media Group, a radio programming consulting firm with specialists in all mainstream radio formats. Did you find this article useful?  You can leave a comment below or email John at John@Lundradio.com.