Create your first podcast

From deciding what to talk about and how to making your first recording

ONCE YOU’VE CHOSEN your hardware and apps, it’s time to record your first podcast. Ideally, you should know what it’s going to be about before you begin—and who your intended audience is—as well as whether your podcast is going to be a one–off or an entire series with a workable plan for each episode. In other words, think about the starting point, the journey and the destination.

It’s important for you and your guests to know what the key talking points are, then structure each podcast accordingly. That will vary according to what works best for you, and indeed this may evolve over time. Some people will want to have every discussion point written down, complete with links to further reading if needed, and notes for each contributor ahead of time. Others will work better without any notes or preparation at all, especially if you prefer a more spontaneous, freeflowing end result. We’d urge you to overprepare at first so that you have plenty to talk about in your episode, but remember, you can always pause and restart, or cut entire chunks out of your episode when editing—this is podcasting, not live radio, after all. If you stick to your prepared running order, you are less likely to test your listeners’ patience by rambling.

Above all, think about your audience and how you are going to engage them and keep them listening. Think about what they might want to discover about your chosen subject and the reasons might they want to keep coming back. And finally, listen to lots of podcasts yourself— the Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or Spotify apps have thousands of hours of free and paid–for content that you can download and learn from.

We’ve asked some leading podcasting producers for their take—their insights are well worth taking onboard.