I tell people that you’re not really in the radio industry until you’ve been fired at least once. We work in an industry with a lot of turnover, and that means we can lose a lot of time to learning curves as new people step in to take over the duties of previous employees.
It’s not just staffing changes that can cause disruptions. If a member of your team gets sick or injured, you may need somebody to step in and fill their role for a bit. To minimize the digital disruption in these situations, it’s helpful to write instructions and save them in a place where multiple people have access to them.
I am a big proponent of writing out clear step-by-step instructions, complete with annotated screenshots, for every digital task you can’t live without. Here are some of the things you will want to have instructions for:
- How to send an email blast
- How to send a text message blast
- How to publish a blogpost
- How to update the website’s concert calendar
- How to set up a contest on the website
- How to publish a podcast episode
- How to back up the website
- How to restore a backup of the website
- How to publish a video to the station’s YouTube channel
- How to set up online ticket sales for a station event
- How to post an advertisement on the website
These instructions are useful not only to people who have to take over a role, but also to the same person who may have performed the task in the past. Because I do it so infrequently, I often have to go back and figure out what I did the previous year. If you’re responsible for an infrequent task, such as setting up ticket sales for an annual station concert, it can be incredibly valuable to go back and read instructions — even if you’re the one who wrote them!
If you don’t already have instructions for your most important digital tasks, start writing them today. The next time you have a staff position turnover, you’ll be glad that you did.
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