The Art Of The Tease

There are a few things which don’t change. The sun comes up at the start of the day, it sets at the end of the day, it gets colder in winter and warmer in summer and promoting something is always worthwhile and seldom overdone.

From the first time I ever stepped foot into a radio studio, way back in hospital radio days in Derby, the promo making job was a thing. In fact I remember my very first visit and look around and sit in, to see if it was something I wanted to join- the person showing me around was making a promo for an interview they had done.

Making a promo, a trail for something is a basic skill. I’m not going to discuss the technical issues and skills surrounding physically making a promo, its more about the overall rationale of why you should promote in the first place. If you make something, or if you present something and you don’t promote it- you are wasting its overall potential. Its kind of like the old saying “if a tree falls in the wood and no-one is there, does it make a sound?”.

There are three stages to enjoyment. Anticipation, experience and memory. If you skim on any of the elements you reduce the potential of the enjoyment. Think about it. When you are going on holiday you look forward to the travel and say things like, “this time next week I’ll be on the beach”. If you just had a surprise holiday, whilst very nice its also very unexpected- you get robbed of the ability to look forward to it and therefore part of the excitement and enjoyment as a result.

From a practical sense it also helps bring more eyes and ears to your content of course. I publish this blog post update on a Monday morning at 8am and I post on social channels at about 8.15am, (giving time for WordPress to do its thing just in case of any wobbles or issues). I post a reminder to the blog on a Thursday morning each week also around 8am. If I wrote a killer article with some amazing insight and viewpoint but didn’t promote it on any social channels at all, the potential audience would greatly reduce. This is pretty obvious I know, but all too often the art of the tease is left out. The very basic promotion of great or even just good content is lacking or nonexistent.

It is possible to overdo it, but in truth you have to go a long way. The end destination has to be worthy of the travel- so if you promote something its got to be worth the effort of me following that promotion… you don’t want someone thinking “was that it?”. Make it worthwhile. Equally going on and on about it, might appear both desperate and demanding- and at a point becomes more destructive than it is constructive. If I posted a reminder post on socials every day for this blog post for example, I’m sure it would become annoying and ultimately wouldn’t actually end up growing its readership- and would probably end up diminishing the long term readership as a result. To fair there is a vast void between promoting anything and becoming over the top and annoying. It shouldn’t stop you attempting promotion.

Still to come…

Its important not to be lazy or clumsy with it. I often think its a bit of a lazy try when I hear presenters say “still to come”. I applaud the sentiment and I applaud the promotion and cross promote, but I would challenge the effort. The worst case of this I once heard was a presenter who started their show with “Still to come…”- I pointed out that in reality EVERYTHING is still to come and so its a pointless phrase! Instead, write something, create something bespoke or a question or statement which is bespoke to the content later and then hook me in. Still to come is just not needed!

Recycling you cumulative reach (“cume”), or your audience, is a healthy thing to do. Its the equivalent of looking at something on Amazon and scrolling down to find “other people who bought this also bought these…” and taking a look. If someone likes something you do or you create, what else might they like that you have done? Why not give them a chance to find out?