Audience

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Audience episodes

December 19, 2019Crafting The Narrative
In this episode, we talk through what makes up a good story for your podcast, and why it’s an essential step in creating engaging and shareworthy content.
These days creating the same content as the rest of the shows in your niche just isn’t good enough. We all need to be publishing 10x content that really stands out above and beyond what other shows are creating.
To learn how the pros do this I sat down with Jared and Leah from Vancouver based Pressboard Media.
Jared and Leah are experts at crafting a story around their topic, and helping their guests share those really interesting and insightful moments during interviews.
During this episode we discuss:
Why you can’t start out at a 10 when telling a story
How to be vulnerable without seeming negative
Why brands can tell just as good of a story as individuals
How to think about your competition (hint, it’s not often who you think it is)
How to go about crafting a story arc for your episodes
Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:05 Hello and welcome back to audience. I’m Craig Hewitt, your host. This is the podcast where you follow the journey of one brand building their podcast audience from zero to a meaningful and impactful resource for their business. Today we’re talking all about storytelling. Storytelling is so important because it’s really what separates meaningful and engaging and dynamic content from everything else out there in the podcasting world. And today I’m joined by Leah and Jared from pressboard media.
Speaker 2 00:35 We’re in the business of telling stories. Everything we do is about telling stories. And because we’re a storytelling company, we’re always looking for new ways to reach both our audience and help our clients reach their audiences.
Speaker 1 00:48 Why talk about storytelling on a podcast about growing your podcast audience. You might ask, and that’s a fair question. And the reason is in this show we’re going to be exploring kind of all aspects of growing a listenership, uh, from paid advertising to content marketing, email marketing. But the core of it really is creating really excellent podcast content for your listeners. And storytelling is by far the best way to stand out from the crowd and really make your show different from everyone else out there. By sharing a narrative, building a story, and having an evolution of of your message over time, as podcasting gets more mature and frankly more competitive, we have to evolve the way we create content and the way we relate our message to our audience much in the way that the traditional marketing and advertising has changed over time. Jared Grimm from pressboard shares a analogy around this that I think will resonate with everybody.
Speaker 3 01:55 So when you think of moving from a banner ad saying, Hey, we’ve got great shoes and those shoes are on sale and you should buy those shoes to try to tell the story, it’s quite a bit different. So it’s the different, you’re using different marketing muscles and instead of looking to things like, you know, banner ads and print ads for inspiration, you start looking towards things like movies and TV shows and books because that’s where screenwriters and authors have created a story arc. And so the biggest challenge I find in working with brands is, is taking them from a place of you can’t turn your magazine ad into a story. You need to take inspiration from maybe your foundational story of the company or your customer’s story. Uh, and that’s what you’re going to market rather than deals and destinations to buy the products.
Speaker 1 02:47 Getting inspiration from outside of your realm and your world and your niche is really difficult sometimes. But often we find that’s the best place to find new and interesting ways to relay a message to your in a way that they can relate to. And again, that’s share worthy. And that ends up having this kind of viral aspect to it. Building an interesting and engaging dynamic story is not a coincidence or an accident. It, there’s a method behind it and there is a lot of science behind this. We see this in popular movies all the time, and our podcast should follow the same type of arc that we see in popular media to engage our audience and keep them wanting more all the time.
Speaker 3 03:30 We’ve even changed the way that we look at storytelling. So one thing that Leah brought on board was this idea of that a story has to, or it should be a three act play. Um, and I’m maybe Leah, you can speak to what a three act plays and it’s not something you learn in. I took marketing in school. You don’t learn about, you know, how people create movies and the three act play. And that is some of the science. And that applies to whether you’re writing something in text or you’re doing a video for branded content where you’re doing podcasts,
Speaker 1 04:02 but what does a three act play mean? And how do we go about creating this within our podcast?
Speaker 2 04:08 Yeah. So I think it’s important for any podcasts or storyteller, remember that you’re not just competing against other podcasts, you’re competing against any kind of entertainment, um, whether that’s movies, you know, the newest series on Netflix. So you always need to be thinking about how those pieces of content are structured and what makes them successful. Uh, and try to apply that to your own stories. So like Jared mentioned, we, we always try to keep the three act play in mind, which is just this idea that stakes needs to be raised over the course of your story to constantly sort of re-engage your audience. Um, if you start at a 10, uh, there’s nowhere for your story to go and there’s no reason for viewers or listeners to or readers to keep listening to the content. Do you need to make sure that your story has depth, um, and different moments where you’re re-engaging people.
Speaker 2 05:02 And then two other sort of main, uh, ideas that we try to incorporate into every story we tell is that you need to have a character that drives the action. So you need to have someone that you relate to that you care about, that you can follow through the story. Because that sort of personal connection is often what drives engagement. And then the third sort of thing. So you have the three act play, you have that strong character and then you need some kind of theme or message that readers can take away. You want them to bring something to the water cooler next day, talk about what their friends over dinner, something that sticks with them because if you tell a story that’s some amazing story, that’s great, but if it doesn’t mean anything then no one’s going to care about it a week or a month later.
Speaker 1 05:46 Giving meaning to our podcast content and the message we’re trying to relate really is the key to making it sticky and have it be something that carries over to the water cooler at work or to the sports field or to your church group where people are just talking about this all the time. I think about the cereal brand and the podcast kind of dynasty that they’ve created there and it really was around this concept of people can’t wait to hear the next episode. People are talking about it all the time. Social media in person, newspaper magazine, it’s everywhere. The story is really interesting and engaging and is really worth following along and people are are bought into the concept of this show. If you’re doing a podcast by yourself, this is easy to control and script and plan out. But if you have an interview based show, this is a little more difficult. Here’s where a little bit of planning thought and research goes a long way into prepping your guests for the particular audience and the topic that you want to talk about in that specific episode.
Speaker 2 06:49 But one of the things that we did this year for first season of the scientist storytelling was to select a theme before each episode. Make sure that the guests were aware of what we wanted to talk about. And in this case we talked to different, like I said, thought leaders about a specific campaign or story that they were telling. So inherently you have a story to talk about. The, for example, we spoke with Atlas Obscura, which is a site in the, in the U S about all these amazing travel destinations that you never knew existed. And they did a campaign with chase Sapphire, uh, where they gave chase Sapphire card holders access to these sort of ancient train cars that were formerly using the MTA and let them go on this sort of retro once in a lifetime experience train ride through New York subway system. So right away we have a story to talk about, which is that story within the campaign.
Speaker 2 07:44 And then from there, uh, we ask a few questions of our guests beforehand so you know, where, where did you get inspiration for this campaign? How did you get involved in the business so that we already have an idea of stories before we get to the recording studio. And then from there we can choose, you know, which stories compelled us, which ones do we want to sort of investigate more. And it just makes sure that everybody as well is aware of what they’re going to talk about and even have some anecdote prepared that they can share. So I definitely think that being prepared is really important though, of course spontaneity and having that sort of national conversation is really important as well.
Speaker 1 08:23 So do your homework ahead of time, prepare yourself and your guests for the episode you’re about to record and then let the conversation take its own natural course and let the guest to tell their story like they want to. Oftentimes, this is where the biggest surprises and the most interesting content will come out organically and naturally
Speaker 2 08:41 while we’re creating our podcast series. So a lot of times people are more interesting than company people within those companies. So a good example was we were interviewing Bexley from
Speaker 3 08:56 Bleacher report. Uh, and Bleacher report has an interesting story. You know, it started out as a, as an app that basically found could record and get highlights, cetera, crowdsource or Abba was really interesting about the podcast was Bakley who is heading up their branded content division. How he became is the role that he was in, how he got to that role. He was a high school basketball coach and he just loved basketball. Like love every part of it, like playing it, love coaching it, love watching it, like he sees himself as basketball in a lot of aspects of his life. And that was intriguing. So because it told the story of Bleacher report and why bleach report was important to people, but we were able to look at it through Besley’s eyes and it was really cool. Yeah. If you started as like a beat reporter doing a little bit of basketball coverage, who’s a basketball coach at a high school at the same time, and he was so passionate about the sport, he was able to easily talk about why police report made sense and why he wanted to work there. And that became really the story of the podcast. It would be really difficult to find that out on the spot during the podcast while you’re interviewing the person where you only have 20 to 40 minutes. But by knowing that that could be a nice three act play that could exist in there, uh, helped us at least have some really good guidelines on where we’re going.
Speaker 1 10:31 So we’re sold on good character development and a story arc being an important part of creating interesting content that our audience can relate to and will want to share with their friends. But how do we go about this? This is a really difficult thing to do if it’s not something that you’re familiar with and have a journalistic background. Jared gives a really great example that I think we all know and love and certainly can relate to.
Speaker 3 10:55 The easiest way to reference this is for most people is to look at movies. So if you like the matrix, if Neo would have started as the one solves all of the matrix problem, there wouldn’t be much of a movie there. So starting the character off in a baseline. So being a normal person that people can relate to and then identifying what the inciting incident was that brought them to a new normal. And so let’s reference back to the matrix scan, right? You know, takes the pill that’s being setting and goes on this journey with lots and lots of tension and challenge along the way. Finally realizes that he’s the one and then there’s the new normal. And so I think you want to start at how was this person before they are what they are now and what were the events that led them to the place that they are now. And that isn’t super interesting story arc and you can do it people, you can also do it with companies like the story of Uber is, is really like, there’s this folklore almost now, but Travis and his friend can’t get a cab. They decide, Hey, wouldn’t it be easier for you to just get like quickly on our phone? They, you know, decide to start Uber. Uber goes through a thousands of challenges along the way, including Travis being one of the biggest challenges to the company.
Speaker 1 12:19 So we don’t start off at a 10. We give the character some room to breathe and grow and be real. Uh, I like how Jared says that this can be a personal example or an example of a company. Many of us are podcasting for our brands and this is a, an entity bigger than just ourselves. So give yourself some space and the Liberty to talk about your organization or your brand as the entity and as the thing that’s experiencing these troubles and going through this journey, uh, itself, not just a person individually.
Speaker 3 12:50 It wouldn’t be very interesting to hear the story of Uber. If it was Uber dominated. It is worth billions of dollars and everything. Right? It’s much more interesting that it didn’t exist and that they ran into massive problems with their CEO and cofounder that they kicked him out of the company and that’s still going.
Speaker 1 13:08 One thing that the story of Uber reminds us of his image and brand and really who we’re competing with to develop and instill the, the image of our brand with our audience and with our listeners. And a lot of times we think of brand as is competing our brand versus another, but a lot of times competition comes in in a lot of different forms and isn’t always obvious to us as we’re sitting here today thinking about our podcasts versus the others in our space. We have to consider other types of media and other things that are vying for audience attention.
Speaker 3 13:44 Your brand story isn’t competing with other brands. It’s competing with entertainment that’s available in the world. So the storytelling around a brand or a company, you have to think of it in a way that it has to follow a lot of the same rules as entertainment cause that’s your constant, your competitive set when you’re building a podcast. The same thing. There is no shortage of podcasts out there. There is thousands of podcasts being created every hour. Um, but why is it that we listened to Malcolm Gladwell’s revisionist history, right? Why do we care about the NPR ones? Why is reply all from Gimlet interesting. Like why are these ones more interesting than other ones? Because they tell an interesting story
Speaker 1 14:23 and this is where the onus comes back on us as content creators to do our work and do our homework and sit down and think about the story that you can tell around your brand and your message and that your audience can relate to. Jared mentioned some of the best storytellers out there and the best content creators in the business and as podcasters, whether you’re just starting out or whether you have an established and growing show, the onus is really on us to up our and up the style of content that we’re creating too to match some of these best in class content creators. But we can only take this so far. We create the content, our audience listens and then forms their own opinions about our message and our brand.
Speaker 3 15:05 So one way to think about it is your brand story is a dinner party and you don’t get to the side what everybody at the table says, but you get to control your own voice, right? You get to control what you say and what you contribute to the conversation, which is your owned assets, right? It’s your, you know, you do a podcast because this is your viewpoint and you’re going to contribute that to the dinner party conversation. What other people say about your brand and the part you don’t control. And so you can only control your contribution to the conversation. And then other people are going to contribute to that story as well. So it makes sure that your voice is heard. You don’t want to sit at a dinner party and let everybody else talk and you not say anything. So make sure that you use your outlets to be able to say the part that you want to contribute.
Speaker 1 15:53 And as independent podcast creators, we often have an advantage over a lot of conventional media outlets here.
