Everything I know about podcasting

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Groundwork

If your idea is current events or media based, there is an immediate audience to tap into, but fatigue is an issue to watch out for – A recap podcast of an old show always has legs, but how much of a current fandom for that show is active on line right now? Has anyone done one before, and are your personalities/analyses offering anything new to the discussion? Do your research, and see if there’s a niche you can own. An example would be that an immediate way to make it in the Apple Podcast charts would be to make a podcast about Swimming – you’ll always be in the top 10 of that chart, because there’s only about 8 of them.

In your research of the competition and looking at the charts, you’ll have noticed there’s something of a formula among artworks – this is actually informing what people expect a podcast to look like now. Find a way to balance “looking how people expect” and “Looking distinct” in line with the character of your show- something people will recognise in a small tile on their podcast player of choice.

Please not just a microphone and your podcast name, please. Please.

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Making a podcast

The production aspect of podcasting is, to me, the easiest part, as with the right pieces of equipment, it just functions. You can swap in and out the parts to make it function smoother, or fancier, or simpler, and tinker your way about like a greaser in a garage till the cows come home, but the underlying mechanism is the same.
I will say right now that if you have a smart phone, you can make a podcast. It won’t sound great, but it will exist. If that’s enough for you, simply beaming audio out into the world as it falls from your lips, you’re in luck. Everything I write about from here onwards is polish. Just download the Anchor app, or even use the Voice Note function on your phone, and skip ahead to Uploading section.

Set up

The first £30 you spend on production will make more of a difference than the next £300.

If you have a laptop or computer with a spare USB slot, there are dozens of simple, cheap USB microphones that will make a world of difference to your built in one. If you have multiple hosts in the same room talking, I’d heartily recommend multiple mics, as crowding around one between you is pretty personal, but even that is ultimately optional.

Plug the microphone in, download Audacity (it’s free and does just about everything you’ll want for the anything up to semi-professional recordings), and you’re good to go. The user community around Audacity is active and helpful, should any problems arise, and do keep an eye on the file size of saved projects, as they can get pretty beefy.

Further refinement on microphones will be to swap from USB cheapies to actual musicians microphones. Some of these can still be cheap, and some of them won’t even sound as good as a USB cheapy, depending on your needs/uses. The Old Reliable Shure SM58 has been the go-to mic for vocals for decades, and the same is true still – keep a review of it open as you do some research, and use it as your audio compass for how other mics compare.

A proper microphone also needs a way into your computer – a USB audio interface that’ll give you even more chance to polish and perfect your sound, with knobs to do all sortsa stuff. There are some straight forward interfaces that have years of reliable, professional service to their name, and dozens of upcoming brands who are looking to cash in on podcasting (as everyone else, including me and you) with something cheaper. Reviews abound here too (someone else cashing in on podcasts, you get a feel for this now?), with the current choice du jour being a Focusrite Scarlet. Ultimately, mic goes in, digital comes out, computer makes sense.

Personally, I use a Behringer Xenyx Q802USB I got off eBay, as it has holes for plugging in up to 4 mics in, and a USB connection to my laptop. It sounds pretty good, and there’s not too many ways I can make it sound worse by playing with the knobs. The microphones, Behringer Ultravoices, are SM58 knockoffs that came in a pack of three, so I’ve got 2 to use in interviewing and a spare. With some stands and cables, the whole kit came to about £120. Does more than the job, and any changes I make to that from here are just tinkering.

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recording

Once you’ve got your set up and are ready to record, here’s a simple guide to the actual recording.

