Last week we held the first of our Global Radio Producer sessions in London, discussing with Global Radio producers from around the UK, not only our digital plans for the year ahead, but also how to produce great content that can be easily shared across multiple platforms.

It was an interesting couple of days as was a great opportunity for the digital teams to hear about the challenges and opportunities the radio teams face on a daily basis and how to make content work in that unique environment.

Here’s some random thoughts from the event and I look forward to the next session early next year.

• Amazing content doesn’t necessarily mean complex ideas, the ideas themselves can be quite simple. What’s more important is that they are executed brilliantly with an attention to detail that demonstrates you really understand your audience. Sometimes executing brilliantly means stripping away the idea to it’s simplest (and most understood) component.
• Make it as easy as possible to share these ideas in your organisation. Identify silos and training requirements otherwise you’ll have teams trying to reinvent the wheel every time they sit down to plan the week ahead. Avoid the trappings of email where there is often the illusion of communication and understanding.
• Radio is an extremely reactive environment buzzing with brilliant ideas so getting the right balance between proactive planning and spontaneity can be tricky.
• Discussing what makes great ‘content’ is a fruitful conversation to have in any organisation – but let’s talk about content with a small ‘c’ shall we? Take radio as an example, there are very slight but important differences between digital and radio editorial ideas and sometimes we run the risk of obscuring this with conversations around Content. Let’s recognise the differences so we can recognise the best ideas and facilitate them through the best platforms available.