Why Scripting Your Show Can Disconnect You From Your Listeners? With Cody Hanify

Want your podcast and videocast to be seen, heard, found and rewarded in this noisy digital world, you are not alone. Join the nonprofit community at Podcasters United and podcast industry experts Tom Hazard and Tracy Hazard as they debunk all that outdated and bad advice you've been getting from the podcast gurus and find out what actually works. Today, get ready to finish Feed your Brand with smart cut tactics proven to cast your original voice to the world.

Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of Feed you'd Brand. I'm your guest host today, Cody Hanafi. I've been on the show a couple times, taught you a little bit about tech things and what to look forward to to help record your podcast and different tools and such. But today I will be going over a couple different things. The main reason we are gathering today is to talk about why scripting your can disconnect you from your listener. Right now, I don't think about scripting as scripting as much as I do as prepping, if that makes sense. So the main point that I want to get across today is making sure that you understand that the quality of your show is most important. And the best means that you can bring quality content to your listeners is developing a plan that fits yourself, if that makes sense. Now, a lot of people would say that new podcasters really benefit from scripting, and what that means is podcasters will attempt to write out every single word that they want to display on the show on the episode with their message and such, and really read word for word what that is. And that has a lot to do with prepping the show ahead of time. I'm going to be going over a couple different factors and a couple of different things that might help you if you want to move away from scripting or adapt it into your prep style, because it really comes down to your comfort level on how you want to prep your episodes. Now I've been an actor and an improviser on stage for many, many years, so I'm definitely someone who loves a script in my hand. Give me all the information ahead of time. That way I can display the emotion and the intricacies that I need to display for my character and showcase that to an audience. Right now. When it comes down to podcasting, the reason why we could be disconnected from your listeners with a script is because it kind of can sound really not that authentic. There's not a lot of energy being brought in. There's not that intuition that you can bring and pull out while you're talking to a mass audience. Altogether, right? And so scripting can kind of make it feel like it's a little bit more robotic and less human. Because what we want to do for podcasters is because we want to sound like we're human. We want to sound like we're talking to you and not reading something. Right? And this is definitely something that I've done in the past as well. For my first episode, I wrote out word for word. The entire script of what I wanted to share with all the podcast listeners out there and to the productized clients in this podcast ecosystem is I wanted to make sure that my topic got across word for word. So I wrote out the entire message on a Google Doc and read the whole thing. And when I did that, I found that I wasn't able to add in that energy that I could possibly bring from my improvised skills. Right? Bringing in different types of intuition that I want to bring to the topic as well, too. It really left me into a spot where this is what I have to say, and if I get off track, I'm going to get lost. I'm lost in my thoughts. I'm lost in what I want to say next. And it really doesn't really help me get across now. That's just been my experience.

