How to make your courses and podcasts more professional
What’s keeping you from creating an online course, webinar or podcast?
We are well into this pandemic. And even if a vaccine were to be released tomorrow, the business of speaking, training and consulting is going to be changed forever.
If you are one of those waiting for everything to go back to “normal” I hope you have a lot of savings.
Those who want to keep the lights on during this difficult time and prepare for what comes next are already adapting.
In the past I’ve talked about how you can quickly and easily create online programs and scale fast.
So why isn’t everyone jumping on the online course and presentation bandwagon?
Well the truth is most of us just don’t think we’re good enough to pull it off – even if we have great content.
There is a great story about how Cary Grant wouldn’t ever watch any of his movies because he didn’t think his performances were that good. I have a soft spot for his screwball comedies and can attest that he WAS THAT GOOD.
Are you like Cary Grant? When you look at your own recorded performances do you cringe at the tics and fillers that creep into your speaking voice?
I know I do. When I recorded my first online course over 5 years ago, I had faith in the quality of the content. It was the performance that made me blush.
But people liked it and I moved some units. In fact I sold enough that I had no problem creating an updated version at the beginning of 2020.
When I started doing pre-recorded webinars I got rave reviews for the content and the presentation. But when I look at them, it’s not the content that catches my attention – it’s the verbal gaffes that nobody else seems to notice.
It’s the same with any podcast interview I do. I come on – and in the moment – I think it’s great. But then I listen to it a few weeks later on my podcast app and I’m embarrassed.
You are THAT GOOD as well
If you are a content creator you can’t let an obsession with your own deficiencies become the excuse not to adapt your business to what the market wants.
Easier said than done I know.
When I present or do interviews my biggest, most notable “tic” is filler words. You know the ones I’m talking about. The ums and ers and you knows.
I drop them into the conversation effortlessly as I search for the right words to use. It’s annoying and I sometimes think that it makes my stuff sound unprofessional.
I know I’m not alone in this because I have spent countless hours editing client videos for courses and removing filler words is a tedious nightmare.
The other week I tried an audio/video editing tool called Descript that promised to seamlessly remove filler words for audio and video with just a few clicks. Did it work? It sure did. And if what’s keeping you back from creating videos and audios to help your business shift into a market where virtual is going to be the new normal then you need to try it.
What Descript does is use advanced AI to create a transcription of the video or audio input. Then you can edit the video or audio – by editing the text! In my tests I found the transcription to be better than 90% accurate.
There are both free and premium versions. The “Filler Words” feature— available on the premium version —finds and highlights unwanted words. Then, as if by magic, you can delete them from the video.
I signed up for the free 7 day trial to test it out on my latest free online workshop (Work it Like a PRO: How any business can use content to create a micro-media empire). When I used the filler word feature, my presentation went from 45 minutes to 42 minutes. And more importantly it sounded a lot more professional!
How good was it? Well I went back to the course videos from my online program and used the magic editor on all those as well.
I’m not an affiliate or shill for this product. They aren’t paying me to promote it.
There are loads of other features I’m not going to get into – this isn’t a review blog. But it is certainly something worth checking out as a free trial.
Every day there are more and more tools to help make our businesses thrive in the post-pandemic world. And with each one the excuses to put off moving forward become weaker and weaker.
I’d love to hear what tools you’ve discovered and how they are helping your business transition.
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