Andrew Iverson

Discovering your unique voice is arguably the most important thing you can do for your podcast to get it to grow. The combination of being authentic and having a consistent voice will get you people invested in your show.

When editing your podcast episode, your natural inclination is to get rid of all filler words and to cut every single second of dead air. This makes sense, this is what has been drilled into our collective unconscious. But it may surprise you that this is not best practices. You will want to maintain a more "natural" tone in your show. Keep the longer pauses, the "uhh's" and short stints of ramblings. In my own podcast, we go for a "rougher" cut and have found great success.

Having a clear understanding of how you want your podcast to sound is essential to being a successful podcaster. And it doesn't have to be complicated. Free tools like Audacity (which I personally use) is more than robust for a vast majority of creators. Here you will be able to increase / decrease certain auditory levels as well as cutting or moving snippets of audio around. The best thing you can do is to experiment early and often with different tools. But once you find one that you resonate with the most, dive deep into the best practices surrounding that tool. Start with YouTube videos and other free or low cost education to broaden your knowledge base.

To determine if your podcast is engaging, content analysis is key. Start by examining listener feedback and comments for insights into what resonates with your audience. Analyze engagement metrics like episode completion rates, listener growth, and social media interactions. Examine your content's structure for a clear, logical flow and consistency in themes and styles. Assess the substance of your content for relevance, value, and how well it meets your audience's interests and needs. Check for originality and creativity in your topics and presentation. Additionally, listen to your episodes critically. Regularly reviewing and adapting your content based on these analyses will help maintain and improve its engagement level.

To achieve professional podcasting audio quality, invest in a good quality microphone and use a pop filter to reduce plosives. Record in a quiet, acoustically treated room to minimize background noise and echo. Utilize a digital audio workstation (DAW) for recording and editing; software like Audacity or Adobe Audition offers robust tools. Apply noise reduction, equalization, and compression to enhance clarity and balance. Monitor your audio with high-quality headphones to catch and correct issues. Finally, consistent microphone technique, such as maintaining a constant distance from the mic, is crucial for even sound levels. With these steps, your podcast audio quality will significantly improve.

Marketing is an important piece to growing your podcast's audience and attracting new listeners. Hands down, the best place to do this is social media. Your strategy should be to focus on one platform and get very comfortable making content for that one platform. You can choose Instagram, TikTok Youtube, etc. But just focus on one at first. Once you feel very comfortable with your first platform, then you can repurpose your content to another platform. However, the best way to keep your podcast growing for the long term is to build community. Patreon is the largest platform for this in the market but there are others like Substack that can serve as a worthy alternative. The important thing is to show up, stay consistent and offer value.