20 – Do you need an editor or producer for your podcast?

WEBVTT

So the previous episode, we were talking about, do you need a director for your episode? So now let's talk about editors and producers. So if you're thinking about

hiring anyone, director, editor, producer, anyone to help, it's probably because you are concerned about the quality of your production. And that makes a lot of

sense because the human brain actually perceives

Things that it learns like advice from a low quality production to also be low quality. So it really associates the message along with what it actually looks like. So if

the audio is all messed up, they're not going to probably trust what's being said much at all because you are sort of associating how much care is being put into the

production with how much value to place in what's being said.

And there's been research to show this as well, that listeners will associate

like high quality audio with the intelligence of the speaker. Because when the research subjects were

presented with the same information with high quality audio and low quality audio, the listeners rated the speaker as more likable when they were in that high quality

version only. So the only difference

what they heard was the quality of the sound. So this is actually a little bit unsettling for other reasons but politics aside it does indicate that we should be looking

at improving our audio or video quality of the things that we're putting out there because it is kind of like a form of branding for your business. And there's a also like

a more physical reason that this matters because

Like if you put out audio that's hard to hear or video that's hard to kind of see maybe it's a little bit blurry the brain has to work harder to process that information

because it's trying to work out the words or hear what you're saying or see what you're what you're explaining and this is cognitive friction that's the scientific

word for it and it's your brain using up resources for comprehension instead of just focusing on

being focused on those ideas. And if there is a lot of cognitive friction, it's actually been shown that listeners will drop off that content a little bit earlier. So

this isn't great on YouTube if you're putting your videos on there because you need everything that you can get. And I'm going to guess that I'm not the only one that's

kind of like if I'm listening to something in headphones and the audio is really bad, like you're just not going to keep listening to that.

So that editor is working on fixing your audio, making the quality of what you recorded well, but the producer is actually working on the strategy side of things a lot

more. So they're helping you with your episodes, making sure that they meet the needs of your business, that it makes sense, like that all of your episodes, say in a

season are sort of in a good arc, or that those topics make sense for the audience that you have.

you're targeting, that those things engage them. They're going to make sure that you don't ramble.

They're going to think about the format that you're using, that the episode is kind of structured well. They're helping with the strategy of your show. Because that

content that you're putting out there, your podcast or a series of videos on your website, that's kind of like meeting a lead. So they're probably evaluating you in a

way.

And the production quality of your show is going to be applicable in that evaluation.

I'm Jen DeHaan, and this is the Credibility Minute. Find more episodes and get in touch with me and subscribe at stereoforest.com slash minute.