31 May 2021

Why this note?

More and more podcasts are being made, also within the university and FGGA. The department of Communication & Marketing wants to control the quality of these podcasts, set guidelines for the making of podcasts and streamline the process. If you have plans or ideas to make a podcast, let us know at communicatie@fgga.leidenuniv.nl and we will be happy to help you.

Facility

In 2.60 in Wijnhaven a complete podcast studio has been set up. You can reserve the space by submitting a meeting request in the agenda of the next functional mailbox: mediacenter@fgga.leidenuniv.nl. It is also possible to check the availability of the Media Center this way.  
Do not forget to inform the Communication & Marketing FGGA about the set-up. They offer support in recording, editing and distributing the podcast.  The equipment is expensive and fragile, so be careful and clean the stuff afterwards for the next user.

Tips and Tricks

You can use podcasts for different purposes. They can be informative, opinionated, recruiting, entertaining, analytical or descriptive. 
•    Think carefully about the purpose of your podcast. 
•    Make sure you have a clear structure that is repeated every time. This gives structure and familiarity to your podcast. 
•    Make sure you have a catchy intro, a nice jingle or a teaser that makes listeners want to listen on. 
•    Introduce the presenter and the guests. 
•    Keep your podcast short and to the point, the ideal listening length is between 15 and 20 minutes. For more substantive podcasts, for example for education, the ideal listening length is even shorter. In any case, try to keep the podcasts as short as possible and record or publish each topic as a separate podcast.
•    Discuss the thread with your guests and give an indication of the questions you want to ask so that the guests can prepare themselves properly. 
•    Make sure you have a logo for your podcast to make it easier to find and to make it look good in the apps. 

Technique

The starting point should be that your guests are facing you in the studio. This improves the quality of the recording and gives interaction in your conversation. What if you have a guest on the phone? 
•    Test the connection 
•    Use a telephone line via bluetooth or a special app like zencastr: https://zencastr.com/ Note: The quality will always be less and the editing will take more time.
•    For editing and post-production, use Audacity or Audition. 
•    Listen carefully to your recording, remove long silences and questions/answers that you have re-done. If you use telephone recordings, announce this in your podcast. 
•    You can find free music on freemusicarchives.

Upload

Podcasts must be uploaded to an online database. This is not Spotify or Soundcloud, but a secondary database. The podcasts of the FGGA are on ANCHOR.FM. You can only promote one podcast series per Anchor account, but you can create multiple accounts. We now have two: 
Anchor 1: FGGA Kennis en Verdieping
https://open.spotify.com/show/3Ld812rxR49udiaGGfhLkM

Anchor 2: Introduction to Security Studies.
https://open.spotify.com/show/6DrNgG3oiPdTz6gqRCjWUz?si=yJ7rhSCuSTG_V-J64nZr3Q

In Anchor you can upload all details of your episode such as a description, title links, images, logo. Once you upload in Anchor, it takes about an hour for Spotify or Soundcloud to show it. The actual publishing of an episode can take up to 24 hours. So Anchor is actually the back-end where Spotify and Soundcloud are the front-end.   

All FGGA podcasts end up on the Spotify and Soundcloud profile of the FGGA. Under this profile, the podcast series will be published as public playlists. This will ensure that we have all the podcasts produced by the FGGA in one place. Listeners will be able to follow the profile and receive an update as soon as a new episode has been made.