Beginnings are as important as endings, to quote from Dune by Frank Herbert. If you’re like most of the podcasting world, your first three hours of content will not be as slick as your later work.
The worry about the tech tends to overshadow everything else. Do not let this stop you from publishing. You can only get better by doing and by doing so live.
No number of “practice” episodes will give you the momentum for change and improvement that live episodes do. On a thought experiment level this should be nonsense. In practice, it is true. So get out there and publish.
Say you’re aiming at a half hour show once a week. That’s six episodes in those first three hours. This points you at episode 7 and dreaded podfading period. See more on avoiding a podfade here. It is also, conveniently, the amount of free “air time” offered by Soundcloud. If you’ve chosen the free option to test the waters you should be ready to migrate to paid hosting at this stage. Choosing a host is discussed in here.
What should you aim to have accomplished in those first three hours of showtime?
- You be starting to get a feel for your on air voice.
- Your editing skills should be improving.
- You should have established some sort of workflow.
These three skills will be the bedrock of your podcasting adventures. Your voice will develop over time. It will age with you on an audio level but the “voice”, the vision of your show in its audio form will also develop and become deeper, more focused over time.
Your editing skills with improve the audio experience for your listeners over time. This will also take less time as you improve. This makes for a more enjoyable experience. Learning your editor and its nuances also takes time but you will improve this skill through usage.
Your established workflow is another time saving skill. You will learn what you really need to do and what is unnecessary. What used to take me five or six hours to start with, I can now do in 45 to 60 minutes. Improvement comes with repetition.
Takeaways
- The first three hours set the ground
- Learn your craft
- Decide if podcasting is for you.