Approximately 7.1 million people in the UK now listen to podcasts each week. That's one in eight people and is an increase of 24% over the past year.
Start a podcast they said…it will be fun they said. True to form, I thought ‘why not’ and just went for it. No planning or understanding of what it would take.
I’ve learned a lot along the way.
Here are my top lessons I’ve learnt:
1) Decide on your platform
You’ll need to host your podcast somewhere and this will give you an RSS feed. I used Anchor as it then puts your podcast on other platforms like Spotify, Apple, Google etc. For me, this works better as I only have to upload it on Anchor and the rest is done
2) Test it
Test everything, and not just that you’ve edited out the outtakes and background noise in - make sure that the podcast plays well on the different platforms before you go out promoting it to all of your followers
3) Get a microphone and the gear
There’s nothing worse than find information on a topic you’re super interested in and then finding out you can’t actually understand it because the audio quality is poor! Investing in a mic that allows you to adjust input levels for example, combined with good mic technique can really help your podcast stand out from the crowd
4) Outsource the editing
Editing your own podcast can be time consuming and often daunting, especially as a beginner! It can take the fun out of the creation of your podcast and use valuable content creation time. Plan a budget for outsourcing and make sure you have a strong understanding of the quality you can expect to receive, as well as the turn-around time.
5) Plan out your content and guests
Each podcast episode should have its own agenda to ensure continuity but also to build momentum and keep listeners interested. Having a similar beginning and end will create familiarity with your audience; listeners will know what to expect and it allows you to keep structure to your episode.
Planning ahead is great for guests too; have questions and answers prepared before had with a plan of who will be appearing in which episode
6) Pre-record ahead of time, so you have the podcasts lined up
If you ever find you need to take time off, or if life just happens as it often does, having podcasts lined up makes it much easier for you to keep to a release schedule and releases that added pressure of trying to create content on top of other things that are going on.
Having several podcasts lined up is not only convenient and less time restraining on you, but it also gives your guests the opportunity to listen back and request edits to their parts in advance of publishing.
Thinking of creating your own podcast?
Get in touch for more tips!