So definitely something that I want to get across today is making sure that you understand what your comfort level is when it comes to podcast recording. And scripting, to me, like I said earlier, comes down to the preparation of how you want to showcase your message and how you want to showcase what you want to tell your listeners in real time. Right? Now, scripting does come with benefits. It does come with you laying out your thoughts out there. But I want to talk about three main forms of how you can prep your show, because like I said before, the quality of your show matters, the quality of the content matters, and being able to have that human element without it being too robotic or too static is important for your listen, right? So one main form of prepping would be scripting out your show, right? Writing word for word everything you want to display out to your listeners. While the pros of that could be the amount of thought that you could put and the amount of ideas that you want to put on paper and kind of gather everything and really understand what message you want to bring to your listeners, which is really important, right? But that takes a lot of time. So it does take a lot of time to write out, word for word, what you want to script, what you want to be displaying to everyone. And that does really help out later when you go edit the podcast episode, right? You already have what the show is displaying in front of you. You already have the different means that you have to help edit your podcast as well, too. But the main important thing that I want to bring across is being able to sound authentic as possibly as you can, because we're humans and we're here to converse with each other, and we're here to talk about many different topics. And I want to make sure that I'm bringing an element that is most intriguing to a listener, right? I want them to be able to understand me from a human level instead of me just regurgitating information over and over and over and over again. Now, another big problem, I don't like to say problem because it really does come down to your comfort level, but another way that you can disconnect from your listeners is when you're speaking to everyone on video, right? We service video for feed your brand as well as audio format. And so if you are listening to this podcast episode, I definitely highly recommend you checking out feed your brand blog posts of this episode where you can see the video and really understand why scripting your podcast can ruin the video format of your show. So definitely check that out. Because when you're talking to a video monitor and you're talking to your audience out here, if you script word for word for word for word, you're really going to run into you reading the whole time. So the podcast listener and the viewer is just looking at you. Move your head back and forth and back and forth, and you can tell it's taking me away from my microphone a little bit, too. So you want to make sure that you're presenting the best quality show that you can showcase. And scripting can really disconnect your listeners from a reading stand, right? We want to make sure that you're authentically getting your message across the best that you possibly can. Right now, another form of prepping or scripting, you know, something that I've displayed earlier, if you're just tuning in, is I just wanted to make sure that you understand that there's three main types of prepping. I like calling it preparation instead of scripting. Now, prepping your show scripting is a format of that, like I just said, I just went over the time constraints. It can bring down the authentic quality of how you can sound and how you can look weird reading a script while on your presentation. Right now, another form of prepping is having an outline of your show and an outline of your show. Really what that does is it creates A bullet point opportunity for you to basically bullet point out whatever message, whatever story, whatever idea that you have and bullet point the main topics, right? And you want to spend time ahead of time prepping any episode that you want to do. So this is actually a pretty good form to just get your thoughts out on a piece of paper as well, too. Putting the bullet points down there and then spending the time while you're recording, filling in the story, the actual elements in between the bullet points. And. And it really helps get your show to the level of quality that you expect as a listener yourself, and for your listeners as well, too. That's the main point of why we want to make sure that we're prepping our show to the best capabilities that we possibly can. Because the quality of your content is most important. I talked about scripting, I talked about outlining, right? Outlining. It's a basic form of getting your thoughts down, and it's basic form of making sure that you can get the bullet points connected into your overall message, right? And there's this third type of prepping or scripting for your podcast, and that's freeform. Now, freeform podcasting, it really does come down to you plugging in, recording, and going. You know, some people can kind of just get in, plug in and record and just get their style of podcast out there from free form talking, just improvised talking on here. This is something that I'm attempting to do today because like I said earlier, I have tried scripting my show and I've understood that that doesn't really work for my brain, right? It comes down to the comfort level, like I said earlier, of prepping the way that you want to do your show. Now, Freeform, it comes with a lot of great things as well too. It allows you to banter back and forth between a couple different ideas. It allows that authentic intuition that I've been talking about to bring to your podcast listeners and really get them on the hook with you, right? Make it feel like you're having an actual conversation, which is great. I talked about the different types of forms and the different types of prepping that you want to do for your show. Right now you want to apply this to the style of podcast that you have as well too. Brings me to my overall second point is you need to understand the style of your show, right? If you're doing like an audio drama or an NPR style type of show, this is where a script definitely comes in handy. Because if you're doing an audio drama, it's a scripted story, it's a story that you're getting across to the mass of people, right? If you're doing a solo podcast, which is something I'm attempting to do today, a style that I definitely recommend is making sure that you have your thoughts collected ahead of time and outlining what you do. Something that I definitely highly recommend. Now, if you're doing an interview type of thing, obviously you want to have the questions ready ahead of time when you're participating in an interview, when you're asking questions for your guest as well too, and you want to have all of that prepped ahead of time. But when you're in the show, you don't want any of those answers or any of what you want to bring to that interview scripted because it really disheartens the listener when you come across as someone who has over planned or sound a little too static or a little too robotic.

