When it comes to reaching out to your readers, a good method is podcasts. Through a podcast, a reader feels the nearness of the author by listening to his or her voice and is more likely to respond than to a blog post. It is also much less effort to listen than to read, especially if your readers are busy. But in spite of having put up author podcasts and making them available, you realize that no one is listening to them. Why should that be the case? One or more of the following reasons might be the problem.

1. Bad audio quality

Making podcasts requires investment of some sort. If you aren’t willing to do it, it is better to not opt for this avenue at all in order to save yourself embarrassment. Podcasts need some excellent audio equipment, which will ensure that the end product is clear and without any fuzzy problem. If you aren’t technically inclined, this again might be a problem, so you might need some assistance to help you get set up and to be taught the basics of operating the audio equipment. Don’t think that you can handle this with mediocre equipment. Those listening to podcasts are used to great quality and will quickly move on if you can’t provide them with the same.

2. Too lengthy

A lot of readers might not be willing to hear you speak for a long time because many people don’t have the time to stay put and hear podcasts at one go very often. If your podcasts are inordinately long, then you are incurring the risk of people ignoring them merely because of their length. You are left wondering what the problem is and why no one seems to be listening to your podcast. Keep them to a decent length that people can listen to while travelling or doing chores. About 30 to 45 minutes would be ideal. If in doubt, you can always ask for opinions from your readers / listeners on how long they would like your podcast to be.

3. Lack of editing

You wouldn’t send your book out for publishing without any editing, so why would you do the same to your podcast? An unedited podcast makes you look unprofessional, and might even turn potential readers away from you because you appear as if you don’t care about putting finished content out there. If you are not editing your podcasts, they are very likely turning people off. Ideally, one hour of podcast would require about four to five hours of editing. You have to edit out all the hesitations, outside interruptions and rambling. The finished product must be crisp and to the point. So it is a lot of work. If you aren’t willing to put in this work, just forget doing podcasts.

4. Boring content

Putting podcasts out there means preparing interesting content to talk about well in advance. You can’t just put on the recorder and start talking randomly. Far too many newbies do exactly just that, and not surprisingly, no one is interested. Prepare your content well in advance, know what you are going to talk about, and make it relevant. If you write murder mysteries, your listeners would definitely not be interested in hearing about gardening. You are preparing podcasts to sell your books, so start talking about topics relevant to the themes of the books. Avoid talking about nothing in particular and find a theme for your podcasts so listeners know what to expect.

5. Absence of branding

If you intend to make podcasts a part of your author personality, you need to brand yourself effectively. If you keep changing the names, the themes of the content and the method of presentation each time, listeners will not be able to relate to you from one episode to the next. You can easily lose them. Build up your brand and make sure that there is at least one thread running through all your episodes so that your readers will have something to which they can look forward to. It could be the way you speak and engage guests, a certain theme to the topics you choose, or even just the atmosphere you build up during presentation.

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Kavitha is a freelance content writer and French translator, and has been working in this field since 2008. She has degrees in computer applications and international business and has a background in business and international trade. She enjoys learning languages and is currently learning Japanese. Her interests vary from books and writing to travelling and history.