Many people are now listening to podcasts, and this trend is not going to stop any time soon. With this growth of the audience for podcasts, perhaps this is the best time to start a podcast for your brand, business, or even as a personal hobby.
You see podcasts are an excellent way you can create a genuine connection with your audience. After all, a podcast is more convenient than a blog post, meaning people can listen to a podcast while working, driving, doing chores, or working out. This post is a guide to help you to start a podcast.
Developing a podcast concept
Podcasts are as unique as the people who create them. You can find great podcasts about pop-culture, neuroscience, history, or even fiction stories. The only limit to what you can create using a podcast is your imagination. But before you decide on a podcast, you need to know why you want to start it and what you want a podcast to explain.
Once you have figured out the above, it’s time to identify the podcast goals. People can start a podcast to generate leads for businesses, be known as a leader in their industry, share important messages, and simply to have fun. So it’s important to write everything you need to accomplish when you start a podcast so you can refer back to it while developing a concept.
It’s also crucial to choose a topic or theme for a podcast. Your topic may be a broad one or focused like discussions about recent events. You only have to be passionate about what you’re doing. Also, it needs to be something exciting to research and discuss regularly.
When you have an idea of what you intend to podcast about, then do market research. Here, you can check podcasts in the same genre to find out if there are already other podcasts. If there are, you can listen to some of them to determine what they are or not doing well.
If you decide to pick up a podcast name, try to get one that is memorable, catchy, and that can rank for the relevant keywords of your podcast. So the keywords should not be stuffed, but you need to make it easier for people to find the podcast. Therefore, it’s a good idea to have a one or two-word name and add a brief description to help search results.
Choosing a podcast format
You can find some podcasts featuring a single host while others feature in-depth interviews or are scripted. Hence, it’s important to choose a podcast format that meets what your podcast is all about and it’s something you’re comfortable with.
If you like getting everything planned and scripted, perhaps you may want to have an audio drama. Alternatively, you may choose to get a co host. With podcast formats, remember that there is no clear answer.
Interview podcasts usually have a single host who can interview people within a specific industry. Scripted non-fiction is serial podcasts that can have a single topic for an entire session. When it comes to news recap, this is a format that may summarize the news within a particular industry.
Also, there are educational podcasts that are scripted non-fiction shows designed to teach their audience. Lastly, scripted fiction podcasts are quite similar to radio dramas and are usually scripted and even highly produced.
You need to know that there is no optimal podcast length for an episode. No wonder, you can find shows that run for 20 minutes while others average 2 hours per episode. It’s also a good idea to have a podcast edited.
Therefore, you need to get comfortable cutting out some segments, parts of the episode that are valueless to the listener, and removing boring questions. If you decide to produce engaging and high-quality content, you can rest assured that your audience will keep listening.
No doubt, podcasts can sometimes be a full-time job or something you can do as a hobby. If it’s the later one, then you can have a more relaxed publishing schedule. So you can choose to publish every day or even publish a podcast series every two years. But if you have the bandwidth, it makes sense to publish once a week. Here are the ways you can do to publish a podcast
Develop a good connection with the listeners
If you intend to publish daily, your listeners will begin to schedule the podcasts into their day. A weekly schedule can allow you to create a profound connection with the listeners. You can find great podcasts about pop-culture, neuroscience, history, or even fiction stories.
Create a habit
Releasing consistent episodes may keep you continue podcasting regardless of whether or not you lose excitement for doing it. Ideally, you need to create a habit so that you may keep on growing your show. When you have a podcast format, you can estimate the show length and publishing schedule. At this point, you can know that you are ready to get podcast equipment.
Podcast recording equipment
You need to know that podcasts usually have a low barrier to entry, so if you decide to launch a podcast, it can be quite easy to start the process even with little experience. So you can begin recording a podcast with only an iPhone and a single pair of headphones.
No one listens to podcasts since they have great sound quality. Some people can also put up with low sound quality but the content of the show needs to be excellent.
When it comes to podcast equipment, it can sometimes be confusing to get the right podcasting setup. Nevertheless, you may need to have podcast software suitable for editing.
You can also choose to get Audacity which is an open-source audio editor and is free. You can use this tool to make some changes required in the original code or add an echo remover extension. Even better, you can customize the user experience and even make some improvements where you want. There are a lot of things you can actually do with Audacity, you can check out Youtube videos for tutorials and find the best and suitable settings for your podcast. If you find it hard to produce a high-quality podcast, you can always rely on podcast production services. Whether it’s a full-service agency or a low-cost solution, you can rest assured they will resolve your problems.