Use a good player that fully supports podcasts. The last thing you want is a player that supposedly supports podcasts but then makes you do all the leg work (thus eliminating some of the major advantages of podcasts). A podcast, by definition has a feed, and the player should support subscribing to that feed in some fashion, and have some mechanisms to automatically download the episodes for you and present them to you in some fashion. It should also provide some mechanisms to present which shows have been listed to and delete or hide them. If you are on an Android phone, I highly recommend DoggCatcher (I know, weird name, but it is great).
The beauty of podcasts is the way you can set your player/device to fetch them automatically and delete them when you are done. It’s hard to believe we had to go to the websites individually to manually download this stuff!
Having too many podcasts can be frustrating, you can never keep up. Too few can can be annoying because there will be times when you would like to listen something and simply have no episodes of anything.
Podcasts that advertise themselves as such, but then fail to provide an RSS feed annoy me to no end. Individual mp3 episodes (in my mind) are not a podcast! I can’t tell you how many times I encounter sites (made by people who should know better), who make it nearly impossible to find the podcast rss link.
Podcasts that only feature an Itunes subscribe link are annoying too! Hello, not everyone has an apple device and not everyone uses itunes…
“Is there any chance I’ll listen to an episode of this in the next month?” may be a good criteria to determine whether to subscribe.
There are basically two types of podcasts, the ones you want to listen to every single minute of, and other ones that you let run and tune in and out on (or perhaps look at the title a just skip through them).
A good balance between “an episode every day or week” and “an episode or two this year, perhaps” shows is good. Too many of the former and you will be overloaded and never able to keep up. Too few, and you’ll find yourself wanting to listen to something and not have anything.
A good variety between emphasis on episodes among your podcast list is good (ie. both long and short, interviews and lectures, serious and funny, etc.)
Are you a podcaster and you want to improve your podcast? General tips that should work out to your advantages in most cases:
Publish more than once a month but less than twice a week, and then make your shows longer if you need to.
Try to make your shows an hour or less if you can.
On your website, make the RSS feed clearly visible!
Avoid annoying ranting, if you are just one person, at least interview someone once in a while!
Balance continuity and discontinuity between shows. No thread or too much of a thread between shows can become a problem.
Each episode, while ideally sharing common themes and continuing various memes, should to some degree intelligible without listening to the previous show or all the shows up to date.
If you make jokes and your show isn’t explicitly about humor, more likely than not your jokes will sound corny.
Consider and evaluate the tone you use and the way you handle guests or people you talk about! An overly polemic or negative tone actually gets quite annoying when you listen to it over and over again.
Try to get the best audio quality you can!
Think carefully about the theme music, don’t make it too long.
Episode show notes can be a real asset if they are done well.
Constantly talking about money (unless of course you are NPR Planet Money ) gets old very quickly (and saying how you “hate doing this” or “we never do this” doesn’t make it more excusable). Hearing small one-man podcasts repeatedly talk about money gets really irritating. If you’re a big organization that actually has an infrastructure and a following outside of your podcast, this is more excusable, though depending on context it can still be annoying. I think I must have dropped at least 4-5 podcasts because the constant jabbering about money or complaining about the lack of it just got so annoying and eliminated or reduced the usefuless of the podcast. If you talk about money do it minimally, giving listeners the information they need in order to donate (without repeating it too often). While one might pay for audio content, it is highly unlikely anyone wants to pay for audio content of you asking people to pay you for audio content. If you do ask for money, I suggest taking one of the following approaches:
Put it on your website, but leave it out of the podcast.
Make it a predictable, scripted, tasteful presentation of about 15-20 seconds a consistent place in the beginning or end of your show (if I get the sense that any time, I could get an extemperaneous speech lasting between 1 minute and 20, I will drop your show ASAP).
Devote one show to talking about money and then drop the topic and do not bring it up in any other show until at least a year or two has passed.
) gets old very quickly (and saying how you “hate doing this” or “we never do this” doesn’t make it more excusable). Hearing small one-man podcasts repeatedly talk about money gets really irritating. If you’re a big organization that actually has an infrastructure and a following outside of your podcast, this is more excusable, though depending on context it can still be annoying. I think I must have dropped at least 4-5 podcasts because the constant jabbering about money or complaining about the lack of it just got so annoying and eliminated or reduced the usefuless of the podcast. If you talk about money do it minimally, giving listeners the information they need in order to donate (without repeating it too often). While one might pay for audio content, it is highly unlikely anyone wants to pay for audio content of you asking people to pay you for audio content. If you do ask for money, I suggest taking one of the following approaches:
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