Off Air Talent

If you really want to make it in radio today, you have to work harder to differentiate yourself, and you have to dig deeper in terms of developing your skills and talents. I'm not just talking about on air work here.

Jesus... as I type this, I just got an email from someone wanting to hire me to build him a web site. "I need a website...I know that for sure." That's the difference between radio today and fifteen years ago. Today, you've got to be talented on the air and great at marketing yourself off the air.

When you need a gig, you need to be able to get more than just a demo out there. You need to get your ideas out there too. You need to be able to show you're talented before they even hear the demo - or have something to follow up the demo with. A website, for example.

When you've got a gig, you need to be marketing yourself to your own audience (and potential audience). Get a blog. Write a column in a local indie paper. Get a frigging page on myspace and use it to promote your show. If you're doing 18-34 radio, I assume you know what myspace is, because your listeners know.

Here's an idea - especially if you're in a smaller market: Make a trade with a local indie weekly paper. Trade a full page ad in the paper (or at least a half page ad) in exchange for free airtime for them. Give the paper a weekly segment with your morning show or afternoon show where they have someone come in and do an entertainment guide kind of thing.... talk about new movies, local shows, whatever's going on in town. You use your ad space for a weekly column of some sort. Maybe a new music report. Maybe you set up a weekly event and talk about it on your ad space. Maybe you take a feature you do on the air and extend it to the paper. The point is to give people something to look forward to reading that guides them back to your station. Print the column on your website too, with an extra piece not in the paper, and put an extra piece in the paper that's not on your website...? I don't know - I'm thinking out loud here.

I constantly encourage people to start blogs... to start writing more, and writing creatively. That's a talent that'll do wonders for your career.

I had a PD call me recently to see if I could recommend someone to fill a creative services gig. He said something that really shocked me. He more or less said that the tools for production have gotten so good that nearly anybody can do promos these days. But there aren't enough people who can write good copy. He said "I'm not even accepting mp3 demos. All I want is a writing sample. If somebody shows me they can write good stuff, then yeah, I'll ask for a demo. But why blow up my email with a hundred megs of the same old crap?"

Writing. Photography. Marketing. Events planning. Ever tried stand up comedy? Local theatre? What about volunteer work? There are so many ways of bettering yourself that have nothing to do with radio - yet these things have everything to do with success in radio.

That which you do outside the radio station will be a benefit inside the radio station. Make your cup of creativity runneth over.