Imagine sitting down for a one-to-one call with a client, and spending the first 5 minutes adjusting your webcam, making sure everything looked right, and chatting to someone else in the room. If you don’t edit your podcast, that’s what your listeners will expect – a disorganised session where the facilitator wasn’t prepared and kept getting distra…

Find the “Recording” tab of your Zoom settings screen, tick the box labelled “Record a separate audio file of each participant”. You’ll still get single video and audio files like you did before, but you’ll also get a separate audio file for each person on the call. This is essential for a podcast editor, because it means they can cut out noises fr…

We all need a quick throat-clear from time to time. Or you’ve just got over a cold. Whatever it is, a quick cough is no biggie. But we as podcast listeners don’t need to hear it. And if you do it partway through a sentence, a podcast editor has a harder time removing it. So just take a moment, clear your throat, then start the sentence again. You w…

If there’s something you’d really like your listener to do, don’t leave it ‘til the very end. I see it every month when I create reports for clients: the end-of-episode drop-off, where listeners reach the point where they’ve wrung all the value they can out of an episode, and are ready to hop to the next one. Not everyone does it, but as your audie…

Whether you’re a podcast host or a podcast guest, you’re a professional. When we hear your phone announce a new text or your laptop herald a new Slack message, you stop being a professional and you become someone who’s been disturbed while they were busy doing other things. While you’re recording a podcast, that’s the only thing you’re doing. Put y…

Following a checklist before you hit record will really help you counter a lot of common problems that can affect recordings. When you’re new to podcasting, you’ve yet to build up the muscle memory and the mild complacency that can kick in. But as you get more comfortable behind the mic and with the process in general, it becomes easy to forget cer…

Even the most fluid and fluent speakers can get a tad lost halfway through a sentence. The aim of any good podcast editor is to make everyone sound their smartest. So the easiest way to do that is to stop, take a breath, and go back to the last full-stop in your mind. A skilled audio editor can often quite deftly cut together a few takes if there w…

There’s a nasty sound, somewhere between a tut and a swallow, that’s really prevalent in podcasting. We almost all do it a little, but some do it a lot, and it can be pretty distracting. That sloppy, wet, lip-smacking sound (it’s gross to describe and unpleasant to hear) is often caused by too much saliva in your mouth while you’re speaking, which …

We don’t listen to podcasts in groups. OK, occasionally there’s a car journey, but you know what I mean! When you refer to your listener as “everybody” or “guys”, you create distance between them and you. You put up a barrier that the listener isn’t allowed to cross, and you reduce them to one of any given number of faceless listeners. I’m still su…

A podcast always means a series of episodes, just like a blog is always a collection of posts, not a single post. 🤯 I know it sounds pedantic, but we make everyone’s lives easier when we start using the same (correct) terminology. Most of the time it doesn’t matter all that much, as people know what you’re talking about, but the medium can be confu…

We have all sorts of verbal ways to communicate that we’re a little unsure of the point we’ve made or the objection we’ve raised. We can sometimes use phrases like “Does that make sense?” to soften the blow or to hedge our bets… maybe it’s a little bit like the old stereotype of the “Australian” upward inflection? I think we can also find ourselves…

If you’re not 100% confident in your question, it can be tempting to cary on speaking after the question mark. You know the thing: “Can you tell me a bit about how you got started? What was, um, what was it about the work you were doing? Why, so yeah, why did you want to pursue that line of work? Tell me, tell me about that. How did you…? Yep.” If …

Your listener doesn’t care if your hair gets messed up, and the video version is just there to promote the real (audio) podcast. If you’re recording podcasts remotely (using Zoom, Riverside, SquadCast, or any other online tool), every person speaking on the call needs headphones. No exceptions. If person A isn’t wearing headphones, every time perso…

It doesn’t matter how much money you’ve spent on your mic, or whether Steven Bartlett uses it or not. Where you put your mic matters more. Always try and keep your mic about a fist’s distance from your mouth. You’re unlikely to be using the sort of mic with a giant fluffy attachment like the ones they have on the F1. If you’re using a condenser mic…

If you're bringing a guest on, don't assume you know how to pronounce their name. A name might read as "Anne" but be pronounced "Anna". You might be pretty sure where you put the emPHASis on which sylLAble, but you could be wrong. Some people will tell you when you're getting it wrong. Most are too polite, especially if it's only a little bit off. …