Summary: The first part of this article will help you decide if you want to create podcasts and audio content. Assuming you want to dive into podcasting, then the second goal is to help you do it right; usability applies to podcasts.
Overview
Audio can be fun and exciting, but creating useful and entertaining content is much more difficult than you might expect. While you might have all the technology you need, there are other issues that you need to know about before you start recording.
In the first part of this article I am going to explain the issues you will face. I'm going to paint a bleak picture of audio production and audio content. However, in the second part of the article I am going to provide you with advice on how to improve the usability your audio content and podcasts. In short, I'm going to try to help you decide if you want to generate audio content, and if you do, I am going to help you do it right.
Should You Create Audio Content?
You might be mentally ready to produce your own radio show, audio blog posting or podcast. You might even have all the technical issues worked out. You might be ready to talk. However, before you jump into the fire, please consider the following points.
When people are listening to you, they cannot talk to you. They cannot respond immediately. Any remarks they have to something you say must wait. Audio isn't about striking up a conversation. It is a one way stream. When you post audio, it is very unlikely that you will receive audio back from listeners. It is a one way street.
Listeners are slugs. They might contact you via email, or chat, or phone, or through a blog comment system, but really, listeners are passive. You talk and they listen. Unlike email, chat, phone conversations, and blogs, your listeners are consumers. You produce, they consume. Once you start talking they have two choices: keep listening or stop the audio feed. They can't click on something you said. They can't leave audio comments on top of your audio stream.
Audio starts at Point A and moves to Point B. It is difficult to know how to skip around. Right now "hyperaudio" isn't available to the masses, although it might be soon. If you reference something, the listener has remember it or write it down. Human memory is fragile. Writing something down while listening is not easy. It is even more difficult if listeners are listening while running, driving, or doing the dishes. For the geeks reading this, we're talking about serial versus parallel processing. Audio is largely serial. You can't easily listen to 3-4 audio streams at once. Compare this to the web where you can have 4-5 browser windows open and you can click on links and easily move around. Audio is a brick; it is what it is.
You can't throw Babelfish at audio content. That is, you can't translate an audio stream on the fly very easily. There are language issues. If listeners don't understand you, they are stuck and your content is all but useless. With audio, you get what you get. However, you can translate text. You can put hyperlinks in text. Audio is even more unfriendly than I have described thus far. You can't use Google to find content inside an audio stream (yet). You can't quickly skim content to find what you want. There is no quick auditory way to scan audio. You can do it, but it is inferior to visual scanning. Unfortunately, when it comes to audio, life is slow. You can read way faster than you can listen. Listening isn't reading.
But there are even more issues. Many people won't have access to your content because it isn't realistically accessible. They can't pull it down over slow dial up connections. Even if they wait for hours, some audio files are just too large to manage. Furthermore, there isn't really an easy way for listeners to preview your content. You can make some samples available but even that isn't foolproof.
I'm not joking when I say that audio content is terrible for many reasons. Of course audio is fun because seems more personal and humans like to hear other humans. However, when you really get down to it, text and images are often superior to audio, especially huge audio files.
For those still not convinced, consider this: It takes more time, money, and effort to create audio than text. Audio content on the web isn't about you talking, it is about your listeners listening. It might not be worth their effort, or yours.
Do you still want to create audio content and podcasts? Excellent. Read on, brave soul.
Audio Content Usability
If you are going to create audio content then you might as well do it right. Creating good audio content is tough work, but producing great audio content is extremely hard. You need guts and brains. If you want people to listen to you again and again and again, follow the advice below.
You need to prepare. You need to think ahead. This means you should have a script and you should practice. It is a pain to edit audio content and you'll reduce necessary changes by having things planned out ahead of time. Do yourself a favor. Have a script and practice. Start small and grow. Little victories feel big. Have fun. Be yourself.
Test all of your equipment before and after your recording session. Check your microphone(s), check your software, check your outlets. This might sound like silly advice, but just get in the habit of checking everything. Remember, editing audio isn't fun. It sucks up time that you could be using to produce new content.
Test your content on various output devices. Some people will listen to your content with headphones, others with a decked out PC sound system. Check your volumes and your channels. Have the right balance of sound to voice. Experiment. Have users "try" your content on their own devices. Don't give them advice and don't help them. Throw them the file and let them tell you how it worked. Use their feedback to improve your production. Once you have a good system in place, and you feel that your listeners will be happy, save your settings. Make back ups of everything, including your settings.
Take the time to provide text information to listeners before they listen to you, if possible. Give them text to help them understand what they will hear. Give your files good names. The file name should provide users with clues about the content. Think about how other people would interpret your label. If you are posting the file on your site, provide listeners with helpful meta information such as:
You can improve the usability of the audio content by providing listeners with a title and intro at the start of the stream. Give your listeners an overview of what you are going to cover. Give them a summary so they can decide to listen to your file, or instead find one that might be more valuable to them. If you regularly post audio content, then you should try to follow the same patterns in your files each time. Familiarity patterns in your audio content format will go a long way.
I strongly advise people to repeat difficult concepts. When you read the same thing over and over it becomes annoying. However, since it is difficult to scan and jump around in audio, you need repetition. Repetition is a very good thing. Say the same thing several times if it is important and if you want people to remember it.
In general it is pretty much useless to provide people with URLs in podcasts. Listeners aren't in a good position to write URLs down, and they can't click anything. URLs imply a call to action but listeners are unable to act. If you do provide a URL (or other calls to action) then provide listeners with a warning that you are going to give them a URL. Remember, audio is passive and you have to carefully lead people along the way. Help them. Be gentle.
The summary is that you really must think of your listeners if you plan on keeping them around. They might listen once or twice but if you don't have good content, and if you don't apply some usability, they won't download your content again.
If you are going to create podcasts, do it right.
Overview
Audio can be fun and exciting, but creating useful and entertaining content is much more difficult than you might expect. While you might have all the technology you need, there are other issues that you need to know about before you start recording.
In the first part of this article I am going to explain the issues you will face. I'm going to paint a bleak picture of audio production and audio content. However, in the second part of the article I am going to provide you with advice on how to improve the usability your audio content and podcasts. In short, I'm going to try to help you decide if you want to generate audio content, and if you do, I am going to help you do it right.
Should You Create Audio Content?
You might be mentally ready to produce your own radio show, audio blog posting or podcast. You might even have all the technical issues worked out. You might be ready to talk. However, before you jump into the fire, please consider the following points.
When people are listening to you, they cannot talk to you. They cannot respond immediately. Any remarks they have to something you say must wait. Audio isn't about striking up a conversation. It is a one way stream. When you post audio, it is very unlikely that you will receive audio back from listeners. It is a one way street.
Listeners are slugs. They might contact you via email, or chat, or phone, or through a blog comment system, but really, listeners are passive. You talk and they listen. Unlike email, chat, phone conversations, and blogs, your listeners are consumers. You produce, they consume. Once you start talking they have two choices: keep listening or stop the audio feed. They can't click on something you said. They can't leave audio comments on top of your audio stream.
Audio starts at Point A and moves to Point B. It is difficult to know how to skip around. Right now "hyperaudio" isn't available to the masses, although it might be soon. If you reference something, the listener has remember it or write it down. Human memory is fragile. Writing something down while listening is not easy. It is even more difficult if listeners are listening while running, driving, or doing the dishes. For the geeks reading this, we're talking about serial versus parallel processing. Audio is largely serial. You can't easily listen to 3-4 audio streams at once. Compare this to the web where you can have 4-5 browser windows open and you can click on links and easily move around. Audio is a brick; it is what it is.
You can't throw Babelfish at audio content. That is, you can't translate an audio stream on the fly very easily. There are language issues. If listeners don't understand you, they are stuck and your content is all but useless. With audio, you get what you get. However, you can translate text. You can put hyperlinks in text. Audio is even more unfriendly than I have described thus far. You can't use Google to find content inside an audio stream (yet). You can't quickly skim content to find what you want. There is no quick auditory way to scan audio. You can do it, but it is inferior to visual scanning. Unfortunately, when it comes to audio, life is slow. You can read way faster than you can listen. Listening isn't reading.
But there are even more issues. Many people won't have access to your content because it isn't realistically accessible. They can't pull it down over slow dial up connections. Even if they wait for hours, some audio files are just too large to manage. Furthermore, there isn't really an easy way for listeners to preview your content. You can make some samples available but even that isn't foolproof.
I'm not joking when I say that audio content is terrible for many reasons. Of course audio is fun because seems more personal and humans like to hear other humans. However, when you really get down to it, text and images are often superior to audio, especially huge audio files.
For those still not convinced, consider this: It takes more time, money, and effort to create audio than text. Audio content on the web isn't about you talking, it is about your listeners listening. It might not be worth their effort, or yours.
Do you still want to create audio content and podcasts? Excellent. Read on, brave soul.
Audio Content Usability
If you are going to create audio content then you might as well do it right. Creating good audio content is tough work, but producing great audio content is extremely hard. You need guts and brains. If you want people to listen to you again and again and again, follow the advice below.
You need to prepare. You need to think ahead. This means you should have a script and you should practice. It is a pain to edit audio content and you'll reduce necessary changes by having things planned out ahead of time. Do yourself a favor. Have a script and practice. Start small and grow. Little victories feel big. Have fun. Be yourself.
Test all of your equipment before and after your recording session. Check your microphone(s), check your software, check your outlets. This might sound like silly advice, but just get in the habit of checking everything. Remember, editing audio isn't fun. It sucks up time that you could be using to produce new content.
Test your content on various output devices. Some people will listen to your content with headphones, others with a decked out PC sound system. Check your volumes and your channels. Have the right balance of sound to voice. Experiment. Have users "try" your content on their own devices. Don't give them advice and don't help them. Throw them the file and let them tell you how it worked. Use their feedback to improve your production. Once you have a good system in place, and you feel that your listeners will be happy, save your settings. Make back ups of everything, including your settings.
Take the time to provide text information to listeners before they listen to you, if possible. Give them text to help them understand what they will hear. Give your files good names. The file name should provide users with clues about the content. Think about how other people would interpret your label. If you are posting the file on your site, provide listeners with helpful meta information such as:
- Title
- File length
- File size
- File name
- Category / genre
- Recording date
- Hosts / artists
- Guests
- Topics
- Channels
- Frequency
- Bitrate
- Related links
You can improve the usability of the audio content by providing listeners with a title and intro at the start of the stream. Give your listeners an overview of what you are going to cover. Give them a summary so they can decide to listen to your file, or instead find one that might be more valuable to them. If you regularly post audio content, then you should try to follow the same patterns in your files each time. Familiarity patterns in your audio content format will go a long way.
I strongly advise people to repeat difficult concepts. When you read the same thing over and over it becomes annoying. However, since it is difficult to scan and jump around in audio, you need repetition. Repetition is a very good thing. Say the same thing several times if it is important and if you want people to remember it.
In general it is pretty much useless to provide people with URLs in podcasts. Listeners aren't in a good position to write URLs down, and they can't click anything. URLs imply a call to action but listeners are unable to act. If you do provide a URL (or other calls to action) then provide listeners with a warning that you are going to give them a URL. Remember, audio is passive and you have to carefully lead people along the way. Help them. Be gentle.
The summary is that you really must think of your listeners if you plan on keeping them around. They might listen once or twice but if you don't have good content, and if you don't apply some usability, they won't download your content again.
If you are going to create podcasts, do it right.
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