Nail Your Next Podcast: The Ultimate Guest Guide, Tips and Tricks

Being on a podcast is a great way to get your message out, but are you ready. Preparing to be a guest on a podcast and not sure what to do? This video is your ultimate guide! 

Gain confidence as it covers essential tips, from preparing, picking your location, setting up your lighting, getting your computer ready, setting up the ideal recording environment, managing on-camera behavior and promoting your appearance post-recording. 

Learn about the importance of storytelling, avoiding mistakes, staying focused, and properly using microphones and cameras for the best audio and visual quality. Follow these expert insights to ensure you become an outstanding podcast guest!

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Transcript

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Hey, so you've been asked to be a guest on a podcast and you don't know what to do. You don't know how to prepare. Well, this video is for you. I'm going to be covering all the things that I've noticed from doing podcasts over the years and give you some really great pointers and tips of how to be the best guest you can be. So stay tuned. Be confident. You know something that not everybody knows. And that's why you're on the show. There's a lot of people who may be expert in the subject you're talking about, but not everyone is an expert. You don't have to speak to everyone. to the experts. You're talking to the general audience. When you're talking, think about stories or examples that you can tell that will help to illustrate your point. Um, this is a great way to have people get to know you a little bit and connect with people on a, on a more deep level. Take a breath and pause every once in a while. This is something that a lot of folks, they get excited and they just, you know, It's a complete stream of nonstop talking. And if that's the case, the host is going to have to break in and interrupt you to keep things on track. I want you to be able to tell your story and keep going with the flow, but we do have to keep things on track and we do have to hit some of the major points that we're trying to get to. Remember also mistakes are okay on my show Uh, it's edited after the fact. So if you make a mistake just stop say oh, that was a mistake Let's go back and start it over again Sometimes I need to ask you the question over again, and then you can start talking about it again but um It's okay to make mistakes and even when you're doing live podcasts It's okay to make mistakes people aren't perfect mistakes happen. Don't get flustered by them Just realize that everybody makes mistakes. And also remember, nobody's thinking about it as much as you are. So when you make a mistake, people don't really notice it as much as you do. Next, avoid distractions. Don't set yourself up in an area where people are walking behind you or are going to be yelling out to you. Try to find a place where you can have a clear mind and stay focused. Don't be distracted when you're on camera. Because remember, you are on camera. even when you aren't talking. So sometimes when we need to make an edit, um, we'll need to cut back to you for a reaction shot or something like that. If you're being distracted or looking somewhere else, we can't cut over for that moment. So stay focused even when you aren't talking and react when you're not talking. Remember, also, the host is there to help you. If you have a question, or you don't think something was right, or you don't know how to phrase something, just ask. We can help you put it together. We do this all the time. We talk to a lot of people. We can give you some tips on how to phrase things properly, or whether you should be talking about it at all or not. Avoid swearing or controversial subjects right up front. The algorithms of some of these platforms can be really finicky and if you are coming out in the first 5, 10, 15, 20 seconds swearing or talking about super controversial subjects, that can hurt the performance of the video. Remember, and I know I've thrown a lot of stuff here for you to think about, but most importantly, enjoy yourself. You're probably passionate about the subject you're talking about. Let that come through. Just have a good time and that will take care of a whole lot of this stuff. On the prep, what should you do before the podcast? One thing that I find to be very challenging is is getting headshots for people. I need to use them for the thumbnails. I need to use them in other promotional things. If you don't have a headshot, go and get a good headshot. And that headshot needs to be 720 pixels from your waist to the top of your head vertically. Um, more is even better. So many times I get postage stamp size LinkedIn headshots that I have to either up res or do a lot of work on just to make it usable. Try to have a good headshot. Send links and promos. There's a reason you're on the podcast. You're probably promoting something. Be aware of what you're promoting. Send me links. Send promos. that, uh, you know, if you, if there's a giveaway that you can do or something like that, that'll get people interested in, in checking out what you're doing. Send a bio to beforehand. If there's things on your, in your past year or your current company or your current position or your passions, I want to know that so that I can reference them when I introduce you. Send b roll. This is stuff that appears. On screen while you're talking, it's something we cut away to. It's, uh, it could be a video of your product. It could be a video of somebody