Hello, and welcome to day 10 of Flash Briefing February. Today we're going to be speaking about who presents your Flash Briefing. And who are we? Well, I'm Susan Cooper, and this is Peter Stewart is that way there is. And we are both professional broadcasters who create Flash Briefings ourselves. And we have put together this month long course Flash Briefing febri to give you the mindset, the marketing and the skill set behind making a Flash Briefing, all the things that you need to know, all the way through. If you've missed any episodes, they're all up on YouTube. They're up on the voice works. Facebook page. So do go back through check the ones that you've missed, and we will be continuing throughout the month as well. As I say today is Day 10. We're going to be speaking about who presents your Flash Briefing and why that might be important, aren't we, Peter?

Absolutely. So Suze underplays herself a little bit because Suze actually presents audio not only for herself, not only For one of the big commercial radio players here in the United Kingdom, but also for the evening standards in London, so that obviously is heard around the world, especially, or particularly in the United States and also for one of the biggest and best skills companies in the UK as well. vixen left, so she works for all sorts of different companies. So she knows her audio stuff. me I've got three Flash Briefings on the go. And one of them is the second highest rated in the UK. And also I work for one of the big British Broadcasting companies can't tell you what it is. I'm not allowed to. But guess what it is when I say one of the big British Broadcasting companies and try and work it out from that and also I've written several books about audio, presentation and production for TV and for radio as well. So we reckon we kind of know a little bit of thing about the presentation of Flash Briefings and podcasts. There are two ways you can go. You can make it really easy for yourself or really engaging for your audience. And it's up to you which of these two roads you decide to travel down. So let me first of all, talk to you about making it easy for yourself, you make it really easy for yourself by having Alexa, read your Flash Briefing for you. Which is quite straightforward to do. You essentially set up the RSS feed in a different way. And you have the text to speech option, Incorporated, which means that Alexa will read out what is on your website and website. And it says, so quite as straightforward to set up. Once you read from your page, you've got to have a couple of things in operation. So you've got to make sure that those sentences are really short because even though the intonation of Alexa is reasonably good, she does stop A bit if the sentences are really long, it's so if there are too many kind of sub clauses, too many kind of bits in within commerce as it were, then she finds it difficult to know where to go with the intonation. So keep the sentences really short. Also make sure that you finish sentences as well, because otherwise the intonation won't be quite right. For example, if you have a phrase, which is just got ellipsis at the end, so dot, dot, dot, even though you could carry that off as a human being, she quite won't quite know how to pronounce that where to go with that kind of intonation. It's really important that you have proper punctuation, with commerce and with full stops because that will guide her into the kind of style and presentation when she's reading you from your website. Also, make sure it's plain text and no captions. One of the problems is that she will read everything that's there unless you tell her not to. So she may very well read a caption A photograph, which says,

this is something like Mr. Smith and Mrs. Smith receiving the check. That doesn't mean anything if I'm just listening who are these characters? And anyway, why would I need to know that that is a phrase in the middle of of what she's saying would sound totally out of place. Also, if you're linking to other pages, she may very well read that as well, you know, so it might actually be something like, click here for more. That would obviously sound completely odd for somebody that is listening to your Flash Briefing. Also, you've got to make sure that it's under 4500 characters because when it gets to that limit, she will simply stop the limit of the duration when you are reading a Flash Briefing yourself is 10 minutes. The limit for the duration when Alexa is reading is 4500 characters, so be aware of that. You don't want someone to be listening to a Flash Briefing and then she just stops in the middle of Set like that. Also one of the really big problems which Suze's now kind of kind of pick up on is that even though Alexa is pretty good with the integration, and all of these API's are improving all the time, there's no verb, there's no vitality, there's no wait. There's no understanding of what it is that she's actually reading. And also, if you've got several Flash Briefings all in a row, all read by Alexa, but all from different people, then yours is going to sound exactly the same as the ones from other brands and other businesses and other individuals, which won't be particularly good. Also, it'll sound exactly the same as the host. The linking person that links and introduces all of these Flash Briefings is Alexa herself. So she'll be introducing herself with your Flash Briefing. I think you want a bit of differentiation, I think you want a bit of a human touch nothing. So Is as engaging as the human voice.

Absolutely. And you know, the human voice adds emotion, detail intent, we understand intonation, all of those kinds of things. And one day, maybe these synthetic voices will get some of that emotion and detail in there. But at the moment, they really don't have that. So the way that we communicate with people is to speak, and it really gives that connection. So why not use your own voice to provide that connection to someone you know, yourself, when you're listening to the radio or a podcast or something like that. You hear that person, they're speaking just to you. It doesn't matter to you that they're speaking, you know, to lots of other people that might have downloaded it or have tuned in that day. So the human voice is just so so powerful, and certainly with the Flash Briefing, you know, hopefully you've picked content and a topic that you really love and you're really passionate about, and there is no way of Alexa getting that passion and joy out and over across to the audience and you know, if you want to really get connect with your audience. And certainly if you're doing this in a marketing sense, that's something that you're probably going to want to do, you're going to perhaps add a call to action, you want to actually move people to make a decision or act on whatever it is that you're saying, then you want the best connection possible with them. And that is the human voice. I mean, after all, you know, as, as a pregnant Mom, I was told to speak to my baby, you know, the baby in the womb, he is the human voice. It's one of those very first human connections that we make. So I really would urge and encourage you to use your own voice. And, yes, there's a little bit more kind of having to get the equipment setup and recording it. And there's actually been quite a few people quite recently who've come to me and said, I don't like the sound of my own voice. It really doesn't matter. It's something that you kind of have to get over. You don't need to listen to it. Again. It's about making that connection with your audience. So really, try to put everything you can into using your own voice to present this con And really get out there and make that connection with people. If you're going to put the effort into creating a Flash Briefing, coming up with the content and everything else, then this is kind of the icing on the cake that will really make such a difference to the way that it sounds. And as Peter says, it means that your briefing then sounds different to the next person's briefing. Because your voice is unique. It is you and you know, Alexa is never going to be able to kind of take that on and be the person that you are and, there's lots and lots of other stuff that we're going to be talking to you about during Flash Briefing February. But Peter, how can people stay in touch with us, kind of throughout throughout the year,

it's all part of your branding Your voice is your personality is part of your branding is part of your content. And we're gonna be talking a bit more about content and how you find it. Tomorrow as Flash Briefing febri continues. In the meantime, don't forget, you could always sign up to our newsletter. It's a Friday flash. briefing briefing, it's a briefing or a newsletter if you're like all about Flash Briefing and audio production, whether it be presentation or whether it be the music or whether it be the technical essentially, as we always say, get it in the right order, the skill set the mindset and the marketing to building a better briefing. And you can find that by going to www dot voice works. dot info, dot info voice works dot info, sign up for that newsletter, and you'll get it every Friday as the title of may suggest, and you'll get all sorts of links and tips about how to build a better briefing. We're back tomorrow, of course, Flash Briefing February continues with tips about your content.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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