Make Love to Listeners with your Voice - 5 Tips

💥 Make Love to Listeners' with your Voice - 5 Tips
Using your voice is so important and probably why you are doing podcast guesting - to get found, heard, and connect powerfully with the people who need you.  But the WAY you use your voice - your actual speaking voice - in your audio appearances is an important key to having listeners fall in love with you
...well, at least like you enough to want to hear more, share and maybe connect with the possibility of doing business.

This episode offers 5 important tips for optimizing your voice in those recordings.

1. Vocal fry - the Valley Girl sound   
2. Uptalking - high-rising terminals
3. Animation - too much or too little
4. Filler words - like, you know?
5. Signaling approachability and connection

Keep these 5 things in mind to effectively woo your listening audience - and podcast host - in every performance!

💥 If you found this episode useful, we'd love it if you could drop us a review on Apple podcasts or iTunes.

👉🏼 Find us over at The Of Course Podcast Guesting website for more resources.

To get you started -
𝐆𝐞𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐫𝐞𝐞  5-step guide to Strategic Podcast Guest Appearances

💥 If you've got any questions or comments, well, you can drop us a voice message via this SpeakPipe link for leaving a voice mail and we'll answer it for you.  Who knows - it might end up as a topic of a future episode!

Transcript

0:00

What if I showed you a process to consistently get high value content that showcases you and your business? Get it created for you with almost no work on your part? And then have it featured on your behalf on media platforms, where people actually come expressly to find content and solutions, just like yours. And you get all that for free? That's what strategic podcast guesting will do for you. And that's what the Podcast Guesting for Business Growth podcast is all about. I'm your host, September Smith. And I wanted to get into a topic that is super important to the success of your podcast appearances. As far as connecting with listeners, having them listen to the whole interview, remembering you and wanting to go find you elsewhere. And that comes down to something as simple as your voice and how you use it. So there are five tips, five areas that I want to get into that are things that are simple to control, simple to take into consideration, but are quite often overlooked by people who are doing podcast guesting. The first one I want to talk about is vocal fry. And I'm putting that right up the top because I just witnessed that the other day listening to a podcast. vocal fry is a tonal effect that's often found in women, but not exclusively women. And it's when at the end of the sentence, their voice goes low and vibratory. Some call it raspy have scratchy and like for example, I used to really like them, but now not so much anymore. I don't do it very well. But vocal fry has become a much more common thing in North American speech patterns over the last 25 years. So it's not universal. This is something that is becoming a habit or a trendy, or habitual way of speaking in North America. And using that vocal fry can convey a range of emotions and intents. But also, as a sidebar, it's damaging to the vocal cords, so you should reconsider using it. But anyways, more important for your podcast guesting is when it comes to your audio recordings. vocal fry is actually incredibly unpleasantly harsh on the listeners ears, it really impacts the sound levels as well. So for example, when you're speaking, the the volume, the audio volume of that vocal fry, if you look at an audio sound wave, it really peaks up and it's really harsh and grating on to the ears. So for the listener to be have that have the volume low enough to lessen the irritation of that intermittent vocal fry. The result is that your normal speech is now at a volume lower than is optimal. You want them to have a nice, even volume as they listen to you, so that they're not aware of the the highs and lows and the kind of the peak scratchy noises of your vocal fry. You want them to just relax and listen and be enjoying you and what you're saying. So tip number one vocal fry, love your listeners ears be aware of and minimize your use of vocal fry in your interview. Number two is Up-talking, but just also known technically as "high rise terminal". And again, it's much more common in women, children, or people wanting to adopt the more feminine register. And it's when most sentences have a rising question-like pitch at the end of them. For example, if someone was to say, I have a degree in engineering? and I worked at numerous engineering firms? and I'm usually the head of the project? Not only is this annoying on an ongoing basis, your listeners are really going to start feeling like ooh, what is that. But you may have noticed that it seemed a little incongruent with the words that I was just speaking about being an engineer and working for firms and being the head of a project. There is a whole ton of sociological context that I could be unpacking around that as to why people would use this. And I'm not going to get into that here. But the net effect is that that form of speech putting that in your speech is inconsistent with a person of authority and power. So the subconscious takeaway for your listeners is that you have this air of deference and timidity and a lack of certainty. And that is not what you want them to come away with. Using this vocal effect not only irritates the listener, it's really hard to listen to on an ongoing basis, you're blowing your credibility as an authority or an expert, someone who should be heard and trusted. Use your voice with persuasive certainty to win over your listeners. The third thing that you should be trying to avoid when you're doing your podcast casting, or any speaking actually is filler words. And while this is not technically a vocal effect, it's something that is a huge turnoff for listeners. Much like the impact of