Podcasts! I bet you’ve been hearing that word an awful lot in the last few years, but what is a podcast? We like to think of it as an audio show or interview that you can download or stream and listen to, as opposed to watch.
The organic and conversational style of podcasts has made it an extremely popular platform for sharing conversation. To be precise, there are currently 525,000 active shows and over 18.5 million podcast episodes, so yep, it’s a pretty popular thing.
However, if you’re already reading this, chances are you already know what a podcast is, you already listen to a podcast (our very own getDigital podcast, of course) and now you want to start your own. Well, the Cincera crew here to help.
1. The Idea
Who? What? Why? How? (Ignore the when and where, for now). Who is running the podcast – you alone? Or with guests? Others in the same industry? What will you discuss? Will there be a theme e.g. finance, fitness, sustainability? Why do you want to create a podcast? Also, how often? Monthly, weekly?
2a. Equipment: The Basics
If you’re using your smartphone, an app called Anchor has been highly recommended; you can record the podcast, interview guests in-app and even publish to iTunes.
2b. Equipment: Going Pro
You only really need your smartphone, it’s so much nicer to listen to high quality sound. Gary Vaynerchuk who runs his own podcast under the name Gary Vee, recommends this kit to get started.
3. Recording & Editing
Audacity is a highly recommended audio recording and editing software, though, recording and editing is similar across different platforms. It usually works like this; plug your audio interface into your computer, plug the mic into the interface, set up a program like Audacity to record, the press record and do your thing! With regards to editing, focus on removing any awkward silences, and anything you’d rather not have in your final version. Then export the file.
People have less and less time nowadays, or so it feels like it, but it’s more so that our attention span is becoming shorter and shorter and that we have more and more information at our fingers. As a results, trends are turning towards shorter ads, to capture target audience’s attention. Research suggests that 90% of six-second ads drive ads to be recalled easier and increased brand awareness by 61%. This is something that I can highly agree with – shorter but more informative content.
4. Distributing the Podcast
Once you’ve taken all the above steps, you’ll want to upload and publish the podcast. Here’s where it gets a bit techy; the distribution service host your files for anyone to download, and generates an RSS feed that people read to know information about the podcast and where to download the file from. There are different platforms to do this, so you should decide what fits your needs the most, a few include, iTunes, Soundcloud, Stitcher, Anchor, Libsyn and Simplecast.
Also, before publishing, it may be worth having 3-5 episodes ready to publish so that your listeners have more to listen to after getting hooked! It also saves time when content creating in bulk.
5. Promoting the Podcast
This is arguably the most important part of the of the podcast, there’s no point putting together a podcast if you can’t get it out to your target audience. Social media is an awesome platform to promote, as well as on your blog. Think about the design and branding around it, as though it’s a brand in itself. For example, at Cincera we have our own podcast series by the name of getDigital, we upload the podcast to iTunes, Stitcher and Soundcloud, then put together a brief with timestamps. We then promote the podcast on our social media platforms; with stills and video snippets from the different episodes.
