Prep Or Strategy?
The key to showprep is knowing your strategy. Knowing what you are going to do on your show before you walk into the studio. It’s finding a fresh mix of content that’s really going to connect with your audience. Knowing where and when to use content it is part of the strategy.
Here’s a few ideas that can help refresh your showprep strategy. Take these raw ideas and make them personal for you!
- Plot out your show by quarter hour. (Find ONE great element of content for each quarter hour and plot out the show that way)
- Prep buckets. Identify 4-5 subjects you know your listener values everyday. Use these subjects as your prep buckets. (Faith, family, relationships, fun, music, adventure, fitness, finance, parenting, hope, marriage, entertainment etc) Each day, look for stories to put in your prep buckets, that way you an rotate through content. Prep buckets challenge you to build a rotation for the subjects your listener cares about most. It’s like strategy by content category.
Themes. When you break up your topics hour by hour, you can frame your strategy like a theme. IE: Rotate the heart content with the funny content. Rotate the human interest with the spiritual and so forth. This will give a different texture to each hour in your show. What are 3 or 4 themes that I want to highlight today instead of the typical news stories/bits/call in discussions? If I start with 3-4 themes they work as the outline. Then I can steer the discussion and lead the show rather than the time just controlling me.
- Top three. Find 3 trending stories your listener might share with her friends. Find 3 encouraging stories that make you smile. Find 3 Bible verses or spiritual themes that feel relevant today. Find 3 stories that will make your laugh. Start your show outline with your top 3 in mind.
- Point of view diversity. This strategy is about how you will share the content you found. Look at all the stories and prep you’ve collected. Think about the different ways to tell the story differently than you did yesterday. Am I sharing this story in the third person or in the first person perspective? How can I build this story into a fun call in discussion or a Facebook live video? Can I take this raw story and add nostalgic music/pop culture clips/and lots of verbs to help create emotion or make it theatrical? Am I focusing on storytelling? (What’s my beginning, middle & end? How do I better highlight the characters in this story? Am I talking about this story with another personality from my station in order to get two different points of view? Look at today’s stories and think about how to shift the point of view and change the texture.
These are a few ideas you can use to refresh your prep strategy. They each bring out different points of view and textures for your listeners. Mix them up! Experiment! Entertain! -Scott Herrold
FREE For College Students
If you are a college student who attended the #CMBMomentum17 conference, you get a FREE year of Creative Cardio showprep! Email Scott.Herrold@gmail.com to get your login!
We want to help connect you with other creative personalities! We hope this helps your personal growth as you develop as an air talent!
Think About The Words
The song Forgiven from Crowder explains the personal nature of the Resurrection in a powerful way.
Take a minute and think about the power inside the words you’re playing in your songs today.
What’s Under The Hood?
Try Creative Cardio showprep for 30 days for free!
Here’s a peek behind the passwords to the content ideas inside CreativeCardio.com!
You can make a FREE 30 day trial of the showprep resource by simply clicking right here!
Join Our FREE Email Ideas List!
We send out a FREE email each month with a TON of showprep idea starters you can use for your show! We also do group brainstorms over the phone that you can be a part of. If you want to be updated on when these are, share your email here!
How To Get Our Kids Talking!
We want to have meaningful conversations with our kids, but when we ask lame questions, we just get one word answers! Ask open ended questions to stimulate a conversation. Have follow up questions ready. Here’s some examples:
Tell me about the best part of your day.
What’s been the hardest part of this week for you?
Did your brother say anything that made you laugh today? What’s the funniest thing about your mom?
Which friends do you miss most from school?
What’s the biggest difference between this summer and last summer?
Tell me about what you read this week?
What’s the hardest video game we have? (Let’s play it together and maybe I can help!)
Who did you play with today? What did you play? Who won? (Why do you think they always seem to win?
What used up most of your energy today?
What did I promise you this summer that I haven’t delivered on yet?
What rules are different at school than our rules at home? Do you think they’re fair?
What’s on your bucketlist this summer? Give me your top 5!
What do you like most about our neighborhood?
What do you feel that God has been teaching you this week?
Can you show me something you learned (or did) today? (When you see your kid do something well, ask them to teach you how to do it!)
Pledge Drive Brainstorm Audio!
We had 30 personalities on our Creative Cardio 2016 Pledge Drive Brainstorm.
Here’s the FULL audio! You can download it here and grab all the ideas shared!
A Long List Of Spring Topic Ideas
It’s spring & we’re always looking for fresh ideas. Here’s a recording of a 40 min Creative Cardio brainstorm call with 15-20 personalities sharing on air discussion ideas. Grab a pen! There’s some fun ideas in here!
ONE Memorable Thing From Your Show
Jimmy Fallon comes up with something memorable EVERY WEEK that seems to go viral. Have you ever thought about what you’re doing each week that’s actually memorable to your listeners? Can you come up with ONE thing?
Think about what you are good at. Maybe it was a memorable phone discussion with listeners? Maybe it was a memorable story with the right music & SFX that grabbed their heart? Maybe it was a silly bit with an artist you play? Maybe it was a hilarious St Patrick’s Day game? Come up with ONE memorable thing from your show EVERY week and you will be a star. Put a clip from that memorable element in a recorded promo and on your website. It may be a serious turning point for your show…
Why Doesn’t My Show Audio Go Viral?
Ever had audio from your show actually go viral? Or was it a picture, a video or text that you found your listeners sharing? This is interesting food for thought from Mark Ramsey as we think about where we post our audio, how we showcase our audio and how we re-purpose what we do with audio, text, pictures and or video. Click here for the article!