Are you considering audio podcasting? Here’s a quick list of all the things you need to think about and do.
Planning
- What is the goal of your podcast? Why do you want to do one anyway?
- Who is your intended audience?
- Does your audience have broadband access?
- How technically savvy is your audience?
- What are your competitors doing?
- Do you have the resources to produce your own podcast or do you need help?
- How long will your podcast be?
- How often will you produce your podcast?
- Will you commit yourself to a regular schedule or do a limited series instead?
- Have you researched and chosen a name and tagline? Is it easily repeatable by word of mouth?
- Have you registered a domain name for your podcast?
Publishing
- Will you integrate the podcast into your existing Web presence or build something new?
- Have you looked at WordPress and all its various podcasting plugins?
- Do you have album art and a visual identity for your podcast?
- Have you selected theme music as your auditory signature or brand?
- Do you want listeners to be able to subscribe via iTunes with one click?
- Have you provided a Flash or HTML5 player, RSS feed and download capability so your audience can listen now, subscribe or listen later?
- Will you allow listener comments? Audio and/or text?
- Will you set up a comment line so listeners can phone in?
Content
- What kind of tone do you want to set?
- Do you have any existing content that can be repackaged?
- Will you record a standard into and outro with music?
- Will you write show notes for each podcast – for the sake of your listeners and to boost search-engine rankings?
- Will you produce a transcript for each episode?
- Will your podcast sound like a radio show, a tutorial, interviews, a conversation or something else?
- Will you be recording conference presentations or seminars?
- Who is the host?
- How long will the show be?
Production
- Where will your audio be recorded? Studio? On location?
- Do you need to record over the phone or Skype?
- Have you selected software to let you record Skype calls?
- Will you script any of your content in advance?
- How much editing do you expect to do? Have you selected software for this task?
- Do you need professional voiceover talent for your intro/outro?
- Have you sourced royalty-free podsafe stingers and music for your musical signature?
- Have you evened out the volume of speech and music in your file?
- How will you generate your feed? Have you looked at Feedburner?
- Have you added proper ID3 tags so that listeners can identify your show?
- Where will your MP3 files be hosted?
- Where will you store backup copies of your files?
On recording day
- Do you have your notes?
- Have you confirmed your guest, if you have one?
- Do you have some room-temperature water to keep your throat hydrated?
- Have you shut down non-essential gadgets that make noise (phone, computer fans, etc.)?
- If you are in a remote location, do you have a portable recorder, batteries, microphone, etc.?
- Is your microphone hooked up properly? Have you done a test recording? Checked your input levels?
- Do you need a pop filter?
- Are you using headphones to monitor your recording?
- If you’re recording a Skype call, is your audio-capture software ready?
- Have you remembered to record roomtone to enable noise removal later?
- Have you backed up your uncompressed files and then your final mix?
Promotion and measurement
- How will you promote your podcast using traditional and social media?
- How will you track download statistics?
- How will you measure the success of your podcast?
Updated October 9, 2012
