The Winter Olympics are over for another 4 years and chances are lots of people will be tuning around the dial looking for something good to listen to.

It is not unreasonable to think that as the interest in the Olympic games grew over the 13 days that radio tuning habits may have changed. More people would have been tuning to either radio or television stations that carried live Olympic coverage, and perhaps spending less time with their favourite radio station. Lots of people were changing their routine and getting up in the middle of the night to watch particular events or athletes compete. You may be one of the thousands of Canadians who got up as early as 4am in BC to watch the Men’s hockey final between Canada and Sweden on Sunday.

But now that it is all over, where will those people go? My belief is that many of them will be going through Olympic withdrawal and may be looking up and down the dial for something that catches their attention.

So here, then, are 10 things you might consider doing to to make your station stand out from the rest, post 2014 Sochi Olympics:

1. Review music: Radio stations should be on top of their music each and every week, but sometimes even the most diligent MD’s can let a few DNF’s creep into the categories. Start by looking closely at your recurrent categories and delete anything that is not super strong. Look at all your categories and freshen things up a little.  Make an  extra effort to groom the logs this week so your song to song transitions really pop.
2. Update imaging: Hopefully you had lots of “seize the moment” imaging on the air during the Olympics. For example, did you have two versions of imaging produced and made sure the current one played soon after the men won that hockey game on Sunday? Well, now that the games are over keep that process going and write imaging that reflects the day, the market and the way people are feeling. This is easy to say but can be hard to execute week in and week out. But if you make an effort in this area people will notice. It helps create that feeling that I really need to listen to this radio station because I don’t want to miss something important.
3. Brief your announcers: OK folks its over, and we won lots of medals, but now its time to move on.  There is no point in reminiscing in all the wins, the near misses and the losses. It is time to move forward, so make sure your announcers are on top of what is hot and what your demographic is interested in. For some it may be what to do for March Break, for others it might be when winter will end so I can get my golf clubs out of the basement?
4. Have some fun: Create a new benchmark or contest that will capture the imagination of your audience.
5. Make the most of Social Media assets: Let people know that you can relate to the post Olympic blues, and that your station can help them get over this. 
6. Clean up the clutter: With all the additional talk, and perhaps special programming that ran over the past 13 days, now is a good time to tighten things up and make sure all the clutter is gone. People will have become tired of all the talk and all the additional features you ran, so batten down the hatches and play lots of great songs.
7. Have Production and Creative check their material: Any chance you have commercials on the air that somehow reference the Olympics, that need to be updated?  Often, clients who want to cash in on the excitement of such a major event will ask for ads to be written in a particular way.  These will sound as out of date as those Christmas commercials that somehow run in January.
8.  The revenue end of the ship: If you were running a sales campaign such as “Go For The Gold”, hopefully that is off the street and no longer offered. But make sure you go back to all those clients that were “thinking about it” with something new and fresh. Remind them this is a great time to be advertising.
9. Check your website: This is a good time to check your station website and make sure all the Olympic material is pulled.
10. The benefit of memory promos: As radio stations we are very good at teasing a major event and then executing it. But once it is over and we have awarded the prizes we often forget to run a memory promo thanking everyone for taking part and letting listeners know who won. Doing this is good marketing, plus it helps to dispel the myth that radio stations don’t really give away the prizes.

Lastly, make yourself a check list of things you need to do when the Olympics come around next, so you can be ready for them and sound even better. By the way, the next games will be the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil from 5-21 August, 2016. The next Winter Games will be in South Korea from 9-23 February, 2018.