Catching the FEEL of your Show...
There are shows out there that just work.
The host is right.
The topic is great.
The effects and audio are amazing.
Sometimes people just make a great product and everything is bolted together right and tight. They're smooth and amazing, like a well finished cabinet.
It's not always that way off the bat.
Many shows are a work in progress.
We've said before, "You don't have to be good to start, but you have to start to be good."
Many folks ask me, "How do I make my show good?" and they tend to not like the answers that I give them...
Like any art form, profession, or process, practice makes perfect.
You have to put in the reps.
There's no short cut to that; HOWEVER, there is one major thing with creating audio programming that can help you make those reps count more than if you were just working on your own.
"Take the best, leave the rest."
It's an old phrase from a colleague I used to work with in sales.
She was about 30 years my senior and had been a salesperson all through the 1980s, yeah, the Wolf of Wall Street type sales days.
I once asked her how I could get some of my younger, less experienced colleagues to get up to speed a bit faster. Her mantra of "take the best, leave the rest" came to the forefront.
Those young sales professionals didn't have to invent/design the wheel, they had to find someone to emulate who had already made the wheel and simply borrow the blueprint.
The same thing goes for your audio product. There are tons of podcast shows, audiobooks, ads and more out there that have different feels to them, and you know the ones you really like.
The shortcut to building a better audio product faster is to identify existing products that have aspects that feel they fit your show.
I take all of my clients through this process, asking them to describe what they want their show to sound like, feel like, and what existing shows they like the sound of.
For example, if you own a financial planning agency, you may already listen to Dave Ramsey's shows and like some of the sound and layout of what they do.
Don't copy it exactly, that's not content creation.
Take pieces that you like and recombine them.
Case in point, there is a second podcast in development from us here at Westport Studios.
Without spoiling too much, there are a number of Youtube channels and other podcasts that are in a similar topic area, but aspects of their content have influenced the creation of this new show.
Taking the best parts of layout, mixing, and research and plugging them into your show makes for a better initial product, but it's not the core of what you're making.
The real trick is to find your differentiator. What is going to be the key thing that makes your show stand out from all the others like it in this crowded audio market.
The pieces of other shows shape the feel of your show, but they aren't the content at the heart of it. You need to create that core and then apply the aspects of other shows that help to mold that core into a truly unique product.
Not everything is a bolt on add-on either. Often times, concepts you borrow from other shows need to be adjusted and shaped to your own show to give it the right feel.
To go back to our sales example from my colleague earlier: those younger reps might have found a great script to help them sell, but their actual use of it and phrasing, voicing, and inflecting the words the right way needs to be done by them, and only them
It's back to the reps statement made earlier. You can get the blueprint, you can get the key, but until you're comfortable building whatever the blueprint is for, or placing the key in the lock, you need to practice.
Does your audio concept need help being shaped into a truly unique show?
~WPS