The question every radio on-air talent who wants to create digital content should ask themselves is this, are you a consumer or a creator? I admit it’s a bit of a trick question. Because it’s hard to be good at something you haven’t been exposed to. Imagine walking into a radio studio and jumping on a mic for the first time without ever hearing a radio station before. Good money says you’d be terrified and probably sound terrible. That’s how many of us radio people feel the first time we look into a camera, write a blog, record a podcast or go live on TikTok. But the digital revolution isn’t just here, it’s over and digital won. So, like it or not we all have to start creating digital content to pair with our on-air content daily. If the thought of doing that still seems overwhelming, here are three simple steps to get started. 

Consume everything

I was only a casual reader up until high school. I’d read the books I had to for school and maybe the occasional Stephen King book because I liked his stuff but that was about it. But, an English teacher encouraged my interest in writing, which lit a fire under me. Plus, I remembered meeting a writer when I was a kid who told me if I wanted to be a successful writer I needed to read everything I could get my hands on. Remembering that lesson I committed to reading a book a week. However, I knew it wouldn’t do any good if I just read things I liked and I’d never stick with it if I read only things I wasn’t that interested in. So, I did one for me and one for my brain, flip flopping every week. That strategy worked and I still apply it anytime I need to consume any kind of new content. If radio talent want to get good at creating digital content they have to watch, listen and read as much digital content as possible. Starting with things that interest them so they’ll stick with it and then expand to consuming all kinds of content from creators they don’t like or agree with. Focusing on things that are having success.

Commit to creating

Consuming content is important, but ideally we get to a point where we’re creating more content than we’re consuming. Luckily, there is an easy hack for figuring that out and it’s in the palm of your hand. Every week, whether I ask for it or not, my iPhone sends me a screen report showing how much time I’m on my phone. I add that number to the time I spend consuming digital content on other screens. Then, my goal is to have that weekly content consumption number be lower than the total hours I spend creating content. It’s a lofty goal because we all spend a depressing amount of time looking at screens, but it’s the Rubicon we all have to cross to become more of a creator than consumer. It also encourages another good habit of creating content across many different platforms, because we’re most likely to create content on the platforms we use ourselves. Then, once we get comfortable doing that it gives us the confidence to commit to creating content on additional platforms we’re new to. Collaborating with others also helps us increase our volume of cross platform content.

Let AI help

Regardless of the kind of digital content we’re creating, there’s a way to use AI to do much of the heavy lifting (if not all of it) when creating that content. Not doing so puts creators at a massive disadvantage when competing with creators who do regularly use AI tools. But, none of us want to add to the AI slop that’s filling all of our feeds now and annoying us because as AI gets better at appearing real we all have to spend extra time double checking everything we see online (something we probably should’ve been doing anyway). The key to striking the healthy balance is to become an AI enhanced human who uses AI to 10x or 100x themselves, but still double checks the work before putting it out since their name is on it.

What do you think? Comment below or email me at Andy@RadioStationConsultant.com. 

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