Speaker 2 15:59 One of the most exciting things about doing content for brands or as a brand is that you have access to stories that journalists have never heard of. You have access to data in your company that journalists don’t have access to. So there’s stories that people want to hear, they just don’t know exist. So for example, um, I think I read a story just recently, it was a small story by a local food delivery company that examined where people were ordering their food in the city and what kind of food they were ordering. So we live in Vancouver. So people in the West end of the city, uh, for the most part were ordering like falafels and in the East part of the city they were ordering, um, you know, Chinese food and subpar city. Most people are to sushi and um, that’s data that no journalist really has access to.
Speaker 2 16:50 But it’s for as this kind of conversation about, you know, what is the food preferences of the city? How does that reflect people’s personal taste, their demographics in the city? Um, so it was just sort of an interesting thing that I thought, Hm. Like who would have that information without putting a or something. And so you want to think as a brand, not about necessarily how do I counter the narratives that other people are putting out there cause they’re gonna do whatever they want. But it’s more about what stories haven’t been told that I know represent my company exactly as I want it to be represented. And how do I tell those stories to the best of my ability?
Speaker 1 17:29 What story hasn’t been told or what story hasn’t been told in the way that you can tell it? I often think that the best podcast content out there is in an interview format at least of people that I’ve never heard about in a particular niche or people that we all know and have heard on many podcasts. But hearing them talk about you’ve never heard them discuss either way, you approach this way of creating a new angle on your content, whether it’s a story that’s not been told in your space before or having a guest on talking about an aspect of their life and their journey that you’ve never heard in another podcast they’ve been in before. Either way you attack this. I think this is a great strategy for creating interesting new and engaging content that your audience is going to love.
Speaker 3 18:15 Like my advice to everybody is the most interesting stories are the ones where you share these personal aspects because they are very relatable. Uh, I, I was lucky to learn this almost in the first week of starting the company, started the company, uh, both five years ago we had zero clients with zero products. Um, we had zero credibility, but all we had was that me and GM, my business partner took that big leap of faith. So I had just had, uh, I have two kids, we just had our second kid, Henry. So that’s, that’s like a big thing that happens in your life. We just bought a house in North Vancouver. We just have this big mortgage. So second kid mortgage, my wife’s going on mat leaves who have no income coming in from outside. And then I quit my job. So now we have zero income, a massive mortgage second kid.
Speaker 3 19:02 And we did that all in, up through period. Terrible idea. But I was like, okay, well we don’t have any, I’m just going to say it. I’ve got nothing to lose. Right? Like, and I, I posted something on LinkedIn and it was just like, Henry’s, you should have a baby, buy a house, what your job and start a company. And it’s still the most viewed piece of content that I’ve ever had, like on any blog post or anything that I’ve ever done, regardless published. And people still ask me about it. I think it was funny because my sister’s hairdresser, she lives in Edmondson, said, uh, Hey grim, do you know Jared? And she’s like, yeah, that’s my brother. And she’s like, I just read something LinkedIn on LinkedIn about when starting a company. I have no idea what they do. But that’s really interesting now. I mean it’s not like this was such a big story that everyone saw that she’s connected to my sister LinkedIn’s algorithm. But that was my first realization that something that’s really interesting is something that is like incredibly personal, incredibly vulnerable. And I found that’s like powerful from a marketing standpoint.
Speaker 1 20:07 Being vulnerable and telling a story from the heart is really the essence of good content. And I think this is something that’s scary for people who haven’t done it before, who’ve maybe kind of hid behind the veil of, of their organization or their brand or their company, but opening yourself up to really sharing how you feel. And what the journey was like in the high points and the low points and being emotional about sharing that experience with your audience is something that they are going to love you for. When you do this, you find that you have a deep connection with your listeners and they’ll reward you by sharing your podcast with their friends and their coworkers and people in their world.
Speaker 2 20:46 Vulnerability have to mean negativity. It just means talking about something, um, that you don’t have in your company bio that you don’t have on your company website and being fluid and able to sort of take the conversation where it goes.
Speaker 1 21:01 Jared and Leah from pressboard are experts at creating a story arc and telling a narrative around their message and we can be too. I think the, the onus is on us and it’s time for us to do a bit of homework on how to implement this storytelling method within our podcast and within the content that we’re already creating. Jared, share some more about how exactly they do this.
Speaker 3 21:21 One thing that we’ve started doing from a marketing standpoint, I think marketing applies to podcasts a lot is to draw out like screenwriters, write it as if it was a TV show or a movie or a book. So when you have a podcast, rather than having let’s say a series of 10 questions that you’re going to ask the other person, do some prep on the person or the story you want to tell, kind of sketch it out, right? Whether whatever your most, your favorite way of doing something, you can storyboard it and you can screen write it. Uh, you can, we do this three act play and we create a story arc and actually like events that are happening throughout it. It’s a very different way to approach any piece of content that you’re creating. But if I were to leave one tangible thing, that’s what it would be be to map this out as if this is your of thing.
Speaker 1 22:11 But unfortunately our audience’s attention span and their tolerance to let you develop your story is getting shorter and shorter over time. So you have to catch your audience quickly and give them a reason to keep listening throughout the episode.
Speaker 2 22:24 So we interviewed were shell shark Tran awhile ago, who is a screenwriter and a producer and she says that if you don’t have the compelling incident in the script, if you can’t read that within the first 10% of the script, someone’s going to put it down. I think it’s like you have to have that sort of hook, that compelling incident within the first 10 pages of your script. So I think it’s important when you have a podcast, when you’re crossing that narrative, sure you don’t want to start at a 10, but you want to sort of hint at what does that exciting thing that we’re moving towards. That means it’s worthwhile to listen to the podcast. I think there’s, there’s like the meme where someone is in sort of like a crazy moment. There’s a fire happening in the background and an explosion and there’s a record scratch. Like you’re probably wondering how I got here. Finding a way to tease out those intriguing moments or, um, sort of drop that foam early in your story so that people know that there’s something that is worthwhile to listen to. It’s a really challenging skill. But if you can figure out a way to do that, I mean, you’re going to just set yourself up for success
Speaker 1 23:35 in this episode. I think we’re all inspired, educated, and entertained by Jared and Leah telling the story of storytelling. And this is something that we all definitely can and really should carry over into our own podcast. This is a massive part of growing a large audience, which again, is what this podcast is all about, which is creating an impactful and meaningful audience size for your brand so that you can help share the message through podcasting. And a big part of doing that is through good storytelling and good content and content that people want to share and want to engage with and want to follow in between the episodes in your Facebook group or in your email or in your local organizations. Uh, and so I think Jared and Leah from pressboard have done a great job of sharing with us how they go about creating that narrative and telling a story in their podcast and for their customers.
Speaker 1 24:30 And this is certainly something that all of us can and should carry over into our own shows as well. Uh, this is something that we’re going to be following along with and keeping ourselves accountable to in this podcast. We’re hoping that every episode here can be as engaging and as interesting as this episode. And so please let us know what you think. If you have comments for us for this episode or want to hear anything more about storytelling or kind of good content creation, please let us know. Drop a comment in and the post for this episode at dot com slash podcast.
Now Over To You
We’d love to hear your stories about telling stories through your podcast. Drop a comment in below to tell all about the highs (and the lows) you’ve encountered in crafting an engaging narrative around your podcast topic.
26 min
December 19, 2019Podcast Setup And Gear
Everyone’s favorite topic, and an important one here at the beginning of your podcasting journey is a podcast’s setup.
If you’re new to recording high quality audio then sit down for a crash course in podcast setups. After this episode, you’ll be able to record the kind of sound that your audience will love listening to, and keep them coming back week after week.
In this episode we discuss:
Podcast microphone suggestions
Audio recording and editing software
Podcast hosting providers
What an RSS feed is and why it’s important
Where we will be submitting our show for distribution
Whether you’re new to podcasting or are a seasoned veteran we’d love to hear your experience with your own podcast setup. They’re really important as you’re getting started and then, fortunately, we can kind of “set it and forget it” when it comes to our podcasting gear and setup.
Leave a comment below about your podcasting setup and what you’ve learned using it.
Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:04 This will arguably be a lot of folks favorite episode because here we’re going to be geeking out on gear and set up and the nuts and bolts really of how to start a podcast. This is the only time probably will talk about this because again, this is not the most important thing to get on an ongoing basis. You have to make this decision once, get the gear, get things set up, and then everything is just in place from then on so you can focus on what’s really important, which is creating interesting and compelling content for your audience and connecting with them and grow in your brand.
Speaker 1 00:42 Welcome back to the audience podcast. I’m Craig Hewitt, your host, and here we’re going to be talking first about gear. A lot of folks favorite subject and for good reason. You don’t want to have a bad sounding podcast and this is an important thing to talk about as we’re getting started is you have to have a podcast that sounds good and is pleasing to your listeners. Podcasting is more and more competitive every day and now the minimum bar of audio quality is relatively high. The, you have to have a good sounding podcast that’s interesting and is is not kind of harsh for your listeners to listen to. You have to have something that sounds good. And really the first place that that starts is with a good podcasting microphone. We get pretty opinionated about podcasting and microphones here at Costos because we have a lot of experience on the post production side as well.
Speaker 1 01:28 Cast us productions is a done for you service inside of our hosting platform that allows you to just upload the raw recording files like this. And then our team takes care of all the editing, mixing and production of your podcast after that so you don’t have to do any of this work in audacity or Hindenburg or Adobe audition. And with that we’ve seen a lot of really good sounding audio and we’ve seen a lot of really bad sounding audio and we’ve done a lot of pattern matching around what makes a good sounding podcast and what doesn’t and what makes a podcast that our audio engineers have trouble with and that ultimately people just aren’t happy with the results of. And so here’s the skinny on recording, a good sounding podcast. The microphone is the most important thing and the microphone that we recommend to almost everybody is the audio Technica ATR 2100.
Speaker 1 02:14 If you’ve done any research about podcasting, you’ll see that this is the most recommended Mike by a lot of people. Um, it’s relatively inexpensive. It’s about $65 on Amazon right now and it plugs right into your computer so you don’t need any other kind of gear or stuff to use, like an audio interface or a mixer board or anything like that. You take the USB cable from the microphone, plug it into your computer, turn it on and go. We really like this microphone because it’s also really forgiving. Another popular microphone you’ll hear recommended a lot is the blue Yeti, and this is a really, really, really high quality microphone and that’s a really good thing. And it’s a really bad thing. Sometimes the blue Yeti is an excellent microphone if you are in an environment that is really good audio quality. And this would be something like a sound booth, like a professional sound booth where recording artists would record songs or voiceovers or things like that.
Speaker 1 03:08 The blue Yeti really shines here because a really deep sound to it, but if you are in a shared working space, a coworking space or in an office where there’s other stuff going on and there’s the door open in the trash man outside the blue Yeti is going to pick up all of this sound just from the type of microphone it is, and again, we’re not going to go into all the details of of audio physics here, but just to know that if you want to get a really high quality mic, the blue Yeti is a decent option. If you are in a perfect sound environment, if you are not, do not get that mic because it will pick up a lot of the environmental noise around you and it will make the postproduction process very difficult for you or the audio editor you’re working with.
Speaker 1 03:51 If you’re a real audio file and want to go up market a little bit from the audio Technica ATR 2100 that we recommend. The next step up there that we really like is the Shure SM seven B. Again, we’ll have links to all this in the show notes for this episode. dot com slash podcast the Shure SM seven B is the workhorse of a lot of audio producers and it’s a really, really high quality Mike that has really great kind of depth of voice. You might pick up a little more quality to the recording with the Shure SM seven B than you would the audio Technica ATR 2100 but with this it is an XLR Mike, so the connection type on it is different, doesn’t plug right into your computer. You would need an audio interface between the microphone and your computer or your recording device. And so this could be something like a zoom H six which is like a portable recorder that has an XLR connection.
Speaker 1 04:41 So you could plug the sheer microphone right into that. Or you could use something like a Scarlet focus, right, which is a preamp that the microphone would plug into and then the Scarlet focus right would plug then into your computer for you to record on your digital workstation, so that’s podcasting microphones. The easy answer is by the audio Technica ATR 2100 that’s what I’m using in this podcast and it’s the one that a lot of podcasters get started with and it certainly is good enough for you to record high quality audio. There’s a couple of accessories that go along with this as well that make your life so much easier. Again, in terms of recording good quality audio and not doing a ton of work in post production. The first and most important of which is a pop filter. A pop filter is a screen that sits between the microphone and your mouth and dampens a lot of these really harsh P and T sounds.