1 person on phone:
1. Have your diary/script on something that isn’t your phone. A laptop, printed out, committed to memory, but no phone-touching is allowed.
2. Get a glass or two of water.
3. Find somewhere you can close all the doors and windows and shut out as much external noise as possible.
4. Build yourself a pillow fort, if possible. Somewhere to sit up straight, with your phone flat in front of you on a pillow, surrounded by blankets. These will help soak up echos and noise.
a. As you do so, sing a song. Loosen up your mouth, vocal chords, tongue and body. This is more fun than tonguetwisters or theatre improv games.
5. Drink some of that water, swish it around in your mouth and wash away the saliva
6. Put your script where you can see it comfortably, and settle in.
7. Open the Voice Recorder app on your phone, set it on that pillow, and hit record
8. Sit still for 10 seconds, drink some more water.
9. Say your name, the name of your piece, Take 1, and then clap. This will be a sound marker for editing later.
10. Read your piece, louder than a conversation but not yelling. Just give it a little more push.
. Feel free to pause and drink water as you need. Just leave a few seconds space either side of the swallow.
a. If you slip up, take a second and go back to the start of the sentence. Repeat as needed.
11. When done, hit stop and save the recording
12. Get up, stretch out, drink some water
13. Sit back down and do it again. Things will be different, your emphasis on words will hit different and you’ll be more familiar.
. Try recording it with your arms stretched out infront of you, palms up.
14. When done, hit stop and save the recording as Take2
15. Get up, stretch out, drink some water
16. Sit back down and do it again. You’ll know what you are confident with, what parts take a bit of a run up, and what’s the important part to emphasise and emote on. You’ve got it.
17. Drink some water.
18. When done, hit stop and save the recording as Take3

2 people together:
1. As close a set up as possible to the 1 person set up, within the boundaries personal space/social distance/pillow forts allow.
2. Keep the phone/microphones between you on a stable set up, about a foot away from both of your faces. This may mean some accidentally intense eye contact.
3. Open the Voice recorder app on your phone and hit record.
4. Spend the next two or three minutes talking about how weird this feels. Get cosy, relax and settle in.
5. When you’re ready to actually start talking properly, Introduce the recording with both of your names, Take 1, and clap.
6. Have a regular human conversation.
a. If you’ve prepared questions/topics, use those as a guide, but it’s not necessary to stick strictly to them if the flow of the conversation goes elsewhere. Like ski slalom gates - Good to aim for, but dont hurt your time trying to steer into them.
b. Look at the other speaker as they talk, and nod as you listen. If you’d like to join in, raise a hand so they can see you’ve got a thought without talking over them and coming off rude.
c. Don’t be rude.
7. When you hit the end of the conversation, hit stop.
8. Laugh about how weird that felt
9. Check if there’s any questions you’ve missed but would like to circle back to, or points that you feel didn’t come through as cleanly as they could have
. If so, hit record again with a Take 2.
10. When that’s all taken care of, escape from your blanket fort.

2 people remotely:
1. Ideally you could do this while having a Skype session running alongside, so you can see each other over cameras but muted. If you’ve only got so much internet bandwidth, it’s fine without. Update: Zencastr is now trialling a videochat function too.
2. Build yourself a pillowfort and get a few glasses of water.
3. Plug headphones into your laptop
4. Go to Zencastr.com
5. Select New Recording, and let the website detect your camera/microphone.
a. It should then give you a Health Check, which hopefully all works.
b. If you’re having any issues, check the settings icon in the top right - looks like a speaker icon in a gear
6. Name the recording after the distant interviewee.
7. Copy the website address you are at, which will end in /IntervieweeName , and send it you the interviewee to join you at.
. Ask nicely for them to plug in their headphones too.
8. When they have joined and their healthcheck is passed, click Start Recording.
9. Talk about how weird this feels. Drink some water. Get cosy.
10. When you’re ready for the actual interview to begin, Clap.
11. Have a regular human conversation.
. If you’ve prepared questions/topics, use those as a guide, but it’s not necessary to stick strictly to them if the flow of the conversation goes elsewhere. Like ski slalom gates - Good to aim for, but dont hurt your time trying to steer into them.
a. Look at the other speaker as they talk, and nod as you listen. If you’d like to join in, raise a hand so they can see you’ve got a thought without talking over them and coming off rude.
b. Don’t be rude.
12. When you hit the end of the conversation, hit stop recording.
13. Laugh about how weird that felt
14. Check if there’s any questions you’ve missed but would like to circle back to, or points that you feel didn’t come through as cleanly as they could have
. If so, hit record again with a Take 2.
15. When that’s all taken care of, escape from your blanket fort.
16. Click the download buttons for both sides of the conversation

Group recordings done remotely: Recording from Zoom is probably easiest, let’s be honest. Just do that.

