The Top Five Lessons From Oprah

Every radio station in the world could learn some lessons from Oprah.

I'm a huge fan of content, in all the things that come between songs. It's the only way your station can truly be unique anymore.

And Oprah is the Queen of Content.

Let me share five lessons from Oprah that can immediately make your station better:

1. Be Relevant And Use Stories To Make Listeners FEEL.

Stories create emotion ... and authentic emotion is powerfully magnetic.

Oprah finds people who tell personal, emotional stories -- and you can too, as long as you're willing to do the prep work, and alter rigid formatics.

If your talent starts trying to be relevant rather than just shocking or funny, your audience will immediately notice the improvement, because you will be speaking to issues they care about. You will be reflecting their lives.

Nothing is more entertaining and compelling than that.

2. Surprises

Oprah finds a way to pleasantly surprise her audience and viewers. Whether she's giving away a new car to every audience member, or just a small summer goodie bag, she enhances the delight by being unpredictably generous.

When's the last time your station just gave away something really valuable to the first 100 callers? I'm not talking about a big contest, which many listeners feel they have NO chance of winning, and which most listeners won't play.

I'm talking about spontaneously offering something of real value to those listening right now.

This is something you post-promote, and if it really is something of value, those who win will be powerful customer evangelists, telling all their friends and families about your generosity. The very fact that it seems spontaneous, that they have to do nothing at all to benefit, is what gives it power.

3. Oprah Is An Enabler

She spotlights human generosity and kindness and then goes the extra step of allowing her P1s to tag along and help, too.

Your listeners want to be part of something bigger than themselves, and in a world that has so much pain and heartache visible every day, everywhere, you can be the catalyst for involvement by making it easier for your listeners to help others.

Helping others always feels good, and always makes us feel better about ourselves.

When you help your listeners feel better about themselves in your presence, you have created a powerful and lasting emotional bond with them.

Again, I'm not talking about huge fundraisers that are scheduled months in advance, be they breast cancer or muscular dystrophy, even though these are great causes and these events are important and necessary.

I'm talking about the family whose house burned down last night, who lost all their belongings. I'm talking about the local family whose son or daughter was just killed in Iraq. I'm talking about the child who needs a stem cell transplant who doesn't have medical insurance. I'm talking hyper-local.

I'm talking about personal stories and personal intervention. People helping people without big organizations cluttering things up. This has always been powerful content.

Give your listeners an easy way to become involved and to help because we all want to be better human beings.

4. Produced And Packaged

Because hers is a TV show, Oprah's best content has been carefully produced and packaged. It is rarely live and spontaneous. And it's this extra step of editing interviews, and of producing them with music, that generates the highest emotional payoffs.

We, in radio, tend to be lazy. We tend to call our guests live, or have them in the studio (even worse). When Oprah has a guest in the studio with her, she almost always combines their live appearance with pre-produced segments, and those segments are always the meat of the show -- not the live interaction.

Oprah knows that creating powerful bonds requires emotional content, and she is the master at producing it.

So take the time to record your stories, to edit them for the most powerful content, and to set them to music, which always signals mood and emotion. The result will be instantly unique to even the most casual listener.

5. Use Today's Show To Generate Interest In Tomorrow's.

Oprah is always promoting what is coming up -- not just later in today's show, but tomorrow, and later in the week. She is using your interest in what she's doing now to hook you for tomorrow. This requires lots of pre-planning and a rigorous vetting process to weed out weak content. There's no point in promoting something no one cares about. If you do Lesson 5 well, it will require a lot of off-air work. She has a big staff. You don't. But if you want to become that daily habit your listeners cannot miss, you must do this one every day. Give them a reason to listen at this time tomorrow.

If you don't already, record Oprah's show and watch it for two weeks. You will learn everything you need to know to make your station more compelling and memorable.