The long awaited arrival of the second installment of this series. With Short Staff…No Problem, I am attempting to solve the age old excuse, “I want to work on my website, but I have such a small staff I really can’t.” I don’t want to downplay the problem of having a small staff, but rather highlight ways to get around having a small staff.
Today, I want to focus on content creation for the site.
Remember the good old days, when there were live jocks in studio for all dayparts? Remember when those jocks would take phone calls and solicit participation from their audience? Why does that have to change? Three ways now to solicit input from your audience without a love jock in any daypart.
1.) Take a topical story that’s in the news in your market (Rod Blago’s controversy in Chicago comes to mind) and run a sweeper that says something to the effect of, “XYZ station wants to try Blago. Is he innocent or guilty? You decide at XYZ.com” Run that sweeper for a week and report the results in voicetracks throughout the weekend and post the results on your website. Very quick, very easy.
2.) Even more hands off…Jump off of The Office on NBC. Every Thursday and Friday ask your listeners to submit their nightmare office stories. Encourage them to submit them anonymously or if they’re really brave to include their name. Then have your voicetracked jocks read them on the air during the day on Thursday and Friday. A simple email link will do.
3.) Requests: Encourage e-quests and ACTUALLY PLAY THEM!! This is a very easy way to get listeners involved. Make sure to read their names and where they are from…same as you would if you were taking their calls.
Add a weekend twist and encourage them to send in where they are partying on Friday and Saturday night’s and give them a shout out “during” their parties.
These are three very simple ways to include listener interaction in an age of very few live bodies in the building. These are very light lifting ideas that will help you keep the interaction at a maximum and the workload to a minimum.
