7 Things Podcast Listeners Hate (Podcasting Mistakes to Avoid)
Whether you’re brand new to podcasting, or you’ve been at it for a while, looking at your podcast from the perspective of a listener is a great way to avoid these common podcasting mistakes.
As an avid podcast listener and blogger/critic, I have my own pet-peeves about podcasts. There are definitely things that make me turn a podcast off and keep me from subscribing.
For the first couple of years in my podcast listening, I thought it was just me. Then I started interacting with other podcast listeners online and in Facebook groups and learned that I wasn’t alone.
In 2019 I even went to PodCon, a podcasting event made for both podcast hosts and listeners, and attended a session all about the things that drive podcast listeners crazy, and will make them turn your show off. It was so gratifying to sit in a ballroom full of people (including some very famous podcast hosts) and hear them complain about the things that I scream about in my own head!
So here’s a list of bad habits and podcasting decisions you should try to avoid, compiled from my own personal annoyances, and those of my friends (both in real life and online).
7 Things That Will Make a Listener Turn Off Your Podcast
1. When All The Co-Hosts Sound Alike
This might not seem like a mistake, but it IS a problem. It is extremely difficult for a podcast listener to really get into your show if there are co-hosts or actors who sound very similar.
If you’re making an audio drama, this is easy to avoid. Here’s what you do:
Before you record and edit your first episode, record a table read with the actors you’re thinking of hiring, then get feedback from third-party listeners (aka, people who are not familiar with the characters). Don’t rely on your own ear to make this judgement call (you’re too familiar with the content/story line to be impartial).
If you’re hosting a chat or interview-style podcast with your best friend (just two of you), or a group of friends, you really want to think about how you all sound together.
It’s easy to understand why YOU think that Joe and Chris sound completely different, but you have to remember that you’ve know them for your whole lives (or many years)!
A listener DOESN’T know the difference, and if voices are bouncing around in their earbuds without a clear idea of who’s who, it might not be worth the effort to try following along.
Yes, it’s difficult to avoid or change the way an actual human being talks. And no, you don’t want to stifle someone’s personality for the sake of the listener (this could actually change the chemistry that makes your podcast magical).
Here are some things you can do to help the listener:
- Acknowledge it. In episode 1, tell listeners that you know that you and your co-host sound a lot alike, so you’ll try to make it clear who is talking.
- “Throw” to the other person. Once you’ve finished your thought, say, “Chris, what do you think?” This helps the listener in the moment, and over time, they’ll be able to identify Chris more easily (and by default, identify you, too). The Women Who Travel podcast does this really well.
- Identify yourself. If you’re in a group recording and you want to interject or speak without someone mentioning you, say, “This is Joe, and I have to disagree with what Chris just said.”
2. Too Much Housekeeping
If you haven’t gotten to the main point of your episode by minute 3, there’s a good chance that I (and a lot of your new listeners) are going to fast forward or turn you off.
Too often, podcast hosts spend the first 5-10 minutes of an episode talking about “housekeeping” things. By this, I mean their upcoming events, how/where to sign up for bonus content, where to buy their latest book, or some other announcement.
While I understand that these things are important to building and engaging with your podcast audience outside of the podcast episodes themselves, I didn’t download your episode for this content.
I downloaded the episode to hear you talk about the topic you promised in the episode title and episode description. So get to it!
Here’s my recommendation for quickly addressing housekeeping issues in your podcast:
- In the beginning/intro of the episode, mention (in 20 seconds or less) that you have important updates about X, Y, and Z, and that you’ll be getting to those later in the episode. This is a “stay tuned” approach. Your loyal listeners/subscribers will be glad to hear that you’ll be updating them. New listeners won’t get bogged down by all of it at the front of the episode.
- Cover one of the updates/announcements as an ad break. By this time, you’ve already delivered some of the valuable content you promised in your episode title, which is what all listeners are looking for. You still get at least one housekeeping item in early in the show.
- Give the rest of the updates/announcements at the end of the episode. Any listener who has listened all the way to the end of the episode is likely to be eager to hear your updates.
