Why it’s important to do a final quality check on your podcast
You’ve spent all this time recording and editing your episode and now it’s time to press publish and breathe a sigh of relief, right?
Unfortunately, when your episode is “live” there’s one more thing you need to do to make sure the quality of your podcast is as good as it can be.
But whyyyyyyy?
I know adding another step to an already long process is boring but there are things that can go wrong or things you can forget to do when you publish your episode.
When you’re crossing a million things off the to do list it can be easy to miss something or to make a mistake and not realise it when you upload your file.
You don’t want to have put all that effort into an episode only to find out that what your listener is hearing isn’t exactly what you intended them to hear.
So, what can go wrong?
This isn’t an exhaustive list but here are some of the unexpected hiccups I’ve noticed when listening back to my shows….
The upload can be glitchy
That’s a very untechnical way of saying the episode jumps around between time codes when you listen to it.
I don’t know what crazy codey magic goes on behind the scenes to make that happen but what you end up with is an episode that randomly jumps forward or back so it sounds like it’s been really badly edited. Not the sign of a quality podcast.
This happened to me with my podcast, You’ve Gotta Start Somewhere. Luckily, re-uploading the MP3 file was all it took to fix the problem but I wouldn’t have known it sounded so god awful if I hadn’t cast my ears over the finished product.
Unfortunately, if there is a problem and you have to replace the file that does mean you need to listen to the show AGAIN to make sure the new MP3 is working.
You also need to listen to the WHOLE episode.
In one of my episodes, the glitch didn’t appear until 55 minutes into the episode, so if I’d just checked the first ten minutes and thought “this is fine” I would have missed the problem.
Production in between segments can go missing
This used to happen with my old podcast, Paul and Rach. We used segments in our show and in between each break of content we’d play a short musical interlude.
Sometimes, in the finished product, those bits of production (or ‘stings’) wouldn’t be there which means instead of a break finishing with a nice musical end, there was stone cold silence. Not quite the effect we were going for.
Again replacing the audio file usually fixed the problem, unless it was human error and the problem was me forgetting to place one of the stings into the edit…nobody’s perfect 😉
Production that’s not meant to be there can be left behind
If you’re working off a template it’s easy to leave behind a little sting or sound effect from a previous episode and not notice it’s in the session until it’s exported.
This can fire off over the top of your content or it could be left behind in a session past the time when the episode is finished.
If that happens you’ll end up hearing the end of your show and then a whole lot of silence before you get to the piece of audio you left behind.
Oopsy!
Missing intros
Instead of hearing your carefully crafted introduction that perfectly sets the tone for your show, your audience hears (insert however long your intro is) seconds of silence and then your random voice appearing out of nowhere.
Again, I’ve had this happen in my previous podcasts and sometimes it can be audio hocus pocus, other times it’s been because I’ve accidentally knocked the ‘mute track’ button in Adobe Audition.
A problem that’s easily fixed once you know it’s there (but you have to listen to find out).
You’ve uploaded the wrong episode
Having a different episode to the one you’ve promised your audience in the title is definitely not great especially if you end up sharing an episode that’s not supposed to be released until later.
I’ve done this with an episode I didn’t have scheduled for another three weeks…not ideal.
Lucky it wasn’t sitting there for long before I noticed because I listened back to the episode, panicked and hastily uploaded the one that was meant to be there.
When you’re pre-recording and editing interviews ahead of time this can easily happen if you’re switching between audio files.
Creating a quality podcast should be your number one priority
I share all these tales of technology working against you and my own incompetence to show you that even when you think you’ve crossed all the t’s and dotted all the i’s, it’s still possible for things to go wrong.
Sometimes it’s your fault, sometimes it’s completely out of your control but it will affect the quality of your podcast.
Taking a little bit of time to listen to the finished product can make sure the show your listeners get in their ears is the one you intended them to.
Got a burning podcasting question you’d like answered? Send me an email.
Want to start your own podcast but need a little help? Download my “How To Start A Podcast” guide or sign up for my online podcasting course, PodSchool.
