How to start a podcast
Welcome to the first part of The Basics series where I try to answer the questions, ‘How does one start a podcast?’ From complete noob to podcast reality, I give you seven steps to learn THE BASICS.
The Basics series is my answer to ‘but how do I even start??’ In this series, I break down the steps to starting a project, creating a thing, or learning a habit that I’ve tried in my own life. Demystifying the process in a simple, fun, hopefully useful way. See the whole series here.
Whatever your reason for wanting to start a podcast, I welcome you to join me this muggy November to wish, to scheme, to dream of finally bringing to life that misty podcast idea lurking in the shadows of your mind. With a little internet and some tech, you’ll find that it’s much easier than you’d think to turn your podcast into a reality.
I’ve wanted to make a podcast for years, probably since the first time I heard the words, ‘This is American Life’ in Ira Glass’s distinctive nasal voice. One step up from blogging, maybe less intense than making videos, podcasts felt like a fun, accessible way to explore creative ideas and talk to interesting people. But with zero experience in the podcast process, for years I felt like the learning curve was too great.
I’m glad to say I was wrong and that making a podcast, especially in 2021, is more of a breeze than you’d think. In this post, I’ll give you the ingredients to start throwing together your own magical podcast.
Why do you want to make a podcast?
First things first, a good question to ask yourself before you throw your energy into making a podcast is, ‘Why do I want to make a podcast in the first place and will it be the best solution to my problem/what I want to share?’ Working in marketing and communications, the amount of people that I have heard say, ‘I want to make a poster for x’ and I ask ‘Why?’ and they don’t have an answer is… a lot. You could swap any go-to or trendy content type with ‘poster’, which is what a lot of people do when they’re trying to solve a marketing or comms issue.
Podcasts can seem like a great idea, but I would really interrogate why you want to make one. If it’s for fun, by all means, go right ahead. If it’s for your company or organisation, I’d give it a bit more thought. Whether you’re creating a podcast for a commercial reason or you’re just trying to express your bad self and you want the podcast to engage and reach the right people, here are three questions I recommend you answer first:
Is a podcast the best format for your content? Consider who your audience is and what type of content or platform they “live” on or engage with the most.
Who is your podcast for? Do they even listen to podcasts?
Why would someone listen to your podcast? How is it different? What’s the hook? Helpful to put this in your podcast description and your intro/outro in each episode.
Now, the practical stuff…
1. Do some research
The two things that will dictate your podcast the most is your budget and level of technical skills. I’m going to assume that if you’re reading this post, you’re a complete novice with no money, like I was in the beginning. Not to fear though – the internet is full of resources for the podcast beginner. With a bit of research, you’ll be able to pull something off in almost no time at all (I recorded, produced and published my first podcast episode in a week). To make my podcast, I researched the following online:
How to make a podcast (duh)
How to use Zoom to record a podcast
Best podcast hosting platforms (I then googled reviews for the platforms)
2. Find a platform
What does a podcast hosting platform do? The platform you choose is where your podcast will essentially “live” online. It’s where you’ll upload your podcast episodes to, where you’ll provide a description and show notes, and how you’ll stream your podcast to other platforms, like Spotify. Besides looking up tips on how to make a podcast good (I recommend checking out Buzzsprout’s Youtube channel for this), you’ll invest most of your research time into finding the right podcast hosting platform for you. Obviously each platform offers different features and levels of support. I ended up choosing Simplecast, but if you’ve never edited something before, or you’re unsure about how to add in music, etc. then I suggest trying out Anchor by Spotify. I haven’t tried it myself, but you can do basically everything you need to do to produce and share a podcast within this one app, like editing, hosting, and analytics.
3. Create the podcast image
The podcast image will probably be the first thing that people see when they look up your podcast, so it helps if it’s eye-catching and conveys something about the tone of your content. To quickly whip something up, I used the web app, Canva. I feel like it’s ironic that I have a design degree but still use a free design app created for non-designers, but it’s FREE and it WORKS. Most of Canva’s features are free for a single user and includes templates and pre-made elements, like images, shapes and even videos to help you design everything from social media posts to presentations. I used their podcast image template to create a cute and silly image for Breakfast Chats featuring a young Kim.
4. Record the podcast
I feel like you can get as fancy or as basic as you want when it comes to recording your podcast. When you’re just starting out, using the voice memo app on a decent smart phone will do just fine for recording conversations or intro and outro pieces (where you introduce the guest or topic and when you say goodbye).
