50 Game-Changing Podcasting Tips in 15 Minutes

hey it's pat flynn here and i've been podcasting for 12 13 years now a very long time anyway i'm here to give you 50 podcasting tips in 15 minutes let's do this to start off mention other podcasts on your show why because when people subscribe to those podcasts your podcast will show up under related podcasts on their podcast pages on apple and what's cool is you can get new listeners just by doing that even if you're not a guest on their podcast the best length of your podcast as far as how long it should be should be exactly how long it needs to be for the value that you want to give just provide value and that's the biggest biggest thing you should worry about your podcast artwork is very important actually it's one of the only things besides the title of your show that people see before they make a decision to go and listen to your podcast and potentially subscribe most important just make sure that as you design it it looks good even small on a little screen that's really important because most people listening are in fact on a mobile device the best way to grow your podcast and get discovered is to be a guest on another person's podcast listeners apps are already open it's more easy to find you and they hear your voice and not only that you are getting endorsed by the host that has spent all this time building trust with that audience there's no better way to do it if you want to be a guest on another podcast start with people who you know first people who have a podcast of course if you see a podcast that you might want to be on but you don't know that person try to get an introduction and find somebody who knows both of you tell more stories people absolutely love stories even if you're teaching even if it's something technical tell a story stories get remembered and they are more likely to get shared invest in a great microphone audio is the most important thing when it comes to podcasting obviously even if it's a video podcast and a microphone will make all the difference in the world my top recommended microphones are in the description ranging from cheap prices that sound great to nice expensive very high quality podcast microphones like this one when you speak into the microphone speak about a fist lengths away unless you are this guy in which case maybe you want to be half a fist lengths away for the best quality sound use a shock mount to hold your microphone it actually kind of suspends the microphone in the air these little rubber bands here absorb any sort of vibrations from your desk or your computer fans or anything like that so you don't get like humming noises inside your audio get it and make sure it's the right size for your microphone before you purchase it next get a mic flag for your podcast microphone it's really cool because it has your brand and your logo on it this little cube here you can get it at impactpbs.com and yes obviously people listening don't know it's there however if you do happen to turn on the camera for a video podcast it is there it is branded to your show and it just looks cool it makes you feel professional and that comes across in your podcast audio batch process your podcast episode production what that means is when you sit down to record a podcast try to attempt to get more than one episode done at a time this way you can get ahead and not fall into the trap of the content hamster wheel that we've all felt before where you feel that pressure of the next episode which just is not a great place to be in order to do that you need to in this tip plan ahead actually put time in your calendar block out time to plan ahead and come up with the content ideas for your future episodes this honestly has been one of the biggest things when it comes to revolutionizing my podcast production and just like fun with podcasting when you edit your podcast don't worry about removing too many mistakes yes obviously if you make a big mistake or sneeze or something but removing every breath and every um just takes up too much time plus the final product doesn't actually sound like normal human speech it sounds fast and it doesn't sound natural when you get on a call with a guest number one make sure they feel as comfortable as possible i always tell my guests immediately that i'm not recording it makes them feel like okay we're not having to be on yet and secondly i use this sort of script and you're welcome to take it from me and that is let's just pretend we're at a coffee shop having a conversation the audience they're just a fly on the wall we don't need to worry about them i just want to get to know you and understand more about what you got going on when a guest is comfortable it's more likely to be a great interview now if you are recording a remote interview like on your computer do not use zoom zoom will give you compressed audio it doesn't sound great you want the best audio quality possible on both sides and that comes from places like squadcast.fm that's a tool i use full disclosure i'm an affiliate there's my link right now and i'm also an advisor to the company i wouldn't be if i didn't use this product and love it and i use it for every single podcast interview i do and it's great now when you've had your podcast up for a while go to your podcast page on apple scroll down to the bottom where you find your related podcast these are other shows that your listeners are actually listening to that's great insight to discover what else they're listening to but it's also a great conversation starter when you reach out to those podcasters and say hey we have shared audiences let's maybe collab and it's a good spot to go to find guest podcasting opportunities analytics are really important to understand and from your host server