I’m a great believer in just getting on with something when the notion takes. In today’s fast-paced world it’s often hard to find those few moments of time to do something you love, something creative and something you know will help your business.
I had spoken to clients and colleagues a number of times about the benefits of podcasting but yet, despite having been a broadcaster and journalist for two decades, I’d never got round to it myself.
Then, thanks to being asked to be one of the trainers on the Libraries NI and TrainingMatchmaker.com Get Blogging course (#GetBloggingNI) I decided it would be unfair to send the students away with a challenge if I wasn’t going to take on one myself.
Being a content creator for a living made that a little difficult, pretty much everything we were talking about on the course I’d either done for a client or myself in the past. Except podcasting.
So that was it, I decided creating a podcast was my challenge. Here’s how I did it….
1. Choosing Your Podcast Content
I decided not to make life difficult for myself when I was trying to create my first podcast. I had big plans of how I thought I could be a great podcaster but at the end of the day, I needed to prove it could be done easily, effectively and quickly.
I found a piece of content I’d written for an event I was speaking at The Future Of Marketing on the topic of Storytelling. It’s a subject I’m passionate about so I knew I’d be able to improvise easily when I needed to and I was familiar with the content.
**TOP TIP** Print out what you want to say, even if it’s just bullet points, don’t read off a screen.
2. Recording Your Podcast
I wasted a good 15 minutes getting out my new (never been used) clip on mic and recording with it…It didn’t sound right so I’ve decided sound equipment and fancy mics are something for down the line. All you need right now is a half decent smart phone. I’m going to recommend iPhone but that’s because I have one.
I then recorded with the app MTSR Pro, recommended to me by my partner Ciaran McElhinney who is a musician. However, you could use any voice recording software that allows you to export the file.
I recorded my particular piece 4 times and there is still fluff ups and mistakes in the one I eventually put live. However, for me it was more important to start the process and learn how to get the podcast up than it was to be perfect – that can come down the line.
When I exported my podcast it was as an M4a file which was accepted by the platform I used. However, if you need to convert yours to an MP3 file (or anything else) you can do so at www.zamzar.com – my favourite file converting website.
Armed with my recording I made the decision not to do any editing and to leave it raw – again, that’s a skill for later on. I have some knowledge and experience of editing audio files but for this I was attempting to prove how quick and easy it can be to get your podcast from idea to reality.
3. Finding The Podcasting Platform
The first thing I did was Google where I should host the podcast. I knew of SoundCloud and AudioBoom but I wasn’t entirely sure whether either would be what I needed. I quickly gave up because I’ve the attention span of a ghat when it comes to the real technical side of anything.
Off to Facebook I went, the Facebook brain never lets me down.
And the lovely Rod Zapien was first in with the recommendation for Spreaker, I should point out at this point that I did take the first suggestion made to me I was pretty confident that Rod would know of a platform that would meet my needs but as you can see Matt Johnston also recommended Anchor.
4. Uploading My Podcast
I was expecting things to be really complicated from here on in, but I’m delighted to say they weren’t. The Spreaker website literally just takes you through the process. Once you are in the dashboard it’s pretty self explanatory.
What I did eventually work out was that it’s better to create an “overall show” and then create episodes within that. Which means you can have different strands to what you do throughout it. It’s great for me because it meant I’m going to be able to launch different types of podcasts with different graphics etc…
5. Creating A Graphic For Your Podcast
When you’re uploading your podcast you need to create a graphic as well. I did this relatively quickly using Canva. With Canva you can simply fill in a template and amend. I used one of the Instagram templates and also a Facebook one so that I could use them on both platforms.
You could also just upload a photograph you have taken or one from a royalty free stock photography website such as Pixabay or Pexels.
6. Distributing Your Podcast
In the Spreaker dashboard you have the ability to share your Podcast across a number of platforms. These include Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Soundcloud and more. All you have to do is follow the instructions to add your social networks. You can also submit your show to Spotify but you will need one of the PRO accounts to do this.
I also then went on to look for other places I could submit my podcast to and I found this blog to be very helpful: Where to Submit Your Podcast. I literally Google’d it so I’m sure there are a lot of other platforms as well. From this list I then submitted to iTunes, applied to Stitcher to be a content partner and was approved and I emailed TuneIn with details of my podcast as well.
7. And That’s It
Whilst there is much more you can do with your podcast, this is where I finished my journey before creating another 2 podcasts and scheduling them to go live. It really is that easy and all of this took me around 2.5 hours to do (3 hours if you include the other 2 podcasts I did). Good luck creating yours!
Listen to my podcast here:
Listen to “The Content Club #ContentClub” on Spreaker.
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