Podcast Advice

It is still very early days so over time it is very likely things will change, but for now I am trying to keep it as simple as possible.

•   Make it timeless – The podcasts will be treated as a weekly digest. They will go up on the website on Tuesday, and stay there until the following Tuesday. This means it is incredibly important to ensure that your podcast is timeless. Your podcast needs to be as relevant on Sunday as it was when it was first put up on Tuesday.  Avoid making it too topical or too centred around current events as these will date quickly.
  
•  Keep your podcast to around 3 minutes - People get bored easily and struggle to stay focused when they are listening to one voice. The best way to keep a podcast interesting is to use sound bites and clips of interviews, as these break it up and help to refocus your audience. This also helps your attract your audience, if you advertise the fact you have an “exclusive interview” with someone, then more people will be inclined to listen to your podcast. Unfortunately none of us are as interesting as we would like to think, so unless you are Stephen Fry, try to keep your talking down to 45seconds as studies have shown that people tend to zone out after that point. Another tool you can use is having more than one presenter on the podcast, the back and forth banter and communication helps to give a podcast a bit of life. This leads me onto my next point.
  
•  Use your personality!  - Give your podcast some character. Unlike WINOL you do not have to be objective, you can be yourself and the more you put that across the more the audience will like you.
  
• Give your podcast a running order - This is a list of all of the things you intend to discuss during your podcast and it helps you to avoid lulls and stops your podcast going off on a tangent.
  
•   Make sure you don’t waffle -  Keep what you have to say to the point, people don’t care about what you had for breakfast, keep your podcast focused.
  
•  Only keep in the good bits - When you’re editing your podcast this is your opportunity to take out those rambling moments you may have had or any of those technical glitches. Use stings and beds to make your podcast as polished as you can. The more professional it sounds the better.