Have the word processor check your grammar. Spelling isn’t important here, as long as you can read your own typing. Grammar, however, is important, depending on what you hope to accomplish. A Southern accent is fine, poor grammar is usually not.
Load your text up into the podcast teleprompter, and start practicing. An unrecorded practice session is not necessary. You aren’t using expensive tape or anything like that, so practicing is free.
Practice as much as it takes, but for the sake of time, only record your first five minutes of the podcast and listen to it to see how it sounds, if you are on your time schedule, and if you are easy to understand. Try to have someone else listen to it as well to ensure that they can understand you clearly.
If you are producing your podcast on your computer, you are really kind of tied down as to where you record, unless you have a laptop. If you have a laptop, find the quietest possible place, where there won’t be any interruptions or background noise. If you are tied to a desktop, turn off the ceiling fan, and the air conditioner, as these only serve to create unwanted background noise. Put a sign on your door that says ‘recording in session’ and close the door. Make sure that you won’t be interrupted.
On your computer, close your email, instant messengers, and any other running software that may make noise. Avoid typing while recording, as the click of the keys or mouse will be picked up in most cases. If you must do something with your hands while recording, get one of those tension squeeze balls that don’t make any noise.
Avoid recording in an empty room. Carpeting and furniture will absorb sound, and reduce echoes, which can ruin a recording. When you are practicing, you should test out different distances between the microphone and your mouth. A podcast where the listener can hear you heavily breathing is not only unacceptable; it will be creepy to many. Make sure that the microphone is not picking up a chest rattle or breathing noises.
If you must cough, clear your throat, or get a drink of water during your recording, you should be able to pause it if you are using software, as opposed to phoning in your podcast. Use this feature as often as you please; just make sure that you edit out any sounds that this causes and that the podcast sounds ‘smooth.’
Remember that speed of speech is important. Don’t talk too fast or too slow. Again, practice this so that you can get the speed of speech just right for your podcast.
Don’t settle! Don’t settle for less than a high quality recording, especially if you are podcasting for business. Just as you would not settle for a website that didn’t work in all browsers, or that had broken or less than quality graphics, you should not settle for a podcast that is less than what you want it to be, or less than what you listeners would expect.
Regardless of how it is delivered, content is, was, and always will be king. Never forget that. If you are just babbling about something that doesn’t make sense, or has no point, you probably will not be very successful with podcasting. Have a point – a goal.
Be interesting not just in your words, but in the way that you say them, and in how you express yourself. Nobody wants to listen to a podcast of someone who is obviously reading a script. It’s boring.
Your words should have emotion and feeling in them. Get excited. Laugh. Be personable. Be someone that YOU would want to listen to on a regular basis. At the same time, be natural.
If you have a Southern accent, don’t try to mask it and pronounce words as you never would in your normal everyday speech. People love accents that are different from their own, as long as they can understand what is being said. Most find it pleasant to listen to.
If you use slang, use slang that your audience will understand the meaning of – or be prepared to explain it. Often, if the audience won’t understand the slang without an explanation, it is best to avoid it altogether.
Above all, always keep your overall goal in mind, as well as your audience. While this is your platform, and you can say anything that you want to say, you don’t want to offend or alienate anyone that may be your potential long time listener or customer. Don’t say anything that is going to come back to haunt you.
At the same time, don’t be afraid to be controversial. Think of Rush Limbaugh. Some loved him, some hated him, but all tuned into his show regularly – to disagree with him or to see what idiotic thing he would say next if nothing else. He was very animated and passionate in his speech and about his topics, and this is what you want to strive for – even if there are those that will disagree with you.
Use your normal voice. This is a mistake that many first time podcasters make. You don’t have to sound like the radio announcers or show hosts. Use your voice, and speak as naturally as possible.
You don’t have to shout. People in Japan will be able to hear you just fine when they listen to your podcast. In fact, depending on the sensitivity of your microphone, you may find that you need to work at speaking softer than usual.
Hopefully your recording software will allow you to set the options where the same volume on the recording is maintained whether the actual volume of your speech changes or not during the recording. Note that not all recording software has this feature, and it can be expensive. So, if shouting or getting really loud when you get excited is not a problem for you, don’t worry about it.
Purchase a good pop screen. These are also often called pop filters, and they go in front of the microphone. This reduces popping sounds that often occur when we say words that contain letters such as P, B, or F. You can get a pop filter from Radio Shack.
Watch the decibel mark on your recording software. You don’t want it to go in the red. The ideal decibel mark on the meter is 0. On your recorder settings, set it to record at CD quality, which is usually about 44.1 kHz. If you have a higher quality available than that, use it.
If you mess up in your speech while recording your podcast, don’t sweat it. Just keep going. This can be edited out and replaced when you get to the editing phase. Pretty much everything can be corrected with editing.
Now, once you finish, if you feel like the entire thing will need to be edited, go ahead and take the time to redo it if possible. It will be faster. If you are interviewing someone else, you don’t have to re-interview them. You can re-record your questions, and insert them into the recording before the answers.
Again, relax. Breath normally, speak normally, and just be yourself. There is absolutely no point in being nervous when you are recording your pod cast. It is just a recording, not a public live broadcast. Until you are ready for the rest of the world to hear it, nobody else, other than you and the people that you invite to listen, is going to hear it. It can be edited. It can be completely redone if necessary. Nothing is set in stone at this point.
While you just recorded the first five minutes of your podcast initially, for testing purposes, it is a good idea to run through – recorded or unrecorded – the first few podcasts for practice. This will get your relaxed, and it will even reduce stumbling over the words a bit, because after you’ve written it, and practiced it, you will be better able to know what is coming next.
Are you finished? Great. Save the file, and make two copies. Put one on your desktop to work with, and another copy in your documents file, in case you make irreparable mistakes while editing.
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