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The Art of Podcasting

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Ummm... Er..... Well?

posted by Bo Bennett, Group AdministratorFriday, November 27th 2009 @ 4:43 PM (not yet rated) post viewed 836 times

As a long time public speaking professional and Distingished Toastmaster, it has been embedded in my brain that verbal pauses, better known as "Ummm... errrr.... so..... and....." are one of the worse speaking crimes that one can commit. I have found this to be true in public speaking since non-verbal pauses can be so effective. But is that rule valid in podcasting? If you want the quick answer, it is "depends". For the long answer, read on.

Without doubt, a speaker's ability to construct a valid and topical sentence without using any of the verbal pause crutches is ideal. However, we all know how difficult that can be. Since communication is mostly non-verbal, a speech in front of a live audience can replace verbal pauses with silent ones. This shows the audience that the speaker is in control of his or her speaking. The audience knows more is coming by the facial expressions made during the silent pauses. But podcasting is a different medium than live public speaking.

In audio podcasting, all communication is verbal. A silent pause in an audio podcasting is known as "dead air" and can create an unprofessional and awkward moment. "Dead air" in a podcast is the equivalent of a speaker with his fly down in a public speech. The silent pauses are even worse when multiple people are on a show jousting to make their voices heard. A pause is an opportunity for someone else to jump in leaving your unfinished thought hanging out there.

Here are some techniques you can use to avoid using verbal fillers.

Become aware. The more aware you are of your use of these, the less you will use them.
Practice. Practice speaking without them.
Know your material well. If you know what you are going to say, you will rarely need to use a filler.

Remember, in podcasting verbal fillers are better than dead air and certainly better than someone interrupting your thought, so use them if needed, but practice not needed them.

Bo Bennett, DTM is a Distinguished Toastmaster, professional public speaker, and creator/host of several podcasts including Philosophizers, EVcast, Twooting, the Toastmasters Podcast, and Real Marketing Bull.

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Scott Wright
Podcasing for Business

ScottWright said on Monday, November 30th 2009 @ 10:28 PM:

Good points. I agree that Toastmasters is a great experience for podcasters. I joined over a year ago - a few months before I got up the nerve to do my first podcast - and it's really helped me with pacing and thinking a few words ahead. As you say, it's particularly important in a show with multiple hosts. I do the Social Media Security Podcast with two other people over Skype, and if you pause in mid-sentence, you can get unintentionally trampled on by others. It really helps to be able to jump in and make a solid statement or question in an uninterrupted flow. This really comes with practice.

Toastmasters also really helps with becoming aware of your crutch words. I got rid of my "ums", only to find I've switched to another verbal crutch... but you'll have to listen to my podcast to find out what it is.

- Scott

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Nathan Lowell
Podcasting for Fun

NathanLowell said on Saturday, December 19th 2009 @ 4:33 PM:

I'll go with "It depends."

When it comes to podcasting, we're not talking about the same model as "public speaking" and certainly not "radio." Yes, both of those models have influenced the medium, but let's remember that - technically - a podcast is a method of delivery and not the content payload. Just like "radio" might deliver news, interviews, music, drama, and who knows what all, a "podcast" also has the same flexibility -- even extending it to video, text, and pretty much anything that can be digitized and attached to an RSS enclosure tag.

In the audio form that we're mostly talking about here, a case of the um's or even dead air might actually not be that big a deal. If you're interviewing somebody, or recording a natural conversation, people will do it. It's part of their speech. In my podcast novels, I regularly pause for effect. The medium provides a time value that is not apparent on a printed page and I take full advantage of it when reading my novels. In radio terms, this would be "dead air" but in the context of my podcast, it's part of the performance - as important to the message as white space is on a web page.

Having listened to a more than one really bad podcast where the producer clipped out any dead air, chopped out the "ums" and generally butchered the flow of his own show, I'll submit that these -- while maybe bad -- aren't the worst of the speaking crimes.

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