Never lose a listener – a how to guide by Valerie Geller

Whether you broadcast or podcast your show, you already know—radio isn’t just “radio.” Your audience gets their entertainment, news, and information, “radio,” on many platforms. Since there’s a lot of “noise” out there, and a lot of competition for the time and attention of your listeners, what comes out of the speaker (or mobile device) needs to immediately engage, the content must be relevant. We’ve known all along that audiences are fickle, but now there’s proof: according to PPM—listeners have a short attention span. And they’re likely multi-tasking as they listen.

So what can you do to grow your audience and keep your listeners listening longer?

I coach talent all over the world and work one-on-one with air personalities—they all want to know “What’s the formula? 

It’s simple. Listeners come when they are informed, entertained and engaged, they leave when bored. The answer is: Engage your audience by working with these three proven “Powerful Radio” principles:

1. Tell the truth

2. Make it matter

3. Never be boring.

How Do You “Never Lose A Listener?”

This is the question I’m asked all over our planet. The answer, whether I’m working with broadcasters in the United States, Canada, England, Australia, Europe and Africa, is the same: Never Be Boring.

To Create Powerful Radio: If you can’t immediately engage your audience with relevant content, that’s the kiss of death. Authenticity is key. Try to avoid “manufactured topics for air…” Before you put anything on the air, ask: “Would you talk about this off the air in normal conversation? If not, why are you talking about this on your show?”

Why Do 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 specific headline or 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 the person on air did not make it matter.

A misconception: Pace and tempo do not equate energy. Nor does volume. “Energy” does not equate making it matter. Storytelling makes it matter. A storyteller who cares about what he or she is presenting is what always works. This is not an acting job. If it means something 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. Make the focus: What is in this for the listener?

What Are Listeners Not Getting From You?

When a listener leaves either mentally or physically, and actually switches off the station, here is what is not happening. That listener is not engaged. He or she is bored. Zoned out. Looking for another station or immersed in his or her own thoughts.

Try the following Powerful Radio techniques to engage your audience:

1. USE THE WORD “YOU”

If there was a magic word to guarantee you could get the attention of a listener would you use it? Of course. And there is such a word. Radio’s Magic Word is: “YOU.” Always talk to the individual. Logically and intellectually you know that when you are talking on the radio you are, in reality, talking to more than one person, but on the radio, the magic, the connection, the power of radio, is based on the feeling of intimacy between the host and each individual person listening. It never works as well on radio to talk to all those “folks” or “people out there listening” or “all of you…”

2. USE “YOU” INSTEAD OF “I”

Whenever you can, always try to talk to one individual. If you use YOU instead of We-Me-I or Us, listeners feel the deeper, and true connection. Think of the difference, “I have tickets to give away” or “You can win tickets.”

And it’s not just radio. I went with a friend looking at houses—they’d just had twins and needed more space. The real estate agent said: “Now, this would be your kitchen over here. The bedrooms are upstairs, the guest room is in the back. Here, you could knock out a wall and make this an open plan. Your garden would be here, in the back…” This really, really works.

Replacing you for “We, Me. I and Us” takes a little time but it is worth the effort, as long as you have patience, and understand that, as human beings, it is hard to change old habits. Perhaps you are familiar with the work of Australian based brain researcher Dr. Evian Gordon? (www.brainresource.com) If so, you may already know that according to the research, it takes a 1,000 times of repeated behavior before you rewire your brain to change a habit, so keep trying. Try a stack of bright yellow “Post-it” notes. Put them everywhere and write the word ‘you’ on them. It helps.

What else makes a listener leave?

3. BORING BREAKS

If you have commercials in your show, ask: Are your commercials causing a listener to tune out because a break is too long, or is the spot simply bad—boring, noisy, off message, or a wrong format fit? The same goes for branding elements and features like event calendars that “sound” like commercials!

Never be boring.

4. GETTING THE LISTENERS YOU HAVE TO STAY

While, there’s been so much emphasis on developing and getting new listeners, don’t forget that we also need to pay attention to keeping the audience you’ve already got on board. Again, with the amount of choices people have for their time and attention, listeners are easily distracted. So how do you get a listener to listen longer?

5. AVOID THE MANUFACTURED TOPIC

As mentioned above, this is important. Try to think about your listener before you put anything on air. Avoid “manufactured topics.” Listeners feel it when it sounds like: “And now here is another topic manufactured to fill a bit on radio!” When they hear that, listeners tend to tune out. Ask yourself: If you are not talking about this off air, why is it on the air?