Like I've said in the past, I have scripted my shows before. Brand new to podcasting, it's a lot of what new podcasters bring to the table is they don't really have everything that they want to say and showcase out there, so they want to write down every single word that they have. So to kind of give you an example, I'm going to pull up my script right here that I have in front of me that I've used in the past before, and I'm just going to read it for you and kind of showcase how it could separate me from the listener because you've seen me talk recently and I've done the intro to this episode. I introduced the episode of Feed your Brand. I talk about how I'm a guest host today and I talk about how I'm presenting on behalf of Tom and Tracy. Right. I was able to kind of improvise and throw my own little spiel into it today. But let's read what I've had before. Hi everyone. Welcome back to Feed your Brand on behalf of Tracy and Tom Hazard. My name is Cody Hanafi and I'll be your guest host for today. Part of what Potatoise and Tracy is working on is getting more and more voices on the feed your Brand platform and to bring new and exciting topics from inside productize for those who are just meeting me for the first time. Hello, it's nice to meet you and be here to hopefully provide some value you are looking for. Now, that's kind of hard for me to do because like I said earlier, I am an actor, I am an improviser. So if I'm reading something, I definitely Am in mind know that I'm going to be publicly displaying this out there, and I'm publicly speaking. Right. But as you can kind of tell, it took away that authenticity. It took away how energetic I can be, because that's the main thing you want to kind of bring your message to these podcasters is showcasing a type of energy that they look forward to. Engaging with your audience is key in also producing quality content. Right. Because if we're, at the end of the day, not engaging with our listeners as much as we possibly can, we're probably not doing our job as podcasters. Now, what's really cool about prepping and planning and scripting everything ahead of time is that that's something you want to do. I'm not saying that you should not script your show at all. Like I've said, it works for different types of styles of show. So really understanding the style of show that you have, really understanding what message you want to bring to your listeners and understanding how you can collect your thoughts in an organic way to get your message across, that's authentic and. And it allows intuition to come in, because that's what we love as human beings, is. If I'm. If I'm having a phone conversation with a telemarketer and it's a recorded message, there's no point in me having this conversation because the nuances and the answers I want and more questions that I'm going to have aren't going to get answered because it's an automatic thing. Right. You sound too robotic. On these podcast shows, people aren't going to stay engaged and they're not going to stay for your message. So it's just something to kind of keep in mind. Prepping is definitely important, so whether you like scripting out your show, it's a really good way to get all of your thoughts that you want to bring to the table and everything you want to bring with your message. Right. Something that I've tried today is a little bit of the freeform style mixed with an outline. Right. So before I come on and record, it's very important to lay out your thoughts so that you can display your message appropriately. Right. In the past, I've had to do research on many different types of topics because I'm talking about different things and I'm showing pricing points and all that stuff. That's usually what I've come on here and talked about. Right. So with that understanding that prepping ahead of time can really help lay out how you can authentically engage with your listeners and Engage with anyone you're trying to engage with out there, it's going to come across as authentic as possible. So it really comes down to your comfort level. Scripting Word for word can work for you, especially if, like I said, you're doing like an audio drama or an NPR style type of show outlining your show. It's really the best of both worlds. It's taking the freeform style that you want to start implementing into your show. Because as podcasters, we're public speakers, right? And the more that we work on public speaking, the more that we can work on the most natural engagement that we have, the quality content's going to come out from that, right? So I definitely highly recommend you adapting a certain style to the way that you like showcasing to your audience out there. And if it takes scripting, of course, utilize the script word for word, but you're going to run into that disconnect to your listeners if you can't come across as authentic as possible. Like I've showcased in my example before, it runs you into sounding like a robot. We want to sound like a human out here right now. The freeform type of show, I've seen people who can just plug in, record and just go at it, but they've been podcasting for years, right? And they've done the prep time ahead of time, right? So what I mainly want you to understand today is that scripting your podcast is not necessarily bad. What it comes down to is presenting good quality content for your listeners by preparation, Whether that is scripting out and laying out all your thoughts ahead of time, whether that is developing a hybrid version of scripting by outlining main bullet points and freeforming banter in between those bullet points, really connecting those bullet points to an overall story. Something that I've learned recently as well, too. Her name is Raffi Wagner. She's a Potatoes employee as well, too. And she was able to show me a really cool way that she can kind of get across her comfortability with showcasing her ideas and what she wants to get across to her listener. She has adapted this outline format, right, of what type of message she wants to display. And because her brain works in a very compartmentalized form, she does something called batch recording. And I know we've talked about batch recording on here before, but to go into it just a little bit deeper is batch recording is something that you can do to really display all the ideas that you want. It really allows for taking and retaking and really laying down and fleshing out a good quality show. That you want to display for your listeners.

Basically, batch recording is you have a whole main topic of your show that you have, right? And you have the different parts, the different. Let's say you have three bullet points of what you want to get across in this topic, right? She'll start with one topic and record that portion of bullet point with a freeform type of style, because she definitely wants to get across to her listeners that I'm here to talk to, right? And I want make sure that this authentic message is getting prepped. So she record that section, listen to it, make sure it's at her quality, and make sure it's good for her listeners. And then she'll go on to the next topic and take all of those different recordings and put them together and put it into one episode. Not only does that allow for you to flesh out a really great quality show, but it really gets you into the planning and the prepping ahead of time. Because when you're laying and displaying all your ideas out ahead of time, you're really seeing how much you can talk about this topic at the same time too. And you really want to keep topics concise, clear, and pretty much straightforward as you possibly can. So if you're realizing that you've been able to display many ideas that could service into multiple different types of episodes and it don't have to shove it all into one single episode, that's a really great way that you can plan out your episodes as well too. So another form of getting that out there is batch record. Taking a specific topic that you want to talk about and batch recording each bullet point topic that you have and then fleshing it all together later really helps some people's brains, especially if you compartmentalize the way that you want to bring information out to the world and such. And it really does help showcase how to plan for more episodes in the future as well too. So that's something that you can kind of take in consideration. But at the end of the day, scripting would mean prepping and planning. And without prepping and without planning, the quality of the content isn't going to come across the way that you want it to. So regardless of how comfortable you are, we really want you steering away from word for word speaking. Right? If you really need that crutch and you need to read word for word, like I've had to do in the past, completely understandable. It really helps you display what you want to talk about with your podcasters, and it kind of keeps you on topic and in there, right but moving away from that can open up such more energetic opportunity and engagement for your listeners at the same time too. So really keeping in mind that the quality of the content matters most and that comes with prepping ahead of time, making sure that you have a show that's fleshed out and fits the style of your show as well too. Thank you so much for taking time to listen to my message today. I hope you have a great day. My name was Cody Hanafi. On behalf of Tom and Tracey Hazzard, this has been another episode of Feed.

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