I have spent a lot of time recently speaking and training in the Asia-Pacific region. Particularly in Australia last month, I saw how popular and common the use of podcasts and live film/video in websites has become. I also saw the spread of a dreadful contagious speakers’ disease: the dreaded Filler Disease.

Filler Disease won’t kill your body. But it will harm your professional success and your status as a speaker or representative of your industry. If you even THINK you might have this disease (some of us have it without knowing), then please read on to check the symptoms and especially the cure!

Speakers with Filler Disease use ‘Filler Words’ to fill even the tiniest pauses in their speeches, talks, or presentations. Filler words are words like ‘Um’, ‘Ah’, ‘Weeeellll’, ‘You see’, and many others. Badly diseased speakers even replace normal punctuation with fillers, making their sentences strenuous to listen to and interminably long. This is an ouch because research into audience memory and listening ability suggests that speakers should use sentences which have an average length of 15 words (please note that I said ‘average’!). Your audience cannot go back and re-read what you have said, so lots of short, clear bites are best.

When a podcast interview, video talk or discussion is spattered with fillers, the stature of the diseased speaker plummets. Speakers using loads of fillers sound unsure and unprepared, even if some of their content is good. I’ve seen dozens of very poor videos and heard many poor podcasts in the past few weeks, and I’ve joined the Filler Disease prevention task force. Please, please don’t let your professional status and reputation as a speaker be damaged by this disease.

First, though, you need to check if you actually have the disease. No point in wasting time if you’re symptom-free. Stand up and deliver the things you plan to say on the podcast or video OUT LOUD (and tape yourself or get a friend to listen in!). This is the only way to check just how badly you have the disease. If you have it, don’t panic. Filler Disease can be cured. Here’s how.

1. Pause.
Go back and redeliver your answers, speech or message (out loud). Force yourself to complete each sentence fully and then to pause. Let the silence just hang there. Silence is part of your cure, your friend. It allows you to recover, think forward, and also allows your audience to catch up and reflect on what you have said. I think one reason why speakers catch Filler Disease is that when they do social media podcasts and interviews, they are worried about time. ‘Got to get all that info packed into that short interview’. Thing is, filler words take as long to get out, if not longer, than making brief pauses takes. Filler words do not save you time. And they can irritate the audience to the point of turning you and your message right OFF.

2. Prepare.
Many speakers think that social media videos and podcasts are done ‘on the spot’, very casually. Wrong. The good ones involve quite a LOT of preparation time, depending on the experience level and ability of the speakers. The poor ones do not, and it shows. I once made the mistake of making a poorly prepared video for a site and that video has come back to haunt me many times. Once you’re in there, it’s hard to get out. So it’s worth doing properly. That means requesting the questions you have to answer up front, and preparing your answers, for instance. Why? Because Filler Disease symptoms are usually more severe in impromptu, unrehearsed situations. Don’t worry that you will sound ‘rehearsed’. As long as your tone is conversational, this is unlikely. Instead, you will sound fluent and articulate.

If you want to stand out in the crowd of social media speakers, avoid Filler Disease. If you have it already, I wish you a speedy recovery, and in the meantime, remember: ‘In the pause lies the applause’.