Seven key ingredients of highly effective podcasting
Paul Kotheimer offers a warning to prospective podcasters: Before spending a lot of money on equipment, consider renting a studio for your first taping. “Many people think they’ll love doing a podcast, but find they have no interest after just one episode,” says Kotheimer, a digital media producer in the College of the Arts and Sciences at Ohio State.
In fact, the phenomenon has a name: “podfading.” According to Blubrry, 50 percent of all podcasts never get past episode seven. “The time commitment is huge,” says Vince Tornero, president of Wessler Media, creator of Pelotonia’s One Goal podcast and A Fair To Remember for the Ohio State Fair. To avoid becoming a podfader, Kotheimer and Tornero recommend you focus on these seven essential ingredients of successful podcasting.
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Hosting Site: A website to upload your podcast to. Examples are Soundcloud, Blubrry, Libsyn or PodBean.
Recording Space: Studio time costs $25 to $50 an hour, Kotheimer says. Or you can do it yourself. Find a quiet spot at home or the office, perhaps a closet, where the hum from the air conditioning and heating aren’t a problem. Even your car could work. “If you close all the windows, you sort of have a sound booth, although it’s not great for conversing with someone since you can’t face each other,” Kotheimer says.
Recording: The goal is to have the volume remain the same throughout the podcast so listeners won’t have to fiddle with controls. Easier said than done. “The most basic setup is a single mic that you plug into the USB port on your computer,” Kotheimer says. “If you have multiple mics, then you’ll need a mixer.” A good mixer? Kotheimer recommends RodeCaster but warns they’re not cheap: $599 for one with four microphone inputs. A good mic? “The Blue Yeti is a god mic to start with,” Tornero says. The Yeti mics range from $99.99 to $249.99. “If you have a long-term plan in mind, invest in a Shure SM7B [$399 and up].”
Editing: “If it’s boring and someone is babbling on and on, you may need to make more edits,” Tornero says. He and Kotheimer recommend Audacity, a free, entry-level editing platform. Adobe Audition is a step up.
Time: Tornero admits he’s a bit obsessive about editing. “It’s not uncommon for it to take a week, but a week and a half can happen. It all depends on how good you want it. The goal is to create an immersive audio experience.” While Tornero’s podcasts are more complicated and include a lot of interviews and editing, a simple one-on-one interview podcast episode can take as little as three or four hours to produce.
Directories: iTunes is the biggest player in podcasts, so make sure the service has your RSS feed (most podcasting hosts do this automatically). There are several other directories, including Spotify, Google Play Music and Stitcher, to name a few.
Paid Sponsors: Once you get 2,000 to 5,000 downloads per episode, “you can start to talk to local businesses and go from there,” Tornero says. There are websites that find sponsors for popular podcasts and take a percentage of the revenue. Anchor.fm and wondery.com are examples.
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