How to Start My Own Podcast

How to Start My Own Podcast

It is easy to imagine that producing podcasts is easy since they are audio-only. But this is not right as they can take a lot of time and effort to produce. It is even harder when you are doing it for the first time. Other than just getting the right podcast equipment, there are many things you have to do for your podcast to run. If you are interested in producing podcasts, this piece will cover some of the things you need to know.

Know What Your Podcast is For

It is imperative to understand the reason you want to make a podcast in the first place. You have to do this as soon as you find the right podcast equipment for the work. Note that marketing managers, freelancers, and companies employ different strategies to create podcasts. Podcast is one of the best ways to gain authority in the market and provide customers with the information they need to know.

This is not a stage that you need to rush with. If you can know the reason you are producing podcasts, you will stay motivated, even if it seems hard in the first place. It usually gets easier when you are passionate about what you are doing regardless of how fast or slow your efforts pay off.

Understand Your Audience

Before getting your podcast setup ready, you need to understand the nature of your audience. Unless you know who you are doing this for, the chances are that you will have a hard time trying to grow your audience. Maybe you are looking at it from a business perspective, and you intend to make health and fitness podcast. In that case, your audience will be individuals interested in healthy eating, weight loss, bodybuilding, and exercise.

Just make sure that you take your time and understand your audience perfectly. When you are creating content, ask yourself if you would enjoy listening to it if you were a customer. While creating and doing some podcast editing, you need to think about the challenges clients might be facing and then tackle them well in your audio. This means that some research must go into your work.

Give Your Audience a Reason to Listen

Despite your choice of niche, each time a client listens to your podcast, they are supposed to get value from it. Other than giving them a reason to listen, you will make them come back for more. As they come back and listen, they will start sharing your audio with their peers, thereby growing your audience. This is something you need to plan well in the initial stages so that you do not mess up the project.

Try to list down between 10 and 15 episodes that you are convinced your clients would enjoy listening to. If you are not a good planner, you can get assistance from someone who has been doing it for some time. In case your audience listens a few times without gaining anything from your podcast, you might not like the long-term results.

Name Your Podcast

Naming your show properly is important since you need to stand out from the competition and gain enough attention. You should give your show a name that people can find easily when looking for information on your topic. Other than giving your show a clever name, try to give it a vivid description alongside the title. There is no point of creating great content when no one can search on the internet and find it.

Some podcasts have descriptive names, and they do great with them. Though some might think descriptive names are boring, they can be used to make content easy to find on the internet. For instance, if you call your show “The Fitness Podcast,” that is quite direct, and the users will know what it is all about. If that is the information that they are looking for, they will go ahead and listen to your podcast and even share it.

Decide the Length of your Episodes

The length of your podcast should depend on the nature of the information you intend to share. It is not advisable to cut your podcast short or even give brief content because you are trying to achieve a particular length with it. As long as you have the right podcast equipment alongside great podcast editing skills, you must give your audience enough details.

Most experts will advise you to at least give it a break every 20 minutes if there are extensive details to be covered. However, these are just other people’s ideas, and the figures should not worry you so much. Here are some of the things to consider while deciding the length of each episode:

• Your audience
• Nature of the content

If you have important information to share with customers, but it will take around fifty minutes, don’t cut it down to twenty minutes. However, it is great to have a consistent length for your episodes so that your clients know what to expect.

Decide How Frequently You Should Release Episodes

This is an important question that you need to ask yourself before you start creating podcasts. Make sure that you stay consistent throughout. If you can produce two podcasts a week, make sure that you stick to it throughout your project. Better still, it is okay if you can do one podcast each month. You can choose the frequency depending on the content, and the audience you intend to engage with your content.

Some individuals prefer podcasting in seasons. It is a great way to bring life back to podcasting, more so if you are talking about issues that impact your listeners directly. If you prefer doing it seasonally, then you must have a theme for each one of them. Make sure that you have a unique topic for each of your 6-10 episodes.

Give your Episodes the Best Titles

Podcast editing is not enough if you want your content to be received by a larger part of the market. Just like giving your podcast an interesting, catchy name, you need to select the right titles for your episodes. Your titles should be good and searchable so that internet users can easily find them. Do not make a huge mistake of naming them “Episode 1,” Episode 2,” and so on. By doing this, no one will know what your podcasts are all about, and so, they will not even try to listen.

With the names of your episodes, you make it easier for the listeners to know what to expect when they listen to your show. This is why it is advisable to use descriptive names for all your episodes. Use things such as “Five tips for” and “How to” These ones are quite popular, and they also work pretty well.

Final Thought

Always have the right podcast setup so that you create high-quality content for your listeners. You can spice it up by giving it a cool music background, but this is entirely optional. If you are getting started in podcasting, you should take your time and do everything suggested in this piece. If possible, ask for assistance from someone who has been creating successful content for some time. They will share with you their little secrets to get you started.