CS405 – Recording Your Narrative Podcast

Special guests:

• Corey Coates
• 
  
• Jessica Rhodes
• 
  
• Dave Jackson
• 
  
• Daniel J. Lewis
• 
  
• Geoff Woods

Intro:

Welcome to the Creative Studio, where we conduct experiments with podcasting. We are in the middle of our fourth season, where we are talking about narrative podcasting. If you’re new to the show, I’d recommend going back to the first episode of this season because each episode builds on the previous one – at least to some extent.

We’ve already looked at:

• What a narrative podcast is and whether you should do this format or not
• 
  
• The overall workflow or roadmap of a narrative podcast
• 
  
• The planning and preparation that needs to go into a successful narrative

In this episode, we will be looking specifically at the recording aspect. Jessica Rhodes and Corey Coates are the hosts of The Podcast Producers podcast. They are conducting interviews for their second season (which is almost over), but for the first season, they did a narrative or documentary style.

4 – Guests are the spotlight

1 – Looking for sound bites

6 – Interviews not meant to be raw and uncut

2 – Doesn’t have to be perfect questions

7 – Let the guest talk

5 – Allow the guest to tell the story

3 – Shut up after asking the question

8 – Best stuff after 15-20 minutes

Jessica Rhodes is also the founder of Interview Connections, a service that connects podcasters with guests. She also provides a lot of great information and resources for interviewing. One resource is a video series called Rock the Podcast from Both Sides of the Mic. This can help you with being both a host and a guest. Check it out at InterviewConnections.tv.

Besides having interview skills and techniques to get the content you need, an important aspect of interviewing is having a way to record the content. There are several ways that you can record.

One popular way is using Skype with a Skype-recorder. You just speak with the guest and the software can record the conversation for you, usually splitting your side from theirs. This makes it easier for editing later. This is how I did most of the interviews for this series.

I also used my cell phone with Corey Coates. I had my phone hooked up to my mixer so that both sides of the conversation could be recorded into my digital recorder. If your guest has the right equipment, you could speak over the phone and each of you can record on your own side separately. This is called a double-ender.

Another method that you use is in person interviews. For this a portable digital recorder is really helpful. Dave Jackson even uses his iPhone’s recording software.

9 – Digital recorder ready

Daniel J. Lewis also talks about using a digital recorder, but he emphasizes the importance of getting good quality audio – at least quality that is good enough. He has some great tips.

10 – Clear spoken word

11 – Microphone techniques

12 – Contrast in audio

Geoff Woods records a lot of audio for his podcast, The Mentee. It started as a personal mission to build passive income after his income got slashed by 40%. He sought out people...

Welcome back to the Creative Studio where we conduct podcasting experiments. This is the fourth episode in our series on narrative podcasting. If you haven’t listened to the previous episodes, you can visit CreativeStudio.Academy or subscribe to the podcast to get those episodes.

My name is Joshua Rivers and I am your host on this extraordinary journey into the world of narrative podcasting. I’ve mentioned before that I’m not an expert. I’ve been learning these things along with you.

This episode is a continuation through the podcasting workflow and is kind of a part 2 to last week’s episode where we talked about planning your narrative podcast. This week we will take those plans and begin to make actual preparations. We’ll be getting things set in place so we will be ready to record.

In a previous episode, we heard from Jessica Abel, the author of the book “Out on the Wire” and the host of the associated podcast. She shared some things about planning and creating the narrative arc. We won’t rehash those things now, but she helps us take the next step.

7 you have a character who's going to be at the center of the story, you want to think about what are these stages that they've gone through, and the change that you want to depict in your narrative, right?

8 you figure out when the turning points are, when do they go from one place to another place, where were their dilemmas, where were their decision-points, and then when you go to the person you want to ask them all kinds of questions about those decisions that they had to make, and about those moments of change, and how was it before, and how was it after. So your preparation is often figuring out the bare outlines of what this person's story is, and then deciding where do you want to delve in further.

4   In our case, we very specifically targeted certain individuals that we wanted for their knowledge-base and their experience in the industry.

Corey Coates joins us again. He is from Podfly, helping podcasters  with their podcast production. He also works with Jessica Rhodes in creating The Podcast Producers podcast.

It's tough because in a lot of cases you have folks that are the most boisterous, or the most vocal, the most prominent in some of the communities and Facebook groups, that may not necessarily be the ones who are bringing the best information,

We know, because I've been in podcasting for 10 years, Jessica'd been doing this for two, three years, as well, so we kind of got a sense of those, you pass kind of the sniff test, if you will, you can kind of tell when you talk to folks that they're either really legit, they know their stuff, and they're really making a contribution, or they're kind of jokers and they're coming in and they're just sort of marketing themselves and not really the skills that they may have acquired

Dave Jackson from the School of Podcasting also does a lot of experimenting and testing of different things in the podcasting world. He chimes in on this as well.

