Make Sure The First Time You Do That - It's Not the First Time You Do That...

PODCAST OBSERVATIONS

By Dave Jackson from the School of Podcasting

WHAT I'VE BEEN UP TO - Lots of Eye Squinting

Is it Wednesday already? What have I been up to? Hosted a local meetup, mowed, the lawn, and fed my addition to App Sumo.

My lesson for this week (and probably YouTube video if I make one) is know your equipment before you use it "for real." I went mobile with the Tascam DR-10 portable recorder. It fits in the palm of your hand, and you just plug a regular XLR Microphone into it. I used the Rode Reporter microphone.

It is the least amount of equipment and super easy to use. I do hate that you have to slide a switch up to record. A button would have been nicer. So what did I learn? I've used this at indoor events, but never outdoor. Big deal right? Well the display is backlit, and I couldn't see a thing. My solution? Go indoors, set the autogain to ON, start recording (it uses a SD card, and I could record for hours) and went looking for interviews. You can hear them HERE.

Next time, I think I would just use my phone and a set of lavalier microphones. Simple, Sounds, "good enough" and I have a little more control on my phone display.

The bottom line is make sure if you are doing something for the "First time" (like recording interviews outdoors in the sun) that its not the first time you've attempted this.

We live, we learn, we move on.

NEWS

The Libsyn Outage

Libsyn (A company I do tech support for) had an outage that lasted HOURS. While our customers files still worked, they couldn't login to make new ones, check stats, etc. Even worse? It was self-inflicted. The Solution?

110% transparency. We had all hands on deck, and made sure to give tons of updates. IF you go to https://status.libsyn.com/ and scroll down you can see what we lived through.

So as horrible as it was, I expected to have TONS of angry emails. Instead we received quite a few that actually praised us because of the communication. When you leave anyone wondering, "What is going on???" their mind drifts to the worst. By keeping everyone in the loop, their fears didn't escalate, and they new we were working on it.

When I was in a band, I would do a "treasurer's report" as the "Band fund" was in my sock drawer. The band was always like, "Yeah, Yeah, OK, whatever" as many weeks NOTHING had changed. We hadn't had any gigs, but still I would provide my 20 second update. You know what else? We never argued over money in that band.

Communication is the Lubrication that keeps Relationships running smooth. When in doubt, communicate.

Free David Hooper Book

David Hooper is a friend of mine, member of the School of Podcasting, and marketing Guru. His new Book 101 Podcast Episode Templates – Powerful, Done-for-You Episode Templates to Grow Your Podcast Audience even if you don't read it (and you should, its got some great things that make you go Hmmmmmm) buy it to boost his numbers (and, it's FREE). Check it out now Friday 7/29/22.

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(only a few spots left to "name your own price" for the Podcast Rodeo Level 1 Review).

QUESTION OF THE MONTH

Source: This month's message comes via Dave at from Walking Is Fitness. His question is about covering those topics that really interest your audience. How much is too much? How often is too often. I'm using Rumble Studio to catch the answers at www.schoolofpodcasting.com/question where you can record or upload your answer.

Answer: Go to https://www.schoolofpodcasting.com/question to answer by 8/31/22 (and don't forget to mention your website!)

WHAT CAUGHT MY EYE

Rumble Studio Watch "first impression" video. This is supposed to be like the Volley app that I use (you talk, I talk) except you come up with questions and send it to a guest. For that, hmmmm. But for me, (who does a "Question of the month" ) its like a cool version of Google Forms for a one time price.

If you want to help me play, go HERE and answer a three question form. It reminds me of Voiceform, but I had issues getting the audio out of that one. Maybe I should revisit.