5 Mistakes That Make Listeners Turn Off Your Podcast: And How to Avoid Them
There are far too many podcasts that have great content, but lose listeners by making one or more of these simple mistakes. It can be helpful to think of a podcast like a written piece that needs to be edited.
(How to Start Podcasting: A Checklist for Writers.)
When I work on unscripted podcasts, I generally aim for producing them more perfectly than a live stream, but less perfectly than an audiobook or audio drama.
1. Overuse of Words or Phrases
We’re all guilty of this from time to time in conversation, in our writing, and certainly on podcasts. Overusing words or phrases often has the effect of taking the listener ‘out’ of the podcast. They’re no longer listening to the content because they’ve switched to focusing more on how many times they hear your verbal habit.
The fix: Unlike real life non-recorded conversations, with podcasts we have the advantage of being able to listen back to what we’ve said. With a skilled editor, we can even remove some of the overused phrases after the fact. It can be challenging for our ego at first, but listening to yourself unedited, and with a critical ear is crucial.
Ask yourself if there are any ‘crutch words’ you overuse when you aren’t sure what to say or as an exclamation. Two of the most notoriously overused phrases from podcast hosts are “you know” and “one hundred percent.”
2. Echo or Unpleasant Sounds
New podcasters are often surprised by how hard it is to get a quality recording without the noise of traffic, helicopters, kids, air conditioning, echos of their own voice, mysterious electronic hum, and radio interference getting into their recordings and making a mess.
The fix: The most surefire fix for great sound (and most of the items on today’s list) is to hire a sound savvy producer or audio engineer to help you troubleshoot your recording setup and/or remove the noise from your episodes in post production.
There are also lots of simple ways to tweak your recording setup to minimize noise, echo, and interference. The most important is to record in a room that is as soft as possible—carpet (most important), rugs, couches, a bed with comforters and pillows, hanging blankets, or tapestries—all of these things will help deaden the sound in your recording space.
Sound waves bounce off of surfaces like tile, glass, wood, and bare drywall creating unpleasant echoes and allowing outside noise into your recording. You don’t need to build a recording studio in your house, but choosing to record in a carpeted closet or a room with a lot of upholstered furniture or bedding will go a long way to improve your sound. And whatever you do, don’t record in your bathroom or kitchen.
3. Dead Air
Imagine you’re listening to an episode of your favorite podcast and all of a sudden, there are 4…5…7 seconds of silence. You would probably look at your phone or tablet to make sure you didn’t pause the show or exit the app. Not a huge deal, except—you’re not engaged in the content anymore. Checking to see if there was an issue on your end has now taken your mind out of the podcast, and when there are multiple dead air spots during a podcast, many listeners will become too distracted and move on to different content.
Dead air usually happens when podcasters pause for a long time to think, or when speakers are extra mindful of not talking over one another. It can also happen if your music or sound effect cues are misaligned. All of these situations are easily corrected, but when left in the final release of a podcast, will lose listeners fast!
The fix: While it can be a good goal to work on the host’s performance to minimize dead air in the future, it is sometimes unavoidable. The best solution for fixing spots of dead air is simply to edit your podcast in post, which, I would say, is absolutely necessary regardless of the podcast.
This is a task that can be outsourced, or depending on the complexity of the show, done by you or your current podcasting team. Most editing I would recommend hiring a producer/engineer for, but removing dead air is very simple and can be done in any industry standard audio editing software or a simple program like GarageBand.
4. Issues With Pacing or Energy
Pacing affects the energy and the energy affects the pacing. They are inextricably linked and cyclical, but it’s important to remember that they’re not exactly the same thing.
Pacing: Just like a good book or story, a great podcast moves the listener along in a way that keeps them engaged. Long-winded anecdotes or asides can be one of the biggest culprits when it comes to pacing problems.
The Fix: As with many of the issues I’m discussing today, listening to your raw recordings a day or two later can make a world of difference. Try to listen with a critical ear, like someone who doesn’t know you. Does anything feel too long? Too far off topic? A personal anecdote can go a long way to help the audience feel connected to a host or subject, but if the anecdotes are less than entertaining, too slowly delivered, or too long it will affect the quality of the podcast and listenership greatly.
Not everything you say will be interesting, and that’s totally okay! So much of podcasting is about trying things and tweaking them. The key is to remain flexible and try to keep your ego out of it. Hosting is performing, and it’s a hard skill to learn!
Energy: When it comes to the energy in the host’s voice, it’s important to match the energy to the content and audience, keeping engagement in mind. It’s also important to get any tenseness or nerves out of the voice. An anxious host can rush the content delivery, or even pass that anxious feeling onto the listener, who will likely turn off the podcast.
The fix: Again, listening critically to your raw audio after recording is key. It’s often difficult to accurately perceive our own energy completely correctly when performing or hosting. The nerves and excitement skew our reality, and sometimes we talk with much more or less pressure, volume, or enthusiasm than we thought.
Listening to your recordings will help you gauge your energy, tweak it to be the best fit for your show, and have a more accurate perception of your performance as a host in real time. Vocal warmups, breathwork, and ecstatic dancing (shaking the whole body) can help relax and prepare our bodies and voices before recording.
5. Not Mastering
Have you ever turned on a podcast and parts of it blast out your ear drums while other parts are too quiet to hear? This is unmastered audio.
The fix: Unsurprisingly, the fix is to master your audio or hire a service or individual to master it for you. Mastering is the process by which an engineer normalizes the loudness of your audio to be more uniform, and therefore easier to listen to across all kinds of devices. Mastering also makes your podcast industry standard for loudness, meaning that it won’t sound comparatively quiet when played right after another show.
If outsourcing your mastering is not in the budget for your podcast, there are simple ways to get a decently mastered podcast on your own, but more on that later in the series!