9   Well for me, I've done it where I have chosen guests who had the background I was looking for,

So by doing that, I kind of knew that the information they were going to provide, I wasn't going to really have to sift through much, it should all fit the goal of the episode,

you have to...

Today's guests:

Bryan Orr
Corey Coates
Doc Kennedy
Jessica Abel
Dave Jackson
Erik K. Johnson
Rye Taylor
Daniel J. Lewis
Elsie Escobar
Geoff Woods

“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.” This is a quote from Benjamin Franklin. It applies to many areas of life, and it applies to creating a narrative podcast as well.

My name is Joshua Rivers, and I’m helping to guide you through this journey into narrative podcasting. So, we’ve learned what a narrative is and whether you should even try this. We’ve also climbed the mountain to get the 30,000 foot view of the narrative process.

Today we will be looking at creating a plan, and it’s best to start with the end so you know where you’re going. I asked Bryan Orr about this…

Bryan Orr: You waste more time…

As we speak to the others, we’ll see this thought of having a plan and knowing where you are going. It really does help a lot when piecing together the story arc.

Bryan Orr says that are basically two types of stories…

Bryan Orr: Some are content centric…

Bryan Orr: Writing intensive…

Bryan Orr: So when you start off with the timeline…

Corey Coates and Jessica Rhodes created what Bryan is calling a content centric podcast series with the first season of The Podcast Producers (which they are now in the middle of the second season).

Corey Coates: I think it always starts with the story arc…

I love the idea of breaking the ideas down into chapters. I see this in a couple ways. First of all, when creating a series, each episode can be viewed as a chapter of the story. Secondly, if you’re looking at a single episode, there will be several sections, or you could say chapters.

Try to logically lay things out so that similar things are grouped together and flow from one part to the next. In episodes 7 and 8 of this series, we’ll dive into more ideas of doing this while still enticing the listener to keep listening and how to flow from one to the next.

Jessica Rhodes: You need to know and have a good understanding of who your audience is…

We probably should have started here. Who is your listener? Who are you targeting?

Jessica Rhodes: …and also what story arc is…

Doc Kennedy: Everything scripted…

Doc Kennedy works in the film making industry as well as in the world of podcasting.

Doc Kennedy: I would set it up like…

One aspect of the podcast that needs to be thought about is the voices. We’ll get into actually picking and finding the right people in the next episode, but during the planning stage, you need to really consider how multiple voices can create a third dimension for the audio.

Doc Kennedy: If I could, I would definitely have multiple people…

Dave Jackson from the School of Podcasting also agrees that writing things down to help jog the inspirational juices and to organize your thoughts.

Dave Jackson: For me, I wrote it down…

Dave Jackson: …and there was this whole skit

Rye Taylor: If you’re going to do a narrative…

This is Rye Taylor.

Rye Taylor: Once you take that step…

Rye Taylor: It’s hard to describe this…

Erik K. Johnson: So I think your first step…

This is Erik K. Johnson, Podcast Talent Coach.

Erik K. Johnson: I think the most difficult part…

Rye Taylor: You’ve got to decide…

Learning to focus the story on one main person is an effective way to bring perspective. It also gives you a boundary and direction or how to tell the story.

Rye Taylor: Once you get that…

Most of what we’ve talked about looks at telling stories that have either already happened or that we create. What about approaching something that is either currently happening or is still in the future. Daniel J. Lewis brings his perspective.

Daniel J.

If you haven’t listened to the first episode of this series, go back and listen to that first. We covered what a narrative podcast is and whether you should or shouldn’t pursue this format of podcasting.

Assuming now that you’ve considered those, we’ll cover an overview of the process of creating a narrative podcast in this episode. We won’t go into a lot of detail, as we will delve into the different parts in future episodes; but you’ll be able to see the big picture.

This episode is going to be a little different than the rest. There are only going to be three guests with us – Jessica Rhodes, Erik K. Johnson, and Jessica Abel. The majority of the episode will be my voice. The rest of the episodes will be featuring more of the guests and less of me.

In addition to the overview or roadmap, I’ll be sharing a couple other things here that are key to making the process easier or better – or hopefully both.

From Interview Connections, Jessica Rhodes is the host of the Rhodes to Success podcast and the co-host of The Podcast Producers along with Corey Coates. She realized the importance of having a team.

