20 Podcast Production Tips From a Team That Does This Daily

Most podcast production tips read like they were written by someone who has never sat in a session. This list is not that. Earworm is a B2B video podcast agency that plans, records, edits and publishes shows for brands like Soldo, Experian, Cisco and IG Group, and these are the habits that keep those shows sharp. Twenty tips, grouped by stage: before recording, in the session, in the edit and at publish.

Use them yourself, or skip the learning curve. Our podcast production services cover the whole process, from strategy through to distribution and reporting. Either way, the tips below will make your next episode better than your last.

Podcast production tips: before you record

1. Batch your recordings

One episode per session is the most expensive way to make a podcast. Set-up, sound check and warm-up take the same time whether you record one episode or three. Block a half day, book two or three guests back to back, and bank a month of content in one sitting. Batching also protects your schedule. When a guest cancels in week six, you still have episodes in the tank, and your publishing rhythm never wobbles. One warning: change tops between recordings if you are filming, or three episodes released weeks apart will all feature the same jumper.

2. Brief your guests, don't script them

Send guests the themes and the two or three questions you will definitely ask. Do not send a full script. Scripted guests rehearse their answers, and rehearsed answers sound like LinkedIn posts read aloud. What you want on tape is the first genuine telling of a story, not the fourth.

3. Do the tech check days before, not minutes before

For remote guests, run a ten minute check earlier in the week. Wired headphones, an external mic if they own one, a cabled internet connection if possible, and a quiet room without hard echo (a wardrobe full of clothes beats an empty meeting room). Fixing this on the day burns your first half hour and rattles the guest before you have asked a single question.

4. Agree file naming conventions before anyone presses record

Decide the pattern up front and make everyone stick to it. Something like showname_ep014_surname_cam-a.mp4 tells an editor everything without opening the file. "Untitled_final_v2_NEW.mp4" tells them nothing, and once you are ten episodes deep with two cameras, separate audio and a screen recording per session, sloppy naming costs real hours of detective work.

In the session

5. Film everything, even if you think you are audio-only

Camera hire is cheap next to the cost of re-recording. A filmed episode becomes a YouTube episode, LinkedIn clips and an audio feed, all from one session. An audio-only episode becomes audio, full stop. Every show Earworm produces is filmed for exactly this reason. You may not want video today, but you will want it in six months, and you cannot retrofit footage.

6. Get the mic technique right

Keep the mic about a fist's width from the mouth, angled slightly off axis so plosives (the burst of air on p and b sounds) miss the capsule. Set gain so the loudest laughs peak around -12 dB and normal speech sits nearer -18 dB, which leaves headroom for surprises. Then keep watching. Guests drift back from the mic as they relax, and the sound drifts with them.

7. Record 30 seconds of room tone

Before the interview starts, ask everyone to sit in silence for half a minute while the mics roll. That is room tone, the sound of the space itself. Your editor will use it to patch cuts, cover breaths and smooth transitions. Without it, edits get filled with pure digital silence, and pure silence in the middle of a conversation sounds wrong to every listener, even if they cannot say why.

8. One track per voice, always

Record each speaker on their own track rather than a combined mix. Multitrack recording means a cough, an interruption or one person's noisy chair can be fixed in isolation. A single mixdown of both voices means every fix affects both people, and some problems become permanent.

9. Back up before anyone leaves the room

Record to two cards at once if your camera supports it. Then offload everything to two separate drives before the session wraps, and check the files actually play. Not back at the office, on set. Drives fail, cards corrupt and bags get left in taxis, so no single copy of the session should ever travel alone. A lost recording discovered the next morning means an apology email to a guest whose diary took six weeks to pin down.

10. Frame for vertical while you shoot

Clips for LinkedIn, Shorts and Reels are vertical. A 16:9 frame with the speaker centred crops to 9:16 cleanly; a speaker framed to one side does not. Compose your shots with that crop in mind at capture time. Treating vertical as an afterthought in the edit is how you end up with clips where half a face sits at the edge of the frame.

11. Keep a live log during the session

Have someone note timestamps as you record. Great answers, fluffed questions, the moment the fire alarm went off. A one line note ("42:10, brilliant story about the failed launch") saves your editor scrubbing through two hours of footage hunting for the good bits, and it makes choosing clips ten times faster.

In the edit

12. Edit to the listen, not the waveform

It is tempting to edit visually: chop every gap, delete every um. But a conversation with no pauses is exhausting, and some ums carry meaning. Play it back at normal speed with your eyes off the timeline. If a pause feels natural, keep it. The waveform shows you where the silence is. Only your ears can tell you whether it belongs there.

13. Open with the strongest 30 seconds

Nobody owes you their attention past the first minute. Find the sharpest exchange in the conversation and run it as a cold open before your intro music. If the best moment happens at minute 38, your listener should hear it at minute zero. This matters twice as much on YouTube, where the first 30 seconds decide whether the algorithm shows your episode to anyone else at all.

14. Master to around -16 LUFS

Loudness, not peak level, decides how loud your show feels. For a stereo podcast, aim for an integrated loudness around -16 LUFS with true peaks no higher than -1 dB. That sits comfortably with the playback normalisation Apple Podcasts and Spotify apply, so your episode does not arrive quieter than everything the listener played before it. Publishing mono? Aim nearer -19 LUFS, because mono files play back louder at the same reading.

15. Go easy on the noise reduction

Aggressive de-noising leaves a watery, warbling artefact that is worse than the noise it removed. If you captured clean audio and room tone on the day, you barely need it. Use the lightest setting that works, and if you can hear the processing, back it off.

16. Pull your clips during the episode edit

The editor assembling the full episode already knows where the strongest 60 seconds live. Have them flag and cut clips in the same pass rather than handing the finished episode to someone else to mine later. It is faster, and the clips get better, because the person choosing them has heard every minute of the conversation.

At publish

17. Write episode titles for search, not for cleverness

A title should say what the episode is about and who it is for, in words your audience actually types into YouTube and Google. Puns and in-jokes feel good and rank for nothing. Guest name, topic, and the specific question the episode answers. That is the formula, and it is boring on purpose.

18. Front-load your episode descriptions

Most podcast apps show one or two lines of a description before truncating it. Put the hook and the guest's name in the first sentence, not after a paragraph of throat-clearing. Use the rest for a short bullet summary of what is covered and links to wherever you want people to go next.

19. Treat distribution as part of production, not an extra

An episode is not finished when the file is exported. One recording should become a full YouTube episode, an audio feed for Apple and Spotify, and a run of clips for LinkedIn. That multiplication is the whole point of recording on video, and it is the model behind every show we make, including The CFO Playbook for Soldo.

20. Measure something that matters

Downloads are a floor, not a scoreboard. Track which episodes drive traffic, which clips start conversations and, for B2B shows, whether the podcast touches pipeline. Reporting is the fourth stage of Earworm's process for a reason. If you cannot connect the show to a business outcome, you will struggle to defend the budget when someone asks.

Or let us handle production for you

These podcast production tips will take a DIY show a long way. But if the list reads more like a second job than a checklist, that is because it is one. Earworm's podcast production services cover all of it: strategy, studio recording, editing, clips, distribution and reporting, from £1,500 a month, with shows launched in 4 to 8 weeks.

Book a call and tell us about the show you want to make.