All About Podcasting – Advantages, Process, Tools & Best Practices
A podcast is a series of audio episodes (can also be video episodes) on a particular subject or topic of interest, that can be downloaded by the subscribers and consumed on demand. Podcasts have become one of the most extensively consumed forms of media in recent years.
Podcasting must have grown out of the need for background content — content that can be consumed in the background (while being involved in a regular routine) without actively looking at/paying attention to the device. People can easily educate, entertain or inspire themselves through audio content which makes podcasts more engaging and effective.
Advantages of Podcasting
Podcasts can be More Personal
Podcasts are a kind of content communicated directly to the listener, which makes it more personal and engaging compared to blog posts or emails.
Convenient and Easy to Consume
Once your audience subscribes to your podcast, your releases are automatically downloaded or available for download on your subscribers’ apps. And compared to any other kind of content, podcasts are easier to consume and require minimal effort from the audience’s side.
Cost Efficient
One can start podcasting with minimal setup and gradually increase one’s audience base with the right practices. Podcasting doesn’t involve much of the resources and costs of creation and editing compared to video and even blogging.
Grow your Audience Base In Less Time
People have started to consume podcasts more in recent years, which means that creators have a huge opportunity to obtain and grow their audience. With podcasts, you can hook your audience to your content in less time, which means that retaining your existing audience is also easier with podcasts.
Make Your Messages Stick In Your Audience’s Minds
The goal of marketing is to make your message and instruction stick in your prospects’ minds which persuades them towards taking the actions you instructed them. And podcasts are a great way to accomplish that.
Process
So here we get to the process of launching one’s own podcast. This is not a complex process. Only thing is, you need to follow certain procedures and practices to successfully launch a podcast.
1. Decide on The Subject & Plan Your Content
This is an obvious but also the crucial step that can determine the success of your Podcast. First of all, you need to decide on a topic/subject for your podcast, and it depends on the purpose of your podcast itself.
Are you starting a podcast to market your business/brand? Or to build an audience base in your field of expertise as an influencer? Or you want to monetise through podcasting? Once you answer this, you also need to answer who is going to be the audience for your podcast. You need to get clear about your target audience, who will be interested in your podcast content.
Once you clearly map your purpose of podcasting and your target audience, you can choose a subject for your podcast and plan your content accordingly. And in the process, you might need to make certain tweakings to your content plan as per its performance, in order to align with your goals.
2. Gather the Equipment
Next, gather and set up the equipment necessary for your podcast. You’ll need to a good quality microphone and a computer. Don’t use a low quality microphone, your audience can recognize it and the experience won’t be good. Don’t compromise on your audio experience.
You can find a great deal of quality microphones on ecommerce stores like Amazon. You might also need an XLR recorder and an audio interface, if it is an analog microphone.
3. Install an Audio Editing Software on Your PC
After you get your microphone, preferably a USB microphone, you need to have audio editing software to record and edit your audio.
Tools or Softwares for Audio Editing
Audacity
Audacity is a free, cross-platform audio software which can be of great help for your podcasting. Audacity is easy to use with a simple interface using which you can record and edit your audio for podcasts.
Adobe Audition
Adobe Audition is a paid professional audio editing software which is used by many audio content creators and marketers.
4. Create Your Podcast
Once you’ve set up everything, you can start creating your podcasts. While recording episodes for podcasts is one thing, formatting and editing it is another critical thing. It’s because your podcasts don’t just contain your audio content, but also titles, descriptions, cover image/art and tags.
Create a perfect title and description for your podcast. Add relevant tags and summaries for each of the episodes. Wherever you publish your podcast, people need to find it through search. Hence use the right keywords in your titles and descriptions.
Add a cover image
Add podcast chapters so that your audience can have more control over their podcast experience. Adding podcast chapters gives your audience easy access to the various segments in your podcast.
Add a proper cover art or picture that is relevant enough to your podcast subject and also captivating to your audience. Remember, in a library of many podcasts, one with a cool and captivating cover art is more likely to capture attention.
Tools for Cover Art/Image creation
Canva
Canva is an easy-to-use graphic design tool, accessible over mobile or web, which you can use to create your cover art.
Adobe Spark
Adobe Spark is another simple design tool, available on mobile as well as web, to create a great cover picture for your podcast.
Adobe Photoshop
If you know design well enough, then Adobe Photoshop is the best tool to create your own cover art as you want it to be.
Alternatively, if you don’t want to allocate much time on your covert art, you can let a freelance designer do it for you. Quality freelance designers are available on 99 designs, Upwork, Guru, PeoplePerHour and more.
5. Publish Your Podcast
After you’ve successfully recorded your podcast, it’s time to host it, publish it and make it accessible to your audience. Hosting is where you upload your podcast’s audio files, cover arts, feed of title, description and summaries.
Hosting
There are many platforms for hosting your podcasts like SoundCloud, BuzzSprout, Anchor.fm, Blubrry, audioBoom, etc. Each of them has various pricing options and has various features and benefits. Know about various podcast hosting platforms on this link.
Publishing
Once you’ve chosen a hosting platform and uploaded your podcast, it’s time to publish it on platforms where your audience can discover, subscribe and listen to them. You can publish it on directories like iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Stitcher, etc. There are plenty of podcast directories and it is enough to publish your podcast on popular ones that more people use.
6. Promote Your Podcast
This is the step which brings the audience to your podcast. While publishing it in popular directories makes it available for people to discover and subscribe through search, it is important to promote your podcast on social media (and also on search, if necessary) in order to gain an audience.
You can also promote your podcasts on your own blog, or YouTube channel, if you have one, or promote your podcast on other relevant blogs and YouTube channels by collaborating with those bloggers and YouTubers.
Best Practices
While there are many different things you need to learn to create and publish top performing podcasts which you’ll only learn along the process. However, there are certain best practices to ensure that you are doing it right.
Maintain A Composed & Clear Tone of Voice
You need to maintain composure and clarity in your voice and maintain consistent and appropriate tonality. In order to accomplish this, you should not assume that you are talking to yourself or the microphone, but rather with a single person in front of you, who represents your whole audience.
Add Good Background Music
Adding a good background music relevant to the subject is essential to make the podcast engaging and interesting. In fact, it is the background music that hooks your audience’s attention to the podcast. Add background music during the intro/beginning, outro/end credits and during segment change. You can find background music from various sources like Melody Loops, Podsummit, etc.
Enhance Your Podcast
Enhancing your podcast is a great way to improve audience experience and grant them more control. As mentioned earlier, adding chapters/segments to your podcast is one way to do that. Enhancing podcasts can also be done by adding relevant images or clips that appear on screen at certain times, adding embedded web links that allows the audience access certain web resources while listening to you. These types of podcasts are referred to as enhanced podcasts.
Promote On The Right Platforms
Promoting your podcast on the right platforms is necessary if you want to build a strong and dedicated audience base. Promote your podcast on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Quora, Reddit, your own blog or someone else’s related to your niche. Whether you want to use paid advertising to promote your podcast depends on your goals and requirements.
Measure the Performance
Check the engagement analytics for your podcast and measure how people are engaging with your podcast. Seek feedback from your audience through reviews, on social media and through comments. Based on the feedback, you can make changes to your podcast content and experience in subsequent episodes or even subsequent podcasts.