I haven’t followed this advice yet, as I’m working on this series alone, other than the contributions from those I was able to interview. I am, however, talking with someone about helping form some of the later episodes. This should help make it easier and have a better product in the end. I’ll definitely report on this later.

Erik K. Johnson talks about crafting stories on his podcast, Podcast Talent Coach.

Erik shares 4 main parts of a narrative.

These four parts help to structure what you probably already knew in the back of your mind. For a more in-depth process for our purposes, though, I want to share the extensive process that Roman Mars shared in his presentation at Podcast Movement 2015. He is the host of 99 Percent Invisible, which is a narrative or journalistic style podcast with high production value.

Roman Mars has a team that he works with, and it take them several weeks to put together one episode of the podcast. I’m not completely positive, but I believe that they work on multiple stories at a time, overlapping them. I say this because they do release weekly episodes.

I know that this is a generalization, but I would venture to say that the average podcaster has a very simple process or workflow.

Idea
Research
Interview/Record
Edit
Publish

As a general rule, I believe that most podcasters are in a rush to release the episodes because they are trying to keep to a schedule or because they’ve already blown their schedule. This is mostly due to a little thing called life. This is completely understandable since the vast majority of podcasters are doing this on the side of their jobs and families. In the rush, though, the process is simplified and the easiest path is usually taken.

Roman Mars, though, shared his process, and the process is probably similar in other high production podcasts and organizations that produce audio like this. Here’s a quick rundown of this workflow:

Idea
Research enough to pitch idea to group
Research more
Conduct pre-interviews
Adjust story concept
Pick interview subjects
Interview
Transcribe
Write first draft of script
Edit
Second draft
Edit
Third draft
Full cuts
“Read to tape” as group
Group edits
Fourth draft
Tracking
Rough mix
Listen to the rough as a group
Another group edit
Rough sound design
Listen as a group
Edit
Fix sound design
Pass off your final master
Final mix
Send out
Get notes
Fix based on notes
Review again
Green light
Publish

Are you overwhelmed at this list?

In this episode of the Creative Studio, we are launching into the 4th season (or semester) of the podcast. We will be delving into the world of narrative podcasting. This will include similar higher-level production as well, such as documentary and journalistic styles. A lot of the principles will also apply to any podcast and the way approach the development of them.

In this first episode, we will give an overview of what a narrative podcast is, if you should consider this style for yourself or not, and a little bit about narrative podcasting in general.

You'll also get introduced to the eleven guests that will show up throughout the season. You will hear from multiple guests as we focus on a particular part of the process in each episode. Here are the eleven guests:

Bryan Orr
Corey Coates
Jessica Rhodes
Daniel J. Lewis
Dave Jackson
Elsie Escobar
Doc Kennedy
Geoff Woods
Jessica Abel
Erik K. Johnson
Rye Taylor

As we go through this season, each episode will focus on one aspect of the narrative process:

Episode 1: Beginning with Narrative Podcasting (pssst...this is where you are now)
Episode 2: Roadmap for Narrative Podcasting
Episode 3: Planning Your Narrative Podcast
Episode 4: Preparing Your Narrative Podcast
Episode 5: Recording Your Narrative Podcast
Episode 6: Editing Your Narrative Podcast
Episode 7: Enticing Your Listener with a Narrative Podcast
Episode 8: Flowing From One Part of the Narrative to the Next
Episode 9: Picking Up the Pieces Left on the Cutting Room Floor
Episode 10: Learning and Resources for Narrative Podcasting

In the next episode, we will cover the overall process of creating a narrative. This will be a quick overview of the above steps, giving you a better idea of what to expect. You'll also learn some additional tips to help with keeping things in order and on track.
Confession: I am learning these things as we go through this. I am not an expert in this field...yet.
Confession 2: One suggestion that will come up involves having a partner or a team. Other than the contributions from the guests, I did all of this myself. The lesson - follow the advice, not my example in this!
If you have any questions, comments, or other feedback, please join in the conversation! You can add a comment below or contact me. While I've conducted the interviews already and have generally slated what will be in each episode to come, nothing is finalized. I am leaving room to add your thoughts to the show.

The post 4.1: Beginning with Narrative Podcasting appeared first on Creative Studio Academy.

This is a bonus episode for our series on how to podcast.

Brad Clayton from the Entrepreneur Uncovered podcast comes on to share some of the struggles that he's had over the past couple months getting started with his first podcast.

The post Beginner podcaster shares his struggles (3-14) appeared first on Creative Studio Academy.