6. WIFM?

Always ask: What is in this for the listener? What’s in it for me if I give you my time? A quick checklist: Is it interesting? Are they talking to me? Describing things visually? Is there humor? New information? Talkable topics? Would you talk about this off air in normal conversation if you did not have a radio show?

Some hosts get confused and think ‘personality’ means it’s all about you. But audiences care about themselves, not necessarily you. In personality radio, many personalities get confused and think if they talk about themselves it will be interesting. But powerful radio is not about you, it’s about the listener. The personal is universal, but the private tends to be boring.

7. WHAT DO LISTENERS WANT?

Your listeners want to be informed and entertained and have fun. They want new knowledge. If they are alone in a room or alone in a car maybe they just do not want to feel alone. Listeners are hungry to feel connected in a somewhat isolated world that they find themselves in.

A listener wants a connection, or to “feel at home” with or comfortable with the person on air. They like to feel they “know” the person on air. Sometimes listeners like a little help in making up their minds. Say they are not completely certain of what they may think about a subject or topic, here they can get enough information or opinion or viewpoints to make up their minds. And in commercial radio, when the spots are effective, listeners say they like to learn about bargains, new products or services. And if a listener is having a down or despairing black moment, he or she wants to be lifted out of that mood.

8. GIVE THEM “TALKABLE TOPICS”

We are lucky. Most people out there listening do not have exciting lives or careers. Because of this, listeners also desire “talkable topics.” They want to be able to turn the radio off and have ideas and interesting new things to say to people.

9. MAKE THEM LAUGH

Listeners also want vicarious experiences. They like to be taken on journeys they cannot get to on their own. And everybody loves to laugh. If you can make a listener laugh, it’s like handing them a solid chunk of gold.

10. TELL THEM SOMETHING NEW

Listeners to your station like to be in the know, they like learning new things. (They also appreciate help with their “show prep” for dinner, just in case they don’t have anything interesting to say to the people in their lives.) It works if you can give them material they can talk about. Listeners also want you to get ahead and lead them and give them ideas, things to think about.

11. SPEAK VISUALLY

Radio is an imagination medium. Even with photos and video on the internet, the spoken word can create powerful word pictures. Use these “colors” in your paint box to engage listeners. Remember to use details to speak visually and to paint word pictures. Imagine you are talking to one person, and that person is a blind man or woman! How would you describe what you are talking about so the listener can “see” it?

12. TOPIC SELECTIONS: HEALTH, HEART AND WALLET

What are audiences interested in? For years, the Frank Magid study of “health, heart, wallet” 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 new 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, “Extreme Makeover,” DIY fix it shows, etc)

13. ERR ON THE SIDE OF BREVITY

This is hard. (But anything that goes too long is likely boring.) 

14. INSPIRE

 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! 

Valerie Geller’s Powerful Communicating Principles:

1. Speak visually, in terms your listener can “picture.”

2. Find, and start with, your best material.

3. Tell the truth.

4. Never be boring.

5. Listen.

6. Make it matter.

7. Always address the individual, use “You.” Talk to one listener at a time.

8. Do smooth and engaging transitions and handoffs.

9. Promote, brag about your stuff.

10. Brag about other people’s stuff.

11. Be who you are.

12. Take risks. Dare to be great.

Excerpted with permission from Beyond Powerful Radio – A Communicator’s Guide to the Internet Age for Broadcast, Podcast, Internet & Radio (Focal Press 2011) by Valerie Geller. For more info: www.beyondpowerfulradio.com

About the Writer

Valerie Geller, president of Geller Media International Broadcast Consultants, works to help communicators become more powerful in 30 countries, including Australia, for news, talk, information and personality. Through consulting and individual coaching for news and talk talent, Geller finds and develops personalities, leads “Creating Powerful Radio” and “Communicate Powerfully” workshops and seminars for radio and TV broadcasters, internet radio and podcasters. Geller is the recipient of the Conclave’s 2010 Rockwell Lifetime Achievement Award and is the author of four books about radio including her latest from Elsevier’s Focal Press Beyond Powerful Radio – A Communicator’s Guide to the Internet Age. To contact Valerie Geller for a one-on-one coaching or consulting, appointment, or for information on the “Powerful Radio” seminars and workshops, call +1 212 580-3385

Note: This is an edited version of an article that first appeared on radio-info.com and has been republished with permission.