Effective speakers use variations in their voice's tone, pacing, and volume to keep their listeners engaged. Pay special attention to your favorite podcasters or radio hosts the next time you hear them. Can you identify what it is about their voice presentation that draws you in?
If your voice sounds scratchy, try an old trick used by singers everywhere: drink some hot tea with honey. Soda and dairy drinks hurt your vocal performance, so you may want to avoid them when you record. Using a pop filter on your microphone helps to reduce popping P's and B's in the recording, and makes the overall recording sound more professional.
You're Going to Edit That, Right?Depending on your format, once you finish recording, you may need to do some editing. If you had to repeat a sentence in the recording because of a mistake, you'll want to delete the old sentence and replace it. When editing vocal phrases together, be careful not to make a splice in the middle of someone taking a breath. This is a dead giveaway that the audio was edited in that spot. When splicing phrases together, try to pay attention to the pacing in the voice.
If a speaker needs to repeat a line, it's helpful to play back a couple lines preceding the one to be recorded when re-recording it. This lets the speaker get into the same voice and rhythm he was using in the original recording. This makes splicing the two together in a convincing way later much easier.
Keep LearningThere's lots of different skills to master to become a successful podcaster, so if you're not totally happy with your first efforts, don't give up. I've never met a podcaster who thought their first episode was perfect. Podcasts always seem to clarify and reveal their unique nature as time goes on, so the most important thing is to get started and to start learning by doing. Don't let a desire for perfection stop you; Keep doing your best, and you'll end up with appreciative listeners and a great podcast!