It looks like we’re getting excited about a radio show around here, and that’s definitely a good thing. A good radio show is the perfect advertisement for your blog, which is what you still need to focus on. Now, you might think, “Gosh, Elvin sure does keep hammering that point home.” I have my reasons for this. The biggest reason is that you can lose focus of a radio show quickly and have it flatline, leaving you no option but to either scramble to connect it back to your blog, or shut it down completely. Neither option is really appealing, because it puts you in a state where you have to respond and react rather than control the flow of information.
So let’s talk about content. When you know that you want to build a continuous radio show that’s going to be around for a long time, it’s really important to start thinking about content before you even sit down to record a show. You have to make sure that you have a lot of different subjects that you can break down into parts and pieces.
Think about the way my blog is set up, for example. The posts are very short because they are designed to teach you one thing and one thing only, and then connect you to something related. Your shows should lock together like the pieces of a puzzle. Every week or every day should be something different.
Speaking of frequency, this is something you have to think about with content. If you really want a daily radio show, you need to make sure that you have a lot more content than someone doing a weekly, bi-weekly, or even monthly radio show. I recommend that if you want to go down this road, a weekly show is a good fit. Daily is just too much work in the beginning for results that may take time to arrive!
For content ides, you might want to run through your blog archives and ask yourself one question: What information is missing or unclear enough that it deserves to be highlighted on the show? This will give you starter content.
What I mean by “starter content” is the initial set of shows that you need before you actually go further. It’s not just enough to have one or two shows and nothing else scheduled. You will need to make sure that you design something really powerful to start with, like a series of shows that span a few weeks. This gives you not only the power to draw from the audience, but it also gives you the power to really show that you’re an expert on your topic.
Even if you haven’t reached true expert status yet, this is a great time to get more involved in your market. Meet with other experts. Pick their brains. Some of the best online radio shows do nothing but interview people. It’s something you can turn to and count on when you really need to make things work for your show. Everyone wants to have their voice heard, so you will not lack for interview subjects at all.
Instead of lamenting the lack of quality online talk radio programming, you’re going to build your own. Don’t worry: over the next few posts, I’ll lay out a framework that you can grab onto and run with. It won’t be that bad and you will be able to tweak things along the way.
In fact, I absolutely insist that you tweak things along the way. That’s the only way that you’ll get something that’s uniquely you and not uniquely me. I already know how to do things the Elvin Miradi way, and I think it’s a mighty fine way if I do say so myself!
If you do nothing else in this series, do this: make sure that your radio show has a solid idea. Remember that we want to build a radio show that’s going to last for a long time. When we want to build an authority blog, we want to make sure that we’re going to be the authority for a long time. This means that you want to go with an idea that you can flesh out and expand as time passes. Don’t be surprised if you start a radio show that deviates into topics that you would have never thought of at the beginning. That’s normal and part of the process. Your community will help you with content, because they’ll start asking you questions. Tuning into those questions will keep the people coming back to your radio show, and they’ll start bringing their own crowd to your radio show.
This is exactly what you want, from a promotion standpoint. Remember that your radio show is a glossy advertisement for your blog. It all goes back to your blog.
Here, let’s re-emphasize that (italicize, please): It all goes back to your blog. We’re not out here promoting a radio show for the sake of the radio show. You want to imagine your radio show as a large billboard pointing out the glory of your website. Anything else just doesn’t make sense.
Take time to sketch out your idea. If you want to see what I would do, here it is:
The same thing I do here, but a little different. I would want to make sure that I set up a more questions-and-answers format on the radio show, where I take direct questions and spit out answers for 30 minutes to an hour.
To close, there’s one point I cannot stress enough: take your time on this step. Don’t set a goal to have the radio show created from start to finish until you really have thought about this step in great detail. I recommend having at least two months worth of shows lined up before you actually create anything solid.
