The 10 commandments of the podcaster

To be continued if you want to avoid being as bad as me

It's been 5 years since I published my1st podcast on the Trendastic website. The idea had been brewing in my head for several months but I had a lot of trouble getting started, I just didn't know where to start.

However, I had been writing on my blogs for 7 years, so online speaking was quite familiar to me but - even if there are real similarities - a Podcast is nothing like a blog.

Looking back I think I was a mediocre podcaster but I learned a lot.

Here are the 10 tips to follow if you want to avoid the traps I fell into.

1 – Equipped, you will be

To write online you need an online platform (wordpress, blogger, medium, etc.) and a keyboard! Suffice it to say, the setup is basic and really within everyone’s reach.
On the other hand, recording a podcast requires many more elements:

An application for conversing online like Skype or Hangout, (unless you are recording a monologue)
An application for recording the conversation (I use Skype Call recorder for Macbut if you have a PC I recommend Pamela). Note that I have not found any good free application.
An application for editing the audio track because no, you will never record in “one shot” without any cut (Audacity is the reference in freeware).

That's for the software part, the hardware part remains just as essential:

Have a quality microphone (otherwise the iPhone headset is surprisingly a good start)
Record on a silent machine at the risk of not hearing your voice behind the fan

Then a stable and quality Internet connection. It's silly to say, but if you can survive a connection cut by writing a blog article, with a podcast it's not forgiving. Your connection must be impeccable!

Casually, finding these applications, getting to grips with them and being comfortable with the whole chain is a whole setup that takes time.

→ My advice: do a test episode to test all the tools and the entire process.

2 – Regular, you will be

This is certainly the point on which I have sinned the most.

Perhaps even more than an article, a podcast is expected, it is a meeting with the listener. And an appointment cannot be missed, it cannot be postponed and it must be respected. The frequency does not matter, whether weekly or monthly as long as it is respected...

Not being regular is a betrayal, I know I have often been, but the regularity of a podcast is certainly its greatest mark of seriousness. As a listener, I see my disappointment when one of the podcasts I follow is not published the week it was supposed to be released.

→ Set a frequency that you can handle based on your constraints and those of the team. If the subject allows it, record 2–3 episodes at once, it's easier to manage regularity.

3 – Prepared you will be

There too I have sometimes made mistakes.

Absolutely wanting to respect the 2nd commandment - namely regularity, I have sometimes continued to record a podcast when objectively I had not prepared it enough. At most I had 2–3 bullet points to develop. Which is not an illusion for very long. A podcast must be structured, not give the impression of being a succession of improvisations and “um…”

Preparing a podcast also means ensuring the availability of the different speakers and that is far from simple.

→ My advice: Always prepare a podcast. If not, postpone it or, if you can't, reduce the duration.

4 – Accompanied, you will be... Preferably

If you look closely, podcasts with just one person are rare. This is not due to chance and there are several reasons for this:

It is more pleasant to listen to a conversation than a monologue
It is much more dynamic in terms of rhythms
It brings a richness of points of view and experiences

The advantage of being alone is not being dependent on anyone to record, however when it comes to rhythm it is better to be particularly talented because otherwise there is a real risk of putting your audience to sleep.

5 – Edit your podcast you won’t forget

You might think that a podcast is just one long discussion, but that's not the case. To give rhythm, you will need: put an opening credits, cut into sections (sometimes with jingles) cut unnecessary extracts such as discussions before and after recording, delete cuts when one of the people had a connection problem, In short there is real editing work that should not be neglected which means that the time required to produce a podcast does not stop at the duration of the recording.

→ My advice: Don't hesitate to take breaks between sections, it makes editing easier.

6 – iTunes you will cajoler

iTunes is to podcasts what Google is to a website.

Namely the place that will give you the most visibility and where you must be present. However, unlike Google, your podcast will not land on Apple's platform by itself.

You will have to register it, put a nice thumbnail, respect the iTunes guidelines and hunt for the ratings which will determine the positioning of your podcast in the top.

There are of course other platforms like Soundcloud or Google Play, but not being on iTunes is like not being on Google. You are cutting yourself off from 95 to 99% of your potential audience.

→ My advice: make it easier to subscribe via iTunes on your distribution media (social networks, website) and encourage listeners to leave ratings/comments.

7 – Your notes, you will share

Notes are the raw material of the podcast. This is the summary of the themes that you will discuss, the links to the products that you will talk about or the blog articles to which you refer.

How often do I hear about an app, article or book while listening to a podcast while I'm driving. Knowing that notes are available at any time is a real plus and it's also a way to bring people to your site.

An excellent example to follow is that of the site ProBlogger which publishes an episode of its podcast every week. Particular care is taken with the notes of this one and the author Darren Rose repeats the link to the notes several times in the show. And the structure of this link is so simple that we “know” where the notes will be even if we haven’t listened to the podcast!

As an example, here is the link to the notes of his latest podcast (130 being the podcast number here): http://problogger.com/podcast/130/

→ My advice: Put as much information as possible in the iTunes feed (references, notes, etc.) because this makes the notes available directly in your listener's Podcast application.

8 – The distribution you won’t forget

You might think that work on your podcast stops the moment it is published. This would be the case if you have 100% of your audience subscribed to your podcast and have activated the settings to be notified of any new episodes.

This is not the case.

Just like a blog article, you will have to communicate about the release of this new episode, not the means at your disposal: Twitter, Facebook, dedicated article, etc. By relaunching several times in the days following the upload. Because unlike an online article, your episode often has a limited lifespan...Until the release of the next episode.

Not really along tailas we can observe on the sites, few people will come across your episode from 1 year ago wanting to listen to it (which frequently happens with an article thanks to Google).

Suffice it to say that your episode's days are numbered. Bet everything on it.

→ My advice: have a precise communication workflow to follow when each new episode is published. Gender:

D-Day:iTunes + blog post + Twitter + newsletter
D+1:Post the link to the podcast in comments on articles that deal with the same subject.
D+2:planned follow-ups on Twitter (morning and evening)
D+4:reminder of the release of the podcast on Twitter.

The last 2 commandments concern more particularly the feedback necessary to improve the podcast.

9 – The stats you will study

We don't know much about it, but there are several tools to measure the success of a podcast.

The one I've been using since the beginning is Blubbry, a very complete solution specializing in podcasts which notably manages the analytics for each episode.

We can know the number of downloads per day, by medium, where the listeners are, and how they arrive at your podcast.

This is very valuable because it helps you know:

If your podcast has an audience and how it is growing
Which episodes worked best
Which platform are your listeners using to listen to you (this can be useful to know how your ratings appear on which app.

Of course this won't help you know exactly what your audience likes and above all you will only have numbers.

This is why a more qualitative analysis of your audience is essential.

10 – Your community you will develop

To grow your audience, you will need to build a connection with your community. This can take several forms:

Exchange comments on the blog article that hosts your podcast
Ask questions before recording on Twitter and answer them in the survey
Offer to participate live in the recording
Meet people IRL to exchange face-to-face with listeners

Knowing your audience allows you to know which themes are most popular, if your podcast is of quality, what to keep or change in the formula...

As you will have understood, launching and maintaining a podcast is not limited to spending 1 hour talking to a microphone. It’s a much more restrictive and demanding discipline than blogging…and that’s probably why I failed. On a site you can adapt your pace to your other activities and your availability. With a podcast, you have to change the order of priority.

I don't know if I would record a podcast again, but I enjoyed the experience. Like for a dinner, it’s perhaps easier to just be invited…