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Sounding good

Now that’s done with, play it back to yourself with some headphones on. There’ll probably be a lot of awkward pauses, some background hums and noises, and the sounds of your own body doing stuff you’ve never noticed before. It’s gross, but let’s not dwell.

Find a 3-5 second section of ‘silence’, highlight, and then go to Effects > Noise Reduction > Get Sample. This prepares Audacity with the basic background noise of your recording environment. Then, highlight the whole track, go to Noise Reduction again, and with High sensitivity, Medium decibel reduction and Low band smoothing, apply. This will take a few minutes, depending on the length of the recording, and basically cut out any noise/frequencies that aren’t you actually talking. Play back a section of dialogue and see how it sounds – if too much voice as been lost, just undo and lower the decibel reduction next time around.

The rest of editing is up to you – I personally have keyboard shortcuts set up through the Preferences menu set to Amplify -50db (basically to mute a section of a track), Cut and another Generate Silence, if any pauses need adding. Chop and change and tinker from there to make something that sounds alright to you (headphones again, gotta be headphones).

To make your episodes more than just an eruption of voices from nowhere, grab some free music from Free Music Archive that fits your style choices. Be sure to note the attribution requirements to list on your website or in your episodes – from CC0 “Just use this for free no worries” up to CC4 “You have to tell people this was me, and don’t modify it”.

Open it in Audacity, pluck out a 10-15 second introduction that fades out as your voices come in, a few 5-second stingers if you’re gonna break up sections, and a 10-15 second outro that fades in under your voices and plays you out. Add those in a new track under your vocal tracks, and then you are ready to Export to MP3.

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Releasing

Once you’ve got an episode (ideally, once you’ve got 4 or 5 in the bag to launch with, as it’s good to start with a splash) in the bag, you need other people to hear it. That’s where podcast hosting comes in, and boy, are you spoiled for choice.

As with recording, you can do it entirely for free, but spending money does open up options. For example, PodoMatic has a free podcast tier, but you have a limit on total number of minutes of uploaded content or cumulative file size before it starts asking for money. So, if you’ve got a limited release, short and small first burst in mind, that’s fine. After that, monthly/annual fees apply, but you do get access to their stats tracking, which I go into more in Making It…

Other free options include Sounder.FM, whose premade player sites do look pretty neat, Buzzsprout, where upload limits apply eventually as well, and dozens of others.

Really, it doesn’t matter where you use, as there’s little finicky bits about all different services that may tickle your fancy or fit your budget. Of the dozen I’ve tried, I like the slight boxiness of Podomatic – others offer a very smoothed, sleek, iPod experience, but I like the mental weight of the stats boxes, the upload process and the management tabs. It’s all up to you, so long as they hook you up on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts. Not only are these the Big Names in podcast players, they’re where almost everyone else scrapes for content to play back through their player (excepting IHeartRadio, I believe). Buzzsprout, podomatic, and Sounder.fm all make the registration process for getting your podcasts on these networks very easy, as do Podbean and Libsyn.

And then it’s out. Out into the internet for all the world to hear, like, share, comment, subscribe. Your job now is sharing that on your website, if you have one (some top tier paid podcasts include a website for you), social media, in person, through friends, and anywhere else people may respond politely. Ask for reviews as soon as possible to drive your launch, there are facebook groups dedicated to exchanging reviews with other podcasters. Push push push push push.

You’ve made a podcast.

Easy, right?

Now keep doing that again – weekly or biweekly, to a regular schedule, and maintain your social media presence with video clips and conversations. Twitter, Insta, Facebook, the usual culprits.

