You Need this Museum Podcasting Book

Picture it: you’re sitting in a team meeting and everyone decides that it is time for your museum to create a podcast. As THE millennial on the team, the task falls on you. But, yikes, you don’t know where to begin, other than recording sound. Fortunately, a book on podcasting for museums was just released, so you can read it, take notes, and come back to your team well-informed.

While I knew very little about podcasts, other than I like to listen to them, I was intrigued by the idea of a book about podcasting written for museum professionals. A few weeks ago, I agreed to review Your Museum Needs a Podcast: A Step-By-Step Guide to Podcasting on a Budget for Museums, History Organizations, and Cultural Nonprofits by Hannah Hethmon (some of you may know her from her engaging podcast series Museums in Strange Places. Check it out here!) because the mission of my blog is to provide practical advice and insight to support museum professionals on topics they didn’t learn in school. This book seemed like a great opportunity to review new literature that may benefit museum pros who need to know how to get stuff done. I want you to buy this and read it for yourself, so I’m not going to give away too much about the content. I will, however, fill you in on what I thought about it and what I found to be useful.

What did I learn about podcasting?

After reading this book, I now understand how to make one happen. Hannah Hethmon does a fabulous job at approaching the practical steps required to make a podcast and recommends the tools that she has found success with. There’s also an entire toolkit that one can download with resources for planning and creating a podcast, including sample scripts, budget, and pitches. She also does a great job at digging into goal setting, storytelling and marketing your podcast. Equally important to the practical steps.

While I likely will not actually pursue creating my own podcast, I now know the basic tools necessary to do so or know where to start if I was tasked with producing one.

 What surprised me about this book?

When reading a book about podcasting, I did not expect to find inspiring professional advice. Hethmon talks throughout the book about imposter syndrome and about how many podcasters are amateurs who just get it done. This quote resonated with me: “What separates those who want to podcast from these folks—who are actually podcasting—is the ability to work with a deadline and publish episodes that aren’t perfect.”  Her words offer a beautiful solution to imposter syndrome, which is essentially sticking to the deadline and be okay with putting out an imperfect product. There are many similar gems in this book that can be applied to other projects.

Who will this book be useful for?

This book will obviously be useful for those who want to (or have been told to) make a podcast. This is a book that truly takes you from a vague idea of “hey, let’s make a podcast” to a finished, marketed product available on iTunes. Because this book is a quick read, it will be perfect for those who rapidly need to absorb information on how to create a podcast to meet a deadline to pitch the project to the board. As the title suggests, this book will also be helpful for those working with a tiny budget (or no budget at all) to create a show. There are many free and reasonably priced equipment and software recommendations.

While the content is specific to museum podcasting, I found the content useful for any area of museum work- especially the sections about defining goals and storytelling. Even if you are not planning to create a podcast in the immediate future, I truly believe this book will provide you with great insights.

I highly recommend this book to those who are interested in creating a podcast, are curious about how to make a podcast, or were told by their boss to make one. Are you ready to dig in? Go to Amazon stat and pick up your copy.