Podcasts are very popular these days. Who doesn’t love putting on their favorite podcast in the background while they do chores or work? Great podcasts can make it feel like you’re having a fun conversation with some friends. If you’re thinking about starting a podcast, you’ll want to set yourself up for success and make sure that your listeners tune in each and every week.
Randy King is a communications professional with a focus on basketball, blogging, radio production, and podcasting. He has worked in a variety of news settings, including everything from web-based blogs and podcasts to traditional outlets such as radio stations and print publications. Today he shares top beginner mistakes to avoid when you make your podcast:
- Bad audio quality. You want to make sure that the quality of your audio is as smooth and crisp as it can be. People will tune out if there is too much background noise, too much echo, or on inconsistent volume levels. It doesn’t matter how good your content is if your listeners are distracted by terrible audio quality. Try and buy the best microphone that you can afford – it will be worth it.
- Being unprepared. There is a fine line with this one, because podcasts that sound like they are being read off of a script can sound a bit stale, and some off-the-cuff conversation can be really fun for an audience to listen to. However, you want to make sure to prepare topics and research beforehand, and have an outline of how the episode is going to go before you start. You don’t want the whole thing to just be a long ramble.
- Annoying ads. Sponsors are really important to a podcast because they don’t fund the content that is being made. However, it is important that ad breaks are well placed and as infrequent as possible. A couple of ad breaks over an hour is fine, but too many become annoying. You also want to make sure that your audience will be receptive to what you are advertising. Think about what businesses your audience would want to support, and reject sponsors that are irrelevant to your show.
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