using your product or, or it could be, you know, a TED talk that you did, uh, or it could be images or anything that might be relevant or For us to pop up on screen, it could even be a quote, um, lots of things to continue to add interest and give context to things you're talking about picking a location. First of all, I want to say. I hate green screens, all those fake backgrounds that you get from the video conferencing apps and things like that are just absolutely terrible. They don't look good, they're distracting and they make it hard to edit as well. So I would suggest finding a spot with an interesting background. It shouldn't be too busy. It shouldn't be too cluttered. It shouldn't be too plain either. Sometimes it's really good to shoot into a corner. I don't shoot into a corner because I don't have a good corner space to shoot into here, but it provides depth behind you and it sort of frames you into the shot. So that can be really good. One of the things you do want to try to do is create some distance from the back wall. You don't want to be right up against the back wall. Then you're looking like you're taking a mugshot photo, right? Don't want that. And sometimes you also have a tendency to get really harsh shadows against the wall. The more distance you put between you and the wall, the softer those shadows are going to be. Standing is okay. Some people really get a lot of energy when they stand, but sometimes people get too much energy and they tend to walk around and they get out of frame of the shot. And that's a problem. Clean your space, make sure you're not leaving things in the background. And sometimes what you don't realize is that when you're on camera, if the camera's not, perfectly eye level, you're looking at the ceiling, which could have weird things on it, or you're looking at the floor. If it's above your face, you're going to be seeing some of the things that are on the floor. You don't want a whole bunch of clutter on the floor. Try to find a spot that is away from noise. If you're on a busy street, you don't want to be right next to a window. That's going to have a ton of noise. It's great to find a spot that has soft objects in it or objects in general in it so that it's not very echoey. The more bare walls you have, the more echo you're going to get. If you have a carpeted place, that helps. If you have, you know, a plenum ceiling that's got tiles up there, that can help a little bit too. If you have a couch behind you, that can be great. Those things absorb sound. You want to find a spot that's not too echoey. You want to find a spot that's comfortable for you. You don't want to have a spot where a lot of people are staring at you, where you don't feel comfortable talking. You don't want to find a spot that is hard to sit in, or, you know, you're going to be squirming because you're uncomfortable. Find a comfy spot. All right, let's talk about lighting. Natural light. is great, and it's the best light, but It can be variable. It moves during the course of the interview. So you have to be aware of any shadows that may be creeping in. You also don't want to be in direct light. You want the light to be maybe behind you or through some sort of diffused thing like drapes or even sometimes blinds. You have to be careful with blinds because sometimes they'll leave shadows. Trick for this is make sure your your blinds are not pointing down at this angle but up at this angle and then they're bouncing light more up than down and that'll be a little bit less, uh, shadowy. Stay away though from bright windows behind you because they will screw up your exposure. They'll overexpose your background and then you will be just a dark shadow in front of a bright window and you don't want that. If you have a good daylight balanced light, In front of you on your face, it's great to have tungsten balanced lights in the background. You can see I have like these Edison lights. Those are very warm lights, um, and I have very daylight balanced light up front. It gives you some, uh, distance from the background. It gives you some separation. You want to have some contrast between you and the background, whether it's, um, uh, you know, a lighter background or darker background, or whether it's, um, you know, a different color or something like that. You just want to stand out from the background. And I know everybody's going to ask, how do you get this nice, um, blurred background? Well, that's because I'm using a camera with a, an aperture that allows that you might not have a camera like that. That'll do that. Don't worry about that. We can. You know, work with it. Um, and, and sometimes the, the, the artificial versions of that can be really distracting and strange looking. Um, so. Just try to focus on getting yourself looking good. They'll have your background looking good and you'll be okay. Sometimes people will, they have a lot of led lights around and they'll put colored lights on their face. That makes making the color corrections and color balancing and all that stuff that much harder. And sometimes those colored lights will really do strange things to your camera in terms of exposure. And it's, Just avoid it if you can. All right, onto your computer. Make sure you have free space. A lot of the new platforms that we use, uh, like Riverside, which I use, for example, they record the, the, the podcast to your hard drive and upload it in the background. This allows us to, uh, to get really high quality audio and video, um, rather than just what is able to come across the stream. This also means that if your connection