Numerous on-air jocks have told me they use websites to prep their shows each day and these are the top 5:
- Twitter – Trending –
Hit up the twit-verse and see what the world is talking about before and during your show, you can localise your search results to your country, state and sometimes province or region. - Google – Trends – HOMEPAGE
Discover what the world is talking about and refine your search down to the details you are after. One of the best features I found is the ‘Year In Search’ at the bottom of the page – there is a simple to read article for the use of Trends on MAKE USE OF.com - YouTube Trends – on YouTube‘s homepage you will find the EXPLORE, then the TRENDING tab.
It’s very interesting to see what people are watching, and you’ll uncover news, YouTubers, and when you drill down on the trending feed you’ll discover subcategories like music, gaming, news, movies, and fashion to build a topic to talk about on-air. - TikTok Trending – Yawn – okay – I have to put it HERE for those who keep up with TikTok trends.
Yes you’ll find out what’s happening, but my biggest problem is that the trending feature on TikTok appears to be flawed, it’s hard to drill down on what is ‘actually’ popular unless you know what you are really doing – and I – do not! - Your favourite local/state/national news sites – (insert them here)
Because you should always try to talk locally about state and national issues and how they affect local’s, you should be across them – plus there’s all the latest stories on sports, politics, weather, entertainment, personalities and more.
Yes there are a lot of other paid sites out there for content, from air-prep news sites to daily news aggregation sites – but there are far too many to list here.
Remember: Your show prep time should allow you to give a quick glance at the top topics of the day, finding out what people are talking about, then taking note of those topics to build your own talking points around them with your own perspective.
You should also monitor sites during your show too, just in case something major happens and you want to let your listener know what is going on, and, don’t talk about you. Your show should be about your audience and what they are thinking, doing and experiencing – sharing insights and news about the world and your perspective on it is fine – but it should always be about them.
And that’s it for my 5 part on-air toolkit – if you have any other sites you can recommend as free – then I would love to hear from you about them – comment below.
Cheers.
