How to make a *good Quality* Podcast?

The consensus is out and it is most likely the case you have heard "everyone and their mother is starting a podcast" at least once or twice. Everyone is getting into podcasting, all the cool kids are doing it. And the fact of the matter is.. yes, everyone is starting a podcast, because this is the new way in the 21st century we are choosing to communicate with one another. Our sources of information and entertainment no longer have to come from a few controlled and curated forms of traditional media. You can find a podcast for anything you relate to with the smallest of niche and you can also create a podcast for just about any audience. Whether you're an influencer who has a voice to speak on certain topics, a business that wants a new and better way to connect with their core customers, or even a mom of four kids living in Nebraska who wants to teach people a better way of grocery shopping. If you have the ability to talk about it because you have the knowledge, then you will find an audience for your podcast.

Now, with over 4.3 million podcasts that are live according to (PodcastIndex.org). How do you stand out? Anyone can make a podcast and talk about their topic. All it really takes is a phone nowadays. And that may work for some people if what you're talking about has major value for people who only need the information to keep coming back to your podcast. For everyone else however, you can have the best information but if the production quality of your podcast is sub-par, it will not want to make people to continuously tune in. And that is the ultimate goal, to expand the audience and keep them tuned in from start to finish. Which is even a harder task than creating a podcast.. keeping your audience engaged the entire time.

There are three main aspects to a good quality podcast. Visuals, Audio, and Content. The content we will go over in a future blog because that deserves its own entire break down. We will assume just for this blog that you already have the content of your podcast figured out and know what you want to talk about.

First off, the visual quality of your video is important, espescially if the finished product will be living on; YouTube, Instagram, Linkedin, and your Website. If you have a polished website and you have a low quality visual slapped on a landing page then it can be off putting to your audience and make them click away. So how do you get better quality video? First is cameras. I mentioned that your average iPhone can work for a start but lets say you want to upgrade quality and have 3 different angles. This is where research comes in and you have to learn new skills. For our podcasts in particular we use three Sony a6300 cameras with two 56mm 1.4f Sigma lenses for close-ups and a 16mm 1.2f Sigma lens for a wide angle. Again.. research. It takes about an hour or two of time to learn about the basics of cameras and how to find some that may be right for you. Even if you start with just one wide angle camera. Most people are on a budget so finding some inexpensive but high quality point-and-shoot cameras from Sony or Canon is a good way to start. Buying used is also a very good way to go. I recommend though buying cameras all of a similar model to keep consistency in your footage. Different cameras all have different picture qualities.

After you have your cameras and picture quality in check, composition (camera angle) is also majorily important. You can have great quality footage but if your subject is being cropped out the picture then it wont matter much. It's like when you take a picture of your best friend and it comes out emmaculate but when they take of a picture of you, you're halfway off the screen or they zoomed way to far out.

The three common angles you will see is a close-up of each subject, then a wide angle to fit them both in frame. If you learn about f-stops on camera lenses, you can figure out if you also want to create a shallow depth of field so your background is slightly blurry and the subject is in focus or having background and subject all in focus. Every minor detail can add or dimish your podcast visual quality, along with the setting of the podcast. Is it messy in the background? For some, that may be a style you are going for. If you're in a corporate setting, and you have packing boxes in the background or a trashcan is showing or the lighting is bleak, then again, it may be off putting for your viewers. Obviously for audio only podcasts, this factor doesn't matter as much, unless you have some major background noise like a blender going off.

Which leads us into Audio. Audio is not as intuitive as video can be for some. It doesn't take much to set up a good quality camera on a tripod and hit record and letting it do the heavy lifting for you. Audio however is a whole other aspect that requires a lot of trial and error to learn. If you are using an external microphone you picked up off of Amazon for $40 because you thought it would be a better option than the $20 microphone, then I'm sorry to say that, like a good camera, that microphone will not do the heavy lifting for you. Things you need to figure out with audio are, but not limited to; Syncing for any audio lag, noise, distortion, echo in the room, if you're using a Lav mic, is it rubbing against someones shirt causing audio spikes? Are you able to monitor the audio? So on and so forworth. Some mics you can get that plug directly into a camera, which are great, unless you are in a room that will have echo, then its not so great. The most popular mics for podcasting are the Shure SM7B's. You will see just about every podcast on YouTube use these microphones. We use them for KandyHouse, they are the absolute best for a reason, they are so good, they were even used to record 'Thriller', I'm not entirely sure if thats true or not but thats what I heard. Regardless, they are pretty much standard for the podcasting world. If you don't want to drop the money for those, there are plenty of solid options on the market, including the little brother to the SM7B's which are the Shure MV7X's which are less in price, from the same company, and still get the jobs done.

Needless to say, video and audio go hand in hand and need to match in terms of quality. Good video with bad audio is hard to listen to. Good audio and bad video is hard to watch. And again, these things take much research to learn about in depth and even more trial and error. We started 'Talk About It' in Kaits apartment with a small camera we borrowed from her roommate, with two little dogs tapping their feet on the wood floor and one source of light.. that was also borrowed. After each episode you see where you can improve and learn about the mistakes and troubleshooting issues that you faced. From that point it has lead us to using the three cameras that we mentioned on tripods, with lights, audio and video mixers, in a beautiful studio that is representive of our content and we continue to grow and learn.

..I've read this back and realize I've made this out to be a very daunting process. I'm sorry.. at first it can be. The answer to the question 'how to make a good quality podcast?' truthfully is trial and error over time. It is very rare for your first episode to be good right out the gate, though very possible, it won't be the case for most. The point though is to consistently create the podcast to continue to learn where you can improve. That is the only way to grow. But! Hopefully you can begin to evaluate where your visual and audio quality stand and see what you can do to improve. The best thing to do is look at someone’s quality you admire and see if you can emulate what they got going on. You can check out our latest podcasts on YouTube and see what we are doing to keep a high quality product. I promise I wont get mad at your for stealing. ;)