Starting a podcast may seem daunting, but with the right approach, it can be a rewarding venture. Here are some tips to get you started:
- Define Your Niche: Focus on topics that are relevant to your audience and showcase your expertise.
- Plan Your Content: Create a content calendar to ensure a steady stream of episodes.
- Invest in Quality Equipment: Good audio quality is essential for keeping your listeners engaged.
- Promote Your Podcast: Leverage your existing marketing channels to promote your episodes and reach a broader audience.
- Engage with Your Audience: Encourage feedback and interaction from your listeners to build a community around your podcast.
This document is focused on Audio-only podcasts, but the same ideas and prep work apply to video – most likely, YouTube is your best place for distribution.
Prep Work:
- Do some brainstorming to define your niche. Work to focus on topics that are relevant to your audience and showcase your expertise.
- Choose a format – Interviewing guests? Just you talking? Something rougher and more conversational? Or more highly edited/produced?
- Listen to similar podcasts to get ideas or find what you like
- Choose a NAME for your podcast
- If desired, buy a domain name and/or Trademark your podcast name
- Decide on your intro and outro
- I hired a voiceover person on Fiverr.com and gave her a script – she turned it around for me overnight and I think cost me about $15 with a tip
- I used this site to select and purchase royalty-free music for intro and outro
- I recorded my own Outro so I can update it easily (whereas my intro with a voiceover will stay the same – at least for each season)
- I found an editor on Upwork and he’s GREAT – I upload the files after recording to Google Drive and send a link to him, and they edit everything and add the intro/outro and send me back an mp3 to upload straight to host – here’s the Upwork profile and definitely drop my name (Lee Adkins) if you reach out https://www.upwork.com/freelancers/~01f4e95c8c75029c38 – he did a lot to help me prep and choose music and format and has additional resources to help. I pay between $25-40 per episode depending on how many edits are needed and how long it is.
- You will also need to click through your podcast host (more on that later, I use and love Captivate) to set up an account on various platforms – some like Apple and Spotify require free accounts and verification, some others are just a click to turn on.
- One pro tip here is that if you want do a teaser or pilot episode, it helps you set all this up in advance of your first real episode and your RSS feed won’t do anything until you publish an episode – the big ones can take a few days to “approve” your show.
- Consider having some podcast artwork done – whether for each episode or at least for the show as a whole.
Getting Started and Tools to Purchase:
- You’ll need a podcast “host” – this hosting platform is where the episodes live physically (hence the term host) but they generally also push the episodes out to all the platforms you select (Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcasts, etc) via an RSS feed – https://captivate.fm/ is the one I use and recommend, there’s a free trial, a less expensive version to get you started and the version I use. Captivate also has various tools and content to really help you on your way. You can also easily generate a website for the podcast – using a free Captivate domain or connecting a domain you purchase or own already – here’s my site through Captivate https://poweringrealestate.com/ (and it also has a WordPress plugin if you use WordPress and want to add your episodes to a new or existing WordPress site).
- A recording platform – you can record any way you like – including just hitting record on a Zoom or Google Meet session. I use and prefer https://squadcast.fm/ – at the least expensive level, it records two separate tracks (or a separate track for each guest/speaker) for better quality and ease of editing. The higher levels include recording video – I believe that the lower level HAS video for seeing each other while you record, but does not record the video – it is nice to see and interact more with your guest, even if releasing audio-only.
- Most likely, whatever computer you have will work – all these tools are largely cloud-based and work on all major operating systems
- Consider purchasing an inexpensive microphone that connects to your computer (generally via USB) – I’ve used or still use any of the three of these for my recordings
- Lavalier mic (clips to shirt or computer)
- Blue Yeti mic (comes with short/desktop stand)
- This Tonor Condenser mic is the one I’ve used for all my PRE podcast episodes
- I also have this extendable mic stand for ease of keeping the mic close to me for sessions or moving it away when doing other things
- Using headphones to record is ideal – wired is better than Bluetooth – but I don’t do this personally.
Creating/Scheduling Episodes with Guests:
- I use Calendly to schedule with guests so they can easily find times that work for us both. I have an email template in my CRM (Follow Up Boss) with that link and some details and a link to prior episodes.
- I also use a tag in Follow Up Boss (FUB) to remember guests to ask as well as keep track of who has recorded already.
- I also have a Google Form that goes out for episode prep, just getting the guest’s exact name, title and company exactly as they want it, their notes or ideas for topics, as well as permission to use the recording and/or their name and asking permission to tag them on social media when the episode releases. You should probably use a signed video release form…
- I use a small journal for each episode, so I can just write down any questions or write up thoughts as we talk, so I can remember to ask when appropriate
I recorded it, now what?
- I send the raw episode files (WAV are higher quality than mp3 but Squadcast gives you both) to Google Drive, then send that link to my editor via Upwork.
- He sends me back the episode and I generally upload it to Captivate right then, even if I’m not releasing for a while – Captivate DOES allow you to schedule the release day and time.
- I generally listen to the final episode IN Captivate WHILE writing up the show notes
- Once I’m done with that, I usually schedule the episode to launch. I like to launch them on Tuesday mornings at 9:00 EST
- Promote your podcast! Be proud of your work and share it widely to increase your reach and expand your opportunities to gain clients.
Assorted Things to Consider
- Do you want to do “seasons” of your podcast or let it just recur? I went with Seasons and you can technically change this, but I like the idea of having seasons or giving myself a break from recording.
- How often do you want to record/release? I did weekly for a while, but that was really hard to keep up, so I’ve moved to monthly. It IS wise to either release a few episodes upfront or wait until you have a few to really publicize your podcast – this way listeners have other content to check out and are more likely to subscribe or check out other episodes.
- Be smart about planning and prep work, but also just GO at some point – done is better than perfect and practice is the only way to get better and find what you like and don’t like for your podcast.
Here is the checklist from my editor on Upwork: