So. I listen to podcasts. I’m probably not the highest consumer, and I’m no slouch either. I just think I know a few things, I’d like to tell podcasters, both old and new. – For technical advice, please look elsewhere.

Source.

(I’m writing this in English, but it’s for Danish podcasters too.)

(I think about these things because a podcast might be in my future.)

• In episode 1, tell me something about you and something about the podcast. You can’t be sure I already know you or have heard about your plans elsewhere.
• I’d like to know what you look like. Publish a video of yourself. (ETA.)
• Episodes of about 1 hour or less are best. (This is a personal preference, but I’m assuming others feel the same. Like, I can plan the next hour without any problems. Beyond that, I’ll probably plan to pause and do something else for a while.)
• Decide how to handle spoilers. Saying “spoiler alert” in the middle of an episode and then keep talking for an unspecified number of minutes is not viable. I suggest you either ignore possible spoilers or you bump them to the very end of the episode. No, there’s no time limit on spoilers.
• If you jump from topic to topic, make a table of contents available.
• Pronunciation matters. Especially regarding people and places. Research beforehand. If you run into the problem mid episode, make a note, research and edit in a correction, if you need to.
• If you’re going to do a “state of affairs” episode, or “why do people do this” thing, research. Missing something everybody else knows is not a good look. (ETA.)
• The right place for your show notes is not Twitter. You probably need a website, and it should be easy to find the notes for an old episode.
• If you publish an episode and then discover you said something wrong, by all means, mention it in the next episode. But you also need to fix the original episode. This can be as simple as adding something at the beginning of the episode and republishing.
• If you know an episode has technical issues, say so at the beginning of the episode.
• Some podcasts make it easy to listen to the last 20 episodes or something similar. I recommend making it easy to listen to everything.

Most of these should be obvious. If not, please ask.

Some of these are based on the line “people keep writing us and saying…”. This is the cure.