Written by Debbie West, Senior Account Director, Audere
Working in business podcasting means a lot of our clients are aiming to demonstrate their expertise and sometimes technical or specialist capabilities in their professional worlds. They understand podcasting is a great way to do this, as it gives their listeners direct access to the thoughts and views of their subject matter experts and their key stakeholders in a conversational and relatable way.
To add to those benefits, data indicates that podcast episodes capture and retain the attention of listeners highly effectively (Rajar Audio measurement), which gives time for our clients’ experts to bring their thoughts to life with contextual colour or fully explore key concepts with guests and stakeholders.
That spontaneous, dialogic tone is not always easy to establish, but there are some steps you can take if you’re preparing to host a podcast episode:
Some of the polish that’s needed in a podcast relates to what’s edited out or what’s not included, and that’s where expertise in post-production can have a great impact on the credibility of content. It’s human nature to pause for thought, to use ‘filler’ words while we summon the best way to articulate a concept and in real-life conversation, we hardly notice that’s happening. But that perception changes when content is recorded.
Audio-only listening means there are no visual cues that a speaker has momentarily paused for thought. Listening to one or two voices intently for twenty minutes amplifies any often-repeated umms and ahhs. Responding to every question with, ‘That’s a great question’ becomes repetitive. That’s where a considered process of editing adds so much value in what it takes away.
We’re not advocating for standards of perfection that make podcasters seem unrelatable – the human connection and inflection of authentic voices are by far one of the greatest strengths of podcast content, but we are aware that fluent and confident speakers have a subtle but important edge on credibility.
Source: Rajar’s Audio survey MIDAS, Spring 2024: 84% of podcast listeners listen to all or mostly all of each episode and 55% listen to all or mostly all of the episodes they downloaded