gets laggy or it gets really bitmappy and the quality of the video goes bad, it doesn't matter because it's recording locally and we'll have higher quality when we're done, but just keep that in mind. The one problem that we can run into is if you have additional apps running on your computer. Close all the other apps while you're doing the podcast. Um, sometimes we'll get clicks and pops because there's, uh, delays. You know, there's latency from the processor and things like that. We don't want that, so close those other applications. It can make the recording run slow or have gaps and problems. Silence your notifications. So many times I hear people like ping, ping, ping the whole time in the background and that is super distracting. It distracts you and it distracts the person watching it. It distracts me. Silence your notifications. Be sure to test your setup before you are recording, okay? Um, it's it things go wrong and we always schedule more time for that, but I've had times where the Setup was so problematic. We just couldn't even record that day and we'd have to reschedule to another time So it's just really helpful if you can just test your setup before we get going All right. Let's talk a little bit about sound. Use an external mic. I am using a Shure SM7B. This is an expensive broadcast mic. You're probably not going to have all of this stuff and that's fine. There's a lot of great USB based mics that you can use. The one thing that is really important is you want to have that mic as close to your mouth as possible. When your mic is far away, you want you get more of the room then. You want you to be the most present thing in the microphone, not the room. And that's where you get all those echoes. So the closer you get your mic to your face, the more we get rid of that room echo sound and the less hollow you sound. But here's the thing. You'll notice this mic is off to the side of me. It's close to my mouth. It can get all the sound levels, but I don't have the Things blowing right into them into the microphone. Those are called plosives and that's a lot of sound pressure So if I talk like this, you can probably hear how that affects it So you don't have to have the mic right in your front face because one it'll cover your face and when you want to see Your face, but two you don't get those plosives having it off to the sides a great Great way to do it. Use headphones. I can't understate this. People are used to the noise cancelling functionality of video conferencing solutions. They don't work great. And the one thing that you may not be hearing is that when It's shutting the signal down and opening this signal up So if I'm talking and then you speak right after me, it doesn't shut that down right away So I get a little bit of myself back in your recording which becomes problematic And create all sorts of sound problems the other problem is is if I cough or make a noise or something like that and it is loud enough, it'll start playing through your, uh, your, your recording. And that's a problem too. So you need to use headphones. This just solves the problem. You can use Bluetooth headphones for listening, but don't use them for the microphone. Um, Bluetooth headphones are not the most reliable. They can introduce latency into the conversation, which is already a struggle because we're coming across the internet. Um, But they can make the delay really kind of variable as well. Um, sometimes they introduce pops and clicks. Um, if you move your head or brush something, you can, you know, make noise into the headphones that you can't hear, but I can hear. Um, Another thing too, wired is still the best but I would also encourage you to be careful about like the Apple wired headphones where the microphone is right here. Sometimes it rubs up against your shirt or it rubs up against your face and that creates a really muffled or scratching noise that's hard to work around. So that's why I still like to have a separate mic that's close to your mouth. Be prepared for delay. There's going to be delay in the signal when we're coming across the internet and depending on your connection, it can be very variable. Um, just be ready for it and be ready to, uh, react to delay. Sometimes you need to put a bigger pause after you stop talking so that the other person can, uh, jump in and it may take a second because that audio is still coming across maybe for me and I have to wait for that to be done. before I can respond to you, because then I'll know you've paused. Turn off fans and things that make noise. I can work with a lot if you have to have a fan in because I don't want what I don't want you to have happen is that you get so hot that you're sweating. So we don't want that, but if you need a fan, that's okay. But if you can turn it off and all the other things that are going to make background humming noises, that would be great. I got a lot of tools to fix it. If you. Can't get around that, but it's better if I don't have to use them. Don't fidget. Sometimes people are clicking pens or tapping on their, their desktop. Those noises all get picked up and we don't want them. Lastly, I am going to tell you about the bane of a podcaster's existence and that is lawnmowers. I can't tell you how many podcasts I've had where a lawnmower suddenly comes by in the middle of a conversation and says, blah, blah, blah, blah. Try to schedule, uh, at times when you know the lawnmower's not going to be there if you can. If you can't It happens, I know. We're just gonna have to take a pause, let the lawnmower go by, and then get back to