When they need help coming up with ideas for creating digital content I often encourage radio talent to look at comedians. There are a few reasons for this. They’re entertaining (our main purpose), they’re freelancers in an industry that doesn’t pay well in the beginning (sound familiar) so they’re forced to be self-sufficient, they network and share info and they’re used to crowdsourcing feedback from live audiences to see what’s working and what isn’t in real time. That’s why comedians are often at the forefront of what’s working online and on social media. Lately when comics get together there’s one thing they all tend to ask each other, ‘Are you clipping?’ Here’s why we should all be asking ourselves that same question.
Short clips are the key to building an audience from scratch or reaching people outside our existing audience. In this age of short attention spans and countless distractions it is now VERY hard to get anyone new to commit to consuming anything longer than a minute or so from someone they don’t already know. But, they’ll give us a couple of seconds as they scroll through their feed. That’s why it’s not rare for new longform content to have tens of views while the shorts pulled from that content are racking up thousands. It’s also why we shouldn’t stress about long-form content taking a while to catch on digitally.
Shorts emphasize hooks. Just like we coach on-air talent to hook the listener within a couple of seconds of cracking the mic so they don’t hit that scan or preset button, shorts and reels rely on hooks to capture scrollers. Sometimes our on-air hook will translate verbatim to a reel, other times we can tweak it or add a visual to make it more attention worthy. Either way, our mastery of on-air hooks is a huge asset when we translate to digital.
Shorts reward economy of words. Anyone who’s cracked a radio mic has likely been coached up on the importance of brevity and saying things in a few words as possible. This skillset pays off when we start clipping because shorts are all about bite size chunks. Because of our brevity training we tend to create a higher percentage of those chunks in a shorter amount of time. So, we’re likely to get as many shorts/reels out of 10 to 20 minutes of content as others are out of an hour or more.
Shorts are easy to create. If we add the element of video to everything we do audio-wise, there are a whole host of affordable services that can turn any content over a couple of minutes into shorts for us. These services use AI to add captions, B-roll, effects, resize video and remove pauses. Plus, they give each clip a score on how likely it is to go viral. Here are a couple we like Opus Clip, Spikes Studio, Quso but there are TONS of others and all of them are in the $15-$30/month range. Plus, Riverside, the platform we recommend for recording remote interviews for podcasts and on-air shows, automatically creates shorts/reels after recording. These services can also help make scheduling easier or we can use another affordable scheduling tool.
Shorts earn money. Part of the reason we’re seeing an explosion in clickbait recently is because some of the social platforms have started paying for those clicks. Even though the numbers seem nominal on the surface, it doesn’t take long for it to add up. So, we’ve seen a shift in how digital creators make their money. Previously, brand deals accounted for the bulk of creators revenue (by a wide margin). But, now many digital creators are beginning to make real money directly from their clips because the platforms are essentially paying all of us to create the content they need to attract people to their platforms.
What do you think? Have you had success clipping your content? Comment below or email me at Andy@RadioStationConsultant.com.
Pic designed by DC Studio for Freepik.com.