you can see the total number of downloads that you get pay attention to trends over time you want to obviously make sure you are increasing in downloads and if not you might want to make a change in addition to that look at the episode downloads and see which ones get more downloads than others this is an opportunity to discover which topics your audience seems to love and enjoy and an opportunity for you to discover what to do more of in the future also pay attention to the retention graphs that apple podcast or google podcast analytics will give you if you see a huge dip or worse just like a cliff dive well that means that people lost interest at that point and you might want to go back and listen to those moments and go well what did i do there and not do that again now if you're looking for a large number of downloads in a short period of time one of my favorite ways to do it is called bursting maybe you publish five episodes in five days in a row just for that short period of time you'll get more downloads you'll get more opportunities to offer call to actions and if it ties to a promo even better if you're talking about something visual on your podcast do yourself a favor and pop that visual that thing that you want people to look at that they can't because they're listening onto a website and make it easy for them to go there that's going to be enticing enough for them to go there because they're listening to the podcast and now they're on your website you can collect an email you can offer them something else visuals on your website for things that you talk about on your audio podcast now when you mention links don't mention too many all at once the problem is people are often on the go in the car at the gym or wherever and they don't have the opportunity to write all those links down and actually if the links are also complicated and hard to remember well it's never going to work so one maybe two offers of links but make sure they're also easy to remember you might even want to get a godaddy link so that it's easy and it forwards to that particular place that you want them to go next build an email list it's the best way to understand who is in your audience and you need to entice them with something like a lead magnet maybe a gift of some kind in order to exchange for their email but once you do that you have direct access personal access to people who are listeners those are people who can offer you valuable feedback who can offer you insight on what else they might need help with and that informs what other podcast episodes you can create and create a better experience for all your listeners along the same lines and you can use your email list for this try to have a conversation with one listener per month and ask them questions like what they love about the show what do they which was there what kinds of episodes would be more interesting to them than what's available and ask them why when you can understand not just what they might need help with and their challenges but also hear the language and hear the stories that they're telling about those struggles or challenges well you're going to be more inclined to create better episodes because you have a real person in mind not a made-up avatar or anything like that now sometimes as a podcaster you might need to take a break maybe you are overwhelmed or you just didn't have time or life gets in the way sometimes when you come back to your podcast don't make a huge deal about it don't apologize maybe mention the why but then get right onto it and provide value right up front people are going to not even remember that you were gone and be ready for the next episodes that come out next pivoting is okay if you want to make a decision to change the name of your show or your artwork or maybe even the direction of it that's totally okay and it happens all the time your podcast isn't permanent ever and you can always change things you can always upload new episodes and and replace episodes or delete old ones so don't feel like you have to be perfect right away you got to be a disaster before you become the master and over time you might change direction and that's okay next always remember that your subscribers are real human beings i know a lot of podcasters who complain because they only have hundreds of downloads or because only you know 50 to 100 people listen to each episode well imagine all those people in an actual room and how different that feels well it's kind of like that when people are listening to your show they're like imagine they all come to meet you every single week i mean that's powerful so use that connection and use that small podcast of yours as an advantage because you get to know and contact and realize who is in your audience more than somebody who's much bigger who doesn't have the time or availability to do that now if you're going to sell on your podcast i mean there's many ways to do this you can have your own product sponsor the podcast but i actually prefer to invite the customers and students and clients onto the podcast and have them talk about not how awesome the course or product is but talk about their transformation before what was life like what were the struggles what are the challenges that you had and then what's life like after when people hear that transformation story they're going to want to go to who they got that help from and of course that's you and your product don't always worry about trying to get a-lister huge celebrity podcast guests on your show in fact the best guests are the ones that are actually more relatable the ones who are actually members of your audience or other b to c level podcasters plus those podcasters are always going to enjoy conversations with other podcasters and you're more likely