Whether you want to be a presenter at a campus, community, or commercial radio station, you can do certain things to improve how you come across to listeners.

Remember: Most people who listen to radio shows do so in the car or while working. In other words, the radio and conversations taking place on it are not enjoying listeners' full attention most of the time.

This means that you have to work extra hard to grab listeners' attention, keep them engaged and not frustrate or annoy them.

media update's Joreke Kleynhans outlines how you can become a better on-air voice.

 

Identify and Eliminate Crutch Words

Have you ever tried to follow a conversation where "um" and "like" are the most used words? It's difficult to stay engaged and you naturally lose interest as the conversation progresses.

Filler words act as a barrier to effective communication and effective communication is key to keeping an audience engaged. Additionally, they make you sound less confident and break up sentences, making the conversation harder to understand.

A lot of the time, filler words can be eliminated by simply preparing properly for your links (speaking time between songs and ads) and not talking mindlessly. However, sometimes it's just a habit to constantly use certain words!

So, whenever you feel the urge to use a filler word, focus on pausing and getting comfortable with half a second of silence instead of leaning on a meaningless word. After a while, the silent breaks will become shorter and eventually disappear altogether.

 

Find the Planning Sweet Spot

In public speaking, there is a very fine line between underpreparing and overpreparing. Being underprepared can leave space for filler words to sneak in or make conversations take too long to reach the point. You also run the risk of unintentionally touching on a topic that is not meant for radio, like politics.

Overpreparing, however, comes with a different set of disadvantages. Usually, being overprepared — as in, having every sentence you want to say written out and rehearsed — makes it sound like you have every sentence you want to say written out and rehearsed.

This style of speaking comes across as impersonal or inauthentic, which is a surefire sign that your audience will be changing stations sooner rather than later.

The best way to prepare just enough for a radio show is to write a detailed outline of each segment beforehand and include:

  • an introduction to the topic
  • news or facts you plan to reference
  • key points to touch on
  • how you will involve your audience, and
  • how you will transition from one segment to the next one.

 

One Person at a Time

During a radio show, your audience cannot see you, receive visual cues, or connect with you based on what they see. You only have your voice and your words to rely on for that.

You need to ensure that you don't expand the connection gap left by a lack of visual aid. Do this by addressing a single person at a time to prevent listeners from feeling like a number among an audience of thousands. For example, avoid words like "everybody" or "the listeners" and instead rely on "you" as your primary form of addressing the audience.

 

Be Concise

The main components of radio include music, live discussions, news and traffic updates. In the digital age, all four of these can be found on platforms other than radio, many of which exclusively serve that purpose.

However, most radio listeners choose radio because it is easy to listen to. This means that if a radio show is not easy to listen to, listeners might start to deviate to other platforms to get the information or entertainment they are looking for. With shrinking attention spans, it's best to keep your speaking turns short and purposeful. 

The timed length of a link can vary between one and ten minutes depending on the time of day and radio station, but cutting it short is better than trying to extend the link by talking repetitively or purposelessly. Keep your links as purposeful as possible by being concise with your words and only saying things that are relevant to the topic at hand.

 

Adhere to Technical Best Practices

Apart from what you talk about and how you talk about it, there are some technical best practices you can follow to further improve listeners' experience of your show and keep them coming back. Some tips include:

  • reduce mouth noises
  • do not breathe into the mic
  • project your voice (you are not doing ASMR)
  • position the mic so that you can sit up straight while talking, and
  • avoid wearing noisy jewellery or clothes.

Listeners might not notice that you are giving extra attention to these details, but they sure will notice if you don't.

 

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