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The Audacity to Podcast® - tips and how to start and grow profit in podcasting
426. Podcasting with a Teleprompter—Even for Audio Podcasts
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Have you ever considered using a teleprompter in your podcasting workflow? Here are some ways it could benefit you even if you only podcast in audio. Thank you for joining me for the Audacity to Podcast. I'm Daniel J. Lewis. Teleprompters aren't only for newscasters and politicians. They can be great for podcasting even if you podcast in only audio. So just to make sure we're all on the same page, what is a teleprompter? It is the thing that reflects a surface so that you can look the idea is generally directly at a camera or you can look through the teleprompter to something that's behind it, but you are seeing what's being shown on the teleprompter. This is also like a heads up display where you're able to then have your head up looking straight through, maybe even looking directly at a camera and there can be things displayed in front of you on it. There is a specific teleprompter that I've used for now a couple of years that I do recommend. I do have some issues with it, but I'll talk more about the model specifically throughout this episode. But it's the Elgato Prompter. They also have the Elgato Prompter XL and Elgato is not paying me. I am currently not sponsored by anyone, so I don't get paid to simply talk about anything right now. There are affiliate links in this episode, so if you do decide to purchase one of these teleprompters or some others that I'll have links to in the notes for this episode, I will get a commission from that if you purchase through my links. But I recommend things I truly believe in regardless of earnings and I'm not currently sponsored by anyone. So even though you're going to hear me talk about a specific teleprompter from a specific company throughout this episode, they are not paying me. So if you'd like to follow along in the notes for this episode and get the links to some of the teleprompters that I recommend, they are a simple tap or swipe away look at the chapters or go to the audacitytopodcast.com Teleprompter number one benefit here, make eye contact with your audience. This is really what teleprompters are designed to do. There are lots of different styles of video that you'll see. We're typically used to seeing people talk from a third person perspective where it's like we're getting to sit in on someone else being interviewed by someone else. Or of course, movies and TV shows are recorded. This where you're not actually the person being spoken to, but you're getting to see the character speak to other characters. So you have this third person perspective. Yes, that is a technique, certainly. And it has its places, especially in interview style podcasts that fits very well. Or any kind of interview style video, even if you don't get to hear the interviewer and you're seeing only the interviewee, still, that sort of third person perspective is totally okay in those cases. But podcasting tends to be a bit more intimate, and this is thanks to the audio method of podcasting primarily, I think, where audio podcasting allows people to take your episode with them, theoretically anywhere, and they can listen to your voice directly in their ears through earbuds or headphones. Some people, yes, listen to podcasts through speakers, but I would suspect that most podcast consumption happens through some kind of headphone or earbud. And that provides a rather intimate experience, especially as people can take your voice with them to places where they wouldn't welcome other voices or wouldn't be able to, to have other conversations, like doing chores, mowing the yard, driving on an airplane, all of these different places. Then take that same intimate experience and that connection that you get with your audience through audio. And I think the best way to do that through video is making eye contact with your audience. This is something I learned very early on when I first started public speaking in my teenage years is make eye contact with your audience. That helps them feel seen, but also it helps you to see their reactions. I do this with kids, I do this with adults. When I tell a joke I want to see, are people actually laughing? When I'm explaining a concept I'm looking to see, do people look like they're understanding it, or do they have a confused look on their faces? Now, you're not actually making eye contact with an audience when you're looking into a camera, but it will feel that way to your audience. And a teleprompter allows you to do that, because this is the core design of a teleprompter is for newscasters and politicians and others to be able to see something while looking directly into the camera. And whatever that thing is that they're seeing, it might be their notes, their script, a video, the person that they're talking to. It could be anything really, but then that enables them to look at that thing while not having to take their eyes off the camera. There are plenty of Times that it is okay for you to look away from the camera and it won't really hurt that intimate experience with your audience. Like if you're reading from a chat room, or if you're reading a comment, an email, you're looking up something on the web, you're talking to someone else. Those are times when I think not only okay, but maybe even expected that you might look away from the camera to do those things. It might be kind of weird if I'm talking to you and then suddenly I'm talking to my co host, but I'm still looking directly at you, or at least that's the way you feel I'm doing it. Or I'm looking directly at you as I'm looking up things on the Internet that can feel a little weird and a little creepy to do something like that, or maybe even robotic in some ways. Where I'm looking directly at you as I'm citing information from the Internet, that can be weird. Those are times it's totally okay to look away from the camera and people will be okay with that. I think it helps make it even