Pro Tip: Creating Passion
Inspiring people to listen to what you say is a very hard thing to do, much less making them talk later about what you said to someone else. Beyond promoting your own show, word of mouth is the most effective way to promote the show. What will you say deermines how often that happens, and how you prepare for what you say is what determines what comes out of that mouth of yours.
If you're going through the motions, people hear it most times. If you just wing it, people can tell. If you're well versed on a topic and are into it, its naturally relatable, but it also tends to make people later talk about what you're doing. I often tell people to be as selfish on the air as possible in certain ways. Why? Because you are an individual with individual likes and dislikes. You are a person interested in communicating SOMEthing to someONE, right? Why would you try to communicate something you aren't interested in? Don't do that.
I hear a lot of people try to force things on their shows. Its so unbelievably detectable. Especially on online radio shows. I hear a LOT of talk about sex, and then when that's done, they'll pull a news item they had in case things got dry, and when they try to talk about it, it goes South really quick. Its a collosal train wreck. It makes me cringe. I feel embarrased FOR them. I heard a guy the other day talking about sex to a woman on the phone. It went way too long and it got pretty graphic. A few minutes later, he went into talking about gas prices. There was a lot of this, "Man, its really bad right now huh? The gas prices are crazy. What are we gonna do?" and then into reading a news story verbatim the entire way through. Okay, so he made an effort to talk about something current. Great. The passion for the sex talk was dead on, but the passion for and about gas prices was reading a news item? That was pathetic and it really was a waste of time. NO ONE was going to hear that and run to their friends and say, "You HAVE to listen to this guy. HE READ A NEWS STORY ABOUT GAS PRICES!"
When you prepare your show, sit down and do a self detection process. Put a lot of reading material in front of you. Read the headlines. Rate them on a scale of 1 to 10 on importance to YOU. It doesn't matter what you think other people think about them. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THEM? What's most important is how you relay information to people. If you take a fairly boring topic to someone and present it to them in an entertaining or unique fashion, chances are it will be engaging. NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC is KING of that. They can take an hour and devote it to how candy wrappers are printed and you will walk away from it thinking it was a GREAT hour of television. You have to THINK about what makes YOU tick, thus the SELFISH comment from above. If you can take YOUR fervor for something and relay that onward, you will have done your job.
If you do a specific show about ONE THING like animals, technology, physics, games, etc. - all of this is still quite relevant. Each topic or area still has MANY different facets to it.
There are other ways to create passion besides just certain topics. Do something on each show that sets you apart from other shows that they may have heard. STRIVE TO DO ONE THING on every show that will make YOU unique. Think about that when you are not on the show. think about it until you have figured out what that one thing is everyday! If you do a really serious show, be silly sometimes. If you do a fun show with lots of jokes and laughter, be serious about SOMEthing SOMEtimes. If you never take phone calls, take one. Keep people on their toes and never let them think they have you figured out. Surprise YOURSELF! Do something that breaks any monotony! YOU MUST DO IT! Once people think they know exactly what you're going to do, you've lost! The more you keep people on their toes, the more fun YOU will have, and if you aren't having fun, don't do another show because you're dead weight.
