Simply being a great on-air talent isn’t going to cut it anymore. Hell, it hasn’t “cut it” in a long time now! The Infinite Dial from the Edison Research team just released stats about podcast listening. These numbers, alone, show those of us still on – air need to up our game.

Diving into the new research, The Infinite Dial found 48% of the 12+ population listen and watch podcasts.  55% of all Americans listen to podcasts! That’s huge! The biggest jump is those watching podcasts, and not just listening. The visual aspect has increased the consumption of podcasts by those 12 years old and older. We’ve discussed how your morning show NEEDS to have a podcast, but we haven’t dove into the idea of it also being visual. In addition to the “best of” podcasts most of you already do, maybe have a weekly visual podcast about a popular benchmark in your show. When I did mornings, we had a segment called “Weird Science” where we talked about all the weird things going on including robots, aliens, sightings of strange things…just the weird stuff going around. One of our podcast staples was elaborating on the Weird Science info. You can take a benchmark and turn it into a great podcast!

This is just a tip of the digital content iceberg you need to be addressing. Having a great morning show isn’t all you need. Sure, the chemistry is there, the banter, the info, the entertainment…but what about when your listener gets to their destination. Hopefully, they want MORE of you! This is why it’s necessary to have a great digital presence. This is more than just your scheduled Facebook posts.

In addition to ALL the posting, try having an hour live streamed. Obviously, you’d be filmed while you’re off the air so you have to be uber careful about what you say and who pops their head into the studio. To piggyback on that, little videos while you’re off the air are monumental. Listeners love to see what you’re like “in real life.” If you had a caller that was bananas, do a video on that! If you had something crazy happen to you over the weekend and you touched on it on the air, but didn’t go into detail, tell the listeners you’ll have more info “on your tik tok so make sure to check it out!”

The key is to think smarter, not harder. Management, I know when you bring this up to your staff the eye roll will be extreme. More work?! But it isn’t! Take what you already have, and use that! You already did the break, elaborate on it with a video! You already have the bits, turn them into a podcast! You already made the social media posts, take a comment made and turn that into something! This doesn’t have to turn into more work for your hosts. This can be fun! This should gain more listeners, which means better ratings!