Tips and Tweaks: Make Your Best Podcast and Attract More Fans

Do you enjoy listening to podcasts as much as I do? Many of us spend quite a bit of time listening to them. Today we are blessed by a proliferation of topics and an increasing number of podcasts in languages other than English. I listen to all sorts of podcasts in four languages. There are more and more podcasts all the time. Even two years ago there weren't many in Spanish let alone Italian or Portuguese. Today there multiple directories of podcasts in more than a hundred languages.

Now, podcasts are listened to by people from all over the globe. People like to listen to podcasts in their native language. However, there are hundreds of thousands of people who listen to podcasts in a language that is not their native tongue. What does this mean to the podcaster? My guess is that most podcasters, other than language-teaching podcasters, don't realize how many non-native speakers listen to their podcasts. I suspect too, that if they are aware of this market they might not have thought too much about what to do with the opportunity.

A Simple Tweak to Keep International Listeners.

I listened to one Spanish podcaster who had interesting content that was exceptionally well presented. But...... he ran a tuneless background music track that was a tad too loud. I am guessing that a native speaker would easily follow the podcaster. But alas, I am not a native speaker and the background sound distracted me and made it difficult to focus on and follow the excellent dialogue. I listened to the podast a few times as I usually do to catch more detail. But I couldn't mentally block out that background murmur which was the same on every podcast on that site. This was a fatal flaw to my ear and consequently after listening to five episodes several times I took it off my Best Spanish Podcasts bookmark list and haven't been back.

This podcast could be a great podcast. The only tweak this podcast needs in order to cast an even wider net, is to turn off the background music or at least turn it down. He might also try test-driving his podcast. Letting a few other podcasters or friends listen to his choice of music and the recording levels could help a lot.

Thus without slowing down his rate of delivery; without using simpler grammatical structures or frequent rephrasing; and without changing one word of vocabulary a broader listener base could more easily understand and enjoy his podcasts.