If you have a guest on your show and they’re live on the recording already, absolutely do not spend time on housekeeping items. You’re literally asking them to sit on the line while you speak to your audience about yourself.
If the guest interview is pre-recorded, it’s okay to speak directly to the audience in a brief intro before saying, “Here’s the interview I did with so and so”.
For more advice on how to write interesting podcast episode titles and descriptions (ones that will get listeners to download your show), grab my podcasting ebook.
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3. Endless Rambling & Nervous Talking
This happens a lot when a host doesn’t know how or when to end a sentence, or feels like they need to fill silence. And it comes across as exactly that to listeners.
There are two major problems with rambling and nervous talking:
First: You’re wasting time and not delivering on the promise of the episode.
Every episode you make should have an objective or desired result to it, as well as a certain amount of topics or opinions you plan to cover to get to the desired result.
If you ramble on about something because you just don’t know how to stop yourself, you’re taking away from the time needed to address the key objective of the episode.
Your listener downloaded the show because you said you’d talk about X, so stop having side-tangents about A. A quick aside (a 5-10 second mention of something, but not going into detail) is one thing; a 3-minute tangent is another. Stick to the point!
The opposite of this is also true, too: when a podcast host rushes through the important stuff because they are afraid of the episode running over on time.
I cannot stand when a podcaster cuts themselves—or their co-host or guest—short because they “have to stick to time”.
Seriously, unless a guest has said that they have a hard stop at 40 minutes, please don’t ever say to them that you need to skip over something because of time. It’s so rude (and many podcasters often leave this in the audio!). Edit out what you have to, but stop making the clock more important than their ideas or opinions that you asked them on your show to share.
The second problem with nervous talking/rambling is that it’s bad for new listeners who are just finding your show.
“Listener entry point” is something I talk about a lot in my Must-Haves for a Successful Podcast ebook. I think that a lot of podcasters forget that new listeners are finding their show all the time.
You can’t control which episode a new listener will listen to first, so you have to keep your audio on-topic, without a lot of stray ramblings.
(Tip: If your first few episodes are truly terrible and difficult to listen to, and your fear that a new listener will hate them, you can do what the Gilmore Guys did, which is to go back and insert a recorded “disclaimer” into the audio, letting listeners know that the first few episodes are bad, but that they got better and to stick with them.)
4. Unexplained "In-Jokes"
We’ve all experienced what it’s like when the people around us have an inside joke and we’re just standing there looking like an idiot. (There’s a great scene on The Office when Michael pretends to get a joke, and then admits that he’s never been part of an inside joke with anyone).
Inside jokes in a podcast are awesome for loyal listeners, but bad for new listeners (here we go again with “listener entry point”).
I was surprised by how many people at PodCon complained about this. The attendees at this event were avid podcast listeners, who were probably very loyal to certain shows; I thought they would have appreciated a good inside joke. Apparently not.
I’m not saying that you can’t have one or two insides jokes (my favorite podcast ever, The West Wing Weekly, had many in-jokes that made me absolutely giddy), but you have to use them right.
By “use them right”, I mean:
- the joke has been explained clearly on the podcast or developed throughout the podcast, and isn’t some joke that you’re bringing from your outside/personal lives and then laughing about randomly
- you use the joke sparingly, and without too much time and energy spent on them. You can make the inside joke, and your co-host can laugh, but you can’t sit there riffing on it for the next 15 seconds. New listeners are going to wonder what the hell they’re missing, and could lose interest.
There is a fine line to walk when you’re trying to be authentic with your listeners and you want to share a laugh. Try to always remember the actual objective of your episode, and don’t spend a lot of time with inside jokes and lingo that only a few people can follow.
5. Interrupting Co-Hosts or Guests
Just because you’re the host of the podcast doesn’t mean you have to be front and center all the time. My expectation (as a listener) is that if you’ve invited a guest to be on your show, you value what they have to say. So let them say it!
I’m pretty sure it was Hrishi (at PodCon) who said about hosting a podcast “is like hosting a party; I want to manage it, but blend in.”
