The THIRD Step to Effective Hosting: Start with Your Best Stuff

A few months ago, my biz partner Suzanne shared a great blog post about how to be a better on-air host. You can read it HERE.

Suzanne’s main point? When you’re behind the microphone, whether it’s for a radio show or a podcast or a television production or ANYTHING involving you and a microphone and some kind of storytelling, “take time for mental preparation. Then rewrite your script or show notes as if you were talking to just one, specific person.”

This is GREAT advice.

I followed it up with THIS point: When you’re on the air, know where you’re going.

In other words, KNOW what you’re going to say – or at least have an idea of what you want to say for every break or every episode. You can read that post HERE. (And not bad advice, either, if I do say so.)

Consider this, though, as your THIRD step to effective hosting: Start with your best stuff.

Listen, anyone who has ever been lucky enough to be behind a microphone knows about that rush that comes with realizing that people can HEAR what you’re saying.

Even more than that, people might actually WANT to hear what you’re saying. They may have tuned in to your podcast or your radio show or your whatever because they DELIBERATELY wanted to hear YOU.

Wow. I mean, that feels pretty great.

And it’s also a huge responsibility. (And can be intimidating and scary as heck, too.)

Your listener, like you, has a lot of demands on their time and on their attention. So, as you’re prepping your story or your show, keep in mind that you likely have a very short amount of time to grab your listener’s ear. And with THAT in mind, here’s a phrase that I have to credit to Julie Amacher: “Start with your best stuff.”

Don’t wander around your point. Don’t hint and tease and set the scene for SO long that you lose your listener before you even get to your main point. And don’t linger too long in the details. If you’re on the radio, you have a really tight window of time to do this. If you’re hosting a podcast or giving an interview, you have a longer amount of time, true, but the point remains – don’t stray too far from the main point.

Of course, it’s a fine balance! You have to provide enough background and enough detail so that your listener is intrigued enough to keep on listening. And yet, you also have to get to the point as quickly as possible. Yikes. So, how do you find the balance?

Well, first, experience. The more you work on the air, the better you’ll get at understanding the balance. Second, regular airchecks! Is your program director or GM or whomever listening to you on a regular basis and offering up suggestions and feedback? Third, LISTEN to yourself. Would YOU be interested if someone else was telling you this story?

This is also where the idea of show prep and bullet pointing or scripting comes in handy. If you know what the heart of your story is, you can see it in your outline. And if you find yourself getting mired down in the details while you’re sharing the story, well, you can refer back to the outline to get back on track. (Another shameless plug for having a roadmap for any on-air work you do.)

Here’s the takeaway: you want your listener to enjoy listening to the content you’ve created and the content you’re sharing. AND, you want to hook your listener as quickly as possible – you want them to KEEP listening for as long as possible.

So share the BEST stuff, the strongest stuff, the most memorable stuff, FIRST. Don’t wait!