Speaker 1 05:31 They’re called plosives and the audio engineering world. A pop filter reduces these P and T plosives down a lot kind of physically so that you don’t have to manually edit them out in post production process. The other is a boom arm. So regardless of the type of microphone you get, you want the microphone to be up at the level of your mouth in a comfortable position while you’re talking so that you can sit in a a normal, natural comfortable posture and the microphone is right in front of your mouth. A boom arm is some this kind of articulating arm that attaches to your desk or the table that you’re podcasting at and gets the mic at the perfect position for you to record in a comfortable way. While on the topic, we’ll talk a little bit about good Mike technique. Good mic techniques means where the microphone is and what you’re doing to record good quality audio.
Speaker 1 06:21 So typically you want the microphone pretty close to you, typically about a fist with the parts and maybe like an Apple space between your mouth and the microphone. You don’t want to get too close, but you don’t want to be too far. You want to be able to turn the microphone up loud enough to where when you’re talking and you’re looking at your recording tool, you’re getting all the way through the green aspect of the kind of voice register, not into the yellow and certainly not into the red work clipping occurs, so depending on the tool you’re using to record your audio, it will have this kind of register, this volume meter you want to be talking to where your voice gets into the green a little bit into the yellow but never into the red clipping is one of the very few things you can’t solve in the postproduction process.
Speaker 1 07:04 And so adjusting the volume of the input of your microphone and the space between your mouth and the microphone and how loud you’re talking to achieve this kind of volume setting a result is what you want to do. Recording it, this ideal kind of volume gives you a lot of flexibility in the postproduction process to to alter the sound that you’ve recorded and without sacrificing any of the natural sound of your voice. In terms of recording, you really have two scenarios that you’ll probably fall in. One is recording a something by yourself or just locally, and this is a scenario like this episode where it’s just me. I’m recording in my office and I’m recording in a tool called audacity. It’s a free open source tool that works both on windows and on Mac and it’s a really powerful audio editor as well. So audacity is a good tool for recording something locally like this where it’s just me.
Speaker 1 07:56 If you have two people in different locations and you’re on a call, like a zoom call, you could record each of you in audacity locally and then kind of sync those files up later. But typically if you’re doing a remote call, you want to use a specialized podcast recording tool for remote calls. The best out there that we see these days is called squad cast squad. Cast. Dot. FM is our preferred tool for doing remote podcast interviews. It’s a very specific tool. It’s extremely high quality because they do local recordings for both you and your guests. The person or people that you’re recording with, each of you get your own channel and it’s a local recording so it’s not dependent on internet speed or latency or lack of dropout or anything like that, like a zoom call or like a Google Hangouts or like a Skype call would be.
Speaker 1 08:44 So this brings up another really important aspect of recording high quality audio is that each channel, if you have multiple people on the call need to have their own recording. So if you’re on a zoom call, a zoom is a good example. By default, zoom is a conference calling service compiles all of the participants into one channel. There is a setting in there to record separate tracks for each participant. You would want to check that on. If you’re using zoom, typically we don’t recommend zoom in most situations because it doesn’t record a really high quality audio file that compresses the file down quite a bit to get it into be a manageable file size. But for podcasting, we want the best and biggest recording quality and fidelity that we can, which is why we typically don’t recommend zoom. But if you can’t or don’t want to use a tool like squad cast, zoom is another decent option.
Speaker 1 09:35 We particularly like zoom, if you have to call someone on the phone to record a podcast with them. Again, if you called someone on the phone, you probably wouldn’t have a podcasting microphone on their end. So this is not the most ideal situation. But I know a lot of times that this is just all that you have and as podcasters we have to kind of adapt to the the cards that we’re dealt. And so you don’t calling somebody to get their part of your podcast is is something you have to do. In that case, zoom is actually a good option because there are call in numbers for zoom and somebody on a phone can call in and do it there. And the thing we recommend if somebody has to be on the phone is to ask them to be in a quiet, calm place with some kind of earbuds.
Speaker 1 10:17 And whether it’s, you know, your Apple AirPods or the ear, the wired earbuds that come with your mobile phone, those will give a better sound than just the regular built in native microphone for a mobile phone. So we touched on gear a little bit. So the audio technical Mike is the one we use. I have a pop filter, a boom arm and I’m recording this, uh, this segment since it’s just myself and audacity. Uh, if you’re going to do remote calls, make sure you have separate tracks for each participant and we like squad cast.fm for doing podcast specific remote interviews. Once you have your podcast recorded, editing becomes the next step in creating your first podcast episode. We mentioned audacity as a free open source tool. It’s a tool we really like and use a lot for both recording and some light editing. If you want to use a more premium tool, you can look at either Adobe audition or Hindenburg as really a really kind of high quality, more premium tools.
Speaker 1 11:14 Both of them are paid, whereas audacity is a free and open source tool. From there we move onto the subject of an RSS feed and distribution into into podcasting directories, so your podcast really doesn’t exist without an RSS feed and what is an RSS feed? This is something that mystifies a lot of podcasters and we’ll cover it as as quickly and concisely as we do here because you do need to understand what it is because it is really the heart of your podcast. A podcast doesn’t exist without a feed and a feed is really composed of two kind of big groups. One is the meta information. This is the show information as a whole, so the title of your podcast and the description and the cover image that’s used and the categories it’s in and things like that. This tells a lot of the big picture information about your podcast.
Speaker 1 11:59 From there, each time you publish a new episode, it’s added as what’s called an item in your podcast and these are the individual episodes. So within an item is something like the title of the episode and the description of the episode, the media file that’s associated with it, and these get appended to your podcast feed. Typically with the most recent episode kind of at the top, and that’s how podcasting works. So you might say, okay, how do I make my RSS feed into Apple podcasts formerly called iTunes? And so the truth is that Apple podcasts and Spotify and Stitcher and Google podcasts and all these directories are really just aggregators of RSS feeds. And so you can think of your RSS feed as the place where your podcast really lives. And then a place like Apple podcast, Spotify, Google podcast, Stitcher, all these directories are really just reflections of your RSS feed.
Speaker 1 12:51 So when somebody says, I want to upload my podcast Apple podcast, what they’re really trying to say is they want to upload their podcast to the place where their RSS feed lives. In a lot of cases, this is either your website, so with us we have a WordPress plugin called seriously simple podcasting. This allows you to base and manage your podcast content from your WordPress site. And in this case, people’s podcast. RSS feed is based from their WordPress site, but also with Casto as you can choose to not use WordPress and have your RSS feed. And all of your content creation based in the casitas platform, and then your RSS feed is, is created and you manage it there. But either way, wherever your RSS feed is created, that’s where you publish your podcast content to. And then once you’ve submitted your podcast to those various directories like Apple podcasts and Spotify and Stitcher, every time you publish an episode or you change information about your show as a whole, those directories reflect that change and show the new image that you updated or the new episode you published.
Speaker 1 13:52 So once you’ve submitted your podcast to places like Apple podcasts or Spotify or Stitcher, if you want to change something about your podcast, change it where every RSS feed originates and those directories will see that change in your RSS feed and then reflect that change in their listing for your show. We have a lot of tutorials around specifically how to submit your podcast to these directories. If you go to dot com slash blog you can search for them there and we’ll include some links in the show notes for this episode as well to all of the popular podcasting directories. Okay. So we’ve covered, uh, some gear, the microphone and set up how to record and edit your podcast and then what an RSS feed is and how to submit that to the various podcasting directories. I’ll touch on the directories one more time because I kind of touched lightly on them before, but a podcasting directory is really the place where people will find your show.
Speaker 1 14:44 So it is important to submit your podcast to all of the appropriate podcasting directories so that your audience doesn’t have to go out of their way to listen to your podcast. Do you want to put your podcast to where your audience already is so they can listen to your show kind of naturally and organically in the channel and the medium that they already listened to the rest of their shows. So we’ll include a full list of all the major podcasting directories in the show notes for this episode. But here’s a quick rundown on the most popular ones that you want to make sure your podcast is in. The first is Apple podcasts. It still is the King of podcasting. The next is Spotify. It’s the up and comer these days and is challenging a lot of things that Apple is doing with their podcasting and then comes Stitcher and Google podcasts.
Speaker 1 15:25 And from there a lot of syndication happens to third party apps. So you might say, Oh Craig, I listened to my podcast and overcast, overcast really takes information from Apple podcasts and crawls it and then ingest that information itself and lets you search and subscribe to podcasts from their mobile app. And so pocket casts and Castro and overcast downcast. A lot of tools like this that are mobile podcast catchers. A lot of tools like this that are just mobile podcast apps, we call them pod catchers, really get a lot of their information from Apple podcasts. So that’s really the place you need to be 100% for sure. Things like Spotify, Stitcher, Google podcasts are also really important. There’s some ancillary podcasting directories that depending on where you live and what your topic is about are also really important. And again, we’ll include those in the show notes for this episode.
Speaker 1 16:13 Go to cast those.com/podcast to get that full list. Okay, so we’ve covered a lot in this episode, a lot of really nitty gritty tactical information about gear and set up and editing and recording RSS feeds and podcasting directories. Again, all this is really important stuff that you just need to figure out one time. Hopefully we’ve given you a really simple and concise framework for how to do all of that here. If there’s a lot more information about all of this stuff on our blog, if you want to go to dot com slash blog search for our how to start a podcast post, and it runs through all of this and a lot of detail, we have a lot of videos there as well. But suffice it to say, this is information that we need to figure out and get done once at the beginning, and then from there we’re going to focus all of our efforts on an ongoing basis with this show, with the audience podcast on creating awesome content and on connecting with our audience and growing our listenership.
18 min
December 19, 2019Podcast Setup And Gear
Everyone’s favorite topic, and an important one here at the beginning of your podcasting journey is a podcast’s setup.
If you’re new to recording high quality audio then sit down for a crash course in podcast setups. After this episode, you’ll be able to record the kind of sound that your audience will love listening to, and keep them coming back week after week.
In this episode we discuss:
Podcast microphone suggestions
Audio recording and editing software
Podcast hosting providers
What an RSS feed is and why it’s important
Where we will be submitting our show for distribution
Whether you’re new to podcasting or are a seasoned veteran we’d love to hear your experience with your own podcast setup. They’re really important as you’re getting started and then, fortunately, we can kind of “set it and forget it” when it comes to our podcasting gear and setup.
Leave a comment below about your podcasting setup and what you’ve learned using it.
Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:04 This will arguably be a lot of folks favorite episode because here we’re going to be geeking out on gear and set up and the nuts and bolts really of how to start a podcast. This is the only time probably will talk about this because again, this is not the most important thing to get on an ongoing basis. You have to make this decision once, get the gear, get things set up, and then everything is just in place from then on so you can focus on what’s really important, which is creating interesting and compelling content for your audience and connecting with them and grow in your brand.
Speaker 1 00:42 Welcome back to the audience podcast. I’m Craig Hewitt, your host, and here we’re going to be talking first about gear. A lot of folks favorite subject and for good reason. You don’t want to have a bad sounding podcast and this is an important thing to talk about as we’re getting started is you have to have a podcast that sounds good and is pleasing to your listeners. Podcasting is more and more competitive every day and now the minimum bar of audio quality is relatively high. The, you have to have a good sounding podcast that’s interesting and is is not kind of harsh for your listeners to listen to. You have to have something that sounds good. And really the first place that that starts is with a good podcasting microphone. We get pretty opinionated about podcasting and microphones here at Costos because we have a lot of experience on the post production side as well.
Speaker 1 01:28 Cast us productions is a done for you service inside of our hosting platform that allows you to just upload the raw recording files like this. And then our team takes care of all the editing, mixing and production of your podcast after that so you don’t have to do any of this work in audacity or Hindenburg or Adobe audition. And with that we’ve seen a lot of really good sounding audio and we’ve seen a lot of really bad sounding audio and we’ve done a lot of pattern matching around what makes a good sounding podcast and what doesn’t and what makes a podcast that our audio engineers have trouble with and that ultimately people just aren’t happy with the results of. And so here’s the skinny on recording, a good sounding podcast. The microphone is the most important thing and the microphone that we recommend to almost everybody is the audio Technica ATR 2100.
