August Airtime
I mentioned in my last blog post, I released my first podcast on Anchor FM on the 14th August 2017; after some initial ‘favouriting’ from Tim Time, The Corner, Joe & The Method, JulesTheHuman, completelyNOUN, UNIQUELY COMMON, Nerd Vault and Melvyn — the Anchor-sphere went pretty quiet and I’m not surprised to report that I didn’t make it into the ‘Popular’ chart as a Top 20 podcast — at this stage, I remain ‘unranked’.
Learnings — first reflections
Musical interlude — Firstly, I was very excited by the prospect of inserting music into my podcast; through Anchor FM you can connect to your Apple Music or Spotify accounts (if you have them), and then select 30-seconds of music to add as inserts into the podcast — the listener then get’s the option to listen to the full track if they want to outside of your podcast.
The only downside (that I realised afterwards), is that if you decide to create an ‘Episode’ out of your podcast, the music disappears and is not referenced — therefore, your listener ends up hearing you ramble on about a music track that isn’t played.
Know what you want to say — as mentioned, I’d adapted a previous blog post to use as the framework for the podcast; it may sound like an obvious tip, however, read your content a few times so you don’t end up having to re-record certain sections of your podcast 2–3 times (or 5 for me on one particular section).
Remember you’re speaking to an audience — the fact is that you’re recording the podcast in a studio on your own; or in my case, in the converted attic room in my house which is currently full of boxes. Either way, wherever your studiois situated, you have to think about projecting the energy and excitement of the topic as opposed to reading the words like a storyteller.
My express aim was to ‘engage’ as opposed to ‘inform’. I found that I had to record certain sections and listen to them back before deciding on the final cut — and trust me, listening to my own voice is not something I enjoy doing.
Repetition of words — I was SO guilty of this in the final section of my podcast; I must have sounded like a stuck recording as I said the word ‘individual’ about a dozen times. It must have sounded like I was sponsoring the word in some way.
Having said that, at the time of recording the podcast, I really wasn’t aware of it. Even when I listened to it back the first time it didn’t resonate with me; it wasn’t until I listened to the podcast about 5-days later to critique it I realised this error.
Next Steps
Having taken learnings from my first podcast, I decided to adopt a SMART assessment of the potential for me to create a series of podcasts.
As part of this process, I brainstormed ideas for future podcasts and came up with the following:
Women in Tech / Diversity
Teaching — the gap between school leavers and industry?
Chatbots in recruitment / talent management
The GROW Model
Goal-setting and achieving your personal and professional targets
The future of recruitment industry
The sharing economy
Networking and connecting people
The use of personas in recruitment
Talent engagement and attraction strategies
Individual experience
Community building for companies that are hiring
Social responsibility versus CSR
Disrupting HR
Company culture and environment
Do you trust your MD/CEO?
What is talent management?
Marketing — what is the future?
Payments industry trends — what’s the future for the consumer?
Creating a new business within a legacy business
The changing shape of consultancy
RPO — the future of RPO and is there one?
Agency versus In-house recruitment — is there really any gap between the two now?
The death of the CV
If you’re still reading this blog post, I’d welcome feedback on any topics that might interest you.
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