Hi, I'm Charles Commins. I'm a podcast producer for Vibrant Sound Media, and today I'm going to give you a tip about engaging with your audience. I'm a podcast producer, presenter, and voiceover artist through my company, Vibrant Sound Media. I work with a range of businesses from the BBC, Microsoft, and the NHS to an exciting array of small businesses to create engaging audio that gives organisations a vibrant voice that engages with their audience.
I started Vibrant Sound Media in 2018 after I left my previous job in retail. From a young age I'd always wanted to work in radio, and when I was 18 I went to university to study media and radio production. Whilst there I fell even deeper in love with radio and worked at a number of commercial radio stations, as well as hosting several shows on our student station as well.
While finding a job in radio wasn't to be for me, I turned to community radio where I hosted my own weekly show for a few years. And after realising that it wasn't too late to achieve my dream of working in audio, I set up Vibrant Sound Media and started my own podcast called It's All Cobblers To Me, which is a fans podcast for my beloved football team, Northampton Town. I used it initially to experiment with different formats and features.
And within a couple of weeks, I was approached by a marketing agency to make a branded podcast for them. Since then I've worked with some great companies and people and created loads of original podcasts and edited a few well known ones too. The one thing I love about podcasting is its intimacy. Audio has always been the most intimate medium. And for me, podcasting takes it one step further. When you listen to a podcast, it's an intended action.
You don't just stumble across a podcast that's already halfway through its episode. You find the one you want to listen to and hit play. It might be the subject matter that interests you at first, but before long you're going back to that podcast for more episodes because of how it makes you feel. You're hooked. You like the way it sounds, the information you might learn on the way, or the way it makes you laugh uncontrollably. And most of all, you resonate with the person hosting it.
Over time you feel like you know that person and if you met them in the street you probably feel a little in awe of them. It's this feeling that I'm trying to conjure up for the businesses I work for. The podcasts I make engage the listener and let them get to know the people behind the business. My big tip is to just be yourself when presenting your podcast. You might have a favourite radio host or podcast presenter even that you'd like to emulate, but your best self is your true self.
People want to get to know you, not the person that you wish you were. So when you're setting up to record your episodes, take a deep breath, imagine you're talking to a friend, relax and just be yourself. You can find me at vibrantsoundmedia.com, Instagram and TikTok. Just search for Charles Commins. All of my links are in the show notes. Thanks for listening to Podcasting People.