human. Even though I am recording and I look directly into the camera when I'm speaking, there are still times that I look away from the camera. Just for a brief moment, for a thought, or just looking at something. It's just something that people do where we're not always directly glued to to each other's eyes. And nothing ever takes our eyes off of it in a normal conversation. There are times we look away, we glance at things, we glance at what's around us. We're aware of our surroundings. We look at something that someone is pointing out to us. We're sometimes even just looking at our hands as we're making gestures and sort of telling a visual story that we might pretend that we're holding something even though our hands are empty. We pretend we're holding something and we're looking at it in our hands. And that helps our audience relate to that because they can kind of imagine that with us. But a teleprompter, bringing it back to this allows you to make the eye contact with your audience for those times that you want to do that and you want to be able to see something. Now, what is that thing that you might want to see? That goes on to number two, you can use a teleprompter to display your notes or script. Typically, you see people read a whole script from a teleprompter. That's what the newscasters are doing. And politicians are Reading from the teleprompter. And it does take some skill to get good at that. The best thing to do is get really good at writing and get really good at speaking. Get to the point where you can write like you speak and speak like you write. And they are both good communication. And I've worked on that for many years and I think I've gotten mostly to that point where I generally speak like I write and I generally write like I speak speak. So that if I write my own script, it's very easy for me to read it and sound natural. I see other people who need some more practice with that, and that might be where you are, that you just need some more practice. But you don't have to use a teleprompter for a whole script. You could use a teleprompter for just your notes. In fact, that's what I'm doing right now. I'm not reading from a script. I do have my notes in front of me, a multiple point outline in front of me. So I see those points and I can read those to know where I am, to know what's coming, and to read those points exactly as I want them. But they're on the teleprompter screen, so I can still look directly into the camera as I'm looking at my outline. This can make you look really knowledgeable and experienced with what you're talking about. I remember back many years ago when I recorded the SEO for Podcasters course where, which was the first training of its kind, by the way, and I think it was in maybe 2011 or 2012. I had an iPad, I had a DSLR camera, I did not have a teleprompter. So my notes for that session and teaching that, I was sitting down at my desk with my computer and workstation behind me and I would look at the camera and I wanted to make eye contact with my audience and I had my notes on my iPad. So if I wanted to remember what my next point was, because I didn't have the whole thing memorized, I would have to look down at my notes and then look back up at the camera. And I didn't like that. And it might even look kind of weird. And you can display your notes in different places and might be okay even if you do something like you have your laptop in front of you, especially if you're sitting at a table or a desk where there's a surface and you can have your laptop in front of you or slightly off to the side. I think that's more okay and doesn't look so weird if you glance at that for your notes. But in my case, my notes were in my lap. I had no table in front of me or desk or anything like that. So I had to look completely all the way down at my lap to see the notes, because I wasn't going to hold the iPad in front of me the whole time. I just didn't like the way that looked. So it made for a lot of edit points because all I needed was just to remind myself what the next point was. I wasn't reading a script. I just needed to follow my outline. And having a teleprompter would have made that a whole lot easier, because I could put the notes on the teleprompter, have them directly in front of me and advance them as I needed to. One advancing it in a moment. And then I could keep eye contact with the camera while I'm reading my notes. And if you're doing any kind of live streaming presentation, then this can make you look really knowledgeable, because people will see you not breaking eye contact, or not breaking eye contact very much, but still being able to present the information that you want to share. And they might even think, whoa, she's not even using notes. That's pretty cool. And even if they know that you're using notes, then still you're able to do that while maintaining eye contact with them. That's pretty cool. And I think that really enhances that experience. So you can display your notes or your script in front of you. And that's great for video. Whether you're recording video, you're doing some kind of live streaming, even if you're simply in a call with someone, like you're interviewing a guest to have the questions that you want to ask the guest up there on the screen. Maybe as you work through that, or maybe it's even you are being interviewed and you want a couple of statistics in front of you. So you have those available, but you don't want to have to look away from the camera. You want to make it sound like you're able to recite those statistics. Maybe it's even just. You want to make sure that you get the number exactly right. It's 335, not 336. And you want to make sure you have that number in front of you. A teleprompter can be great for that. But even if you don't do video, a teleprompter can still be really helpful because of the tools that A teleprompter is designed around and that is displaying text very cleanly and for flowing and allowing you to focus on just the piece of text that you want in that moment. The way that most teleprompters do this is that you can scroll