Wanna sound natural on a podcast?
When I first started podcasting, I sounded meek, monotone, and boring.
Haha – I went from sounding like that to sounding like a radio announcer. It was freakin’ cringeworthy.
If you really wanna hear how I first sounded, you can watch the video below.
I sound pretty weird, right?
Okay, enough laughing at my expense.
I want to get into some practical and effective tips to help you discover your authentic podcasting voice. These tips will get to the root of how you sound naturally, so that you don’t sound like a caricature of yourself.
Some of these techniques might seem silly, but I promise you, if you follow along, you’ll start sounding better in no time!
1. You’re Stuck In Your Head
Have you ever noticed that it’s pretty easy to sound natural while you’re talking with your friends, but the second you go on a podcast, it’s suddenly hard to speak the same way?
You get all flustered, nervous, and you don’t feel comfortable. You don’t feel like yourself.
While you can be witty and funny with your friends, you struggle to be so on a podcast.
The reason behind this change is that you suddenly go from being relaxed and unfiltered to feeling like you need to filter the words that are coming out of your mouth. You put so much mental energy into “sounding good” that it takes you out of the present moment and you get stuck in your head.
When you’re filtered, you don’t sound organic. You’re spending too much energy carefully selecting the words you’re gonna say. You’re acting in the same nervous fashion as when you’re talking to a hot girl. It’s almost like you’re putting on a mask to avoid being yourself.
To get over this problem, I recommend that podcasters go through a specific process before they go live on the podcast. This process is designed to make you unstifled. You’ll feel more free to express yourself. You’ll stop suppressing what comes to your mind.
I detail the specifics of this method in my FREE course, The Perfect Podcasting Voice, but put simply, you’re going to want to start doing a word association game. In this game, you must NOT STOP TALKING for the span of five minutes. You ignore the critical judgement and critical faculty of your mind. Instead, you let each thought cue the next, until you’re associating each thing you say to the previous sentence.
This simple exercise will help to make you less stifled. It will get you thinking on the fly.
2. You Try to Replicate a Famous Podcaster
I’ve seen this happen countless times, where a beginning podcaster will try to sound like a pro that they admire. They will take on that person’s tone of voice, mannerisms, and common phrases.
Heck, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to doing this myself. I totally have.
I remember when I published my first few episodes in 2015 that I tried to sound like Tim Ferriss, a podcaster that I looked up to at the time. From my transitions to the ending of my show, I would mimic the way he did his.
Why did I do this?
Because I thought that meant I would get more downloads. I also though that podcasters were SUPPOSED to speak that way. Boy, was I wrong.
I remember one time, I met one of my listeners in person. He was nice enough to give me some video editing tips for my new YouTube channel, and in return I was going to give him some advice on his business. About thirty minutes into our convo, he said, “You know Sal, I’m surprised. You sound different in real life than on that show.”
Internally, I started to panic. I could feel a cold sweat forming on my forehead. Had this guy figured out that I was a sham? That I’m not as cool as he thought?
He smiled and said, “I think you should sound more natural on your show next time. You sound better in person. More human.”
The second I stopped miming others and developed my own authentic voice, I started to finally make a connection with my listeners. I had fans reaching out, saying that they felt like they personally knew me, because they had been binge-listening to my show for the last couple of months.
WOW!
To sound natural, you have to give up your persistent desire to mimic other successful podcasters or shows. This might be an internal belief, that you’re not even aware of. You have to be willing to go all in on YOU.
You don’t want to be a shallow copy of someone else. You want to be an original.
Still searching for your voice? Here’s my guide to a Perfect Podcasting Voice.
3. Use literary devices (like these)
When you talk to your friend, you don’t sound robotic. If you did, no one would listen to you. You might not realize it, but when you’re having a good time with your friends, you naturally tell stories.
You tell silly stories of what you did last week, use metaphors, and make use of analogies. Rather than having a boring logical table conversation, you two are laughing your asses off telling jokes and bonding over memories.
All too often, the second a podcaster sees that they are “recording,” they start to panic and focus on two things:
- Talking quickly to maintain attention
- Sticking to dry, boring, logical facts in an attempt to be useful.
No one wants to read some company memo or listen to a boring professor drone on and on about philosophy. It’s a shame, because philosophy is a really interesting subject. If only that professor had spiced things up a bit!
The way to transition from sounding inauthentic to sounding organic and natural is to use the same literary devices that all of us use in conversation. It takes a bit of practice. I run my students through specific vocal exercises to get them better at coming up with metaphors on the fly.
A simple exercise you can do at home is to take five minutes and come up with as many visual images as possible to describe an object in your surrounding view. For example:
- “The water in this water bottle is very cold. It’s almost like the kind of water you’d expect canoeing on a glacier in Alaska. Just imagine dipping your cup into that crystal clear water and taking a sip. It’d be the coldest and purest darn water you’ve tasted in your life!”
Now, I could have just said that the water was cold. That is LOGICALLY what the water is. However, by describing it visually, it makes listening to me far more interesting. I suddenly create a mental movie in my head, and I can almost taste how darn cold that water is.
Copywriters do this all the time to sell products. You can also do this on the podcast to be more authentic and relatable. I would consider incorporating:
- Analogies: situations that are similar to the one at hand. It tends to be an elaborate explanation “Life is like fishing. When you fish…”
- Metaphors: short direct comparison. “Life is a roller coaster.”
- Smilies: comparison using like or as. “Life is like a box of chocolates.”
- Stores
- And, when you can, a sprinkle of humor.
These are some easy ways that you can begin to sound more natural on a podcast. Hope they help!