There are a TON of resources for podcasters to help them take their podcast to the next level. I'm going to be listing just a few of them here.

To start off, here are some of the podcasts about podcasting I listen to regularly:

School of Podcasting
The Audacity to Podcast
Podcast Answer Man
Ask the Podcast Coach
Podcast Review Show
The Podcasters’ Studio
Podcasters’ Roundtable
Podcast Talent Coach
The Podcast Report
The Podcast Producers

There are many other podcasts and blogs about podcasting, and you can find a great list at PodcastPlaces.com, which is a resource put together by Daniel J. Lewis of The Audacity to Podcast.
iTunes Reviews
Every week, I get all of my iTunes reviews from around the world sent to my inbox via MyPodcastReviews.com (another awesome service from Daniel J. Lewis). If you were to manually check on these, you would need to go through a long process of check each country's store in iTunes.
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Social Subscribe and Follow

E-mail Newsletters

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Pod to Pod

Podcaster's Library
Phillip Swindall (Show Notes Guy) created a library of resources for podcasters. This library includes tons of information on the following aspects of podcasting to prepare you to launch, or even to re-launch your podcast to a more successful future:

WordPress
Podcasting
Email Marketing
Social Marketing, and
Mobile Marketing

For a limited time, you may be able to get this great resource for $49 (normally $299).
Podcast Production Services
As I've mentioned before, I am helping podcasters to take their podcasts to the next level and recover their time. I started doing this in February 2015 through PodcastGuy.co. If you use the discount code "CSA", you can receive 20% off the first month of whichever package you choose. Plus, the first episode is always free.

One of my clients, Scott Barlow, created this video, sharing his comments about us working together.

http://traffic.libsyn.com/simpleliving/podcastguy_htyc.mp4

The post Resources for Podcasters (3-13) appeared first on Creative Studio Academy.

Shawn Manaher is the host of the Author Hangout and the Sidepreneurs podcasts, and comes on today to share his tips about podcasting and podcast promotion. In episode 101 of the Sidepreneurs podcast, Shawn shared 101 tips that he has learned regarding podcasting.

Shawn start by sharing his best podcasting tips:
[Tweet "Absolutely everything will take long, be harder, and won't matter as much as you think. - @ShawnManaher #podcasting"]

[Tweet "Create templates for everything. Systematize everything as much as possible. - @ShawnManaher #podcasting"]
Follow your routine!
What is the greatest tip that Shawn has been able to gather from the many interviews he's done?

On his podcast, Shawn asks his guest what the number one thing that contributes to their ongoing success. A common answer among high-level performers is to have and follow a routine. This helps to get them in the flow and maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of what they do.
Shawn's promotion tips

New and Noteworthy in iTunes
Strategic tweeting 20+ times per day to connect with influencers
Create systems and utilize virtual assistants
Strategic posting on social media
Create Quote posts for each episode
Include an image with social media posts
Be consistent with your promotion

Bonus session next week
I originally planned on having this session conclude this series, but I feel compelled to bring one more. There are a lot of resources available to podcasters. I'm going to share some of those next week.
Semester 4
Over the summer, we'll be having our Semester 4. These sessions will be scaled back some between June and August. I am working on getting back to the original intent of this site and podcast, which is to create resources that are easy for people to get and consume.

One of the resources will be some tutorials/courses about podcasting. I'll be using some of the content from the podcast episodes that we have done in Semester 3, but there will be much more content as well. I will be creating several levels of accessibility to these: some will be completely free and available, some will be for those subscribed to the newsletter, and some may be used in a paid/premium course.
PodcastGuy.co
I am doing some podcast production, and I'd love to help you with your podcast. As a listener of this podcast, I will give you a discount if you use the code 'CSA' when you inquire about one of the three packages on PodcastGuy.co.

The post Podcast Promotion and Tips with Shawn Manaher (3-12) appeared first on Creative Studio Academy.

Darrell Darnell is the founder of Pro Podcast Solutions, taking care of podcasters by handling their audio editing, show notes, and many other aspects of their podcast. Darrell has helped many people start podcasts and has a great podcast launch strategy to maximize their efforts. We also talk about the different podcast directories that we should consider having our podcasts in.

Darrell has

The post Podcast Directories and Launch Strategy with Darrell Darnell (3-11) appeared first on Creative Studio Academy.

Jeff Brown from the Read to Lead Podcast joins us to talk about his post production and editing philosophy and workflow. He was also on the School of Podcasting sharing some of his podcasting experience and tips.

The post Podcasting Workflow: Post Production and Editing with Jeff Brown (3-10) appeared first on Creative Studio Academy.