(By Buzz Knight) If you are in the business of creating content, you are competing in a sea of choices. I don’t care if you’re trying to get noticed with a blog, a podcast, or a radio show, you are up against gazillions of options for someone’s valuable time.
The question occurs to me: are you trying to maintain your existing audience or are you trying to cast a net to be discovered regularly by new audiences?
Maybe the correct approach is a little of both. Nonetheless, you should be always thinking about hooking that new audience. The first key to this success? Excellence in every moment, with an eye on unflappable consistency. This achieves both the maintenance of existing audiences while leaving the door open to new cume.
But if you want to be discovered, ask this one question, How can I be discovered if I’m doing nothing different to be noticed and stand out?
This is the classic question of “Differentiate or Die.”
Radio station brands used to be able to pass this test with things called “marketing campaigns.” Remember those? A station would showcase itself in a mass marketing environment and compete for “the street” with ground warfare to win the hearts and minds of potential new audiences.
Covid punched street warfare in the face and now most station street presence consists of a lackluster van with a smattering of live people serving up bland swag and client paraphernalia. There’s an area easy to differentiate in as public life returns. But the over the air fight for new audiences needs to rage on.
What are you doing that is fresh and in the moment that is so good it must be noticed by a new listener capable of conversion?
Is it something quotable that can spread with word of mouth? This is when it is so crucial to have every available social media channel being optimized to help spread the word.
Is it content so dialed in to a moment in time, whether it be of a local or national nature, that it clearly gets noticed? Does it get picked up by other media forms such as newswires where it gains notoriety and prominence outside of your market?
There is a ton of “noise” out there and only a limited amount of “mental bandwidth.” Please don’t allow your work to be mailed in. You are then subject to the ultimate decision makers which is the audience, and they clearly have choices they can make. You have to differentiate.
What are you doing to be noticed?
Buzz Knight can be reached by e-mail at [email protected]. Read Buzz’ Radio Ink archives here.
