Presenting Tips - Helping you take the next step in radio

Presenting is easy in principle, all you have to do is talk, how difficult can it be?! Well the answer, sometimes, can be very. You need to remain compelling, composed and confident. You need to be relatable to your audience at all times and you need to learn to construct a link on the air. How are you going to start? Have you thought about where the link is going? How is the link going to end? And the most important question of them all, does anybody care about what you are talking about?! You need to be totally honest with the answer to the last question, and if you think the answer is no, then don’t do it.

You may think that presenters simply turn up and say the first thing that pops into their head with no preparation, and some do. But the very best don’t. They know exactly what they are going to say, but they also have the ability to react to anything that is more off the cuff and unexpected. This is a unique ability and not everybody can do it. So plan and prepare what you are going to say, and more importantly, learn when to be quiet. Rambling on about nothing in particular is one of the biggest mistake presenters make. Although you may think its fun for you, it can be boring for the listener and very quickly they can turn you off for somebody else who is more precise and entertaining in what they say.

Try and learn from a very early stage to not talk over songs. It annoys listeners. It might be their favourite song of all time and you are spoiling it by either talking over the start or talking over the end, and no doubt they will actually shout at the radio for you to shut up. Think of it this way, did an artist spend hours writing and recording a song with you in mind to talk over the start or the end? The answer is no.

Learn to sell. If you do end up working on a commercial radio station, then one of your jobs will be to sell/promote either a competition or another show on the station. You will do this by reading it off a piece of paper but the art is to sound like you are not reading it at all. It is very easy for presenters to sound like they are reading it and sound bored while doing so. If this happens then the impact of what you are saying is lost on the listener, so if you can learn the art of selling, then that will stand you in very good stead for the future.

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