Starting your first Podcast
Ever since the beginning of the pandemic, businesses have been scurrying left and right to find a way to get their message out to prospective customers. This ranges from your local barber shop to Fortune 500 & FTSE companies. Many started their first podcast.
One thing they ALL have in common is that they all want to maintain a dialog with their customers and I am no different. I started this journey in early 2020 and I had a project that was running around in the back of my head that I thought would work in this time of disconnect.
Hi, I am Keith Smith – my day job is Managing Director of British creative industry new business development platform, The Advertist but at the beginning of 2020, I began exploring how to create a podcast. Since then, I have been interviewing people and companies from around the world and creating a great repository of information about how to win new business.
Here am going to go through the steps in the process for you to start a new podcast from scratch and have listeners in 6 months, and you can have your hobby take over your day job.
To have a podcast is more than having the ability to record 40 minutes of a couple people talking. If that was the case, everyone would be doing it. It takes a goal and a path to create each episode, but more than that, it takes a plan for the whole podcast. I sat down in early 2020 and created a layout of what I wanted and how to get there. I think I might even have the sketches from a napkin that I did with my trusted IT guru Matt Smith over at PhotoSpherix when I did it. Oh, did I forget to mention that his company PhotoSpherix has been a priceless asset to both my day job at The Advertist and my podcast? The guys and gals at PhotoSpherix always go the extra mile in everything they do, including the great 360 product photography that they create. Ok, enough about that, I feel I had to add that just to get this post up on their blog – the things we do for coverage!
No better place to start than the beginning
OK, the idea for my podcast was that I wanted a place to interview those that made the decisions in companies both as employees and consultants and find a deeper understanding about how they go about winning new business, and how they reach out to prospective customers. I knew that I wanted this to be a weekly podcast so that I could still do my day job, and I wanted to have a better understanding of my customers over at The Advertist. With all these goals in mind, I started getting all the gear together. Off I went to the internet, and Amazon, we all know we shop at Amazon a little too much! One of the best places to start to see the gear that you need is at Castos Equipment Checklist for any setup or budget. This is a great start on the gear, and although I’m not an equipment expert, I did my research thoroughly and found the pieces that I need.
The mistakes I made in my first podcast
Gear in hand – or more on the desk – at the office, I was ready for my first podcast. OK, it was a test, it was a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants show that was a little bit of information and a lot of cringeworthy rambling, but it got my toe in the water on what needed to be done. I quickly learned that I needed an outline for each show!
Creating your first podcast
The fuel first podcast
Little did I know that if you make lots of errors, you are going to spend more time editing your episode than it took to record said episode, but we live and learn. I finally got the first episode in the can, and post edited. We use Adobe Audition for all of our editing now, and with a clean recording, we can complete a 45-minute episode in about 4 hours and have it ready for the next week. Now, that doesn’t mean that it only takes 4 hours to produce a show. Your will need to do the following before each show, and as I am writing this, this article is a great example of outreach.
Here is an example of those unknown projects you will need to do to promote your podcast:
For each show, you will need to do the following.
- Find a subject for your episode
- Outline the episode
- Find a guest, our research the subject
- Research your guest, talk to them on the phone, have a virtual beer with them, find out how they talk.
- Setup your recording time. Interruptions cause more editing
- Write a short post for your guest’s blog or have them create a write up. Links and back links always help
- Record the show
- Edit the show
- Create a transcript
- Reach out on social media
- Post the show up at your site. Share the link to everyone above!
- Rinse and repeat
Find a subject for your first podcast episode
You know your subject matter, you know what you want to do, but if your format is more of an interview, you want to know about the subject’s subject matter so that you can ask open ended and engaging questions. Your goal as the interviewer is to get all the knowledge possible out of your guest.
Outline your first podcast episode
While free form can work, it will create more work for you in the long run (unless live, raw unedited fly-on-the-wall styles suit you). Share the outline with your guest – give them a clue about the type of questions you want to ask and then stick to the outline as you work through it.
Find a guest for your first episode
Not everything in this outline is in chronological order. You might have a guest, and you need a subject. Or, you might have a subject and need to find a guest. Do the work in the beginning. Do not try and fit the wrong guest in the wrong subject. I find inspiration from reading LinkedIn posts from people I follow, from time to time, it makes me reach out and ask.