through either manually or at an automatic pace where it's scrolling and then you're reading along that as it's moving across the screen. But typically you'll see the middle line or the middle few lines will be highlighted or bold or a brighter text color or something like that. And then the text that you are not reading will. Will be faded out in some way or maybe even completely disappear. That way you're not being overwhelmed. It's a lot easier to keep your place in your notes or your script if all you see is exactly where you're supposed to be in your notes or script, and that's right there in front of you. So even if there's no camera attached, simply the software in a teleprompter can be really helpful. And you can run some of this teleprompter software through an iPad or even your computer. In fact, when I inducted Dave Jackson into the podcast hall of fame, and then later when I was inducted to the hall of Fame, I used my iPad and a teleprompter app on my iPad to read what I wanted to share. And the teleprompter made it easy for me, so I didn't lose my place. It kept scrolling for me automatically. So when I looked down, the place where I looked was exactly where I needed to be in my script or in my notes. And you can do that with your audio podcast too. Even if you're using simply teleprompter software, it provides a very clean experience designed to be read very clearly, very cleanly. You don't have to worry about zooming in or increasing the font size, or trying to remove items from the interface to make it less confusing and less distracting, or notifications or anything like that. It provides you a very clean interface. And as far as how to advance through it, you can do those things where you're manually advancing line by line or section by section, or it can automatically scroll at a particular speed, and you can use different devices or tools or keyboard shortcuts to speed up or slow down that pace. But I also love that some of these tools and way back when I first started using a teleprompter on my iPad, I used the app prompt Smart Pro that had this feature and it's paid feature for it. So it's one of the reasons why I bought the app back then, and I love this feature, is that some of these teleprompter tools can listen to you and move your script. We can put that in quotation marks because it might simply be an outline, but it can move your script along as it hears you reading those things. So consider this. Maybe you do have a complete script and you are reading your script verbatim, but at one point you decide you want to go off script and you want to share some extra anecdote or you want to say something a little bit differently. When you do that and when the script software is listening to you, it will pause scrolling until it hears you reading the script again and then it continues scrolling. Apply that same thing to your outline too. Even if you simply have your bullet points in front of you, like I'm doing right now as I'm looking directly into a camera and my notes, simple bullet point list of my notes, not an entire script, just my bullet points are in front of me. I'm able to read them very easily and I can advance them a point at a time. Or if I was using the speech recognition software, then it would advance for me so it wouldn't bump down to number three until I said number three and then it would move down there. So it's a nice way to keep my place in my notes or script. Even if you have no camera attached or behind the teleprompter, it can be really helpful for audio podcasters as well. And if you're going to read something from a teleprompter, I highly recommend that you make sure it is not too visually large to you. The larger it is visually to you, then the more that your eye movement will be visible to the camera. In general, the best way to reduce eye movement is have the camera farther away and thus the teleprompter farther away as well, so then your eyes don't have to move very much. And the reason why I emphasize the visual size of it is because it's not necessarily the physical size. Like the teleprompter from Elgato is a 9 inch display. And it's great for having the teleprompter about an arm's length away from you. They also make a 15 inch display. I think if you were to use that an arm's length away from you, that might be a little bit too big because if you were reading from it, then your eye movement would be a lot more obvious. But you could also change the margins on it, so that your eyes don't have to move very far across the screen. So keep that in mind if you do decide to use a teleprompter and read from that teleprompter, even if it's simply your outline. But if you're recording that video, then try to keep your eye movement as small as possible. And one of the ways that you could do this is many of these teleprompter tools allow you to place some kind of target, a crosshair, a bullseye, or something like that, so you can know exactly where the camera lens is. And you look at that point. And try not to read word by word by word by word across the screen. If you can glance at the entire line instead of one word at a time, where your eye is definitely scanning back and forth like the old typewriters used to be. But if you can grasp an entire line in just a glance, then you don't have to have your eyes moving back and forth so much. You'll see this sometimes where people will have their teleprompter much too big, or they're obviously reading from a script and they're looking away from the camera, but you see their eyes moving back and forth as they're reading from the script. And then sometimes that gives that impression of, if you're just going to read from a script, why don't you just provide me with the script instead of reading it to me? But if you can display that script or your notes in a way that allows you to make eye contact with your audience, then that's much better. Before I had a teleprompter, I tried to work around this in different ways by putting my webcam on a mic stand, actually, like the Hyal PL2T, which is a overhead boom arm. But that allowed me to position the webcam exactly