All you have to do is talk. We talk every day. Although everyone’s skills at delivering impromptu monologues may vary, it can’t be that tough to answer questions and hold a discussion about something you’re personally or professionally invested in. Right?

As it turns out, it’s tough to jump from the environment of a conversation to a recorded broadcast, where everything you say should be grammatical, on message, and—most importantly—interesting. It’s tough… but not impossible. After participating in a number of podcasts (70 and counting) and editing nearly that many, I’ve noticed a few issues that always seem to come up for those new to the scene. Nothing tunes out audiences faster than a podcast that just doesn’t sound right.  That said, here are five quick tips that will set you on the path to perfect podcasting.

1.  A podcast is not a staged reading

Before the podcast, write out a general outline of the points you want to address and key facts or tidbits you want to bring up as the conversation goes along.

However, do not write out exactly what you’re going to say and then read from that script as if you were trying to recite a play. Save this kind of treatment for your moonlighting as a budding actor. Nothing sounds more stale and contrived than the vocal inflections and robotic nuances put forth by an average person reading text off a piece of paper. Even if you’re cognizant enough to insert the proper dynamics to sound as if you aren’t reading from a prepared script, your flawless execution with no in-between thinking time will give away your secret faster than you can say… well.  Everything you wrote out.  Use your notes as a helper, but don’t treat a podcast as if it’s a Shakespearean monologue.

2.  Don’t stop

Take pity on your audio engineer (you do have one, right?). If you make a mistake or use a word that isn’t quite right, don’t just stop the podcast with a fit of frantic apologizing or harsh introspection. Keep going. Pretend the recording device isn’t even there, and that you’re just having a friendly conversation with those around you. If your verbal gaffe was bad enough, you can always go back after the fact and re-record a small section. For the most part, however, little gaffes are actually a great way to make your podcast sound completely authentic and unscripted. While that shouldn’t give you carte blanche to do whatever you want, don’t just derail what might have otherwise been an excellent answer or point because you said “their” instead of  “its.”

3.  Silence is golden

It is tricky, but not impossible, to remove background noise from an audio recording. However, the stronger the background noise—or the more erratic said noise is, like the blast of a car horn—the more problematic it will be to trim, fix, and snip the audio to its intended final state. The solution? Record your podcast in as quiet an environment as possible. If you can find a room that’s devoid of extraneous sound, then you’ll greatly improve your ability to re-record parts of audio after the fact if, during the editing process, you’ve found that a certain phrase or section just didn’t come out the way you intended. It’s a lot easier to replicate silence than it is to replicate the exact conditions of a semi-noisy room.

4.  Don’t cut each other off

This tip deserves an asterisk by it for one important reason. If you’re recording a podcast in a “one-take, no matter what” kind of environment (akin to a live radio show), then feel free to cut someone else off just as much as you would in a normal conversation—it adds a certain degree of banter and energy to a recording. If you do have the option to use multiple takes, or are planning to devote some editing time to your recording, than it’s imperative to avoid cutting each other off at the trail of an answer or point. Here’s why. Suppose person A just finishes up a fabulous answer, but person B cuts person A off or speaks over the last part of said answer with another question or comment. You’ve essentially locked that interjection into the final mix of the podcast, whether you want it or not, because you’re not going to be able to edit out person B’s statement.  To delete said statement, you’d have to delete person A’s comment as well.

Simply put, it’s a lot easier to delete parts of a podcast, replace parts of a podcast, and even shuffle around parts of a podcast if each question, answer, and comment exists in its own independent bubble of recorded time. Point at each other. Mute microphones. Bust out the signal flags. Do whatever it takes to keep your vocalizations from becoming a part of another person’s answer stream.

5.  Keep it simple

Just like in writing, the easiest articles to digest are not those that feature 300-word paragraphs filled with complex sentences and complicated arguments. Attention spans are, by nature, short. So you run the risk of losing a listener’s attention should you launch into a five-minute-long answer or discussion point. That’s not to say that there isn’t a time and a place for an extended response to something that’s said on your podcast. However, depending on the complexity of the topic and your syntax (Simple sentences! Subject first! No commas! Action verbs!), it might not be the best course of action if you want to keep listeners engaged. A podcast is a lot like a cocktail party: Keep your listeners impressed with your brevity and attitude, not your 60-minute lecture.

• Funny
• Tells a story
• Uses images/visuals
• Has personality
• Inspires learning, thought, action, sharing, passion
• Solves a problem
• Teaches
• Is new or offers a unique perspective
• Makes the complex simple
• Easy to digest
• Resonates with reader—connects—personalized
• This acronym for compelling content seems to sum it all up: SUCCESs = simple-unexpected-concrete-credible-emotional-story

Almost universally, compelling content has these effects on readers:

• Makes them come back or subscribe
• Draws people in
• Makes people share or want to share the content
• Compels action
• Makes them read to the end

The comments—especially those defining compelling content as personable, passionate, resonating, something you want to share—made me think about the intersection of social media and more traditional content, and whether/how social media is shifting readers’ expectations of what they want from an article, or a blog post, or the newspaper or anything they read. I took a risk last week by writing about my new dog in a weekly “business” email, but I got more response from that than I usually get when I focus solely on business issues. Was it the photo? Or the subject? Or the fact that it was personal?

How can social media be integrated into your corporate Web articles so that readers respond in ways that social tools are encouraging—e.g., they can comment, they can share the article (via email, Digg, etc.), they can subscribe (RSS), they can be drawn in with visuals or polls or rich media or any element that invites a click so they can experience a different facet of the subject, they can take an action based on what the article has taught them by clicking on something that offers a next step, they can see how many other readers ranked it highly or shared it, etc.

I loved how some of our HP clients worked together this week to make sure blog posts teased the audience about the fiber channel over Ethernet story, and then tweeted about the article once it was launched. And the article’s most visually prominent call to action was an invitation to join the conversation on the blog itself.

I wonder, as Web articles support marketing campaigns that incorporate Facebook pages or Twitter accounts or a video series, how corporate marketers can effectively integrate those elements into the articles. And how the organizations might have to work differently to ensure articles and social media elements are well-coordinated.

Check out the follow-up post to the above, How to Get in Touch with your Readers Needs [and Produce Compelling Content], for the author’s principles (he focuses on blog content, but I think the concepts apply to other types). And let me know what you think!