• From: Hamilton, Ontario
  • Registered: 2013-05-14
  • Posts: 291
  • User Karma: 84

Topic: Going to be producing a podcast. Any tips?

Hey guys,

So I'm going to be acting as producer on an upcoming podcast in 2016. As you probably know, I do audio production work all the time. I've never done a podcast, however.

It's a storytelling podcast, akin to the NoSleep Podcast (if you're familiar) or Welcome to Night Vale. The show will largely be recorded piecemeal in separate locations and my job will be to edit it all together with a host providing the throughline for each episode.

Does anyone have any tips or gotchas or anything like that when it comes to releasing a podcast you think might be useful? I'm going to be responsible for making sure it's produced on time every week.

Thanks!

Thumbs up +1 Thumbs down

  • From: Indiana, USA
  • Registered: 2009-11-23
  • Posts: 2,747
  • User Karma: 516

Re: Going to be producing a podcast. Any tips?

A straightforward name will draw listeners searching iTunes. A website with a blog entry for each episode will allow you a place to put show notes and draw listeners searching Google; do not change the permalinks ever.

Don't use cutesy episode titles; they get wearisome to think up and are annoyingly opaque to people trying to decide whether or not to listen to an episode. Do have some video and photos of the podcasters on the site so listeners can put a picture to each voice, and it offers a treat to those who visit the site.

Try to include a lady person and/or person of color and/or non-American at least sometimes. Get a talented person to make a cool cartoony logo and another to make a cool theme; keep the opening and closing themes super short and get to the point quickly (that is, don't start with a bunch of "how was your week, Evan?" chit chat).

Invite feedback on the blog. Keep your audio quality up and volumes eaqualized. Don't let speakers talk over each other very much. Don't murder or steal, or covet anyone's anything. If you separate the show into semi-regular segments, it will give you natural edit points and allow you to shift content meant for one show to another episode if necessary, as well as provide a point for ads to go, if you choose to go that route later.

Warning: I'm probably rewriting this post as you read it.

Zarban's House of Commentaries

Zarban's Website

Thumbs up +1 Thumbs down

  • From: Hamilton, Ontario
  • Registered: 2013-05-14
  • Posts: 291
  • User Karma: 84

Re: Going to be producing a podcast. Any tips?

Thanks Zarban! All very good points and ones I'll take into careful consideration.

I'll be creating the logo and the website that will compliment the podcast. The format will be heavily scripted and only feature the host, who will do an opener, in-between-story-dialogue, and the outro. We will eventually have interviews, so your points about who to include and not stepping over each other are great.

We will be leaving space for ads, since we'll be hosted on a podcast network that does advertising.

Appreciate the feedback smile

Last edited by Aural Stimulation (2015-11-24 14:50:43)

Thumbs up Thumbs down

  • From: State of Idaho
  • Registered: 2010-12-08
  • Posts: 2,367
  • User Karma: 289

Re: Going to be producing a podcast. Any tips?

*takes careful note*

God loves you!

Thumbs up Thumbs down

  • Boter
  • Boter
  • Administrator
  • Offline
  • From: Upstate NY
  • Registered: 2013-10-12
  • Posts: 1,029
  • User Karma: 269

Re: Going to be producing a podcast. Any tips?

The only thing I can think to add is true for most content creation - regularity. Set a schedule and stick to it so that listeners can expect, be ready for, and look forward to each episode. If you're currently churning out content at a rate of an episode every other week but know that the spring semester or something is going to eat into peoples' time, maybe go for once a month and build a backlog to work through it - much better than having to go on hiatus for some indefinite period of time and lose yuor repeat listeners.

Recent anecdote/example: C.A. Pinkham ran Kitchenette, a food blog on the Gawker network. They canned him in their recent restructuring; he was able to find a new place of employment within 48 hours largely in part to Behind Closed Ovens, a feature every Monday morning at 11AM Eastern that regularly drew hundreds of thousands of pageviews each week. The regular, high quality feature grew a fanbase that spoke in obscure memes (Pinkham's law, allergic to crispy and monogrammed thermoses to tell a few) and the two most common types of comments were, "That lead image has me hungry," and, "You give me something to look forward to every Monday morning."

Last edited by Boter (2015-11-25 00:30:58)

Boter, formerly of TF.N as Boter and DarthArjuna. I like making movies and playing games, in one order or another.

Boter's Website

Thumbs up Thumbs down

  • From: Seattle
  • Registered: 2013-03-17
  • Posts: 65
  • User Karma: 15

Re: Going to be producing a podcast. Any tips?

When I started i wanted to find a way to record fancy audio visualizations from the audio track to upload to youtube. After a few months of having that in the back of my mind I finally figured I could do it with FFMPEG, and I was right...So, I use ffmpeg to convert the audio stream into visualizations over a still image and then upload to youtube for random discovery. The response seems to be pretty good...hopefully this will be a long term route for people to find my podcast.

On the technical end, if you can do all the fancy stuff as you record (compression, deessing, noise gates, limiters, more compression, side chain compression) you can treat it like a radio show and save a TON of time not fussing with post.

Not sure what your set up is like, and I'm pretty sure the rest of the world does things differently than I do, but I use Linux with a real time kernel and Jack to work on the audio on the way to the disk, makes a professional quality recording without much if any post. I use Ardour as my DAW.

A facebook page with the option to promote seems like a cheap way to get people's attention. Haven't thrown any money at that yet.

As for a forum, vaniall forum is free, though a bit tricky to set up, but it plays nice with wordpress.

Convince your podcast crew to work conventions and build strong relationships with other podcasts, perhaps a podcast network. Oh, you said they are on a network, good job.

I have only made seven episodes of my main podcast, so I might not know shit about shit.  tongue

Last edited by Jdubs (2015-12-04 08:42:08)

--
One Time @ Bland Camp...

Thumbs up Thumbs down

  • From: Hamilton, Ontario
  • Registered: 2013-05-14
  • Posts: 291
  • User Karma: 84

Re: Going to be producing a podcast. Any tips?

All great suggestions guys.

A little more clarity on what I'm doing. I'm currently an executive producer with the horror audio YouTube channel Chilling Tales for Dark Nights. We produce high quality adaptations of horror stories (with author permission) and give them a cinematic sound.

We caught the attention of PodcastOne, one of the biggest podcasting networks around. They optioned a podcast version of what we're doing on YouTube, which will include a host who will introduce the stories, banter, interview guests etc.

My role will be as producer, as in post-producer. All the recording of the host will be handled by the host himself, who is a voiceover professional and runs his own home studio. He'll be sending me his completed audio every week and my job will be to edit the episode by placing his dialogue in front, in between and after stories. I'll also be handling some background music responsibilities and creating the website for the show.

So this isn't quite your typical podcast in the sense that it's all done in post, really. Nonetheless, I'm still curious about podcasting best practices and any tips I can glean, so I appreciate the feedback!

Thumbs up Thumbs down