One of the great things about getting more into AI and creating digital content is that you immediately start getting more info on that in your own personal feeds. Which is both helpful and creepy at the same time. We’ve all been talking to someone about how we want to buy a mower only to log on shortly thereafter and find a bunch of mower ads and content in our feeds. Which is still a little hard for my Gen X brain to wrap around. One of the digital creator gurus that I keep seeing in my feeds is Gary Vaynerchuk, a serial entrepreneur, investor and social media personality. He’s also an American businessman, born in Belarus in 1975 so he’s a fellow Gen Xer. I can relate to a lot of what he teaches and agree with most of what he says. Today, I saw a clip from him that lines up well with advice I give radio stations I work with every day. Here’s that clip.

That’s a powerful statement, “$100 a week on social media will make you a local celebrity.” It sounds almost too good to believe. But, it is a true statement provided we follow a couple of key things. One, like Vaynerchuk says in the full clip you have to get good at organic first and then use that $100 a week to focus on boosting social content that’s already getting traction organically. By that I mean what’s already getting clicks and shares on its own, even if it’s just within our existing friend groups. That’s because people who know us best are generally good early indicators of whether our content will connect with a broader audience. Secondly, as he mentioned, we have to focus on local. Which conveniently lines up with what we want to do in radio since local revenue is the key to saving radio, but to get the lion’s share of local revenue we have to produce TONS of local content across all of our platforms. Then, as he quickly lays out, for that money to be spent effectively we should geotarget the areas right around us first and then slowly branch out. The third key thing that I will add is that we cater our content to the audience we’re trying to reach by adjusting our creative based on audience feedback. I know it can be daunting, and a little depressing, reading comments on social, YouTube and even our own websites. But, doing so A) thickens our skin which is necessary to thrive in a digital world and B) better informs all of the hundreds of tiny creative decisions we have to make when we’re producing our digital content.

Luckily, radio on-air talent already have the benefit of being somewhat of a local celebrity because our voices are recognizable. However, unless we’re on a lot of the stations external branding, or we’re incredibly active in the local community, our image hasn’t traditionally been as known as our voices. Those days are over if we’re willing to crank out regular video content by putting cameras in the studio, using our phones to capture content everywhere we go and adding cameras to our remote setups.

Going from local to regional, national and then global is another story. That absolutely cannot be done on a $100 a week budget. But, luckily as we build and start monetizing at the local level, we’ll generate enough revenue to push out regionally in phase two, nationally in phase three and, if desired, globally in phase four. This fits well with the traditional syndication model radio has always followed. As a talent coach one thing I always tell local talent who are wanting to become nationally syndicated talent is that you have to win at the local level first before you have any hope of winning at the national level because people aren’t going to take a chance on investing money into putting talent on the big stage when they haven’t mastered the small one yet.

However, building up a strong following on social media along a talent’s journey to syndication is a great way to stand out in a crowd of radio on-air talent being dragged kicking and screaming into the digital age.

What do you think? How have you used digital to become a local celebrity and how has that impacted your radio career? Comment below or email me at Andy@RadioStationConsultant.com.

Pic AI generated using Envato Elements.