Speaker 1 02:14 If you’ve done any research about podcasting, you’ll see that this is the most recommended Mike by a lot of people. Um, it’s relatively inexpensive. It’s about $65 on Amazon right now and it plugs right into your computer so you don’t need any other kind of gear or stuff to use, like an audio interface or a mixer board or anything like that. You take the USB cable from the microphone, plug it into your computer, turn it on and go. We really like this microphone because it’s also really forgiving. Another popular microphone you’ll hear recommended a lot is the blue Yeti, and this is a really, really, really high quality microphone and that’s a really good thing. And it’s a really bad thing. Sometimes the blue Yeti is an excellent microphone if you are in an environment that is really good audio quality. And this would be something like a sound booth, like a professional sound booth where recording artists would record songs or voiceovers or things like that.
Speaker 1 03:08 The blue Yeti really shines here because a really deep sound to it, but if you are in a shared working space, a coworking space or in an office where there’s other stuff going on and there’s the door open in the trash man outside the blue Yeti is going to pick up all of this sound just from the type of microphone it is, and again, we’re not going to go into all the details of of audio physics here, but just to know that if you want to get a really high quality mic, the blue Yeti is a decent option. If you are in a perfect sound environment, if you are not, do not get that mic because it will pick up a lot of the environmental noise around you and it will make the postproduction process very difficult for you or the audio editor you’re working with.
Speaker 1 03:51 If you’re a real audio file and want to go up market a little bit from the audio Technica ATR 2100 that we recommend. The next step up there that we really like is the Shure SM seven B. Again, we’ll have links to all this in the show notes for this episode. dot com slash podcast the Shure SM seven B is the workhorse of a lot of audio producers and it’s a really, really high quality Mike that has really great kind of depth of voice. You might pick up a little more quality to the recording with the Shure SM seven B than you would the audio Technica ATR 2100 but with this it is an XLR Mike, so the connection type on it is different, doesn’t plug right into your computer. You would need an audio interface between the microphone and your computer or your recording device. And so this could be something like a zoom H six which is like a portable recorder that has an XLR connection.
Speaker 1 04:41 So you could plug the sheer microphone right into that. Or you could use something like a Scarlet focus, right, which is a preamp that the microphone would plug into and then the Scarlet focus right would plug then into your computer for you to record on your digital workstation, so that’s podcasting microphones. The easy answer is by the audio Technica ATR 2100 that’s what I’m using in this podcast and it’s the one that a lot of podcasters get started with and it certainly is good enough for you to record high quality audio. There’s a couple of accessories that go along with this as well that make your life so much easier. Again, in terms of recording good quality audio and not doing a ton of work in post production. The first and most important of which is a pop filter. A pop filter is a screen that sits between the microphone and your mouth and dampens a lot of these really harsh P and T sounds.
Speaker 1 05:31 They’re called plosives and the audio engineering world. A pop filter reduces these P and T plosives down a lot kind of physically so that you don’t have to manually edit them out in post production process. The other is a boom arm. So regardless of the type of microphone you get, you want the microphone to be up at the level of your mouth in a comfortable position while you’re talking so that you can sit in a a normal, natural comfortable posture and the microphone is right in front of your mouth. A boom arm is some this kind of articulating arm that attaches to your desk or the table that you’re podcasting at and gets the mic at the perfect position for you to record in a comfortable way. While on the topic, we’ll talk a little bit about good Mike technique. Good mic techniques means where the microphone is and what you’re doing to record good quality audio.
Speaker 1 06:21 So typically you want the microphone pretty close to you, typically about a fist with the parts and maybe like an Apple space between your mouth and the microphone. You don’t want to get too close, but you don’t want to be too far. You want to be able to turn the microphone up loud enough to where when you’re talking and you’re looking at your recording tool, you’re getting all the way through the green aspect of the kind of voice register, not into the yellow and certainly not into the red work clipping occurs, so depending on the tool you’re using to record your audio, it will have this kind of register, this volume meter you want to be talking to where your voice gets into the green a little bit into the yellow but never into the red clipping is one of the very few things you can’t solve in the postproduction process.
Speaker 1 07:04 And so adjusting the volume of the input of your microphone and the space between your mouth and the microphone and how loud you’re talking to achieve this kind of volume setting a result is what you want to do. Recording it, this ideal kind of volume gives you a lot of flexibility in the postproduction process to to alter the sound that you’ve recorded and without sacrificing any of the natural sound of your voice. In terms of recording, you really have two scenarios that you’ll probably fall in. One is recording a something by yourself or just locally, and this is a scenario like this episode where it’s just me. I’m recording in my office and I’m recording in a tool called audacity. It’s a free open source tool that works both on windows and on Mac and it’s a really powerful audio editor as well. So audacity is a good tool for recording something locally like this where it’s just me.
Speaker 1 07:56 If you have two people in different locations and you’re on a call, like a zoom call, you could record each of you in audacity locally and then kind of sync those files up later. But typically if you’re doing a remote call, you want to use a specialized podcast recording tool for remote calls. The best out there that we see these days is called squad cast squad. Cast. Dot. FM is our preferred tool for doing remote podcast interviews. It’s a very specific tool. It’s extremely high quality because they do local recordings for both you and your guests. The person or people that you’re recording with, each of you get your own channel and it’s a local recording so it’s not dependent on internet speed or latency or lack of dropout or anything like that, like a zoom call or like a Google Hangouts or like a Skype call would be.
Speaker 1 08:44 So this brings up another really important aspect of recording high quality audio is that each channel, if you have multiple people on the call need to have their own recording. So if you’re on a zoom call, a zoom is a good example. By default, zoom is a conference calling service compiles all of the participants into one channel. There is a setting in there to record separate tracks for each participant. You would want to check that on. If you’re using zoom, typically we don’t recommend zoom in most situations because it doesn’t record a really high quality audio file that compresses the file down quite a bit to get it into be a manageable file size. But for podcasting, we want the best and biggest recording quality and fidelity that we can, which is why we typically don’t recommend zoom. But if you can’t or don’t want to use a tool like squad cast, zoom is another decent option.
Speaker 1 09:35 We particularly like zoom, if you have to call someone on the phone to record a podcast with them. Again, if you called someone on the phone, you probably wouldn’t have a podcasting microphone on their end. So this is not the most ideal situation. But I know a lot of times that this is just all that you have and as podcasters we have to kind of adapt to the the cards that we’re dealt. And so you don’t calling somebody to get their part of your podcast is is something you have to do. In that case, zoom is actually a good option because there are call in numbers for zoom and somebody on a phone can call in and do it there. And the thing we recommend if somebody has to be on the phone is to ask them to be in a quiet, calm place with some kind of earbuds.
Speaker 1 10:17 And whether it’s, you know, your Apple AirPods or the ear, the wired earbuds that come with your mobile phone, those will give a better sound than just the regular built in native microphone for a mobile phone. So we touched on gear a little bit. So the audio technical Mike is the one we use. I have a pop filter, a boom arm and I’m recording this, uh, this segment since it’s just myself and audacity. Uh, if you’re going to do remote calls, make sure you have separate tracks for each participant and we like squad cast.fm for doing podcast specific remote interviews. Once you have your podcast recorded, editing becomes the next step in creating your first podcast episode. We mentioned audacity as a free open source tool. It’s a tool we really like and use a lot for both recording and some light editing. If you want to use a more premium tool, you can look at either Adobe audition or Hindenburg as really a really kind of high quality, more premium tools.
Speaker 1 11:14 Both of them are paid, whereas audacity is a free and open source tool. From there we move onto the subject of an RSS feed and distribution into into podcasting directories, so your podcast really doesn’t exist without an RSS feed and what is an RSS feed? This is something that mystifies a lot of podcasters and we’ll cover it as as quickly and concisely as we do here because you do need to understand what it is because it is really the heart of your podcast. A podcast doesn’t exist without a feed and a feed is really composed of two kind of big groups. One is the meta information. This is the show information as a whole, so the title of your podcast and the description and the cover image that’s used and the categories it’s in and things like that. This tells a lot of the big picture information about your podcast.
Speaker 1 11:59 From there, each time you publish a new episode, it’s added as what’s called an item in your podcast and these are the individual episodes. So within an item is something like the title of the episode and the description of the episode, the media file that’s associated with it, and these get appended to your podcast feed. Typically with the most recent episode kind of at the top, and that’s how podcasting works. So you might say, okay, how do I make my RSS feed into Apple podcasts formerly called iTunes? And so the truth is that Apple podcasts and Spotify and Stitcher and Google podcasts and all these directories are really just aggregators of RSS feeds. And so you can think of your RSS feed as the place where your podcast really lives. And then a place like Apple podcast, Spotify, Google podcast, Stitcher, all these directories are really just reflections of your RSS feed.
Speaker 1 12:51 So when somebody says, I want to upload my podcast Apple podcast, what they’re really trying to say is they want to upload their podcast to the place where their RSS feed lives. In a lot of cases, this is either your website, so with us we have a WordPress plugin called seriously simple podcasting. This allows you to base and manage your podcast content from your WordPress site. And in this case, people’s podcast. RSS feed is based from their WordPress site, but also with Casto as you can choose to not use WordPress and have your RSS feed. And all of your content creation based in the casitas platform, and then your RSS feed is, is created and you manage it there. But either way, wherever your RSS feed is created, that’s where you publish your podcast content to. And then once you’ve submitted your podcast to those various directories like Apple podcasts and Spotify and Stitcher, every time you publish an episode or you change information about your show as a whole, those directories reflect that change and show the new image that you updated or the new episode you published.
Speaker 1 13:52 So once you’ve submitted your podcast to places like Apple podcasts or Spotify or Stitcher, if you want to change something about your podcast, change it where every RSS feed originates and those directories will see that change in your RSS feed and then reflect that change in their listing for your show. We have a lot of tutorials around specifically how to submit your podcast to these directories. If you go to dot com slash blog you can search for them there and we’ll include some links in the show notes for this episode as well to all of the popular podcasting directories. Okay. So we’ve covered, uh, some gear, the microphone and set up how to record and edit your podcast and then what an RSS feed is and how to submit that to the various podcasting directories. I’ll touch on the directories one more time because I kind of touched lightly on them before, but a podcasting directory is really the place where people will find your show.
Speaker 1 14:44 So it is important to submit your podcast to all of the appropriate podcasting directories so that your audience doesn’t have to go out of their way to listen to your podcast. Do you want to put your podcast to where your audience already is so they can listen to your show kind of naturally and organically in the channel and the medium that they already listened to the rest of their shows. So we’ll include a full list of all the major podcasting directories in the show notes for this episode. But here’s a quick rundown on the most popular ones that you want to make sure your podcast is in. The first is Apple podcasts. It still is the King of podcasting. The next is Spotify. It’s the up and comer these days and is challenging a lot of things that Apple is doing with their podcasting and then comes Stitcher and Google podcasts.
Speaker 1 15:25 And from there a lot of syndication happens to third party apps. So you might say, Oh Craig, I listened to my podcast and overcast, overcast really takes information from Apple podcasts and crawls it and then ingest that information itself and lets you search and subscribe to podcasts from their mobile app. And so pocket casts and Castro and overcast downcast. A lot of tools like this that are mobile podcast catchers. A lot of tools like this that are just mobile podcast apps, we call them pod catchers, really get a lot of their information from Apple podcasts. So that’s really the place you need to be 100% for sure. Things like Spotify, Stitcher, Google podcasts are also really important. There’s some ancillary podcasting directories that depending on where you live and what your topic is about are also really important. And again, we’ll include those in the show notes for this episode.
Speaker 1 16:13 Go to cast those.com/podcast to get that full list. Okay, so we’ve covered a lot in this episode, a lot of really nitty gritty tactical information about gear and set up and editing and recording RSS feeds and podcasting directories. Again, all this is really important stuff that you just need to figure out one time. Hopefully we’ve given you a really simple and concise framework for how to do all of that here. If there’s a lot more information about all of this stuff on our blog, if you want to go to dot com slash blog search for our how to start a podcast post, and it runs through all of this and a lot of detail, we have a lot of videos there as well. But suffice it to say, this is information that we need to figure out and get done once at the beginning, and then from there we’re going to focus all of our efforts on an ongoing basis with this show, with the audience podcast on creating awesome content and on connecting with our audience and growing our listenership.
18 min
December 19, 2019Why And For Whom We’re Podcasting
These two questions are so essential that we put them into this inaugural episode of Audience.
