Have you ever considered starting a podcast? If you want to start a podcast, now may be the perfect time to catch the wave of the podcast revolution taking the world by storm.
Never before in our history has it been so easy to reach a worldwide audience via podcasting. This is the perfect vehicle to get your message out to new people and raise awareness of you, your ideas, your services and products.
Podcast growth has been enormous over the last few years. The Pew Research Centre has found that:
In this episode of The Australia Counselling Podcast I talk you through how to start your own podcast from scratch. After producing almost 100 episodes with 61,000 downloads to date, I've got some idea of what's involved and some great tips for you as well.
Here's what I cover in this episode:
Why start a podcast?
you can expand your reach of people and expose your ideas and your business to countless people across the worldThe Australia Counselling Podcast has to date 96 episodes, 61,000 episodes and has been listened to in 98 countries50% of our listeners are from Australia, 25% from the USA, 10% from the UK and the remaining from other countriespodcasting is great for networking and building relationships with other therapists - on this podcast I’ve interviewed world-renowned therapists Michael Yapko, Sue Johnson, Harville Hendrix, Bill O’Hanlon, Rick Hanson and Irvin Yalom, just to name a fewYou get more attention from the media - I’ve been interviewed for numerous media outlets, magazines and radio stations - plus I’ve secured media interviews for Australia Counselling membersyou can improve your confidence as a speakeryou can build the know, like and trust factor with your listenersit can assist if you want to create products for sales or promote your services to a wider audienceWhat’s involved in podcasting?
the most import thing is the commitment - be aware it’s a huge commitment of time and resourcesif you’re not willing to commit to podcasting on a regular basis, don’t start!securing interviews can be time consuming and challenging with negotiating time zonesrecording of episodes need to be either batched or done in advanceediting episodes takes time, especially if your guest is not a confident speakeryou may need to create blog posts for the show notes of each episodeafter editing you need to upload the audio to your audio hostingonce your episode is published it's important to do marketing so new audiences can listen to your episodesthis is a slow marketing strategy - results take timeHow podcasting works
every episode is an mp3 audio fileyou need to tag the file with 'meta data' before uploading to your hostingyou need a server to host your audioyou need to create a feed - I use Libsyn - which is the gold standard in the industry (I pay USD $20 a month)the feed is what goes into iTunes and every time you upload a new audio, iTunes gets the audio on the feedQuestions to ask before you start a podcast
what are you going to podcast about?are you going to do interview style or just you speaking?what is the purpose or end goal of your podcast?what is your podcast title?what is your podcast subtitle?what is your podcast description? (this goes in iTunes)what will be on your artwork? - look at other top podcasts in iTunes and what graphics they have (I recommend 99designs for getting your iTunes artwork)do you want a professional intro and outro (try fiverr.com for voice-over artists)is your music royalty free?Podcasting equipment and software needed to start a podcast
sound quality is the most important part of recording - invest in a great microphonecost effective solution: Audiotechnica ATR 2100 USB microphone about $60pop filter and a stand and shock mountmy own high end podcasting microphone: Rode podcasting microphone with studio boom and shock mount about $400Call recorder for Mac (Skype plugin) - for interviewsPamela Call Recorder for Skype (PC)Hindenburg Journalist - for audio editing (about $100)alternatives: Garage Band (Mac), Audacityfreeconferencecall.com for free recording on the phonepost-production - auphonic.com to even out the sound levelsHow to record a podcast episode
for interviews I use Call Recorderif I'm doing an interview, I record directly into Hindenburg JournalistI drag audios into Hindenburg - then editthen export the file from Hindenburg as a wav fileadd tags in auphonicupload to auphonic to even out sound levelsif not using auphonic, add tags using ID3 editor softwareupload into Libsyn and add description and schedule or publish immediatelyonce your feed is ready in Libsyn, then create your show in iTunesupload your artwork to iTunes for the first time and add a descriptiononce you’re up and running, submit your podcast to free podcast directoriesTips for recording a podcast
get ahead in your recordings so you're not scrambling to record your episode each weekcreate a system around requesting interviews to save timedon’t get obsessive about editing - you don't need to remove every "um" and "ah"work out the structure of your episodes so you can rinse and repeatprepare your interviewees - create an information document to give them beforeoften interviewees are nervous so let them know it’s okay if they make a mistake and you can edit out mistakeslisten to the most popular podcasts in iTunes for format/structure and interview stylehave a call to action in each episode - what do you want your listener to do?