it. But if you do hear it coming, you might want to just stop for a second and say, hey, there's a lawnmower coming. Let's take a pause for a minute. Next, let's talk about your camera. Clean your lens. I can't stress how much of a difference this can make. Avoid using webcams if you can. The quality is never really good. The frame rates can be really rough to deal with. Um, you can even get 4K webcams, but generally the lenses on them are really not very good. Um, they're not the best option. If it's your only option, so be it. That's fine. We'll work with it. But if you have something that's a little bit better quality, try to use it. And that brings up another thing. Most people have iPhones or cell phone cameras, and that can be a really good option. Um, the quality of an iPhone camera can be really good actually. Um, and even sometimes the mic on them is actually pretty good. I've, I've worked with that, but that can be a hit or miss kind of proposition. When you're looking for a camera, ideally we want something that has 1080p because that's what resolution we're going to be recording in. A lot of built in laptop webcams are 720p, not the best. But we can work with it. Make sure you bring your camera level with your face. You remember earlier I said if you're a little low, you're going to be shooting up at a ceiling. If you're a little high, you're going to be shooting at a floor. You want to be more level with your face. It also is a more attractive angle for you. It's a better angle. You don't want people looking up your nose. You don't want people looking down your nose. You want people looking at your eyes level with your face. And that comes into framing yourself. Most of the time when you're doing a podcast, you want to be framed somewhere, you know, like either chest high or from your waist up, um, and you want to have about maybe a hands width of free space above your head. Uh, sometimes I have people who are, um, at the very bottom of the frame and most of the, the, the image is above their head and you don't want that because it looks like you're But. Okay. You know, falling into the sea or something so much of this framing is based on kind of that rule of thirds where you divide the screen into three parts, and you want your eyes at about that top third. So keep some of those things in mind. You don't have to be. Perfect about it, but the closer you can get to that, the better, because sometimes we'll also line up shots side by side and you want them to be of similar proportion when you're putting them next to each other. Another part of that is center yourself in the frame. So I might do two ups, three ups, however it may end up being. If you're not in the frame, I got to reframe you in the frame and that can be kind of, uh, kind of weird when it happens. So try to keep yourself in the center of the frame. Sometimes we'll do podcasts that are more elaborate and have more, um, professional settings and we can do interesting things like put you off to the one side or another. But in general, you want to center yourself in the frame. Another thing to be aware of is if you are working with something that is sitting on your desktop or is mounted to your desktop, if you get excited and you start shaking your desktop, it's going to shake the camera. And I don't want to have to, um, go back and stabilize all that for you. because sometimes that can make it shrink in a lot or it can make it look kind of weird. So it's best not to shake the camera if you can help it. And I get this mostly from, uh, like laptops that are on desks that are maybe a little shaky. All right, so now you've done your podcast. Everything looks great because of all these great tips I've just given you. Um, but now is time for you to promote if you have a spot on your website where you can talk about it. Remember, this is great SEO content for you because you're talking about a topic that's important. To your customers, most likely, if you have a YouTube channel, promote it. If you have another podcast, promote it. If you have any opportunity to promote it, promote it, get it on LinkedIn, get it on a tech talk, get it on a Instagram, get it on Facebook, wherever you find your audience. Get it out there and promote it. Stay in touch. I want to know what happens to you. I want to know if you've been successful. I want to know if you've failed. You know, there may be more story there to talk about. I've had guests back on to talk about the changes that have happened. Their company got bought, you know, they moved into another thing. They pivoted their main value proposition. These are all interesting things to talk about. I want to know about your new developments. So keep me posted. If you have recommendations, if you know, friends that are doing things that are really interesting, that'd be a great podcast. Let me know. I love that stuff, you know, and, uh, I've interviewed friends of, you know, people I've had on and they've been some of the best podcasts I've done. So, uh, don't be afraid to make recommendations. I know this is a lot of stuff to take in. That's a lot of tips, but those are the main things that I find from my years in the podcasting world. And if you. stick to these things, you will be an absolutely fantastic guest. But just remember, the most important thing is we want to hear your story. So be comfortable, be relaxed. We're excited to hear you. We're not judging you. You're gonna do great. Just be natural. And with that, I will say thanks. Think about subscribing. And if you could give us a like. And I will see you in the next one.