In a little while, you'll be recording your first test podcasts. When you do, here is a critically important truth that is easyand dangerousto overlook: It is impossible to be 100 percent right when you guess about what your audience likes and wants. The whole process of designing your podcast and getting it right is an iterative onein other words, an ongoing process of making decisions, getting feedback, making adjustments, and then getting more feedback. Therefore, when you record your first several podcasts, think of them as "practice 'casts." If you're like almost every other budding podcaster, you'll think your practice 'casts suck. That's fine. You're supposed to think that. (Why should it be easier for you than it was for everyone else?) But however much they might suck, the important thing is that they're a starting point and they're the foundation for you to get better and better as you continue to practice. If you listen to these practice 'casts critically and make adjustments based on what you hear, you might fix a few obvious flaws but you haven't really made any progress with the iterative process we discussed a moment ago. In order to make progress, you need feedback. Getting Feedback on Your Practice 'CastsThe best place to start getting feedback is with family and friends. Everyone's feedback can be helpful, of course, but the most important feedback you'll get at this stage will come from people you know who are as similar as possible to the listener profile you started developing earlier in this chapter. If you're launching a podcast for goth teens, for example, it's unlikely that the feedback you get from Uncle Marvin in Peoria will be as useful as what you get from your 18-year-old cousin Seth who had his tongue and eyebrow pierced and wears mascara. Find four or five people in your Address Book who are close to the listener profile you have in mind and who wouldn't mind listening to your practice 'casts. You can think of this assemblage as your own private focus group. Now, send them your podcasts as they're created and ask for their honest opinions. When you do so, make it clear that you aren't fishing for compliments, that you really want their honest feedback on what would make your podcast better for them as a listener. Some logistical considerations: If you have a website already, you can upload your podcast to your website and then just send a link to the people in your focus group. If you don't have a website, you'll probably want to send them the MP3 file of your podcast. Since podcast files can be fairly largeoften 15 or 20 megabytes or moreyou might encounter problems sending the files via email since many email servers limit the files size they'll accept. An elegant solution to this problem can be found at this website: www.yousendit.com. This site allows you to email a file that's up to 1 gigabyte in size. Using just your browser, you can send files as easily as simply filling out a short form as shown in Figure 2.1. Figure 2.1. Using yousendit.com, you can send files that are considerably larger than your regular email system might allow.Until you have created a home on the Web for your podcasts, this is the easiest way for you to send podcastsor any other types of filesthat are larger than a megabyte or so. When you've gotten feedback from your first practice 'cast, make one or two changes based on what you've learned, then start the process all over again with another test podcast. Don't expect one or two practice 'casts to be enough to get everything right. You should plan on five or six practice 'casts…and even more than that is perfectly reasonable. What's the right number of practice 'casts? As many as it takes for you to begin to feel comfortable and to feel as though your podcast is connecting with the members of your focus group.
Now that you understand the process of designing your podcast, let's turn our attention in the next chapter to the various component parts that will make up your podcast and see how each one of them is used.
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