Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #562: A Useful Key to Using Social Media Posts on the Air

It’s hard to understand why an air talent thinks that reading social media posts on the air can somehow be inherently interesting in itself.

Sure, some postings are good, cool, funny, sweet. And we can certainly use those. But we all know that most “normal” people – who aren’t trained in how to communicate or entertain – are pretty boring. Bless their hearts, they use too many words and include insignificant details. The first sentence we hear can make you not want to hear the second one.

However, I never point out an issue without giving you a solution. Here’s a simple cure that will make this work for you:

Just use the good part – the one “quote” worth repeating. It’ll just be a sentence or two. We don’t need to know their dogs’ names.

Then you continue – if you want to – with your words, not more of theirs.

Start today in disciplining yourself to quit reading too much of it. Just using the one relevant part as a springboard, with your supplying the rest, lets us know how YOU feel. (We bond when that happens.) And the bonus is that this process actually makes the person who posted it look smarter.

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Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (mobile)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2024 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #522: Radio versus Social Media

It’s come to my attention that a lot of people actually take Twitter, Facebook, or other social media comments seriously. Imagine that – someone you don’t know makes a comment, and you actually care. I knew this day would come when they took the cocaine out of Coca-Cola. (According to Facebook.)

I shudder to think – well, I don’t actually shudder; to do that, I’d have to stand up, and I can’t type very well standing up. Anyway, I’ll ask Siri to remind me to imagine shuddering at the notion of a generation of people who have a real need for some sort of validation from strangers.

Okay, done mock-shuddering now. All that came to me was, “Bless their pointed little heads.”

Seriously, if you actually find yourself paying a little too much attention to “social”, remember this: most people don’t have 20,000 Twitter followers, but if you’re on the air in a large market, you probably do have 20,000 listeners at any given moment. VOICES are almost always going to be far more powerful than mere ‘postings’.

Celebrate that! Do the best you can, every day. Ignore any negative comment from someone who’s not your boss or your coach. And to quote the Dean of Science Fiction writers, Robert Heinlein, “Be who you are. And be it in style.”

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Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (mobile)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2023 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #293 – How to Use Texts or Emails on the Air

I hear so many people using a text or email as the ending of something. And a lot of stations have gone way overboard in soliciting them.

But this is one of those things that seems like a good idea, but it’s too broad a concept to play to radio’s strengths.

Here’s what I coach:

Texts (or emails) are only to be used as springboards for something YOU do that’s creative. They’re not a be-all or end-all in themselves. So rather than using a text or email as the “destination” for something, you should use those as the START of something. I didn’t tune in to hear what the faceless “Jennifer” from Highland Park has to say, I tuned in to hear YOU – the trained, articulate, entertaining Personality – have to say. Because, let’s face it, “real” people are usually not very witty or clever or funny at all. Sure, they can be once in a while, but even then, I don’t want to hear you just read a response. How lazy can you get? Why don’t you just read the newspaper on the air if that’s all the work ethic you have?

Plus, I believe it’s a mistake to encourage people to text or email INSTEAD of calling, because radio is about airing AUDIO. Do you want to hear me interview an artist, or would you rather hear me read an interview with the artist out of a magazine? Print is a poor substitute for Sound. Let’s keep our eye on the ball.

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Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (iPhone)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2019 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #288 – What a fan fight at a football game has to do with you

On Sunday, December 2nd, 2018, two fans got into a fight in the stands of a Pittsburgh Steelers game. One guy said something. The guy he said it to tellingly removed his cap, then head-butted the first guy. Guy #1’s girlfriend and several other fans got involved.

Not exactly untypical, but as I read about it (and watched the video), something the writer of the article, Jay Busbee said, really caught my attention:

“This is why nobody brings kids to football games anymore, and why nobody under the age of 40 spends any time on Facebook. They know enough not to get caught up in whatever messes the ‘olds’ are creating.”

The “olds”? Wow.

Now whether you agree with the Facebook statement or not, it’s still something to consider. I’ve been coaching people on how TO use – and now NOT to use – Facebook postings for years. The gist of it is that if a comment is relevant to something top of mind TODAY, you might want to use it, but random postings are virtually useless, because Relevance is King when it comes to Content.

I’m not saying your listeners don’t still use Facebook, but we should always be looking at the next big thing. Because habitually when radio does that, they find out that it’s already here.

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Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (iPhone)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2018 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Tommy Kramer Tip #169 – Being yourself…unless…

We hear it all the time. “Be yourself on the air.”

Being yourself IS what you want to be, UNLESS your natural “self” is too exuberant for the intimacy of radio.

Loud talkers, for instance. Those jocks that seem to SHOUT everything. Over the course of coaching somewhere around 1700 people, I’ve dealt with a lot of these foghorn types, usually old Top 40 jocks who make “announcements” or “present” things. And they always say the same thing when I point this out: “But that’s just the way I talk.” (Actually, they say “BUT THAT’S JUST THE WAY I TALK.”)

Well if that’s true, you’ll need to change.

To become a great talent, you need to fully understand, master, and be able to control your “instrument” – your voice.

When you SHOUT at me on the air, you’re forgetting that I can hit a button and turn you OFF. And believe me, I will.

If you need to get loud to express excitement or outrage, back off the mic a few inches, even turn your head away from it. That way, I still get the Emotion, but I also still have functioning eardrums.

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Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (iPhone)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2016 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Tommy Kramer Tip #153 – What John Oliver Gets about Social Media that Most People Don’t

If I hear “Join the conversation” one more time, I’m going to scream. This is trite and uninspired. First of all, to me (the listener), it’s NOT a “conversation” UNTIL I join it. It’s just a bunch of people I don’t know jabbering away on Twitter. It ranks right up there with someone’s picture of kale zucchini on Instagram. (And any “conversation” about that should include the words “makes me want to hurl.”)

John Oliver, the wonderful host of HBO’s “Last Week Tonight” really gets how social media should be used. Instead of the nebulous, pandering, “What do you think?” or the even more beaten-to-death “join the conversation,” Oliver gives people something to DO.

Example: In April of 2016, Oliver did a piece on the expensive seats in Yankee Stadium in a prime location, known as the “Legends Club” – the first five rows of seats. Priority seating access, people (servants, actually) bringing your food to you so you don’t have to stand in line with the plebeians who have to wait for their lukewarm 15-dollar beer – you get the picture. Oliver quoted the Yankees’ COO actually saying — out loud — in a radio interview that “If you buy a ticket in a very premium location, we don’t want you to sell it for a buck and a half” to a fan who “may be someone who has never sat in a premium location…so that’s a frustration to our existing fan base.”

Indignant about this “rich people don’t like sitting next to people who aren’t rich” perspective, Oliver BOUGHT two “Legends” seats to each of the Yankees’ first three games – right behind home plate. And he offered to sell them to you for 25 CENTS, with the provision that you COULDN’T dress nicely!

To get them, you tweeted a photo of what you and a guest would wear to the game, with the hash-tag #IHAVENEVERSATINAPREMIUMLOCATION.

Totally intrigued by this, I saw the two winning fans at the first game, sitting with all the high rollers and multi-gazillionaires, dressed in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles costumes! Well done, John Oliver, you strange but brilliant British fellow. If you get to Hawaii, come to my place, and we’ll sit in shorts, tee-shirts, and flip-flops (my attire EVERY day) and I’ll throw a steak on the grill for you.

The lesson: Let’s DO something, and get in on the ACTION, not just “join the conversation.”

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Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (iPhone)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2016 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.