How to do a Lib Dem podcast: tips from Jacob Rees Mogg’s constituency
You may have noticed that I’ve got (even more) into political podcasting recently. I’m not the only one. The Liberal Democrat team in Jacob Rees Mogg’s constituency has also got into podcasting with their Not The Mogg show:
This podcast uncovers the political reality in North East Somerset. MP, Jacob Rees Mogg currently enjoys over a 12,000 majority. But, what do his and the Conservative Party’s decisions really mean for North East Somerset? Simon Allen, a local resident, and Liberal Democrat Prospective Parliamentary Candidate, Nick Coates are in discussion around what all this means for North East Somerset.
Nick Coates explains more:
Why do a podcast?
Before Christmas a friend of mine, a party member, suggested we do a podcast. Increasing numbers of people download their favourite podcasts and listen on their journey to and from work. It seems an ideal medium. Because of where people might listen to this we agreed to keep it to 30 minutes or less.
We use the Anchor app. I can ring up my friend Simon, he’ll open the app, click on record and away we go. The record quality is good and Anchor distribute to all the usual channels.
Tips
- Have a clear direction of travel.
- Break it down into sections – this helps editing, means you can cut out duff bits or move sections around so they make more sense. With Anchor you can give each section a “chapter heading” so listeners can skip. And it means you can link with the interviewers voice or music.
- Don’t cover too many topics. We dealt with one in our first and out that allowed ourselves to roam.
- Even though it is my podcast Simon has some good points and so I try not to over-dominate.
- Give it a good name. The working title of North East Somerset Focus is not great. Unseat the Mogg or Not the Mogg are alternatives which we are playing with.
Reasons for doing it
- It provides a platform for sharing my ideas.
- It’s great practice for handling the interview setting and articulating my arguments.
- It doesn’t matter if no-one listens as I can still be introduced as the “author” of the Not the Mogg podcast which sounds great.
I tried to listen to the podcast first on Spotify where it just would not seem to play… just silence. I then returned to the previous page where I managed to get some sound but at such a low level it was inaudible. I had to turn all the sound settings on my laptop to maxium (a volume level of 150%!) in order to hear it. I did check out ALL the sound settings both in the software and sound card settings.
While this could be a problem with my hardware, other things play fine, so I suspect it might be helpful to record with a higher sound level if that is possible with your podcast platform.
I will have to listen to it. Hope I do not have any probs with it. In the meantime I hear that Mogg met Bannon last September.The Alt Right guru chatting to ERG what about? Funding them maybe? or funding the Brexit 4 britain facebook sight? Money that appeared from nowhere,no sponsor mentioned. Only one frontman!
I’d suggest another tip (related to #3). I haven’t yet listened to ‘Not the Mogg’, so this isn’t a comment on theirs.
*Keep it short.*
The best broadcasters make it sound like they’re just having a chat with a mate. But just having a chat with your mate doesn’t make you a good broadcaster.
It takes effort to make a short podcast that’s engaging. But it’s easier to listen to one like that. “Failing to prepare = preparing to fail”
‘Anything but the Mogg’