Hi everyone~ Excited to be making my first submission with this guide that my team and I have spent a lot of time putting together. Since 2015, we've launched 18 shows with a combined 350+ episodes, and some of those shows have served as the foundations for global, standalone communities, so folks come to us for advice on where to start and how to keep the show running.
You can find the full, in-depth blog post here.
Preparing for Launch
Objectives and Strategic Planning
The first, and most important step to making your show succeed is understanding why you’re doing it. Before you get started, think through the following questions
Goals: What do you want to accomplish with the podcast? What does success look like for this show 6 months from now?
Logistics: How frequently do you want to release episodes? Who will host the show? Who will own the different steps of the process (booking, promoting, etc.)?
Content: Who is your target audience? What topics would you like to cover? What are the criteria for a guest?
Assets
Every show needs a name, a description, and artwork. You’ll not only be asked for these things when you submit your feed to various podcast directories but preparing these things is a good forcing function for thinking through the whats, whys, and hows of your show.
Sourcing Guests
Where you source your guests will depend on what the objectives of your show are. Is it to meet customers? Is it to educate your users? A great way to source guests is to ask your audience or end every episode with a question for your guest, “who would you recommend we talk to next?”
Recording Your First Episode
Recording Gear
Luckily, in our remote world, the minimum viable setup is really just a recording app, a quiet space, and a decent mic, which most everyone should have by now.
Microphones
Pretty much anything will be better than your laptop’s built-in mic. USB ones like Blue Yeti and Blue Snowball are popular among podcasters for their ease of use and affordability.
Recording Apps
We recommend using Zencastr for recording remote podcast audio. The app records each speaker on their own computer and splits each speaker into a separate track to ensure high-quality sound capture – no more strange artifacts and hiccups from unstable internet connections.
Where to Record
Minimize background noise and echo. Avoid recording in larger, reflective rooms with harder surfaces like glass, tile, rock and metal. Try to find a smaller room where surfaces are largely made of softer materials (wood, sheetrock, carpet, rugs, furniture, etc.) like a small home office or carpeted bedroom.
Being an Effective Host
Conducting in-person interviews requires a lot of energy and confidence. Interviewing remotely can be harder because of latency issues and dropped connections. The one thing all great in-person and remote interviewers have in common is a lot of practice.
Editing and Publishing An Episode
Avoid Having to Edit
In addition to the recording tips above, the better prepared your hosts and guests are, the better your episode will turn out. The more composed everyone is, the easier it is to find and cut the awkward parts. The more experienced the host, the better they’ll be at rephrasing confusing points.
Tools
There are lots of tools out there to help with post-production. We use Frame for folks to be able to leave feedback with timestamps for edits. Transcribing is time and resource intensive but the payoffs are high; transcripts provide accessibility to folks with hearing disabilities, cater to folks who prefer to read, and make your show discoverable to search engines.
Promoting Your Show
Social Channels
If you’ve done your homework of determining who your target audience is during the objective-planning stage, then you should already know the channels they’re likely to be hanging out in. But lately, people are so hungry for podcasts, submitting your feed (with the correct categories) to as many podcast directories as possible is a great way to increase listenership.
Repackaging Your Episodes
You should be promoting every episode but don’t miss opportunities to promote the show itself. Individual stream and download counts are important but what’s more important is encouraging people, who stumbled upon your one viral episode, to check out the rest and ultimately, subscribe to your show.
Lean on Your Guests
Episodes don’t need to be released in the order that they were recorded in. If your guest and/or their company has an exciting launch coming up, take advantage of that and publish the episode to coincide with it.
We’ll be updating our guide regularly with additional tips so check back often, and let me know if you’d like to add anything or if we’ve missed something. Good luck!
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