This blog post was inspired by one of my viewers who asked me the question via Instagram: "What tips do you have for someone starting a Podcast from scratch?"
Okay, so this could be a very long, complicated answer and blog post, but of course I am going to keep it short, simple but helpful! First thing is first. When I first had the idea to start my own Podcast, it was just that, an idea, for quite a long time. For me though I didn't want to rush into it and start it too early on. I wanted to first complete a few other goals on my career list and wait for the right time before I spent time and energy into a Podcast, something I knew would require a reasonable amount of time and effort.
Once I knew the right time was getting closer, the first thing I did was begin to setup my "Podcast setting." I purchased a table, a shelf, some seats and then some items to start to style the look of the set. After the furniture was in place I then next invested in two Rode Podcaster microphones, decent microphones so I knew I would be able to record decent audio from my studio. The particular microphones are USB mic's as well, so they simply plug straight into your laptop!
With the room set up and the microphones now in place, the next step was to get my friend Travis Mcilroy aka TRAEC in to help me with the audio tech work. Being a music artist, Travis was already familiar with recording voice audio, had the software required and was super keen to join and be a part of my production team. To learn more about how he records the audio, edits it and uploads it across to my videographer, we will create another blog post soon on that subject specifically!
With the audio test complete and Travis aware of what he had to do to have things ready for each Podcast recording session the next step was to get my videographer Ian Yong on set. That was simple, show Ian the room, talk to him about some angles, some storyboards and leave the rest of it to him; he's a legend at what he does with the camera. We will be creating some more nice video intros/outros and B-roll to liven up the show further as we go and as we record each episode! If we are talking to the guest from a seperate place/building; to go along with the external camera recordings we also screen record the podcast conversation through the laptop using the zoom.com app via a video meeting.
Basically with the two mics, two laptops, the audio recording software Presonus Studio One and now a video camera we were ready to make a start of recording Episode 1. Obviously to make a podcast you don't have to have/include any videography, you can stick to purely audio however I think to gain initial interest to your Podcast providing some visual footage will help a lot!
Next task was to begin speaking with a dozen or so potential people to have join me on my Podcast. This task wasn't too tough at all actually as I already had a lot of great people and friends whom I have come to know through this industry over time and across the globe. From there it was then a matter of putting together an order list for the guests and episodes, and for me it was a no brainer to start with recently retired NBL Perth Wildcat champion and legend, and A Stitch In Time Founder, Greg Hire! And you can now watch this first episode! The future guests will remain a secret to keep the surprise as each episode is recorded and released.
Now a few simple tips to get your podcast up and running, and even some things you can begin doing/preparing now at zero cost, whilst you are waiting to spend money on any purchases:
- Build yourself a simple website that you can share your podcast onto when it launches. This will help connect your viewers to a central point as they go back and forth through your social channels with your Podcast. I use wix.com and do all the building & maintenance of the site myself, it's easy to use! You can also build it and launch it for free, you only have to pay for it when you want to remove adds and start using advanced features. So no excuse not to make a start!
- Create yourself an account with soundcloud.com and setup your profile ready to launch your first episode once you have recorded it. I then used the RSS Feed from my SoundCloud account to link it to my Wix website, to Spotify and iTunes! SoundCloud is a free service to begin with and you won't need to upgrade to the pro version until you have a few episodes up and go over the free storage limit. So again, no excuse not to start and create your Soundcloud account.
- I already had a premium Spotify account to listen to my music all day every day. So connecting my Podcast up to it via the RSS Feed from Soundcloud was easy. Providing people access to the Podcast on Spotify makes it convenient for them to switch back and forth from their music to podcasts etc. From my knowledge you don't have to pay for premium Spotify to add your podcast onto their platform, so again you can make a start on this for free and it is easy. Only thing is to launch your Podcast channel onto Spotify you need to have an episode uploaded onto SoundCloud first. Meaning you can't create your Podcast account with Spotify until launch date, unless you made a "temporary/test episode" on Soundcloud, just to get your channel up and running on Spotify.
- To upload to iTunes you will need to first have/create a iTunes account. Again you can set this up free and easy! Use the link https://podcastsconnect.apple.com to link your Podcast and iTunes accounts together using the RSS Feed from SoundCloud to connect your Podcast to the Apple Podcast platform.
- If you are going to share videography to go along with your podcast you next want to create an account with youtube.com If you already have a YouTube account you may like to upload your video to an existing account! Upload this video overnight and early before you share the news of your podcast episode, because it takes quite sometime to upload over the internet.
- Then once you have uploaded your podcast episode make sure to share it across all of the social media platforms you can, such as instagram.com, facebook.com, twitter.com, snapchat.com, tiktok etc. If you don't currently use these social media channels I suggest you do if you are looking to share your podcast out to all of the world!
- If you find yourself needing to share files with others throughout the process I use drive.google.com which is completely free, easy to use & share, and allows heaps of storage. Just so happen to use google for my email, calendar, contacts, documents, sheets etc as well!
In terms of getting things ready and setting up the basics, that's about it. Yes you can do more, yes you could do it differently and use different programs along the way, these are just the ones I believe will suit best from my end and the users end. We are still learning along the way as well, having only shot one episode so far, so I am sure I will have plenty more tips for you in the near future! Hope this helps, hope you start your podcast soon and please reach out to me if you need some more help or just want to share your podcast with me once it's live!
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