So You Still Haven’t Made a Podcast? Part III

Note:  If you can’t read Roman numerals, I have to tell you that this is actually part three in a series of posts about how to make your first podcast.  Check out parts one and two if you’re not up to speed.

If you’ve been keeping up with this series, you finished Part II with a good amount of technical knowledge, understanding how to publish your MP3 so that it displays all of your podcast’s essential information.  You’re also good to go with the hardware, having waited patiently for your luscious computer microphone to arrive.  You’ve got the right programs, the right hardware, and you’re ready to press “record” and…

Uh.

What now?

You actually need to record something now.  In this part of the series, we’ll finally tackle the meat and potatoes of publishing a popular podcast:  your content.

Speak Up!  How’s Your Voice?

We all have that first moment when we listen to our recorded voices – the reaction is commonly some variation of “Do I really sound like that?”

Yeah, you kinda do.  We’re used to listening to ourselves through our own heads – with bones and flesh in the way of sound waves – and we’re actually hearing something different than what everyone else is getting.

Hearing your recorded voice can be a little unnerving – you thought you were Barry White but you’re actually Gilbert Gottfried.  After all of this work, you realize that the hardware in your throat isn’t as finely tuned as you thought it was.

Don’t worry.  With practice, you can work on your vocal instrument.  Comb YouTube for some vocal exercises and try recording yourself with before and afters.  You’ll want to concentrate on a few vocal principles:

• Try speaking from your chest, not your mouth.  You access more powerful muscles when you concentrate on speaking “from” a lower area of your body.
• Project your voice confidently.  An old college acquaintance who majored in theater once told me that a good way to do this is to concentrate on pushing the sound through your teeth.  Don’t just speak loudly enough so you can hear it – speak like you have an audience in front of you but no microphone.

Most of all, don’t procrastinate your podcasts just because you’re afraid how people might judge your voice.

Producing Your Content

Now that we’ve covered a lot of the way you say your words, how about the words themselves?

Your content will obviously depend on your type of blog.  Some podcasts like to cover current events like politics or technology news in weekly or even daily shows like the ones you hear on the radio, and other podcasts are geared more towards producing longer-lasting content that sounds more like an audio tape.  You’ll have to look at your blog and make your own decisions when it comes to the type that suits you the best.  Here are a few advantages and disadvantages to each podcast type:

Current events/news, radio-like podcasts

Positives:

• A podcast produced on a regular basis gives people an incentive to check out your blog – they might want to hear your take on the latest developments
• The constant re-freshening of podcast topics will keep visitors coming back, downloading, and putting your podcasts on their iPods

Negatives:

• The podcast quickly becomes yesterday’s story.  Who reads yesterday’s newspaper?
• Content that loses freshness won’t draw as much “residual” traffic

Article-like “Essay” podcasts

Positives:

• A podcast that’s geared around a particular topic like “How to Build a Shed” will generally have as much value today as it did yesterday
• If a particular podcast becomes popular, many people will share the link, building traffic over the long term

Negatives:

• It can be difficult to promote these podcasts if people don’t view you as credible yet
• Content usually takes some more up-front investment and research

Again, it’s up to you to decide what’s best.  You could try one style or the other, or you can try one style mixed in with the other.

Tips and Tricks to Make a Podcast Interesting

If you do some preparing, get some notes ready, and still don’t think your podcast is interesting enough, there are a few ways you can add some value to them.

• Guest interviews.  Try a program like Skype to record phone interviews or bring in your guest.  You don’t have to land a huge name, simply try to find someone who might be able to offer something to your listeners.
• Incorporate music.  As long as you can avoid using music illegally (always an issue with music), try to include it as much as possible.
• Include running gags.  Take some cues from what works on radio:  include some funny running gags and noises.  For example, every time you mention someone’s name, you could include a funny audio clip of them flubbing a line.
• Introduce characters.  If you can get a friend to sometimes join you and break up your monologue, try it out.
• Try a “how-to.”  How-to’s can provide a lot of value to people, and sometimes people can hear more from your speaking voice than they can from an article.

Don’t be afraid to get creative.  As you publish more podcasts, you’ll probably grow more comfortable with your style, but make sure that you keep experimenting and trying to find new ways to be entertaining and provide value to your listeners.

Finally: Publish That Thing!

With a fresh podcast recorded, the rest of your work is actually pretty easy.  If you have a blog feed, you’ll simply need to include a link to your .mp3 file (after you publish it to your site) in your blog post and the feed should take care of the rest.  I was pleasantly surprised to see that my blog’s feed produced a fancy little set of buttons:

Make sure that you archive your podcasts on one page of your blog so that loyal listeners can find more material.

So you wanna make a podcast?  You’ve got no excuses to procrastinate now!

We Recommend

• So You Still Haven’t Made a Podcast?
• So You Still Haven’t Made a Podcast? Part II
• How to Repurpose Your Content Online