Scoville speech yields pro tips for podcasting

Mary O’Neill gave a detailed presentation on how to set up and run a podcast. She spoke at the Scoville Memorial Library Sunday, May 19.

O’Neill and Main Street Magazine’s Thorunn Kristjansdottir have run the Main Street Moxie podcast for three years now. The pair interview interesting people throughout the Connecticut-New York-Massachusetts area. The interviews are about 50 minutes, and come out once a month, with a couple of breaks for holidays.

“We tell positive stories about people and places,” O’Neill said.

The format is “conversational,” she added.

She had the equipment she uses. A directional microphone with a filter over it, to cut out the “p” sounds. Each person gets their own mic to speak into.

An external hard drive.

A digital recorder, at about $300 the most expensive piece of kit.

And she uses Audacity, a sound editing application, and a hosting service called Buzzsprout.

Sometimes guests are interviewed remotely, and Zoom is used for that.

From soup to nuts, it all adds up to $600-$800 or so.

O’Neill said it can be done cheaper. “You can use your phone.”

But this is the routine she and Kristjansdottir have settled into.

Other tips: “Batch” your podcast episodes. “People like to binge.” She recommended having three episodes ready to go when the podcast starts.

Know your guest. O’Neill said good research ahead of the interview makes for better questions and a smooth interview.

Don’t be a perfectionist. O’Neill admitted to being a perfectionist herself, and said it took a while for her to realize that “good enough” is a perfectly acceptable goal.

O’Neill emphasized that she learned much of what she now knows about podcasting on the fly, from YouTube videos and from experimenting with the equipment and applications.

She also said once a format is determined, “stick with it.”

“People are creatures of habit.”

Main Street Moxie podcasts can be found by going to www.mainstreetmoxie.press.