where I wanted it. And I would position it in the middle of my 27 inch iMac. So it covered part of the screen. But it made it easier for me to look directly into the camera for certain things. But I tried to position my notes right above or right below the camera, depending on which way I mounted it. And I've tried different ways of mounting, like mounting it from the top, mounting it from the bottom. But the point was to try and get what I was looking at as close to the camera as possible, so that it would look like I was making eye contact with the camera, even though I had some notes or maybe the person I was talking to on the screen behind the camera. But that didn't always work because the camera would get in the way of things, or even simply the arm that was positioning the camera there would get in the way of stuff. And I'd have to do some weird trying to peek over or move things around to try and see things. And that just got frustrating. It is so much easier to have a teleprompter. So my notes are in front of me and I can look directly at the camera as I'm looking at my notes or my script, if you want to read a script. Number three, with the teleprompter, you can see yourself as the camera sees you. If you've ever gotten into trying to adjust camera settings, you probably know this frustration where you want to make sure the lighting is correct, Especially like the lighting and shadows on your nose or your glasses. You have to look at the camera, but you also have to look at your screen. So you do this weird thing where your nose is pointed at the camera, but you're looking out of the corner of your eye at the screen as you're trying to adjust the settings and trying to make sure that you look right, because your screen, where you can see the. What the camera sees is off to the side. Well, that's a lot easier to do if you just position your video right there on the teleprompter. And you can do that where it's mirrored so that when you raise your left hand, you see it oriented correctly in the video that you're looking at, just as if you're looking at a mirror. It's not actually recording that way. I hope it's not, but it looks that way to you. So then you can adjust your lighting, your exposure, your clothing, your hair, your backdrop, all of that stuff looking directly into the camera, just like you will be doing when you're recording. But you can also be doing that while you're adjusting any of those settings. And related to that. Number four, using a teleprompter allows you to look at the people you're talking to, even if you don't publish your own video. Like, you're not doing a video podcast. You're not doing anything on YouTube, you're not live streaming. I think as podcasters, we still need to be ready to be on video, because even if we don't do video ourselves, a lot of other people do, and those other people might want to interview us. So that's a good reason to make sure that you can be camera ready to some degree. And having a teleprompter really enhances that experience. Because even if the person interviewing you is not on camera, or maybe you are interviewing them, and even if you're not going to publish the video, the conversation feels so much different. If you can look at the person you're talking to and a teleprompter enables you to do that, where you can put your zoom, your descript, your Riverside, whatever tool you're using, you can put that on the teleprompter screen. So you are seeing the person you're talking to and you are looking directly at them. While you're talking, they see you looking directly at them. So it feels more intimate in that conversation, it feels more natural to them instead of they're seeing you looking off to the side and they're looking at you from the side. And if they have a teleprompter too, then you're not looking at them from the side either. But you can be sort of looking directly at each other, making eye contact with each other. And that helps so much in the conversation. Because a lot of our communication is non verbal. It's the slightest cues, the even just active listening, like the nodding of the head, the weird expressions, or the certain things where you can tell someone wants to say something because you see their mouth opening up, or they're raising their hand, or they're holding up a finger saying hold on, I want to make a point, or hold on, wait, I've got something. You can see that if you're making eye contact with them. Even if you're not actually publishing the video, being able to see the person you're talking to can help that conversation flow a whole lot better. Whether that's a co host, a guest, or you're the guest and you're being interviewed, you can then look at the person you're talking to. And it makes it flow so much better. I think fewer interruptions, better communication even, because you can start to pick up on those things by seeing if they're maybe confused or if they have a question, or maybe if they're starting to disagree with something. And you can anticipate some of those things and guide what you say or what you ask based on some of that nonverbal communication. And number five, depending on the teleprompter you're using or even just some of the ideas from this, you can use a teleprompter as an external display. There are many times when an external display can be really helpful. I remember my first job. I was a presentation designer working at an organization. And I had three monitors at one Point. And I used all three of them and I felt really cool, like I was at some command station. I would have something in one monitor, an old version of something that I was redesigning, and all my toolbars were in another monitor. So that way I could focus on what I was doing on the one center screen and my other stuff was off to the side. Well, a teleprompter, especially something like the Elgato prompter can function as an external display. Even simply an iPad can function as an external display. And doing so allows you to put that low priority information off to that external monitor. Even if it's a small one. It doesn't have to be another 27 inch monitor, another 