Guest Tips With Geller

Have you ever had a nervous guest in studio—or one that went on and on—you could feel your listeners leaving? Whenever you turn your microphone over to another person, even just for a few minutes, it’s a potential “exit” point for your audience if it gets boring. The rules of Powerful Radio are: Tell the truth, make it matter and never be boring. 

That’s where some “guest coaching” may come in handy. You might consider this for paid programming hosts as well. If someone offers something of value, an experience to share or specific knowledge for your audience but is obviously not a professional speaker, some coaching of your guest may be in order. The Powerful Radio Principles apply to guests, as they do for everything that comes out of the speaker.

 

 Coaching Your Guests

Some stations offer guests an actual list of helpful hints or guidelines they can look over before going on the air. The following list can be emailed ahead to guests, or posted on a password protected area of the station’s website, adding to it other pertinent information for guests, such as directions to your studio, how to obtain copies of broadcasts –etc.)  A few possible suggestions might include:

Guest Tips

  • Please be available and flexible. If the interview time has to be changed, be gracious. The station may call you in an emergency, if another guest has canceled, or if the station is in need of your expertise right now. Be willing to appear. The host and station will appreciate and remember you.
  • If you want to make sure you get a copy of the show, ask the host, producer or webmaster if they can email an MP3 or ask where you can have access to the show. Or you can have someone record it for you off the air.
  • If you’re an author, please don’t repeat the name of your new book or your website over and over. Listeners will get annoyed. Your job is to be so fascinating that the listeners stay until the end of the interview because they want to hear the host repeat the title of your book. We will put your information on our station website, especially if you give it to us in advance.
  • Forget there is a larger audience. You will be much more effective if you speak to the host one-on-one, instead of addressing all those listeners “out there.” The audience listens one at a time, talk to one person at a time.
  • Try to relax. Be yourself. Radio is a personal and intimate medium. Listeners like to be spoken to in a conversational, relaxed way
  • Watch your language. This is not a living room and certain expressions could slip out if you aren’t careful.
  • Keep to the point. If you don’t have anything interesting to say, ask the host for another question.
  • Turn off your mobile phone. Listen with your full attention.
  • Do not bring in a lot of notes to the studio and read from them. Hosts hate this and it can be boring.
  • Ask for what you need. If you need reading glasses, have them on hand. Do you have something to write with? A cup of coffee? Tissues? A bottle of water?
  • Do you understand the process? You should feel in control as much as possible. Ask how to use the cough button, just in case.
  • Can you stop anytime? Is this being recorded, or is it live, direct, and “anything goes”? (If the interview is live but via remote, either phone, satellite studio or via Skype, what is the plan if anything goes wrong?
  • Have you eaten? Studies of elementary school kids show that if they don’t eat, their brains don’t work as well. It’s true for adults as well.
  • Don’t be rigid. As in normal conversation, the interview may take a turn that has nothing to do with your agenda. Be a good guest. The discussion may lead to even better things than you were originally prepared to talk about. A skilled interviewer does not stick to a script.
  • Listen to the questions and answer them. Try to answer the questions as you would in normal conversation. If the host seems unprepared or unfamiliar with your topic, don’t get upset or express anger or frustration. The audience is probably in the same boat. Just speak to the host as you would to a friendly, but uninformed, stranger you meet at a cocktail party or sat next to on an airplane. If you can genuinely interest the host in your topic, you will also interest the audience, and will have a very good chance of being asked back.

 Excerpted with permission from “Beyond Powerful Radio – A Communicator’s Guide to the Internet Age” Copyright 2011 – By Valerie Geller (Focal Press 2011)

Valerie Geller, president of Geller Media International Broadcast Consultants, works to help communicators become more powerful in 30 countries, including Australia, for news, talk, information and personality. Through consulting and individual coaching for news and talk talent, Geller finds and develops personalities, leads “Creating Powerful Radio” and “Communicate Powerfully” workshops and seminars for radio and TV broadcasters, internet radio and podcasters. Geller is the recipient of the Conclave’s 2010 Rockwell Lifetime Achievement Award and is the author of four books about radio including her latest from Elsevier’s Focal Press Beyond Powerful Radio – A Communicator’s Guide to the Internet Age. To contact Valerie Geller for a one-on-one coaching or consulting, appointment, or for information on the “Powerful Radio” seminars and workshops, call +1 212 580-3385

Note: This is an edited version of an article that first appeared on radio-info.com and has been republished with permission.