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Making it big with a podcast

Ideally, you would have started making podcasts 11 years ago and cornered a niche interest, but the second best time to plant a tree is today. New podcasts do benefit from the support and interest of tools and networks that weren’t as common in the halcyon days of 2010, so you do atleast get their benefit. More on them later.

As part of the production side of things, you should have yourself a website – make it as accessible and Google Friendly as possible. Hopefully as part of your research, you did a quick search for… say “Breakfast cereal reviews podcast”, and looked at the other sites that came up. Another thing you’re competing for now is search rankings (which I’m just going to call Google rankings going forward, as they are the main search engine by a country mile) – Marketing wisdom states that your website and SEO is going to have to come in higher than any body else’s to get your content seen/heard. There are countless other guides for how to make that happen (which you’ll find by googling them, and you’ll probably pick one of the first five results, further reinforcing their top-score placement), and Google changes the way it weights scoring every so often, but the latest change has unfortunately put more heft behind ‘trusted brands’, making it harder for independent sites to score highly without paying for ad space.

Have I mentioned Google makes it money through ads and quasi-extortionate behaviours?

Focus on social media for building listenership for now, but still have a nice website. Transcripts help with SEO, and also as an accessibility tool for d/Deaf audiences – Buzzsprout and Sounder.fm sites offer built in tools for low cost transcripts with every episode.

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Promotion

Not to put too blunt a point on it, but if you want an immediate boost to a podcast, put someone else more successful than you on it. For now, reflect on the research and production you’ve done. You are a person who has done all that. Many of the podcasts you like and listen to are run by people who’ve done just the same, and they’re usually alright kinda people. Maybe they’d wanna chat about your thing? Send an email and ask politely – the worst you get is that they say no, and nothing has changed. On to the next prospective guest.

You can also throw your name out there as a guest for other shows, be friendly and never presume, but networking works. LinkedIn exists for a reason. Facebook groups abound filled with promo-swaps, guest spots and review exchanges. Podcatcher, which is kinda the IMDB of podcasts, has been rolling out a “connect” feature to introduce possible collaborators.

Don’t go holding out for a Casper Mattress sponsorship at launch, any brands that’s going to advertise with you will be tracking performance of your show and will be weighing their return on investment – If you have a small number of listeners, the odds aren’t in your favour that, even with a highly engaged listenership, your reach is worth their while.
On the smaller side of things, Podcorn effectively sells ad time/interview slots on your show to a roster of advertisers, if you can find one who matches your interests, and there are more “Sell your podcast ad space” micro-agencies popping up by the week.
If you’re lucky, there’ll be on aligned with the topic of your show, and therefor relevant to your listeners interests.

After a certain threshold, you may consider merchandising. Small batch/ On demand printers such as Redbubble will happily slap your logo/artwork on a shirt or mug and take a slice of the proceeds. You could also order in bulk from VistaPrint or a similar service and have a box of badges to sell at live events (if your show is the kind that can be done live, it’s well worth looking into).

You can also crowdfund yourself through Patreon, letting fans donate to the show in exchange for rewards – typically bonus episodes, behind the scenes stuff, chats with the host, buying more access than you’d otherwise grant them (this also depends on if your podcast generates that kind of extra content naturally, if you have the time and inclination, and again the competition. Some peoples entire income is donated.)

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All of the above isn’t exactly making it big, though, as you many have noticed. Because I’ve not made it big, it’d be presumptuous of me to advise on much more than that – this is what those who make enough do. With the Big Money being thrown at podcasts now, much as with Youtube and news media before it, I think independent creators have a harder and harder time of rising above tide of HBO, Fox, BBC, Netflix, Spotify inhouse productions. It would take a sensational topic, a huge existing audience, and an utterly charismatic host for your show to reach the levels of My Favourite Murder, Joe Rogan or This American Life. But also consider – those are the shows that have defined their genres, made by people who were already professional presenters. They never started from a pillow fort in their spare room.

For your first show (and you never make just one podcast) , just get it out. Get it done. Don’t worry about getting big. But eventually, with effort, an audience and a lot of luck, you can get by.

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