Smile!

Amber Beels 0:02
How can I keep my audience engaged with my episode? I'm afraid that I sound monotone. Well, let's talk about it. You're listening to Practical Podcast Tips. My name is Amber Beels. And today, I'm gonna cover tip number 15. Smile. Are you afraid that you sound boring or monotone? Well, let's talk about that. Now, I know that podcasting can be hard for a lot of different reasons. And one of the reasons that you may be struggling with is that you don't have a live audience, it's just you talking to your microphone. Or if you have a co host, it's you and your co host. But a lot of podcasts are solo. So it's just people in their microphone, and they're talking and they're by themselves. A lot of the times they're in a closet, because it sounds better and they're surrounded by padded clothing, it can be hard because you don't have people that you can see their reactions, you can't tell a joke and hear their laughter, you can't see if something's landing. And when you're by yourself, sometimes you can kind of get monotone and then just start talking, and then you sound all the same. And then you start sounding boring. And we don't want that, right. You want your podcasts to be engaging. You want your listeners to want to look forward to your episodes and laugh when you want them to laugh. So how can you do that and improve your episode quality so that you can be confident to know that people are enjoying your podcast, and they're not falling asleep to a monotone voice? Well, one big thing that you can do is smile. It's super easy. Just while you're talking, make sure that you're smiling and smile with your eyes, not with just your mouth. Because you know, everyone knows that if you don't smile with your eyes, it can be you know, not authentic, and we want to be authentic on our episodes. So smile, smile with your eyes. And I don't know if you can tell, but right now I'm not smiling. And I'm talking and it's sounding Okay, right? Well, now I'm smiling. And even though you may not feel like smiling, maybe you didn't have a very good day, but you still need to record your episodes, smile, it's going to change something in your brain that's going to switch something. And even if you may not feel like smiling, you're gonna feel like smiling once you actually are smiling, if that makes sense. I know one trick that if you're feeling sad, you lift up your hands, and you just smile for like 10 seconds, even though you're like depressed or sad or something bad happened. If you do that for 10 seconds, something will change in your brain, and you'll start to feel better. So I try to apply that to podcasting. So while I'm talking, I try to smile. And when I'm smiling, I get excited. And I hope that it goes through and you guys can hear that in my voice as I'm recording my episodes. Another thing you can do is laugh at your own jokes. And not like haha, like you know, an actual laugh. And don't be self conscious about your laugh, be authentic and who you are, be you and laugh at your own jokes, because people are gonna laugh with you people love laughter There's a lot of negativity in the world. And if we all just smiled and laughed a little bit more, it'd be a little better world, right? So laugh at your own jokes, smile, it's your podcast, you should be excited that you're recording another episode, you get to record another episode, you have a listener base, be excited that you get to be on here and get to send a message to the world and be able to do it on your own and be happy about it. I mean, there are some exceptions, there are some podcasts that have you know, a heavier tone to them. So in case of those podcasts, you want to you know have more of a somber tone. Or maybe if it's a serious topic, you want to have that serious tone, you want to match the vibe of your podcast, but try not to be monotone with it. And that's totally doable. One more tip I have for you is to act like you're in theater, people can't see your face, they can't see your expressions. And you know, when you are in an actual theater, and you see the actors on stage, they have to act larger than life so that the people in the back can see them. And a lot of the times their makeup is exaggerated. Like if you came up close and you were like okay, that was a lot of makeup. But that was so that the people in the back to get a similar experience to the people in the front. So same thing with podcasting try to be larger than life. You know, I'm here and I'm with my microphone and my hands are flailing all over the place. If you could see me I am like so animated right now. And that's how I am in person. But I try to step it up when I'm on my podcast because I want you guys to get this feeling get this vibe, get this passion that I'm trying to, you know, display through my episodes and hopefully you guys are picking that up. So in closing, smile and be larger than life. If you do these two things. Your episodes are going to come across as authentic and they're not going to be boring, I promise. This. Alright, I

Amber Beels 5:01
hope you found that valuable. Thank you guys for listening and I'll see in the next episode. Hey, thanks for listening. If you liked this episode, please feel free to leave us a review. It really helps out the show. And I'd love to hear how it helps. Also if you know someone else that could benefit from it, go ahead and share it with them. Thanks again and I'll see you in the next episode.

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