Podcasts work, there is little to do. More and more reports are analyzing, with numbers and data, the boom in audio content that can be downloaded and listened to at any time.
The reasons for success are varied. Let us mention at least two of them, perhaps the main ones. The first corresponds to a sort of reaction to increasingly flamboyant and smart social platforms, but which require absolute concentration on the part of the user, as well as – often – frenetic communication rhythms.
And here we move on to the second pivotal reason: the podcast allows a relaxed enjoyment, but not only. You can listen to podcasts while doing other things, profitably filling the so-called dead times (from traveling by car or on foot to all the moments when you tidy up the house).
The opportunities of the podcast universe
In another article, talking about a podcaster course organized by Chora Media, we showed you how much interest there is around the phenomenon. Interest can be declined in two ways. On the one hand, in fact, the number of listeners to these contents is constantly growing. But on the other hand, and the Chora Media course goes precisely in this direction, new job opportunities are always opening up for those who are able to invent and manage a successful podcast.
Here then is that we have read for you two unmissable books on the subject, perfect both for those who want to know it better and for those who dream of opening their own podcast. For pure pleasure or perhaps, why not, with the ambition of making it a job.
Podcaster profession
The two books on the podcast, allow us some advice, should be read in the order in which we present them to you.
The first of the two is Podcaster profession, Alessandro Mazzù wrote it and Dario Flaccovio published it in February 2022.
Mazzù is a podcaster, speaker, youtuber as well as a consultant and trainer in digital marketing.
The book’s subtitle reads: Train your voice, choose the right content and tools and improve your personal branding. And it gives an idea of the content of the volume: it is a manual where, with great clarity and commendable irony, the author really tells us everything we need to know to become familiar with the universe of podcasts.
Before starting
Mazzù, in the first two parts of the book, explains with a few numbers the phenomenon of podcasts e it helps to reflect on some parameters that anyone who wants to open a podcast will necessarily have to deal with. Not only will the choice of the topic be fundamental, it goes without saying, but also the periodicity of the contents and the duration of each episode. Then there is the sacrosanct citation of what remains the best bignami ever written on the texts intended for the voice. That is, Rules for the editing of a radio text, which Carlo Emilio Gadda wrote in 1953 for the radio texts of Rai.
The technique
The two central parts of the book deal with the technique. A chapter is dedicated to the equipment: there are essential rules for disentangling microphones, headphones, cards, audio and software. With a concept rightly repeated over and over again: a spree doesn’t necessarily match a successful podcast.
Also because a separate chapter is dedicated to the most important (and decisive) instrument of all: our voice.
Then?
And once you’ve got a podcast up and running? Mazzù dedicates the final part of his book to marketing and personal branding. That is, respectively, what to do for a podcast to have an audience, and what to do for the podcast to be a means of promoting oneself.
Branded podcast producer
And this is where Branded podcast producer, written by Rossella Pivanti and published by FrancoAngeli in November 2021, fits perfectly.
Pivanti is an audio producer specializing in branded podcasts. And in the volume she deals with show readers the possibilities of podcasting to promote a brand (not necessarily your own).
The interesting thing is that this book does not start where Mazzù’s one ends, but takes up practically the same arguments. However seen from another perspective: that of those who want to create a podcast to enhance the visibility of a company, a product, a service or an initiative.
Report and planning
This is the title of the first two parts of the book, in which the author explains why podcast branding is successful and how to set up (in format, content, language) a podcast that works. Some concrete examples help the reader, including a project the author worked on.
Production of a podcast
The third part of Rossella Pivanti’s book is dedicated to the production of audio content. We talk again about instrumentation, and an entire chapter is dedicated to the creation and improvement of contenti: ranging from the technical aspects of recording and post-production, to the legal ones.
And finally, the diffusion
Branded podcast producer also ends with a part dedicated to the most profitable ways to launch our podcast in the world. But considering we’re talking about brand content here. So: where to position the brand and how to distribute podcasts? How to calculate the performances and above all how to improve them?
In short, Mazzù and Pivanti’s books show us the enormous and varied potential of podcasts. Which may indeed be individual pastimes, but which are also capable of giving visibility to brands in territories and in ways that are still partially unexplored.