Are Your Teases Google Proof?
There are two reasons to tease content. I bet you only know one of them. Before we get to that, let’s hit the way-back machine and join Steve, a few weeks ago, as he sits in his home-office, listening to a show in his blue, terry cloth Land’s End bathrobe…
Dateline Friday, August 23, 2024, 6:51am in Steve’s house while streaming a morning show: “Hailey and Justin Bieber had a baby last night. We’ll tell you the name they chose right after we play some Ed Sheeran.”
Dateline Friday, August 23, 2024, 6:52am: Steve Googles that exact tease and finds out it’s Jack. Now I can grab a coffee, look at Facebook, or check out another show.
Let’s agree that that’s an ineffective tease. Why? Because I can Google the answer. Not like your listener actually will. But it’s not very inspiring or intriguing to get me to stay with you.
I wanna talk about teases this week. But let’s back up for a second. Why do we tease content in radio? The traditional answer (and the one I get most often): so listeners stay and we extend TSL. I’ll take it, but it doesn’t always work. Listeners have ADD and when they think of something else (or get to their destination), that tease is long forgotten. It just doesn’t have anything that hooks the audience and ends up being very tactical.
The strategic reason to tease is to intrigue the audience with something they can’t get anywhere else so they actually do stay. Here, you gain an image that something special is about to happen, so they return to the show the next day out of a fear of missing out.
What is that unique thing only you have for that content? The item they can’t find out on Google? You only come up with that in prep and ideation and that’s the thing you tease.
Like this instead: “Hailey and Justin Bieber had a baby last night. We’ll talk next to a nurse who was in the delivery room to find out why they named their kid Jack.”
See the difference in the effectiveness of the two? A great tease notes the story then leaves out a big element they can only get from you if they stay.
Teases can’t be throwaways. If they’re going to serve the two goals above of extending TSL and creating intrigue, we must not only prep for those goals, but write teases before the show to have impact. When I was on-the-air, I was the king of coming up with teases on the fly. As I reflect, almost all of them had no consequence to keeping listeners tuned in.
Today, with so many choices for connection and entertainment, we must spend more time creating our content breaks to be special, then crafting a tease to communicate that.
Pull all your teases from the last few days. See how many of them pass the test: are they Google proof?