Podcasting is a great way to connect with your listeners in an engaging, compelling, and committing way. More people than ever are taking the time out to listen. So if you’re looking to raise brand awareness, or are keen to start sharing one of your hobbies, now is a good a time to start. I share below the 6 key steps, to build your confidence and create a successful podcast:
Why do you want to start a podcast?
Podcasts are great a way to raise awareness of your brand, to educate listeners by sharing something useful, or maybe it’s just meant to be for fun. Your topic could be related to anything like pop culture, history, hiking, all the way to current affairs, business, and education.
Try to narrow it down to a specific topic so that whatever you’re talking about, 100 episodes in, the listeners feel it is still consistent. Remember to be enthusiastic and find ways to make it interactive and engaging.
Go solo or get yourself a co-host
You can host your podcast alone but having a co-host is also helpful when you are podcasting. It could help you keep things on track and you can split all the side work like editing and promotions etc.
But it totally depends on you if you want a co-host or not. You can start alone and add a co-host later or you can simply keep your podcast formatted to invite guests over.
Choosing your podcast format
Choosing a format that fits perfectly with what your podcast is about and your comfort level. You might want to know famous podcast formats, a few of them are listed here to give you an idea:
- Educational podcasts
- Fiction podcasts
- Interview podcasts
- Scripted non-fiction podcasts
Do you have the right equipment
It won’t hurt you to buy a good enough microphone. Your podcast is all about your audio. If your audio quality is not good enough, this will be fatiguing for listeners. Buy a USB microphone for best results and you will sound sharper, and heard better without any intrusions. My personal favourite is the Blue Yeti which is around £120, but fellow podcast hosts I know started off with the Blue Snowball ICE which is around £60 which is great value for money.
Make sure your podcast is an optimum length
Before you start recording, make sure you know what your podcast episode is going to look like and you know your content. Your podcast could be of any length you want it to be, without being any longer and boring.
Plugin your USB microphone and press the start recording button on your recording software like a Garage Band. Once you started recording, you shouldn’t stop for anything even mistakes, because they could be altered and edited later by using the same software.
You need to get a podcast-making tool to turn your recording into a podcast. A software like Alitu could help you remove technical issues, takes care of cleaning up your audio, help you add background music, and do whatever you want with your podcast to make it ready to publish.
How to distribute to the key podcast providers
There are many options for you to market your podcast – from Apple podcasts, Sound cloud, Google play store, Spotify, and YouTube. You can publish your podcast on as many directories as you want, and most podcast hosts have an option for you to automatically distribute new episodes to these platforms. After you publish them, make sure to promote them on your social media. Launch with at least 3 episodes. You can also make a YouTube video if you want, and optimise for SEO. All these will help you get what you deserve after all that effort you put into your podcast.
Next steps
Those are the key areas you should focus to create a successful podcast – but I think the main point to remember is to have fun with it. If you are looking for some support with yours, Brandari offer a range of podcast marketing services.
Whether that be you need someone to create assets for your podcast promotion, transcribe your episodes to help with SEO or those hard of hearing, to take over the marketing of a single episode, or even some assistance with launching a podcast from scratch, we are here to help.
