The 10-minute podcast guest tech checklist

“If your podcasts clip looks dark and grainy, no one’s gonna watch it”.
— Spencer Carpenter, podcast booking agent.

Obviously, this not only applies to short clips but also to long form episodes.

As no one watches an episode with terrible video quality nor listen an episode with terrible audio, it’s a missed opportunity for both yourself and your guest to build authority.

And that, no matter how good the value is.

But if you don’t invite your guest to sit in a studio with you, the responsibility to have good audio and video rely on both of you.

In most cases, your guest isn’t fully aware of what makes or breaks the episode before they even say a word.

So I’ve written this checklist so you can share it with them before recording.

From now, I’ll talk to you the guest. Let’s start from the worst case scenario then improve our case at each step.

1) The lighting

A first misconception is to think that seeing you is enough.

As you can see on the image below, you can indeed see me.

But would you watch me talking for 45 minutes? Maybe not.

The problem is that the biggest source of light is behind me. Having it on top of my head wouldn’t work either.

So the fix we’ll apply is to put your biggest source of light in front of you, like I did on the image below on the right.

Now, we need a better place to record.

2) The place

I’ve recently edited an episode where the guest was sat in an outdoor section of a convention.

With people coming through behind the guest, the microphone would pick up everything.

Remember that the main goal here is to make the viewer to listen to you. Any distraction is a risk that they don’t get your message.

To avoid these risks, find a quiet place at work, at home or at a coworking space.

3) The angle

if you look closely at the images I’ve been sharing so far, you’ll see a lot of unused space above my head.

Once you are aware of this, you cannot unsee it.

To fix it, let’s imagine a 3x3 grid layer on your image. Therefore, this grid creates a rectangle at the center of the image. Your eyes should be close to the top border of this rectangle, like I did below.

As you can see below, the difference is staggering.

Now, let’s address a mistake that can ruin all the efforts we’ve done so far.

4) The background

When you join a virtual studio, you’re often offered to blur your background or replace it with an image of your choice.

Resist to this tentation.

You are on a podcast not only to build your authority, but also to build trust. Anything that looks artificial moves away from building this trust.

If you have a DSLR camera or a pricey smartphone that you can plug to your laptop, use it because the background would be blurred in a way that doesn’t look artificial (or not too much in case of using a smartphone).

But if you don’t have a camera, leave your background unchanged to build proximity with the viewer. If needed, you can rethink the place from where you’ll record.

Authenticity prevails.

5) The audio

If I had to name one technical aspect that can make or break an episode, I’d pick the audio.

Simply because it’s crucial for both YouTube and audio platforms.

No matter how good the image looks, rare are the podcasts episodes getting views with terrible audio.

So you must avoid recording with your laptop’s microphone or your Airpods.

AI can do lots of magic tricks but turning terrible audio into studio quality audio ain’t one.

So to fix your audio, I recommend 2 things:

• investing in a podcast microphone to record the audio

• having headphones so you can hear the host but you microphone won’t.

If you need a reference for the microphone, I use the Samsun Q2U for all my video content.

Now you know everything you needed before going on a podcast. I hope this was helpful.

6) One last fix for you the host

Your guest have done their part of the job. Don’t ruin it all this by recording with Google Meet or Zoom.

Podcasts with the best quality out there use tools like Riverside.

If this resource was helpful to you, please consider supporting me by giving this post a like so more podcasts hosts would see it:

That’s all for me today.
Loïc.