Once you do decide to invest in some equipment, I recommend doing your research in comparing the different options out there for beginners who don’t have a lot of cash to burn. I found this video from Buzzsprout really helpful when figuring out which mic to buy. I ended up getting the Samson Q2U. I’ll be honest, I haven’t quite figured out the best way to use it, especially since I do guest interviews and technically need two mics, so I’ve ended up going back to using my phone. Only caveat with that one is that your phone will pick up EVERY SINGLE SOUND, so plan to host your conversations in a quiet spot ideally. For example, I record my intros and outros inside my wardrobe because my clothes buffer sound, so you know, whatever works.
5. Edit the podcast
I use Premiere Pro to edit Breakfast Chats, largely because I already have basic skills in using it and I have an Adobe Creative Cloud membership. When looking for an editing tool, find one that works for you and your level of skill, as well as your budget. There are many choices available, but for the novice, I’ll just point out Anchor by Spotify again as an option or Audacity, which is free, open source software.
Editing is a pretty key part of the podcast process – it allows you add in music, an introduction and an outro, as well as to improve the pacing of the recording. Because I interview people, I’m mostly removing the ‘ums’ and ‘ahs’ that naturally occur in speech but that ultimately slow down the pace of an episode. I also edit myself quite a lot. Often I will ask a question or say something that doesn’t go anywhere or add to the overall conversation, so I’ll opt to take it out. It’s important to listen back to your work and just boredom/relevance check yourself – is this interesting, is this something someone else would listen to?
Editing is by far the most time consuming part of the podcast process, so take your time with it, be patient, and pay attention to pacing. If you want the podcast to be a certain length, like 30mins but you’ve recorded over an hour of audio, be prepared to make some drastic cuts. Prioritise your content by considering your audience and what you want the theme of the episode to be.
If you’re completely new to editing audio, I suggest taking a look at Anchor again. They have a really simple looking built-in editing tool that makes it easy to switch around bits of audio. You can even record directly into the Anchor app, so no stress about importing files. I was very tempted to use Anchor because you can include music from Spotify in your podcast, but I ended up choosing Simplecast because I liked its kaupapa (values) and their desire to make their platform accessible to differently abled users. What champs!
6. Find music
Music is often a copyrighted piece of content, so you just have to be mindful of what you use and where you get it from. Most music that you find online through popular soundtrack platforms is ‘royalty free,’ which means that you’ll often have to pay a one-off fee to use the copyrighted music, but you won’t have to continue to pay royalties every time you use it in your work. There is a lot of music available online in many different genres, so you have plenty of choice. Simply Google ‘free music’ and you’ll find plenty of music database websites to explore.
Personally, I ended up using free music from Youtube’s audio library, which is intended for use in videos or other content that you create. There are restrictions to its use in the Terms and Conditions at the bottom of the library’s page. I also found this Youtube playlist of copyright free music that looks pretty good.
7. Publish your podcast
Once you’ve recorded and edited your podcast, written your podcast description and created your podcast image, you’re basically good to upload it to your chosen platform and hit ‘Publish.’ Once it’s up, it’ll be live for others to listen to and enjoy!
One last piece of the puzzle will be publishing the podcast across popular platforms, such as Spotify or Apple Podcasts. This is fairly important as I imagine that most people don’t listen to podcasts through their web browser, so factor this step in before you start promoting your podcast on social media.
Your podcast hosting platform will likely help you to publish it across other services, like Spotify. They may automatically do it for you, or they’ll provide instructions about how to set up accounts and to link your podcast to that streaming service.
Bonus tip – Reach out to podcast guests
I created Breakfast Chats pretty specifically so I could interview awesome people that I follow online or know in real life. Basically, how can I have a reason to reach out to these interesting people?
If the person is fairly well-known or popular, they may have received plenty of media inquiries in the past. This is where knowing what your podcast is about and who it’s for comes in handy. However, no matter who it is, having a simple, concise and clear enquiry email or message is important when you’re inviting someone to be a guest on your podcast. Here is what I usually include:
Why you’re reaching out – this should be in the first sentence, e.g. ‘I’d love to chat to you on my podcast’
What your podcast is about
How your podcast is relevant to that guest – this is very important and ideally you want to be specific. Maybe you saw their work or their event, or read an interview with them that you’d like to unpack further. Basically, why should they care and want to be on your podcast, especially if they have other options?
I hope this basics guide has been helpful to you. If you end up making a podcast and you used this post, I would love to know about it! My comments and DMs are also open if you have further questions. I’m not an expert, but I love to help and learn alongside others. Many of us have unique perspectives and content worthy of being made. You never know unless you try. So, make that podcast!