If you don’t have a well thought out and defensible answer for:
Why you’re podcasting
Who you’re podcasting for
Then stop everything else now and let’s figure this out.
The answer to these two questions will guide almost all of the creative content decisions that you make with your show. Doing this will give you great alignment between the 3 pillars of a great podcast: what your audience is interested in, and specifically what your message is.
Getting a high degree of alignment between these two will give your listeners the feeling that you’re talking DIRECTLY to them. Almost like you had that one person in mind when you created your show….probably because you did.
Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:04 Hi there and welcome to the first episode of the audience podcast. I’m your host Craig Hewitt from Castos. Here in the first episode we’re going to be talking through two of the really fundamental questions that we as podcasters or any kind of content creators really need to answer before we embark on a new kind of form of content they were going to be creating for our brand. And again, you know, from, from our trailer episode, we’re going to use the term brand a lot here because the audience podcast is about building a successful and meeting full podcast for your brand. And a brand can be anything from a business to kind of a side hustle, a church or religious group and a charity or just a hobby. Uh, so, so it’s not just for businesses, it’s not just for hobbyists, it’s the things we’re learning here.
Speaker 1 00:49 And the principles apply to everyone. And the foundation of, of a good podcast that’s going to make an impact on your brand is, is something that, that reaches the right kind of people in the right way and delivers the right message to them. And so that’s what we’re going to cover here in this first episode or the questions that we have asked ourselves here at Castillo’s to kind of suss out why we’re here and why we’re doing this, who it’s for, and what we’re trying to achieve with recording and producing the audience podcast. Because there certainly are always other options that we all have in terms of what kind of content recreate and how we try to kind of further our brand and market our business or whatever. We write a lot of blog content, we have a YouTube channel that’s really active, but we feel that podcasting is really the best way that we can share what we’re learning and what we know with folks out there that are doing the same thing.
Speaker 1 01:45 And I think for us, the, the consistency between the podcasting medium and talking about podcasting is really clear. But for other folks out there. Well, and I say that because you know, podcasting about podcasting is kind of meta, but we think that we’re showing in this podcast not just you know, that we can podcast and that it sounds good and then it’s highly produced it, you know, it’s obviously live in places like Apple podcasts and Spotify and all these things, but also, you know, the type of content that we’re creating here. So it’s, so it’s really both. We mentioned in the trailer episode that starting a podcast really is not that hard. It’s creating a successful podcast and one that has meaning and impact to your brand. That is really an achievement and something that a lot of people never get to. And so I think maybe it’s worth putting down some guardrails around what a successful podcast is.
Speaker 1 02:38 And the answer is it’ll be different for everybody, but we’ll give some kind of maybe rules of thumbs or benchmarks that you could use in terms of analytics to give yourself a quantitative look at what a successful podcast is and when you know you’ve gotten there. Before we do that, I think it’s important to kind of break podcasting and audiences of your podcasts down into a couple of different buckets. We’ll start with the most specific one, which I think is first super niche businesses or audiences. And that is, you know, say your a consultancy in Tennessee in the United States catering to, you know, government contracts. Maybe, and this is really specific and kind of bizarre maybe, but you can imagine that the potential audience for this podcast would be much smaller than, you know, this American life or the serial podcast or you know, pick your favorite kind of mass media podcast out there that probably gets hundreds of thousands or millions of downloads.
Speaker 1 03:39 Uh, it, this podcast being successful does not mean the same thing that you know, again, this American life or cereal or a startup needs to get in order to be successful. And so I’ll give some benchmarks and these are a little arbitrary, but I think that these are useful in terms of if you are that you know, niche consultancy in Tennessee working with government contracts and you start a podcast. If you have a thousand downloads per episode, then you should consider the podcast to be very successful. Again, it’s a little bar arbitrary, but just a kind of order of magnitude benchmark there for what you should be shooting for. Maybe the next kind of broad category I would use is maybe something like this podcast where it’s a bit niche but has broad market appeal. A lot of different types of people could listen to it and certainly this podcast is not just for people who we think could be our customers here at cast us.
Speaker 1 04:30 This is for the podcasting community at large but is not for everyone in the world or everyone in the United States. And so when you have a podcast like this, I think that a successful podcast, and really what we’re going to use as the benchmark of when we have created a successful podcast is something like 25,000 downloads per episode. When we get to 25,000 downloads per episode, we will know that we will have reached pretty large audience. We will have created really compelling content that people want to share with other people and want to keep listening to every episode. And so that’s kind of the benchmark that we’re using for the audience podcast here to say, okay, we’re working towards this milestone 25,000 downloads an episode. When we get there, we know that we will have been successful, you know, by some measure, but, but that’s kind of a quantitative stake in the ground that we’re using for our podcast here.
Speaker 1 05:21 And the third kind of general category that I would use is this kind of mass media mass market podcast that that a lot of folks are doing. And this includes all of the, the true crime. It would include any kind of news or politics that really anyone in the world or in the United States or in wherever you live could listen to and the the numbers that you would need to have an impactful podcast here are maybe a little different depending on how mass market and mass media you go in this spectrum. But if you’re going for something like a true crime podcasts that literally anyone regardless of religious or political affiliations or perspectives couldn’t and would want to listen to, I think you need to be looking at something like a hundred thousand downloads per episode to make it really impactful. So those are kind of the three very general buckets that I put podcasts into, but just wanted to give a couple of analytics milestones for all of us and depending on kind of which bucket you’re in and kind of which side of each of those spectrums, your end, this is kind of a a number that you can have in your mind to shoot for.
Speaker 1 06:25 Again, we’re not going to get super hung up on analytics here because I think it’s not the most important thing. Again, the whole point of this is to create a podcast that’s meaningful to your brand. We want to put some numbers around that, but I think that that having a, an impactful podcast is something that you’ll know when it happens, but these are some numbers that help us kind of guide our progress along the way. So I think this is a good time to also reflect back on why we’re podcasting. We have a lot of other options of types of content that we can create and how we can educate and inform and inspire our audience. Things like blog content, things like social media, things like YouTube channels are all very valid options here at Casios. We do all of those and I think that this is, this is kind of a lesson for a lot of us, is that if you’re trying to build a really big and impactful, meaningful brand, you probably need to be engaging in most of these forms of content and of marketing as a way to reach your audience.
Speaker 1 07:23 And the lesson here for us is that some people are podcast listeners and some people are not. Some people like to watch YouTube videos, some people like to just read emails or blog posts. And so I think that allowing your audience to consume your content where and how they like is a a really nice thing for them. But also kind of necessary to say like, okay, I’m creating a podcast but you might not be a podcast list or you might not have a commute every day. You might work from home where listening to podcast is not really convenient, but it’s kind of on your lunch break or you know, sitting on the couch watching Netflix, you might want to scroll through a blog post. And so that’s why we tried to create a lot of our content in multiple different forms and we certainly create different forms or media of content across the podcasting spectrum.
Speaker 1 08:12 Again, that’s kind of our topic that we talk about a lot is podcasting obviously. And so I would kind of challenge and question you as listener, you know, someone who’s creating a podcast or already have a podcast and looking to to really further it is what other content are you creating out there and how does maybe your podcast fit in with that other content. And the question here I think is there are types of things that you would talk about subjects maybe within your overall topic that are better suited for podcasts and there are certain things that are better suited for video and there are certain things that are better suited for social media and for blog posts. And the decision is specific to you and your topic. But I think that’s a question to ask yourself is if want to create this piece of content, the media and the format that it’s in should be specific to that one piece.
Speaker 1 09:01 For us talking through this podcast and having everyone follow along with our journey to build the audience podcast just makes sense in a podcast format because we’re going to be talking about this and how we’re feeling and what we’re learning and what’s working and what’s not. Sharing our analytics and our progress along the way. And that’s just kind of a natural fit for the podcasting and audio medium. Something like a video explaining how to use a feature in your product or showcasing, you know, these unboxing videos, showcasing a new feature for a site that might be like an affiliate site that obviously is a better fit for video. And then something like food bloggers do a lot of video as well because you want to show people either in pictures. So something like Pinterest would work well or Instagram or in videos on YouTube to show people how you’re cooking this thing.
Speaker 1 09:50 And then the last one is something like a case study really is probably best matched for written content and your blog. So I think that when you’re looking at creating a particular type of content, think about which media, which format. It’s best delivered in and best consumed by your audience. And again, so our podcast here is a story really and it’s a story of us starting a podcast from scratch from zero listeners and building it up to, you know, we use this benchmark before like 25,000 listeners per episode is our goal and that’s the point where we think we’ll have a successful podcast. Doing that and sharing this story in audio content in the form of a podcast is the best fit for us for this project. We do a bunch of other stuff at Costos in terms of content and we make the decision on which content media best fits the piece we want to create and we create it in that media.
Speaker 1 10:39 So I think the same question should be asked of yourselves when you’re creating new content and then kind of tailor that content format decision to the type of piece that you’re creating. And I think a big part of this is obviously knowing your audience too. If your audience is podcast listeners, then maybe you would tend towards making more podcasts type of content. If your audience is definitely not audio listeners or audio learners, then you might not create as much podcast content. You might sway more towards the blog post or the email or the social media. Again, it’s a lot of the, the type of content that you’re creating and how your audience typically likes to consume that content or that type of content. And then the second question that we ask ourselves around kind of why we’re podcasting is who we’re podcasting for. So we ask ourselves why we’re here.
Speaker 1 11:26 What we’re doing here with the audience podcast, and a really important question is who is this podcast for? And if you haven’t asked yourself that question and gone through this exercise of creating a unique listener avatar for your show, you need to do it. Don’t record another episode until you’ve done this because doing this exercise and listing out exactly who your ideal audience member is will inform a lot of the creative and content decisions that you make going forward and creating compelling and interesting content for your podcast. A few things to think about when you’re creating this listener avatar are things like other demographics. So where do they live? What do they do for a living? Maybe things like age and gender as well. Are they married, are they not? Did they have kids or do they not? But then things like what are they interested in?
Speaker 1 12:15 What are their pains? What are things that they wish they had in their lives and are kind of longing for? What are things they’re really grateful for and, and kinda cherish and celebrate in their lives? When you define these kind of handful or dozen points, you’ll start getting a really clear picture of an exact specific one person that is your podcast listener. And with this you’ll be able to ask yourself, okay, you know, Pete, the podcast listener maybe, or you know, you call the person whatever you want, you know, Pete, the podcast listener. Well what is Pete like? What is he struggling with in his life that I can help him with in terms of inspiration or education? What is he interested in, what challenges does he have in his work life or social life? And once you really defined on this one unique listener avatar, you’ll be able to really easily say, okay, I want to create a, I’ll use our show as an example.
Speaker 1 13:11 Again, this show is really kind of a Petri dish of the whole kind of podcasting experience. So let’s take the audience podcast as an example. Who is this podcast for? This podcast is for people who want to start a podcast or who have already started one but aren’t happy with the success of it and the impact that it’s making on their brand. So these people are typically some form of content creators that have some kind of brand or cause that they’re already involved in. Again, we use the term brand to include anything from a religious organization to a hobby, to a side hustle, to a business or you know, an entrepreneurial project. It can be anything along those lines. So this fits into really, it should, it should apply to any podcaster but, but if they have to have a thing, they’re podcasting for favorite sports team is maybe another good example.
Speaker 1 14:02 And so we think about a lot of the things that podcasters, in our case that’s our listener avatar kind of focus group things that podcasters like, things that they have troubles with and that they are interested in. And we can tell from our Facebook group, and we have a Facebook group here at Castillo’s called podcast hackers, that the thing that everybody that has a podcast wants to do more and better of is to have a bigger audience. And I think that this is the reason that we created the podcast like we’re doing, is to say we want to do a podcast that’s really a live test experiment on how to grow an audience. So our ideal listener is podcasters, existing podcasters, people that want to start a podcast, even who their main focus is growing a bigger and more engaged and more meaningful audience for their brand.
Speaker 1 14:55 With that unique listener avatar in mind, we then are able to make really easy kind of content decisions about what we want to talk about in the podcast here and what we don’t want to talk about. So with our listener avatar in mind, we’re going to talk pretty specifically about podcasting. This is not a kind of how to start a podcast podcast because we’re going to talk through that in this episode and in the next one. And then from there it’s going to be all about growing an audience. So in terms of the things we talk about, it’s not going to be, you know, 18 reviews on podcasting microphones because we have two recommendations there and we’re going to go through those in the next episode and we’re going to move on because it turns out the microphone is not going to make the podcast.