30 inch monitor, whatever size screen that you normally look at, it could be a smaller one. And there's a good place for that. Like for example, I use the ARC browser and like several other browsers, it has a picture in picture option where when you're playing a video in one tab and then you switch tabs, it will move that video into a picture in picture sort of thing. So it moves then to one of the corners of your overall display so that you can still see the video while you're doing something else. And I don't know about you, but it seems like it's Murphy's law. But when I am watching Slash, listening to a video while I'm doing some kind of work, it seems like that picture in picture display is always in the way. So I sometimes have to fight with it, move it around, and then that starts distracting me and makes me get frustrated. And so I decide I'm just going to pause this because I want to be able to listen. But this thing is in the way and I don't want to fiddle with this too much. Or if you have an external display, even a small one, you could move that video to that external display, or you could move notes there, or that chat room, or your social feed, or your stock or crypto portfolio or anything like that to that external display. Really enhancing your workflow, not necessarily making it a primary spot that you do work in, but just that extra stuff that you want to be able to have on the screen while you're working. But it's not taking up space on your normal screen distracting you or getting in the way of things. And that can be a huge workflow booster. That's something I really like about the Elgato prompter is that it functions as an external display. So anything you can do with an external display, you can do with it even when the camera's not on, you can still look at the teleprompter to see the stuff that is on that external monitor. And the Elgato prompter comes in two sizes, the 9 inch and these are diagonal sizes, 9 inch and about 15 and a half inches. So you can pick one that works best for your space and your needs. I use the 9 inch. I think it's just the perfect size for me. And I can use that sometimes as an external display. Like if I'm doing some programming, maybe I move my terminal, my command line over into that window while I'm doing my main work in a window or my browser, I move my browser over there. So whenever I make changes when I'm looking at code, it live refreshes in the browser, or it's a social feed or a chat room or something else I'm listening to passively or watching passively off to the side. It can be a great workflow booster, even just to have that small extra display. So these are five things that I think can really benefit a podcasting workflow if you get a teleprompter. Number one, make eye contact with your audience. Number two, display your notes or script. Number three, see yourself as the camera sees you. Number four, look at the people you're talking to, even if you do only audio. And number five, use it as an external display. My recommendation, if you haven't already picked up on it throughout this episode, is the Elgato prompter and Prompter xl. This episode is not sponsored by Elgato. I have some issues with them sometimes. I'm not currently sponsored by anybody to simply talk about something. I do have affiliate links in the notes for this episode, so if you purchase through my affiliate links, I do get a commission from that. But I recommend things I truly believe in, and I'll be honest with you, I. I've had some frustrations with the Elgato prompter before, and you can see every now and then on social that I might voice some of those frustrations to Elgato. Their software isn't always that great, but their hardware, I think is great and really useful. And I love that the way that they've designed this is that it functions as an external display. So as opposed to in the past where I've had a teleprompter where I would put my iPad in it and I'd have to get the iPad ready and all of that stuff, and if I wanted to do something on the iPad, I would have to actually reach up in front of the camera to be able to touch the iPad and try and work it in different ways and trying to work it through a mirror too. And that mess could get frustrating a lot of times. But when you're using something like the Elgato prompter, then you're controlling it from your computer. It is just an external display from your computer and you have the software that can control that too. And then you add that with other accessories, keyboard shortcuts and stuff, to be able to control the teleprompter in different ways. So that could be helping your scrolling speed or moving through points or switching windows or anything like that, allowing you to use that as really a productivity tool, not just a video tool. So I really like the Elgato Prompter. It goes on sale sometimes for as low as in the hundred to two hundred dollars depending on current inflation and certain things like that. But I've seen it as low as I believe $120 for the Elgato prompter. The 9 inch model and the XL is 15 and a half inches. So if you need that larger size, watch out for a deal for that because it's a little more pricey. But maybe that would be worth it to you, especially when you consider the productivity enhancement or if you need that larger screen because you need to position the prompter farther away from you. But I've got those links in the chapters for this episode as well as in the notes over@the audacitytopodcast.com teleprompter. Special thanks to Dreb Scott for streaming 310 Satoshis to the Audacity to podcast from the last episode. I really appreciate that. And if you value the Audacity to podcast, consider whatever is worth to you and consider giving that back through either a podcasting 2.0 system like the Stream Satoshis or Boostagram, or a simple gift through the audacitytopodcast.com giveback. Now that I've given you some of the guts and taught you some of the tools, it's time for you to go start and grow your own podcast for passion and profit. I'm Daniel J. Lewis from the audacitytopodcast.com thanks for listening. Sa.