Top tips for creating your first ever podcast

Danny at Form a Circle shares the best advice to follow when creating a podcast for the first time – the pre-production things to think about and how the interviews themselves might work.

Shout Out for the Arts has been working with Form a Circle to give young people in Warwickshire the skills to create their own podcasts for the arts.

Last week, Form a Circle’s founder Danny met with our Youth Board to share top tips, guide them to create their own podcast and help draw up a plan for how the process would go.

The first step

The start of the podcast journey always begins with one question – why.

“It’s important to remember what your why is. Why do you want to make a podcast? Why are you doing it? Always remember, with all of the questions you write for your interviewees – what is it that you want to share with your audience, what insight do you want to give them?”
Danny, Form a Circle

Step one, decide on your why. Step two, decide on your podcast name. There are then three stages of creating a podcast – pre-production, production and post-production.

Organising the day itself

Before the big day, practice! Interview someone you know for 15 minutes.
Have a schedule for the day of what you will record and when.
You will have pre-written your interview questions.
You will also have pre-written your intro and outro.

On the day of interviews, you might start out the morning with introductions, recording intros, then break for lunch before your first interview.

You might end the day by recording your podcast outros.

What are intros and outros?

These are the book ends to the episode and should be short and succinct!

There’s lots of important information that should be included in your intro, such as:

The name of the episode.
What it’s going to be about.
Who you are.
Who you are chatting to.
Extra introduction if this is your first ever episode.

Don’t forget to wrap things up, not just with a goodbye and an outro but also in the interview itself. End the conversation with a question to your guest which gives the listener one final take away.

Interview advice

Time to talk to your guests is finally here!

Listen to your contributor as there may be other avenues to explore during your interview. Follow your curiosity!
Don’t be too tied to your questions. Never be afraid to give new questions that weren’t pre-prepared.
Don’t be afraid of silence – don’t jump in too quick, leave pause to check your contributor has finished speaking as they may have more to say.
Encourage your guests to be as descriptive as possible, especially in something like the arts industry, if your subject matter is very visual.