Speaker 1 15:36 The content and the engagement with your audience is what makes your podcast also, you know, we know what podcasters, our target audience, podcasters or aspiring podcasters want is to grow an audience. It’s their pain and it’s their desire. So we’re going to talk a lot about all different forms of growing an audience. And we’re gonna talk about things from, you know, organic acquisition. So SEO, email marketing, content, repurposing, all the way to paid acquisition, Facebook, overcast Cora may be. And so, you know, we’re going to explore all those different avenues. What’s the most cost effective, what’s the most impactful, and has the best alignment between our brand, the podcasters that we want to, and what has the best alignment between our brand, the podcasters that we want to listen to this show. And then the kind of full circle of that back to our message.
Speaker 1 16:28 And those are really the three pillars of acquiring meaningful listeners, is you want people coming to listen to your show, who care about your message that are aligned with your brand. And those three things should be aligned very tightly for you to have a successful podcast. So we’ll include a link in the show notes to this episode. If you go to dot com slash podcast we have a worksheet that talks through all of the steps that we’ve kind of gone through here verbally to build your ideal listener avatar. It’s super important in there as well is a worksheet for you to download and work through in terms of defining exactly why you’re podcasting and then the listener avatar part is who you’re podcasting for. I mentioned in here are our Facebook group as well. If you have questions or comments about this episode, we’d love to hear from you.
Speaker 1 17:12 Please drop a comment in the post for this episode. So again, go to dot com slash podcast so we’d love to hear your experiences and things that you’ve learned along the way of kind of defining why you’re podcasting and who you’re podcasting for. I think this is a fundamental question is why this is the first episode of our podcast here is you have to get this right, and there’s no sense in doing any of the other stuff of gear and RSS feeds and hosts and set up and Apple podcasts and Spotify if you don’t have this down. And if you don’t get this right from the beginning. So that’s why we put this first. We’d love to hear your experiences with defining your ideal listener and your listener avatar, as well as the why of why you’re podcasting. Drop a comment in the post for this episode. Go to dot com slash podcast and drop a comment and about your experiences with going through this process, which you learned along the way, both the good and the bad. We’re sharing the good and the bad here on our show, so we’d love to hear from you and the things that you’ve learned along the way as well.
19 min
December 19, 2019Why And For Whom We're Podcasting
These two questions are so essential that we put them into this inaugural episode of Audience.
If you don't have a well thought out and defensible answer for:
Why you're podcasting
Who you're podcasting for
Then stop everything else now and let's figure this out.
The answer to these two questions will guide almost all of the creative content decisions that you make with your show. Doing this will give you great alignment between the 3 pillars of a great podcast: what your audience is interested in, and specifically what your message is.
Getting a high degree of alignment between these two will give your listeners the feeling that you're talking DIRECTLY to them. Almost like you had that one person in mind when you created your show....probably because you did.
Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:04 Hi there and welcome to the first episode of the audience podcast. I'm your host Craig Hewitt from Castos. Here in the first episode we're going to be talking through two of the really fundamental questions that we as podcasters or any kind of content creators really need to answer before we embark on a new kind of form of content they were going to be creating for our brand. And again, you know, from, from our trailer episode, we're going to use the term brand a lot here because the audience podcast is about building a successful and meeting full podcast for your brand. And a brand can be anything from a business to kind of a side hustle, a church or religious group and a charity or just a hobby. Uh, so, so it's not just for businesses, it's not just for hobbyists, it's the things we're learning here.
Speaker 1 00:49 And the principles apply to everyone. And the foundation of, of a good podcast that's going to make an impact on your brand is, is something that, that reaches the right kind of people in the right way and delivers the right message to them. And so that's what we're going to cover here in this first episode or the questions that we have asked ourselves here at Castillo's to kind of suss out why we're here and why we're doing this, who it's for, and what we're trying to achieve with recording and producing the audience podcast. Because there certainly are always other options that we all have in terms of what kind of content recreate and how we try to kind of further our brand and market our business or whatever. We write a lot of blog content, we have a YouTube channel that's really active, but we feel that podcasting is really the best way that we can share what we're learning and what we know with folks out there that are doing the same thing.
Speaker 1 01:45 And I think for us, the, the consistency between the podcasting medium and talking about podcasting is really clear. But for other folks out there. Well, and I say that because you know, podcasting about podcasting is kind of meta, but we think that we're showing in this podcast not just you know, that we can podcast and that it sounds good and then it's highly produced it, you know, it's obviously live in places like Apple podcasts and Spotify and all these things, but also, you know, the type of content that we're creating here. So it's, so it's really both. We mentioned in the trailer episode that starting a podcast really is not that hard. It's creating a successful podcast and one that has meaning and impact to your brand. That is really an achievement and something that a lot of people never get to. And so I think maybe it's worth putting down some guardrails around what a successful podcast is.
Speaker 1 02:38 And the answer is it'll be different for everybody, but we'll give some kind of maybe rules of thumbs or benchmarks that you could use in terms of analytics to give yourself a quantitative look at what a successful podcast is and when you know you've gotten there. Before we do that, I think it's important to kind of break podcasting and audiences of your podcasts down into a couple of different buckets. We'll start with the most specific one, which I think is first super niche businesses or audiences. And that is, you know, say your a consultancy in Tennessee in the United States catering to, you know, government contracts. Maybe, and this is really specific and kind of bizarre maybe, but you can imagine that the potential audience for this podcast would be much smaller than, you know, this American life or the serial podcast or you know, pick your favorite kind of mass media podcast out there that probably gets hundreds of thousands or millions of downloads.
Speaker 1 03:39 Uh, it, this podcast being successful does not mean the same thing that you know, again, this American life or cereal or a startup needs to get in order to be successful. And so I'll give some benchmarks and these are a little arbitrary, but I think that these are useful in terms of if you are that you know, niche consultancy in Tennessee working with government contracts and you start a podcast. If you have a thousand downloads per episode, then you should consider the podcast to be very successful. Again, it's a little bar arbitrary, but just a kind of order of magnitude benchmark there for what you should be shooting for. Maybe the next kind of broad category I would use is maybe something like this podcast where it's a bit niche but has broad market appeal. A lot of different types of people could listen to it and certainly this podcast is not just for people who we think could be our customers here at cast us.
Speaker 1 04:30 This is for the podcasting community at large but is not for everyone in the world or everyone in the United States. And so when you have a podcast like this, I think that a successful podcast, and really what we're going to use as the benchmark of when we have created a successful podcast is something like 25,000 downloads per episode. When we get to 25,000 downloads per episode, we will know that we will have reached pretty large audience. We will have created really compelling content that people want to share with other people and want to keep listening to every episode. And so that's kind of the benchmark that we're using for the audience podcast here to say, okay, we're working towards this milestone 25,000 downloads an episode. When we get there, we know that we will have been successful, you know, by some measure, but, but that's kind of a quantitative stake in the ground that we're using for our podcast here.
Speaker 1 05:21 And the third kind of general category that I would use is this kind of mass media mass market podcast that that a lot of folks are doing. And this includes all of the, the true crime. It would include any kind of news or politics that really anyone in the world or in the United States or in wherever you live could listen to and the the numbers that you would need to have an impactful podcast here are maybe a little different depending on how mass market and mass media you go in this spectrum. But if you're going for something like a true crime podcasts that literally anyone regardless of religious or political affiliations or perspectives couldn't and would want to listen to, I think you need to be looking at something like a hundred thousand downloads per episode to make it really impactful. So those are kind of the three very general buckets that I put podcasts into, but just wanted to give a couple of analytics milestones for all of us and depending on kind of which bucket you're in and kind of which side of each of those spectrums, your end, this is kind of a a number that you can have in your mind to shoot for.
Speaker 1 06:25 Again, we're not going to get super hung up on analytics here because I think it's not the most important thing. Again, the whole point of this is to create a podcast that's meaningful to your brand. We want to put some numbers around that, but I think that that having a, an impactful podcast is something that you'll know when it happens, but these are some numbers that help us kind of guide our progress along the way. So I think this is a good time to also reflect back on why we're podcasting. We have a lot of other options of types of content that we can create and how we can educate and inform and inspire our audience. Things like blog content, things like social media, things like YouTube channels are all very valid options here at Casios. We do all of those and I think that this is, this is kind of a lesson for a lot of us, is that if you're trying to build a really big and impactful, meaningful brand, you probably need to be engaging in most of these forms of content and of marketing as a way to reach your audience.
Speaker 1 07:23 And the lesson here for us is that some people are podcast listeners and some people are not. Some people like to watch YouTube videos, some people like to just read emails or blog posts. And so I think that allowing your audience to consume your content where and how they like is a a really nice thing for them. But also kind of necessary to say like, okay, I'm creating a podcast but you might not be a podcast list or you might not have a commute every day. You might work from home where listening to podcast is not really convenient, but it's kind of on your lunch break or you know, sitting on the couch watching Netflix, you might want to scroll through a blog post. And so that's why we tried to create a lot of our content in multiple different forms and we certainly create different forms or media of content across the podcasting spectrum.
Speaker 1 08:12 Again, that's kind of our topic that we talk about a lot is podcasting obviously. And so I would kind of challenge and question you as listener, you know, someone who's creating a podcast or already have a podcast and looking to to really further it is what other content are you creating out there and how does maybe your podcast fit in with that other content. And the question here I think is there are types of things that you would talk about subjects maybe within your overall topic that are better suited for podcasts and there are certain things that are better suited for video and there are certain things that are better suited for social media and for blog posts. And the decision is specific to you and your topic. But I think that's a question to ask yourself is if want to create this piece of content, the media and the format that it's in should be specific to that one piece.
Speaker 1 09:01 For us talking through this podcast and having everyone follow along with our journey to build the audience podcast just makes sense in a podcast format because we're going to be talking about this and how we're feeling and what we're learning and what's working and what's not. Sharing our analytics and our progress along the way. And that's just kind of a natural fit for the podcasting and audio medium. Something like a video explaining how to use a feature in your product or showcasing, you know, these unboxing videos, showcasing a new feature for a site that might be like an affiliate site that obviously is a better fit for video. And then something like food bloggers do a lot of video as well because you want to show people either in pictures. So something like Pinterest would work well or Instagram or in videos on YouTube to show people how you're cooking this thing.
Speaker 1 09:50 And then the last one is something like a case study really is probably best matched for written content and your blog. So I think that when you're looking at creating a particular type of content, think about which media, which format. It's best delivered in and best consumed by your audience. And again, so our podcast here is a story really and it's a story of us starting a podcast from scratch from zero listeners and building it up to, you know, we use this benchmark before like 25,000 listeners per episode is our goal and that's the point where we think we'll have a successful podcast. Doing that and sharing this story in audio content in the form of a podcast is the best fit for us for this project. We do a bunch of other stuff at Costos in terms of content and we make the decision on which content media best fits the piece we want to create and we create it in that media.
Speaker 1 10:39 So I think the same question should be asked of yourselves when you're creating new content and then kind of tailor that content format decision to the type of piece that you're creating. And I think a big part of this is obviously knowing your audience too. If your audience is podcast listeners, then maybe you would tend towards making more podcasts type of content. If your audience is definitely not audio listeners or audio learners, then you might not create as much podcast content. You might sway more towards the blog post or the email or the social media. Again, it's a lot of the, the type of content that you're creating and how your audience typically likes to consume that content or that type of content. And then the second question that we ask ourselves around kind of why we're podcasting is who we're podcasting for. So we ask ourselves why we're here.
Speaker 1 11:26 What we're doing here with the audience podcast, and a really important question is who is this podcast for? And if you haven't asked yourself that question and gone through this exercise of creating a unique listener avatar for your show, you need to do it. Don't record another episode until you've done this because doing this exercise and listing out exactly who your ideal audience member is will inform a lot of the creative and content decisions that you make going forward and creating compelling and interesting content for your podcast. A few things to think about when you're creating this listener avatar are things like other demographics. So where do they live? What do they do for a living? Maybe things like age and gender as well. Are they married, are they not? Did they have kids or do they not? But then things like what are they interested in?