And never be afraid to ask. I’ve been extremely flattered to have my invitations accepted and each time, it makes you raise your game. If all you want to do is interview your friends, then well done, you’ve created an echo chamber. I’ve always enjoyed taking on subjects and guests that make me feel uncomfortable.
Research your guest
The more you know about your guest the more you will have a natural interaction with them. Some guests might have a large amount of knowledge, but always need a nudge to move forward. Others might just ramble on and on. Know how to work with them on air so that you get the best podcast possible. Learn how to interject politely and steer a conversation back on track. Your guest might be rambling because they need help, so step in and switch gears and remember to review that part in post.
Write a short post for your first podcast episode
Another marketing strategy you can deploy is some pre-publicity. Just creating it is not going to be good enough. You want people to listen to your episode. To do this, you need as many people to know about it as possible. You have the tools right in your hands to reach out to additional people about your show, you just must write about it and share the information. Your guest also wants people to listen to the episode, otherwise, they wouldn’t be here in the first place. Use the tools you have. Do some pre-show publicity ahead of the podcast, give the guest something to push to their tribe – a logo, a screen shot etc – and outline what you’re going to chat about. Treat it like a 30-second trailer for your show if it was a radio or TV program.
Record the show
Again, thousands of places on the internet cover this subject better than I can; Google is a great tool. Here are a couple that I have used:
Squadcast is popular among many podcasters because it allows for what I call ‘Jack & Jill’ (split-track) recordings where each person has their own audio. This give you the ability to edit out just one person’s dialog – say for example you and your guest are in the middle of a very profound discussion and they sneeze. Using Squadcast, you can edit out their sneeze without chopping out your audio as well. It’s a subscription service but if you’re in the market for a paid tool, then this must be considered a strong candidate.
https://www.adobe.com/products/audition.html
Adobe is my go-to. Audition is a very powerful platform with lots of different tools and effects. It syncs with all the other Adobe programs seamlessly and the quality does show through. After nearly two years, I’m only just beginning to scratch the surface of what’s possible but it’s important to get the basics of using it and get publishing. Adobe makes that very easy. It can be a bit pricey but if you pay for it as part of Adobe’s Cloud package, you can up your game across all of your graphic, photographic, film and audio needs for your business.
There are plenty of free tools for novice creators – again Google is your friend. Most free tools like Audacity or Garage Band are great to start with until you think an investment is needed.
Here’s a list of recording software that might help:
https://www.apple.com/mac/garageband/
https://www.apple.com/logic-pro/
Edit the show
Same as above really. There are some other much better informed articles about how to edit and generate an interesting podcast. The main point is to create a narrative, some texture to the show. Pull a highlight out and use it to engage the listener from the get-go, use free audio from places like Pixabay https://pixabay.com/ and put some time into it. It shows in the finished product and your guests will appreciate the effort you go to.
Create a transcript for your first podcast episode
This is purely a promotional thing. All the search engines can see text, but not audio. They are getting better, but to show up in the search engines, they want text. Type out the content of your show. This is slow, but always worth the work. Also look at artificial intelligence options that can help. They are not perfect, you will have to edit the text, but it might get you a long way towards the transcript. This is something I’m playing with. My shows are notoriously long and transcription software is fuzzy, so if you have time to edit the transcript, it’s good practice.
Reach out on social media
Use your social outreach to get more ears to your episode. Find an outreach plan that works for you and repeat it every time you put out a new episode. Remember that your listeners don’t know that you have a new episode unless you let them know. Use every channel all of the time. Get your guest to promote the show to their followers. Name drop companies in the show and let them know on social media that you’re talking about them.
Post the show on your site.
Finally, you have the episode ready to go live. You can make it available to your listeners. If everything is lined up right, your show will now show up on all the podcast players like Spotify, Google, iTunes, Buzzsprout etc and you will always get new listeners through your marketing efforts.
Rinse and repeat
You will have to do these things for every episode. This is not a once and done. Have your plan and follow it.
And enjoy the process. It’s a big investment in your time and money, so approach this as you would any major time-sponge. If you put the effort in, will you get the rewards you want?
And finally, don’t become obsessed with the analytics and the numbers. This is not a sprint. Regular publishing will pay off over time as the various indexing sites catalog your shows, listener numbers will gradually lift from 1-2 per day, to 10, 30 or 50 per day and you start seeing the cumulative effect of a large back catalogue that new listers can explore.
And thank your audience. If you listen to other people’s shows, you know the warm feeling that it gives you when they say thanks Reciprocation is the least you can do.
