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.