Speaker 1 12:15 What are their pains? What are things that they wish they had in their lives and are kind of longing for? What are things they're really grateful for and, and kinda cherish and celebrate in their lives? When you define these kind of handful or dozen points, you'll start getting a really clear picture of an exact specific one person that is your podcast listener. And with this you'll be able to ask yourself, okay, you know, Pete, the podcast listener maybe, or you know, you call the person whatever you want, you know, Pete, the podcast listener. Well what is Pete like? What is he struggling with in his life that I can help him with in terms of inspiration or education? What is he interested in, what challenges does he have in his work life or social life? And once you really defined on this one unique listener avatar, you'll be able to really easily say, okay, I want to create a, I'll use our show as an example.
Speaker 1 13:11 Again, this show is really kind of a Petri dish of the whole kind of podcasting experience. So let's take the audience podcast as an example. Who is this podcast for? This podcast is for people who want to start a podcast or who have already started one but aren't happy with the success of it and the impact that it's making on their brand. So these people are typically some form of content creators that have some kind of brand or cause that they're already involved in. Again, we use the term brand to include anything from a religious organization to a hobby, to a side hustle, to a business or you know, an entrepreneurial project. It can be anything along those lines. So this fits into really, it should, it should apply to any podcaster but, but if they have to have a thing, they're podcasting for favorite sports team is maybe another good example.
Speaker 1 14:02 And so we think about a lot of the things that podcasters, in our case that's our listener avatar kind of focus group things that podcasters like, things that they have troubles with and that they are interested in. And we can tell from our Facebook group, and we have a Facebook group here at Castillo's called podcast hackers, that the thing that everybody that has a podcast wants to do more and better of is to have a bigger audience. And I think that this is the reason that we created the podcast like we're doing, is to say we want to do a podcast that's really a live test experiment on how to grow an audience. So our ideal listener is podcasters, existing podcasters, people that want to start a podcast, even who their main focus is growing a bigger and more engaged and more meaningful audience for their brand.
Speaker 1 14:55 With that unique listener avatar in mind, we then are able to make really easy kind of content decisions about what we want to talk about in the podcast here and what we don't want to talk about. So with our listener avatar in mind, we're going to talk pretty specifically about podcasting. This is not a kind of how to start a podcast podcast because we're going to talk through that in this episode and in the next one. And then from there it's going to be all about growing an audience. So in terms of the things we talk about, it's not going to be, you know, 18 reviews on podcasting microphones because we have two recommendations there and we're going to go through those in the next episode and we're going to move on because it turns out the microphone is not going to make the podcast.
Speaker 1 15:36 The content and the engagement with your audience is what makes your podcast also, you know, we know what podcasters, our target audience, podcasters or aspiring podcasters want is to grow an audience. It's their pain and it's their desire. So we're going to talk a lot about all different forms of growing an audience. And we're gonna talk about things from, you know, organic acquisition. So SEO, email marketing, content, repurposing, all the way to paid acquisition, Facebook, overcast Cora may be. And so, you know, we're going to explore all those different avenues. What's the most cost effective, what's the most impactful, and has the best alignment between our brand, the podcasters that we want to, and what has the best alignment between our brand, the podcasters that we want to listen to this show. And then the kind of full circle of that back to our message.
Speaker 1 16:28 And those are really the three pillars of acquiring meaningful listeners, is you want people coming to listen to your show, who care about your message that are aligned with your brand. And those three things should be aligned very tightly for you to have a successful podcast. So we'll include a link in the show notes to this episode. If you go to dot com slash podcast we have a worksheet that talks through all of the steps that we've kind of gone through here verbally to build your ideal listener avatar. It's super important in there as well is a worksheet for you to download and work through in terms of defining exactly why you're podcasting and then the listener avatar part is who you're podcasting for. I mentioned in here are our Facebook group as well. If you have questions or comments about this episode, we'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 1 17:12 Please drop a comment in the post for this episode. So again, go to dot com slash podcast so we'd love to hear your experiences and things that you've learned along the way of kind of defining why you're podcasting and who you're podcasting for. I think this is a fundamental question is why this is the first episode of our podcast here is you have to get this right, and there's no sense in doing any of the other stuff of gear and RSS feeds and hosts and set up and Apple podcasts and Spotify if you don't have this down. And if you don't get this right from the beginning. So that's why we put this first. We'd love to hear your experiences with defining your ideal listener and your listener avatar, as well as the why of why you're podcasting. Drop a comment in the post for this episode. Go to dot com slash podcast and drop a comment and about your experiences with going through this process, which you learned along the way, both the good and the bad. We're sharing the good and the bad here on our show, so we'd love to hear from you and the things that you've learned along the way as well.
0 min
December 12, 2019 Trailer
In this episode we set the stage for the Audience podcast. Here we talk through why we’re doing this show, what it’s aim is, and who the podcast is for.
Through the course of this show we’re going to explore all of the ways to grow a podcast audience. From zero listeners through to what constitutes a successful and impactful podcast for our brand.
Follow along as we share the best ideas and newest strategies around growing a podcast audience…real, unfiltered, and transparently.
11 min
December 10, 2019 Teaser
In this episode we set the stage for the Audience podcast. Here we talk through why we're doing this show, what it's aim is, and who the podcast is for.
Through the course of this show we're going to explore all of the ways to grow a podcast audience. From zero listeners through to what constitutes a successful and impactful podcast for our brand.
Follow along as we share the best ideas and newest strategies around growing a podcast audience...real, unfiltered, and transparently.
11 min
December 10, 2019 Teaser
In this episode we set the stage for the Audience podcast. Here we talk through why we're doing this show, what it's aim is, and who the podcast is for.
Through the course of this show we're going to explore all of the ways to grow a podcast audience. From zero listeners through to what constitutes a successful and impactful podcast for our brand.
Follow along as we share the best ideas and newest strategies around growing a podcast audience...real, unfiltered, and transparently.
11 min
July 23, 2019 21 Podcast Recording Tips For Polished Episodes
Recording great audio takes some practice, but you can skip a lot of the trial-and-error with these podcast recording tips. No amount of editing will make terrible source audio sound great so practice these to-the-point strategies to capture clean podcast recordings from the start.
The Top Podcast Recording Tips
Great podcast recordings come down to the host’s ability to produce the right sound. These tips are all about creating the perfect recording environment and actionable techniques you can put to use every time you sit down to create an episode.
1. Use the right equipment
You can record a podcast with your laptop’s microphone, but we don’t recommend it. You’ll need a few pieces of podcast equipment to record professional and clear audio. This is the easiest of all our podcast recording tips and it has the biggest impact on your audio quality.
2. Don’t forget to warm up
To state the obvious, recording a podcast episodes requires a bit of talking. Rather than going into your session cold, warm up your mouth and vocal cords by practicing your script or saying a few tongue twisters. Properly warming up will improve your dictation and keep you from stumbling over words. There’s nothing better than delivering your points flawlessly the first time around.
3. Record in a small, quiet room
Record episodes in the smallest and quietest room possible to reduce outside noise and echoes. Shut your windows and doors, turn off any machines or devices that make a constant noise, and put your pets somewhere they won’t disturb you for a couple hours. Fill your recording environment with soft items (couches, pillows, carpet, etc.) that absorb sound to muffle any errant noises.
4. Create a brief noise profile
Pause for four or five seconds at the beginning of your recording to create a noise profile. Stay absolutely silent and eliminate all environmental noise. You can use this moment of silence during editing to identify and remove any background noise by following The Audacity To Podcast’s tutorial on removing noise using Audacity.
5. Adopt proper microphone techniques
First, place your microphone at the same height as your mouth. Then sit a few inches back and have the pop filter between your mouth and the mic. Next, focus on your mouth’s distance from the microphone setup and adjust your body for the desired volume level. Remember, the closer you are the mic, the louder your voice will sound. While you can alter your voice’s volume level during post-production to keep it consistent, reduce your editing time by keeping your mouth the same distance from the mic while recording.
Having the right microphone isn’t enough, you have to know how to use it. Watch our Podcast Like A Pro video tutorial on how to achieve the perfect mic technique!
6. Watch your volume levels
As you keep your microphone distance consistent, you can monitor the volume levels while you record. Most recording softwares display your levels as a scale from green, yellow, to red. Keep your volume in the green section for your normal conversational tone and yellow sections when you need to add emphasis. Stay out of the red section or your sound will be distorted.
7. Watch your breath
We all need to breathe but controlling the sound of your inhales and exhales will stop any big gusts of wind from sneaking into your recording. For quieter inhales, sit up straight, try taking smaller breaths, or completely move your mouth away from the mic when you need to take a big breath.
8. Keep your body still
Moving your body around creates background noise while recording. This happens a lot if you use earbud headphones. The wire lays close to your chest which causes the microphone to rub against your shirt and collar. Try to stay still in your chair with your feet planted. Avoid moving things around on your desk. If you print your notes on paper, move them around as silently as possible too.
9. Resolve sound issues early
Make a test recording before you officially start to dive into your episode. If there’s a problem with your guest’s microphone or you can hear construction crew outside, don’t try to power through. Identify and resolve audio issues from the start or even wait to record. The worst case scenario is recording a full episode only to find there’s a larger issue you can’t fix in editing.
10. Record with headphones (your guest too)
While it’s possible to record a podcast episode without headphones, you’ll probably catch a lot of audio feedback. Have everyone wear headphones so you don’t have to waste precious editing hours cleaning it up.
While set of earbud headphones will do, we recommend ones that fully cover the ears. Our favorite pair is from Sony.
Sony MDR7506 Headphones
Professional Large Diaphragm Headphones
11. Stay quiet while your guests speak
It’s tempting to drop in simple phrases like “yes” and “right” and “okay” while your guests speak. Those are natural parts of language that we use without realizing, but they can distract your listeners. Yes, you can remove them during editing, but that’s a lot of unnecessary work. It’s easier to train yourself to limit interjections and allow your guest or co-host to complete their thought.
12. Leave audio cues for mistakes
Mistakes happen. They aren’t stuck in your episode forever because you aren’t performing live. Slicing out mistakes is basic podcast editing, but you need to give yourself a cue to find them in the track.
Fortunately, there are a few ways to do this. You can add a spoken marker where you say “remove the story about the pizza restaurant.” Then give a few second pause and keep going. During editing, find those pauses, and remove the mistakes. Another option is a high-pitch sound marker, like a dog clicker, that will produce a spike in the volume level. Click it a few times after the mistake occurs then find the spikes when editing.
13. Mute when you aren’t speaking
Save yourself some editing work by muting your microphone when your co-host or guest is speaking. This way you won’t pick up their voice in your microphone and it’s less noise that you’ll have to remove later.
Pro Tip: Every podcaster needs a background noise cancellation tool in their toolbox. Use Krisp to have high quality podcasting experience without background noise and echo. Krisp automatically removes background noises as you’re recording your podcasts or video interviews.
14. Use production elements sparingly
Sound effects have their place. They can add life and uniqueness to your show. But they can also distract and cheapen used them too often. Use sound effects only when the content calls for it and stick to effects that match your brand.
15. Stay hydrated
Drink at least eight ounces of water before you record. This will settle your stomach, loosen your mouth, and help your focus. It’ll also reduce any mouth clicks, the natural clicking and popping noises we make as our mouths dry.
Our stance is it’s better to drink more water and pause to use the bathroom once or twice than suffer the effects of dehydration.
16. Record a separate channel for each person
If you have multiple people speaking on your show, record each on their own channel. This will give you control over their individual volumes and noise profiles during editing.
You can have each person record themselves on their own computer (sometimes called a “double ender”) or use recording software with a multi-track recording feature.
If you use Zoom to record remote interviews, check out the video tutorial on how to record separate channels:
17. Record under a blanket
If you’re stuck in a noisy environment, an easy way to eliminate background noise is to drape a blanket over you and your microphone. It’s a crude technique, but it works. This is useful if you’re forced to record in a busy hotel, your car, or apartment building.
18. Don’t be afraid to take a break
Try breaking your show into segments with logical places for you to take a break. It’s perfect time double check the audio for any issues, grab more water, and stretch to stay loose for your entire recording session.
Breaks are also good opportunities to discuss what’s next with your co-host or guest. You can plan your conversation, review notes, and even rehearse.
19. Maximize your internet bandwidth
If you’re conducting an interview or conversation over the internet, it’s vital that you boost your connection as much as possible. This will improve the quality of the audio your recording software captures.
How do you increase your bandwidth? Well, other than upgrading with your internet provider, all you can do is plug directly into your router (instead of connecting wirelessly) and close any application that uses the web that you don’t absolutely need.
Make sure to instruct your guests to sit in a place with a strong connection and plug directly into their router if possible too.
