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Podcasting. A Beginners Guide to Podcasting

by | Apr 30, 2021 | Blog, How to Tutorials on Digital Marketing | 0 comments

History of Podcast

Some of the world’s top leaders:

  • Oprah Winfrey
  • Tony Robbins
  • Robin Sharma
  • Gary Vaynerchuck
  • Simon Sinek
  • Tim Ferriss

All of them have one thing in common, they all are involved in Podcasting. 

Let’s take a look at the history of the Internet and where we are now in 2020.

In the early stages, it was the computers, the Internet, and WWW. It started around 1965, then came websites, directories to browse those websites, then Yahoo directories, then in the 90’s eCommerce like eBay, Amazon and then around 1998 came search engines like Google.

Blogs

Then came blogs around 2000 and became popular by 2004. BLOG was the word of the year – 2004. When blogging became popular, everyone wants to read and subscribe to a lot of blogs. That’s when feeds became a thing, RSS feeds (Really Simple Syndication) 

This was an easy way to subscribe to other blogs. It’s more like a bookmark. Whenever any of your subscribed bloggers posts, it comes to your feed, so that you don’t have to go to their blogs. 

MP3 Players

Before that, something else was getting popular among teens and others, Music and iPod. When Steve Jobs launched the iPod (launched on October 23rd, 2001), it was a cool gadget to have and all the teenagers wanted one. With this, Steve Jobs launched a lot of things like Music, iTunes, and many more to accompany the iPod.

The launch of the iPod and iTunes gave a lot of opportunities for Independent artists and music lovers. iPod changed the music industry. Now Independent artist can submit their own music on iTunes. A lot of independent artists became popular because of iTunes and the ability for to submit. They were also able to earn money. 

Before iTunes, people used to buy CDs, and in those days CDs were mainly albums, not individual songs. When iTunes was launched, you could buy individual songs for $ 0.99 cents or so. 

Podcast on iTunes

That’s when Podcast was also launched on iTunes. By this time, those who were blogging started to do an audio blog. Google launched a service in the US called Audio blog, its a free 1800 phone call, where you can call a number and talk and it will be sent as a file in your Blogger account, then you publish that as an Audio Blog. 

In the meantime, Adam Curry an MTV VJ started his own Radio Channel during the early stages of Podcasting and he was one of the evangelists for Podcasting. His show was Daily Source Code where he talks about Technology and Music, etc and whenever anyone started a podcast, he would be the one promoting the same.

By 2004, everyone started blogging and podcasting. It became so popular that Podcast was the Word of the Year – 2005. 

What is a Podcast?

Podcasting is like broadcasting(Radio, TV, etc) where it’s broadcast to the masses. When a show is broadcasted, you have to listen or watch it during that particular period of time, but Podcast, on the other hand, is Play-On-Demand Cast (Podcast), where you can listen to it anytime, anywhere and you can subscribe to Podcast for Free on iTunes and other services. 

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How to start a Podcast?

Step 1: Idea & Theme

Once you decide to have your podcast, all you have to do is to come up with ideas. But before that, you need to identify why you want to start a Podcast? Please keep in mind that by podcasting you cannot promote or talk only about your product or service, for that, you have your website. Podcast listeners want to learn from you. Podcasting is about educating, entertaining, or interviews. Once you are clear with that, you can start by identifying a theme and the required duration and timeline.

Consistency is the key. Your podcast listeners might wait for your podcast, so make sure you stick to the schedule. Day/Time is important. For example, if you are doing a weekly podcast, your listeners might expect that on the same day, every week. 

Once a week is ideal. For example, Every Tuesday at 9 PM you are going to upload your podcast. The length of your podcast can be anywhere from 10 minutes to one hour.

Podcast listeners usually like it if there are two or more people instead of just one person talking. Some of the themes could be:

  1. A weekly update on your Industry
  2. A weekly interview with the experts
  3. Tip or tool for the week
  4. Taking a blog post and talk about the blog post or article and breaking it down
  5. Step by step Guide. Example: How to cook Briyani step by step 

Step 2: Equipment

Microphone:

  1. Your mobile phone with a headphone mic works great. This is ideal for beginners
  2. Or your laptop with a microphone will also do. This is also ideal for beginners
  3. If you want a better quality microphone,  go for any Lavalier Mic (Pin on Mic) which can cost anywhere from Rs 500 – Rs 5000 (Rs 500 Mic will work) – This is for better audio quality
  4. Yeti Mic or Zoom Mic, which might cost anywhere from Rs 5000 – Rs 15,000, is for those who are recording as a group or at a professional level.

Softwares:

  1. Anchor.fm is the fastest and easiest way to start a podcast. Here, your phone will be sufficient and no expertise required. Beginners can start with this
  2. Audacity for editing. It’s a free open-source software 

Step 3: Production & Editing

If you are going for a longer duration show, then you might want to record using your laptop, and to do that you might need software to edit. This is where Audacity comes into the picture. While recording you are going to use this software to record and it will help convert to MP3 files for exporting. Record, Edit, and save the MP3 Files 

Step 4: Publishing

Once you have the MP3 files, it is time to upload them online. Here are the few places to upload.

  1. On your website. You can upload and come up with show notes, which is nothing but a blog post in text covering the key points, links, references covered in the audio.
  2. Sound Cloud is an audio publishing platform, just like YouTube, however, the free version has few limitations.
  3. Libsyn is another web hosting platform known for Podcasting. This is a paid subscription and costs around Rs 350 per month for hosting. The advantage is that you will get stats like downloads, countries, cities, etc.
  4. iTunes, Google Podcast, Stitcher, and many other platforms are like directories, in order to get listed your podcast should have some shows. You can submit and there will be an approval process, If it’s approved it will appear in these directories under the category you have submitted.

Step 5: Promoting

Just like any other content, your podcast should be promoted/marketed on all platforms. Links can be shared on social media platforms. To get more listeners and engagement, ensure that your show is good and educational. 

You will have to do SEO just like you optimize a blog. You can also do google ads, social media organic/paid marketing, and email marketing. You can create ‘Behind the scene’s videos of podcasting and use them to promote, like a teaser. 

Resources:

https://www.buzzsprout.com/how-to-make-a-podcast