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It occured to me recently, just how much a preacher or minister is just like a podcaster. Think about it for a second, As a podcaster, you make your show notes, you prep for your show, do your research on your topic, outline your show notes and then deliver your message in a clear, concise manner to your audience.
A minister will prep for their sermon, make out their notes, make an outline for their sermon, research their topic for that week and then deliver their message in a clear, concise manner to their congregation. In many ways, a minister is podcasting without putting their message on the Internet.
My point here, as you all know by now, I am an Ordained Minister and I was speaking to a Pastor from a local Church the other day that I update their web site for them and he said something to me that made me stop and realize that once again, ministers are just like podcasters. This Pastor made the comment that he was still in Seminary and had not “found his voice yet”. I ask him what exactly he meant by that statement and he told me that while in Seminary, he is taught one way to preach, one method to use for his sermons and this is the primary method that he will use until he leaves the Seminary. Primarily, this method is taught by an older minister who has “found his voice” long ago and he is teaching this to his students.
As you all are probably aware, mostly, you will hear this in the podcasting community too. Novice and up and coming podcasters will learn from a mentor and will begin podcasting using the same methods and “voice” of their mentor. If they stay with it long enough, they soon find their “own voice” and this is when you see a great transformation to their podcasts.
Tonight, we are going to talk about how to find your own voice for your podcasts. This is not always an easy subject to approach, however, I believe that if more novice podcasters were to find their own voices early on, they would stick with more and not suffer as much from podcast burnout (you know, the broken toasters like we discussed last week!).
When I first began podcasting, I learned to podcat by listening to other podcasts and mimicking how they did their podcasts. This mimickery helped me to discover my voice and I soon began to branch out and try different things until I finally found what worked for me. The important point to remember here is, that just because it is working for one person, does not necessarily mean it will work for you too!
Ok, let’s assume you are just starting out and you have been listening to other podcasters and you home in on one or two that you simply just love to listen to. You have these podcasts on your iTunes and download every new podcast as they come out and you listen intently as they speak and you think, “Hmmm, I can it that way and this will really take off for me!”.
However, their format does not exactly match your niche or theme of your podcast and it just doesn’t work well for you. Do you quit and give up? Nope, you try something new! Remember, the lesson learned from the broken toasters here. You keep trying until you find something that works.
Ok, Now something I learned early on in podcasting is, you might not be doing a show on exactly what you are good at. It may seem like a great idea at the start, but then you begin to run out of material and then you have to start changing the show around and now everything is a mess. So here’s an idea that might help. Let’s say your show is on the topic of gardening. You might have some knowledge about gardening, however your real passion is photography. You realize that you are running out of things to talk about on gardening, your audience is dwindling or non-existent, so instead of giving up, switch to your real passion for photography, because you already have all of the photo equipment, you do weddings, school functions, etc. and you are well versed on just about everything there is to know about photography, so go out and change to a photography based theme and see what a difference it makes in the sound of your voice, the type of audience you are attracting because you are showing your passion for this subject and see what it does for your confidence!
Now these are just two, most likely bad examples of topics, however, I think you see my point here. You might have a passion for what you are talking about, however, when you talk about it, you seem like a scared little kitten and that shows in your voice and others will pick up on that. Maybe all you need to do is be yourself, don’t try to imitate others, just talk normally like you are talking to friends. Basically, your audience will become your friends and that makes talking to them so much easier than talking to a stranger.
Let me give you an example from my first live shows I produced here on Talkshoe. No, I’m not gonna play an example for you, but when I first started doing live shows, you could here the hesitation and the lack of confidence in my voice. I learned early on that live podcasts were NOTHING like a pre-recorded podcast like what I was used to doing. I now could “see” my audience and it was much akin to public speaking, for all practical purposes. Now, I’m no stranger to getting up in front of small gatherings, but somehow this was different. It didn’t take me long though, to realize that I wasn’t going to go far unless I found my own voice and started using it.
Just a few episodes into this show here, I started getting my confidence and started experimenting with what worked and what didn’t work. I could tell by the download stats each week what was working and the stuff that wasn’t working, got tossed out and replaced. I soon found a combination that worked for quite a while and after I had become “an expert” in podcasting, I was able to tell when it was time to make changes. You stick with something long enough, you will get the feel for it.
So, to sum it all up right now, no one to tell you exactly what voice to use. This is the reason everyone has a different voice and you need to find your voice so that you can get back to enjoying this great hobby we have all decided to get into.
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