Run a speed test for your internet connection to check the bandwidth using this free resource. Generally, a good internet speed is at or above 25 Mbps.
20. Trust your ears and take notes
The bottom line is trust your ears and don’t over think it. Although just about everyone hates the sound of their own voice initially, it’s important to listen to everything you record. When you playback the audio files, follow your instincts when something sounds off. As you produce more episodes and start liking the final cut, take notes of the recording setup and work to mimic it each time you get behind the mic.
21. Don’t forget about the content
The cleanest, most professional sounding recording is all for nothing it doesn’t contain engaging content. In addition to focusing on your technique, don’t forget to spend time on understanding what makes a podcast episode interesting. While an unpolished recording can turn off new listeners, a podcast that isn’t compelling will deter even the most loyal fan.
15 min
July 11, 2019How Email Marketing Can Help You Grow Your Podcast
You're all set up with your microphone, headphones, and hosting software. You're creating awesome podcast content. People will listen to you because of that, right? Unfortunately, no.
In the past year, podcasters have added 10.5 million new episodes to 150,000 new shows, bringing the total to 700,000 active podcasts with 29 million episodes.
Competition is fierce, and you have your work cut out for you to compete with the best podcasts. But you can do it. And email can help.
There are a few essential email marketing methods you need to get familiar with in order to actually see results. This article will give you a complete, step-by-step guide to how you can ensure your podcast succeeds with an effective email marketing strategy and tactics.
But first, we'll dive into why this channel is important piece to your podcast marketing strategy.
Why Email Marketing?
It's simple. Email marketing works.Between $32 and $44 is made for every $1 spent on email marketing (depending on who you ask).
49% of consumers say they're happy to receive promotional emails from the companies they like at least once a week.
To make matters even better, 73% of millennials say email is their preferred business communication platform, and it's the preferred platform compared to post, social media, texting, or phone calls:
The majority of respondents preferred to receive B2C communications via email.
There were 281.1 billion emails sent and received each day in 2018. By 2022, email experts anticipate that number to hit 333.2 billion.
To stand out as a podcaster who effectively drives listeners and customers with email marketing, you have to do it well.
How To Build An Email Marketing Strategy
Email marketing has its own set of tactics and best practices that differentiate it from social media or paid advertising. Building a subscriber bases asks more from the user than just clicking on an ad. Ahead, we've laid out the essential steps to start building your list and effectively marketing your podcast.
Step 1: Build an email list for your podcast
Lead generation, or email list building, is often a full-time job for a marketer who provides professional marketing services.
So you can do it all while creating great podcast content, here are the key elements to generating email subscribers.
Create a lead magnet
A "lead magnet" is a piece of valuable information that you provide to people in exchange for their contact information. In this case, we're looking for their email address.
Here are a few lead magnet best practices:
If you have existing content related to your podcast subject (blog articles, for instance), compile that content into a single, comprehensive resource.
Create a lead magnet related to your podcast subject. If you try to promote your entrepreneurship podcast to Justin Bieber fans, you're going to have a bad time.
Make your lead magnet comprehensive. If you decide to start a blog, it's best practice to promote your lead magnet within your posts. Consider language like "For a complete guide to [subject], check out our new ebook, "[Title]."
If you need to start a new website to house your lead magnet, use one of the top website builders like WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, or Weebly to create a website without having to be a coder or designer.
If you already have a website, you can add a new landing page for your lead magnet using a page builder plug-in.
Next, you'll need a tool which enables you to create lead magnets worth providing an email address for.
Google Slides can be an effective ebook creation tool. The best way to get started is to download an ebook from a publisher you love then put their pages side-by-side to Google Slides, and try to duplicate what you see.
Step 2: Develop custom landing pages for higher conversion rates
Once you have your lead magnet, you need to put it behind an email-gate on an optimized landing page, and then drive traffic to it.
An email gate is a simple tool which delivers your lead magnet content after people provide the required information (in this case, an email address).
A landing page is simply that, the optimized page you send people to in order to access your lead magnet content.
Landing pages can be created in-house by your developer, but most podcasters and digital marketers use a landing page builder. These tools create templates that are optimized for conversion.
Some landing page optimizations include:
A value proposition or unique selling point, which makes it very clear what value your visitors can expect to get from your lead magnet
A single call-to-action (CTA), which focuses your visitor's attention on your goal (submitting their email address in order to get your lead magnet)
Limited navigation options, so your visitors don't get distracted by other links
Visual cues like high-contrast color on the objects you want to draw attention to
Hidden, or few forms. The example below, for instance, includes a click popup which will only show when the landing page visitor clicks on the CTA button "Book Free Demo."
Examples of optimized landing pages
Here are a couple great examples, which are optimized for conversion that you can draw inspiration from.
Housecall Pro
Housecall Pro's optimized landing page to collect email addresses.
Housecall Pro is a software provider for plumbers. This landing page is simple and clean, with a clear value proposition and high-contrast CTA.
Clicking the CTA opens up the email-gate/form:
Housecall Pro popup lead magnet form example.
It's important you only ask for the information you'll need to turn your new contact into a podcast listener (name and email address). More form fields tend to result in fewer conversions.
Lendio
Lendio's homepage optimized for users to complete a questionnaire.
Lendio, a new business financing tool also keep their landing pages simple. It tells visitors exactly what to expect and has a contrasting CTA button and four-piece benefit-list above-the-fold.
The call to action here sends visitors through to a secondary step, a questionnaire, but this page is focused only on the single objective: viewing loan options.
To do this, you're going to need a good landing page tool. For that, we recommend OptinMonster, Unbounce, or Instapage.
Step 3: Drive traffic to your landing page with social media
Now that you have your lead magnet and landing page, it's time to start driving traffic. The first option to do that is with social media.
No matter your podcast's subject, whether it be a marketing podcast or politics podcast, your prospective listeners (and prospective email subscribers) will be on social media.
But wait, why should I turn social media users into email subscribers? It's a good question, but there's a simple answer:
Email is better than social media at driving listeners to your podcast, and it's not even close.
Email marketing engagement versus social media.
If you get someone to subscribe to your email list, you'll average a 22% open rate. With social media? You're lucky to have 1% even see your posts when you release a new podcast episode.
Use a social media scheduler and batch out your content to automatically post so you can easily drive social media users to your lead magnets.
Build a Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest profile for your podcast, then focus on creating awesome posts focused on the value your lead magnet delivers.
Share at least seven posts per lead magnet you create:
3 Audiograms/Gifs: Audiograms are static images made into videos/gifs by placing audio and transcriptions over them. Record snapshots of your lead magnet content to create these. Audiograms have shown to generate 5X the traffic than static posts.
4 Image Quotes: See below for examples. Consider including people in your images, as this has shown to increase conversions by up to 95%.
Step 4: Drive traffic to your landing page with PPC
If you have a bit of budget and are pushing for a big launch of your new podcast, PPC may be the way to go.
There's no more effective way to drive targeted traffic to your lead magnet and email list than with Facebook Ads or Adwords display ads.
Here's an example from AdEspresso, advertising their new lead magnet:
AdEspresso advertising their free e-book that requires users enter their email address to receive the content.
Through PPC you can funnel in tons of traffic to build your email list and turn them into everyday listeners.
Use Email Marketing To Turn Your Subscribers Into Listeners
You can't just write "Go listen to my podcast" in an email and expect your new list to head straight there.
This section will give you a step-by-step guide to turning the contacts you got with your lead magnet into podcast listeners.
Write better content
The quality of your email content will dictate whether users will regularly open and engage with your messaging. Use the below best practices to write better copy:
Write for intent: What do your email recipients want to learn? Communicate the value of your podcast at the top of every email.
Write for your audience: Who is your audience? Are they young professionals, or older management-types? Should your tone be casual with emojis, or professional?
Use emotion: People respond to emotion far more than neutral language.
A/B test your subject lines: Nothing has a more significant impact on your email effectiveness than the rate at which your new subscribers are opening your emails. Be sure you're using an email tool which enables subject line A/B testing, and keep track of what works!
Personalize each email
If you ask for the first name of your new email subscribers, use it!
A simple merge tag could have a huge influence on your email's open rates. Let alone the effect on reduced unsubscribe rates, click-rates, and general loyalty to your podcast.
"79% of companies that exceeded their revenue goals also have a documented strategy for personalization."
Always use personalization to your advantage.
Send thank you and welcome emails
With an average open rate of 61.73%, thank you emails are between 400 and 500% more impactful than regular emails.
Welcome emails are even better, with a reported 82% average open rate.
As soon as someone subscribes, send a thank you or welcome email with a call-to-action to subscribe to your podcast.
Open and click through rates of welcome and thank you email campaigns.
They may be the only email they ever open from you. Make sure that email prompts them to check out your podcast.
Track your successes and misses
Keep track of what's working in your emails. What types of subject lines drive more listeners, which call to actions garner the best engagement, what images work best?
Here are a few relevant tools to turn email subscribers into listeners:
Grammarly: Grammarly's "set goals" feature allows you to tell the tool what you're looking to achieve with your email. After setting your goals, copy and paste your emails into Grammarly before you hit send to make sure our copy lines up with your objectives.
MailTracker: MailTracker by Hunter is a simple and free email tracker for Gmail that lets you find out who opens your emails. Once you've added the extension, your emails are tracked via Gmail. Then once someone opens your email, you can check out the details and assess what emails are working or not.
Use Email Marketing To Turn Podcast Listeners Into Customers
Many may stop here, wanting to focus on getting more listeners to get paid ads or monetize later. If your goal is increased sales in addition to listeners, you'll have to take it a step further.
This section will give you a step-by-step breakdown of how you can use email marketing to turn podcast listeners and email subscribers into customers.
Don't send bad emails
This may seem like common sense, but you'd be surprised.
The first and most important thing to remember when using email marketing for podcasting is to avoid losing subscribers you've worked hard to get.
You can't monetize your email list if your unsubscribe rates are through the roof.
From a tool perspective, it's important to choose a provider with high, and consistent email deliverability.
Here's an example of a good podcast email from Hotjar:
Email example from Hotjar promoting their podcast episode.
What's good in this email? Let's break it down:
The quote at the top of this email is an example of pure emotion. There's no way to more effectively grab your email subscribers than with emotion.
The high-contrast pink draws the eye very effectively to both links to the podcast. And having two links is also best practice.
Though it's not shown (as this is an example taken directly from Hotjar's email marketing tool), the space before the comma at the top shows us there would normally be a first name merge tag there. Personalization is crucial to continued engagement from your contacts.
Starting with a question. Questions are fantastic hooks, as they inspire people to keep reading - either to see if the question is answered or (having answered it themselves) to see if they got it right.
Reward subscribers with discounts
You could choose to make your subscribers automatic premium members, or prompt them to pay to access your premium podcast content.
Either way, keep your subscribers loyal with additional value exclusive to them. And don't beat around the bush when you talk about the offer's exclusivity.
Exclusivity is part of a psychological phenomenon called the scarcity principle, which states that the rarer something is, the more valuable it is (even if there's no real additional value).
Use the P.S.
If the main call to action in your emails is to listen to your podcasts, your second should be to complete some kind of purchase or advance down your business' sales funnel.
And that call to action should go in the P.S. of your email.
There's something called the Zeigarnik effect, which says that humans have a desire to complete tasks. Uncompleted tasks (like not reading the P.S. in an email) creates tension.
In short, people pay close attention to the P.S. in your emails, so make sure they see the value of making a purchase.
Relevant tools to turn podcast listeners into customers
You're going to need a good email tool, either to send single emails or to automate once you get too many for individual emails to be scalable.
Here are the top two email marketing software options.
Mailchimp
Mailchimp is the premier email marketing option for early-stage business owners and entrepreneurs.

They offer beautiful email templates and simple automation, alongside a free plan for up to 2000 email subscribers.
Hubspot
Hubspot is described in Intercom's ultimate marketing stack as "As a low-cost (and in some cases free) platform, it's particularly popular with small businesses who can’t afford the wealth of software options that more mature companies can." - Intercom
Hubspot offers offer a wide variety of plans that give their customers everything from basic email and CRM integrations all the way to enterprise-level marketing automation.
Conclusion
Email marketing can be the difference between a successful podcast and a flop. Use multiple channels to generate more traffic and convert them via lead magnets.
Then, craft compelling, personalized emails to ensure your podcasts get the attention they deserve.
15 min

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