up-talking the overuse of filler words, particularly simplistic sounds like, "um, ah, or like", has the macro effect on listeners of being really annoying and then subconscious, sometimes not so subconscious, effect of making you seem less intelligent, less articulate and less credible than you really are. This is not a great first impression. And unfortunately, if you do this, it's probably the last impression that they're going to have of you because they're not going to seek out any more of your content, they're not going to want to listen to anything else you have to say. So keep the filler words to a minimum. The fourth thing that you should be thinking about is the animation in your voice. And what you want to avoid is having too little animation, or too much. The animation your voice is what signals to the listener, Because don't forget, they can see your facial expression. It signals the interest or excitement, concern or passion that you feel, and that you want them to feel the emotional experience that you're sharing with them through your story and your voice. listeners do actually want to be taken on an emotional trip with you whether they know it or not. And effectively doing that. Taking them on that trip creates a feeling of connection and emotional bond with you. In addition, your varying tone, timbre, speed projection, all convey and evoke feelings to the listener. If your tone is unvaried or lifeless, it can convey a lack of interest on your part, which is soon the listeners feeling to they're not interested or worse, you come off as aloof and distant, not somebody that they really want to be spending time with or listening to or following. Either way, you're chance at a second date with those listeners and with the host as far as rebooking you in the future or recommending you to other podcasters is pretty much nil. Similarly, over animation can be off putting to your listener, I was recently listening to a person tell their heroic life story from the darkest lows to the most victorious highs. But unfortunately, it was consistent. They sounded like they're about to have a nervous breakdown at any moment, they were so over animated. While the details were fascinating, I started feeling uncomfortable at this over animation. I just didn't even want to keep hearing this story. This over animated, emotionally fraught voice just made me want to escape to turn them off to flee. I had a better impression of that person before I actually heard them tell their life story. And it was all because of their over animated delivery. So the animation in your voice is something that you should be thinking about and working on before you get on your first podcast interview. You don't want too little, and you don't want too much. The last thing that I want to talk about is the tone that you use with the host, the way your voice comes across when you're interacting with a host. Why is this important? To the listener subconscious mind, the host is a proxy for them. How you speak to the host is how the listener perceives you speaking to them. So for the listener to be receptive to you and the information that you're sharing, or more importantly, for them to form an emotional bond with you. They need to hear an openness, mutual respect, a desire to connect, they need to feel that they're being talked to and not talk that. And this is part of your attitude, because we can hear your attitude and your voice. And it's also a part communication style. The famous communication-style metric for winning hearts and votes in the US is that a candidate comes off as "the kind of guy you'd want to have a beer with", which like it or not. That is how - "he's he seems like the kind of guy you'd want to sit down and have a beer with". That's how people judge you. Could I connect with them? Would I want to spend time with them. And in this case, it's spend more time with you listening to your podcast episodes. And that's your goal, you want them spending as much time as possible with you, possibly some of those people will become connections. So that kind of guy that you want to have a beer; with your audience might be more Pinot Noir or healthy smoothie, but either way, your voice and your speaking style has to emanate the openness to connect and share. Whether you're using guesting to have your message heard to change minds to become known or to grow your business or all of those things. In every aspect of your podcast appearance. You want the listener to feel like this is enjoyable. It's a great way to be spending time and you want to make them feel like they want to spend more time with you. Your Podcast conversations are like a first date because it may be the first time people ever encounter you. It is your job to be your most authentically charming self to give the host and by extension their audience, a very pleasant, memorable experience. And you have to do all that with your voice and your words. So keep those five vocal tips in mind for your

podcast guesting: 9:58

avoid vocal fry, up talking and filler words, strike the right level of animation in your voice, and charm the pants off your host and listeners. Thanks for being here. I hope you got some insight and inspiration on how you could be taking advantage of the incredible opportunity of podcast guest appearances open to all of us right now. It's brand building PR up leveled exposure positioning, networking and lead generation and it's all for free. If this is something that you would like to have working for your business in 2022 Make sure you subscribe and follow now and join us for our monthly podcast casting perhaps go workshops that will open your eyes to the potential waiting for you and your business with his media opportunity and lay the foundation for a media campaign that will put you on the map. You can also download our free guide to strategic podcast guesting The link is in the notes or drop us a voice message with your comments or questions via the SpeakPipe link in the notes. Let's make podcast guesting work for you