Preparing for the WebKanix podcast
Wow - it feels like I’ve spent months researching and planning the WebKanix podcast. Having thought the equipment and technical side might be tricky, it’s actually turned out to be quite simple.
The WebKanix Podcast will be a weekly podcast on building and maintaining an effective website for a small business. I plan to include a few news items, some questions or comments, maybe an interview and the main portion - the weekly tutorial on building a website from scratch. I won’t be going into too much technical detail, but will give an introduction to the topic, a short tutorial, extended details and finally resources to continue learning.
The first podcast episode will be released in the next few weeks and focus on domains.
In researching I’ve lost count of the number of podcasts I’ve been listening to, and learnt a few things along the way.
- Weekly is the right schedule. Not many podcasts are released monthly or fortnightly. When dealing with information on building or implementing a project monthly is too long between episodes. There are more doing 2 or more podcasts a week, and I’d say this is too often. It’s good to have a life outside of work, and I know I don’t have two or three opportunities a week to listen to the same podcast.
- Twenty to thirty minutes is a good length. I’ve listened to a few podcasts that are 5 or 6 minutes long and after the introduction and closing notes, there’s not much time for content. Twenty to thirty minutes isn’t mind numbing, but gets in enough decent information to take away and use.
- Maintain the same style. I’ve been listening to a podcast and gone back and downloaded a few previous episodes. The first few had no intro at all, the ones in the middle had a long loop sequence with a voiceover by the host, and the most recent a different loop and voiceover. The numbering convention even changed. Getting a decent loop and voiceover is an upfront expense, but many sound good without any at all. Refreshing the sound can be a good idea, but don’t do it more than once in a year, and give a heads up in podcasts which preceed the new sound.
- Be consistent with ID3 tags. These are the tags on MP3’s that give details such as the artist, album, year and comments. One podcast I’ve been listening to for a while comes up as four different artists on my mobile. It’s not really frustrating, but every time I have to go down into an artist and back up until I find the latest one. Even if there’s a guest or co-host, decide on a podcast name or put the co-host under the comments.
- Sound quality is also important. I found a podcast about voice and presentation techniques which looked great from the description, but the audio was so loud and distorted it didn’t sound much better than a shouting caller on a talk radio phone in. I recorded the same sentance again and again until it sounded comparable to other well established podcasts - the simplest tweaks on a mixer desk or software can make a difference.
I don’t want this to be a negative post, or think that I won’t make mistakes on my podcast, but with literally thousands and thousands of podcasts being published these small points can really make a difference in retaining listeners.
Now the Skype issues are solved I’ve set up a SkypeIn number with Skype Voicemail. If you have a question or something that should be covered before the site launches, you can call in now.