If you find yourself interrupting your co-host or guest often, practice active listening skills, or actually mute yourself (practice muting and un-muting yourself).
You and your co-host(s) could also create hand signals, for when you want to interject (make sure these are very different signals from ones that say “speak louder” or “say more about that”).
Also: Don’t make it a regular habit to finishing other people’s thoughts. You might actually be wrong about what they were going to say!
6. Loud Advertisements (and Other Ad-Related Stuff)
My friend, this is one that people crab about ALL THE TIME!
Listen, everybody knows that advertising equals revenue, and it’s a way for you to pay your podcasting bills (and maybe more). But you have got to approach ads the right way, whether they are from an outside sponsor, pre-recorded by you, or a live read.
First of all, adjust the volume.
Nobody wants to have to lunge for their phone or grab their AirPod to turn down the volume every time your podcast has an ad break. (We do that enough when watching TV).
I have a friend who used to listen to a mega-popular podcast in bed, to help fall asleep. Then, the podcast changed to dynamic ad spots, inserting ads that are crazy loud in comparison to the rest of the audio. The ads woke my friend up just as they were drifting off to sleep, so they quit the show.
Next, make sure the ads actually make sense for your audience and the content you’re providing. I loved this one podcast about technology and business, but hated when the beloved podcast host read a loooong ad for nut milk. It just didn’t jive with the topics the show covered.
If you do manage to score a big name brand and they want you to read a script, ask if you can make it your own. Another beloved podcast host on a different show drove me crazy reading scripted ads for Hallmark cards. It sounded forced (I mean, I don’t know how Hallmark cards organically fit in to any podcast I listen to!).
Sometimes, when it comes to sponsorship, you have to make hard decisions. You might just have to say NO. Remember that your podcast audience listens to your show for a specific reason/topic; off-topic, irrelevant ads are a way you could lose them.
Lastly, and this is a HUGE pet-peeve of mine: let your listener know when you’re going to an ad break. Make some sort of transition. Do not just randomly start an ad read or drop in a pre-recorded spot.
I wrote about this in my review of the Broken Harts podcast (and a few other podcast reviews). Not only were the ads inappropriate for the podcast content (ads for a comedy show in the middle of a podcast about dead children), they were dropped in without any sort of warning. It was jarring and disturbing.
Even if you don’t know yet which ad spot you’re going to drop into a break, you can read the transition and go back later. This is what the huge, backed-by-millions-of-dollars podcasts do.
7. Rebroadcasting Old Episode During Vacation (or when you're behind schedule)
One of the very first articles I wrote when I first started the Podcast Maniac blog was about rebroadcasts. Back then (in 2017), podcasts ran re-runs of old episodes all the time; it was somehow thought as an acceptable thing to do.
But I’ll tell you: it was rude then, and it’s rude now.
Please do not run a rebroadcast of an episode when you’re on vacation or simply behind schedule with episodes. I know how to use a podcast feed. I do not need you putting an old file at the top of the episode list.
Listeners would rather you put out nothing at all, and maybe just announce on social media that you’ll be back in a couple of weeks.
The one caveat I have for this is that it’s more acceptable to rebroadcast an episode if it coincides with recent current events (like the Black Lives Matter protests, or the coronavirus pandemic).
If you DO run a (relevant) rebroadcast, be sure to mark it as such in the episode title, the episode description, and in a newly recorded audio intro to the episode.
I hope this advice stops you from making these common podcasting mistakes that turn your listeners off. My goal is to help you get more downloads and loyal listeners (subscribers, baby!), so keep checking out the other podcasting advice here on the blog.
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Podcast Episode Planning Guide
Fill your podcasting calendar with this list of fun & relevant episode ideas!
So very kind of you sharing so useful content,thanks.
I don’t even have a podcast, but I clicked over anyway to see if as a listener these things annoyed me, and two and six do for sure!
– Pixie | Productive Pixie
My local historical Museum is trying to get into the podcast biz. This information will be very useful to them. thanks