Not Soup

Now, I am a podcaster myself. And I’m extremely opinionated, so instantly you could look at this as advice from a podcaster to a podcaster, but I’m really not viewing it this way. I don’t even follow all these tips myself, (I’m working on it) so I’m looking at it solely from my habits as a listener. But I am a podcaster, so I apply as many grains of salt as you feel appropriate. And I apologize for not identifying any examples, but I don’t wish to accidentally upset anyone by doing so.

1. Vary Sounds and Chunk Your Podcast

I have a touch of ADD. It’s very hard for me to focus on one task. That’s one reason I love podcasts, because I can listen while working on another task, and by splitting my attention two ways I can focus better on both.

But at the same time I need your sound to change at times so it doesn’t feel monotonous. Most podcasts I can only listen to for about 40 minutes MAX and by that point I’m struggling. Two ways to do this are to vary the sounds or chunk your podcast.

Varying the sound is fairly obvious; have different sounds in your podcast. I’m much more forgiving of a podcast that has multiple people or plays music than I am of a solo podcaster. (Oddly enough, most of the podcasts I listen to have a solo host.) But these have their own problems, like I don’t like too much music in podcasts I’m not listening to for the music and multiple voices can get confusing if it’s not easy to differentiate and everyone talks over each other.

If you can’t vary sounds, or simply don’t want to, the other thing I would suggest is chunking your podcast. Chop it up into more digestible pieces. My preferred method to do this is to cut into multiple podcasts, especially if they’re unrelated topics. If you want to talk about a CD, a DVD, and a novel, why do it in one hour long episode instead of three 20 minute episodes? This allows me to more easily skip something I have no interest in. Also I can intercut other podcasts so I can vary my sounds to my liking. (John’s Business side: If you have advertisers, triple the episodes gives three times as many ad impressions as one episode three times as long). On the other hand, don’t cut up 1 idea. I don’t want part 1, 2 and 3 of an interview on one topic. But you could do interview part 1 talking about subject A, part 2 talking about subject B etc.

But say you don’t want to do multiple episodes, there are still ways to chunk the podcast. Promos being my favorite. If I’m looking for something new to listen to, I pay attention if not, it’s aural excelsior. maybe a short music clip. Anything that you can intersperse to give me a chance to mentally rest for a second. It can also be used to build tension (damn you, JC Hutchins) or tell me that there’s going to be a change in topic. I would recommend staying away from doing a “commercial break” per se, because that reeks of old media, but it wouldn’t hurt to put in some kind of trigger that tells me to turn my ears back on, here comes more juicy content.

I heard one podcaster saying “if you want it shorter, just don’t listen to the whole thing, same as a radio show.” Please don’t use this mindset. If I care enough to listen to you at all, I want to listen to the whole thing, and on my own terms. Chunking lets me do that.

2. Identify Yourself and Your Topic

This on one level ties to the first one but also needs to stand by itself.

When you chunk your podcast (which you’re all going to do now that you’ve read my wonderful advice right? ) remember to reidentify your podcast, yourself, and your topic. The biggest offender I have here is reviews.  So often people will introduce what they’re reviewing and then through out the review refer to it as “this.”

“This was a great book..” “One of my favorite things about this…” “You should definitely check this out.”

A few podcasts I’ve heard have some kind of sound problem when they identify the object. Or what if something happened and I had to pause mid review and come back to it later. Sure I could rewind, but on some MP3 players (like both of mine. Want to buy me an iPod?) and some software rewinding and then fastforwarding back to a specific spot is such a pain in the ass. And if there was some kind of audio glitch (one speaker stepped on the other one, or just didn’t say it clear enough) it wouldn’t help anyways.

So take a moment to reidentify what you’re talking about, in case something interests me about it part way through.

I have more thoughts and some different perspectives, but I’m almost at 1000 words now, and if anything this has been about portioning your info and I think that’s a tasty chunk for now. And to sum up these 2 points I think it comes down to letting me listen on my terms and in the simplest fashion available. In other words, help your podcast do what podcasting does best.