10 Tips on Podcasting from Middle East Podcast Forum

Want to join the podcasting community but not sure how to start? This article will give you 10 quick tips!

It seems as though to make better use of our free time, everyone not only listens to podcasts but is also starting podcasts. My friend and I recently started a podcast about people in the Gulf region because we both thought it was a great way to raise awareness and to understand certain topics better. And it turned out to be quite the adventure.

What was not being fully understood by us was the art of how to actually run a podcast. At times, instead of us talking into the microphone, we felt like screaming at it. Do not even get me started about managing the audio quality! A local community where fellow content creators in this field can communicate was very much needed. The universe must have heard me screaming at my mic because I stumbled across an event called ‘Middle East Podcast Forum’ hosted by Mstdfr & Kerning Cultures at Jameel Arts Center.

I sat there and listened to this emerging community share their experience and scribbled down some notes. As we live in a tweet-attention-span world, these are their tips in bite-sized bullets:

1. Interview style podcasts are the most popular, but what is missing is storytelling-based formats and humorous light-hearted content.
2. Before starting the interview, tell the listeners why you picked about this topic and give them the context of how it came to be.
3. Before scheduling the actual interview with a guest, save your time and have a quick 10-minute pre-interview, where you call the potential guest and get a sense if they will be a suitable choice. If they were not, no need to be brutally honest, simply tell them you opted to go with a different angle.
4. Anghamy, which is known to be a music platform, is also keen to be a platform to host podcasts and has algorithms to make it easier to get the target audience.
5. Anchor is a site that automatically publishes your podcast episodes into a lot of platforms.
6. ‘Podtrac’ provides the industry-standard metrics and data analysis to accurately measure your podcast audiences worldwide across all traffic sources.
7. Twitter is the best platform to engage with audiences and it is recommended to release samples on it as a teaser trailer for the upcoming episodes.
8. Have a posting schedule to keep you on track when it comes to posting episodes, along with the teaser samples and press releases if the interviewee is well known, to boost engagement.
9. If you want to make money out of it, ask yourself who the target audience is. For example, one of the panel members mentioned something along the lines of: if you have a podcast about famous crimes, perhaps reaching out to a security-related company would do the trick.
10. To have a less hectic schedule, you can record and publish your episodes in seasons. For example, you can record up to 10 episodes and then publish them once a week.

The list goes on about the lessons I have learned in this forum. If you want to learn more, I encourage you to check out their website at https://mepodcastforum.com/, and to join their community on Slack so you can ask questions and meet fellow members.

Good luck and catch you all at ME Podcast Forum 2020!