to build a real relationship with them if you're traveling to a podcast for some event where your audience might be or other friends and connections and colleagues bring a microphone i can't tell you how many times i wish i had a microphone recording conversations i had at these events bring a little handy microphone you're not gonna regret it as far as travel recording options go there's two that i'd recommend you can check out something like a micro recorder like the zoom h6n which is nice and portable recorder or you can even hook up a special lavalier microphone to your iphone or android i prefer the rode smart lav you can get the extension and even a adapter to have two microphones plug in and that way you can have an interview or just capture some audio on the go now if you're a serious podcaster and you're at home i recommend a little box called the road caster pro i had a video about this a little review you can see exactly what it does but it processes your audio you can input several different microphones there's a little sound board in there as well it's just so so easy to use i also use it as a backup recording for my podcast as well if you can record the video version of your podcast as you are recording the audio just so you have it you can rip the audio out of that video and you can pop that into an audio podcast and the video could live on youtube here's a quick one if you need an interview soon for your show and you don't have a lot of time find a friend or a colleague and maybe do a collaboration or an exchange with them and who knows they might just say yes because you already know them you don't have to go through the introduction period and it's just a lot easier that way now when you're interviewing other people go deeper right ask questions to follow up the answers that come in that's where the golden answers exist and that's where your podcast if it's an interview show is going to stand out even questions like why or how come you did that just extending that answer more makes it so much better now if you're doing a solo podcast it can be a little bit harder to understand well how do i do this because i don't have just questions to ask i have to create and present content the way i do it is i think about the end in mind first what's the transformation that i want a person to have and then i reverse engineer what points stories case studies etc do i need to tell and of course i always try to have a good solid hook in the beginning of the episode to make sure that they are more likely to stick around all the way through now don't script your entire episodes i've done this before and it's a huge waste of time and your podcast episodes sound like you're reading or like you're a robot if anything i do script maybe a little bit of the intro and hook just to make sure i get that right but the other parts i just know it's on my roadmap and when i get there i just talk about it naturally like i would with anybody else here's a big one you need to lean into who you are that's what makes you 100 unique and that's your unfair advantage you're unlike anybody else that's out there when you try to be like another podcaster or another creator you're only gonna be second at best when you're fully you you're gonna attract the right kind of people into your community and that's really powerful now one of the issues with podcasting is that there's no real place for the podcast listeners to connect so if you want your podcast listeners to connect with each other you might think about creating a community it could be something like a facebook group or a linkedin group but i recommend something like circle where you can bring people in and form an actual sort of private community that you can control and host you can check out circle smartpassiveincome.com circle recap podcast episodes are great once or twice a year especially at the end of the year i love to do episodes where we play clips from older episodes during that year or perhaps within a certain category to remind people about those episodes and even though people have maybe heard of those episodes before it's a nice reminder and for new listeners it's a great introduction to episodes that they should go back and listen to don't go into forums and groups and just start spamming your podcast episodes even if those podcast episodes are helpful for that group and you know that if you just come in like hot like that i mean they're gonna you're gonna get banned be a part of those communities first join the conversation and have those things that you talk about come out naturally you want to get to a point where people are asking you for more information and you can drop those things in with permission to take that even further one amazing strategy to get featured in these groups is to actually have the form or group owner present your podcast in front of the audience how do you do that well interview that forum owner they're likely not asked to do that very often if they have really good information to share you can make them look great and they will be more likely to share it because you've made them look like a hero in front of their people don't compare your podcast numbers to others you're different people you're different beings you're in different timelines you have different audiences you cannot do that or else you're just going to sink in a deep dark hole trust me you should be comparing yourself to yourself last week to yourself last month how was your episode this week compared to last week are you incrementally improving you should be comparing yourself to yourself before and always trying to improve when you share your podcast on social media you have to realize that you cannot force a person to listen on a directory or app that they just don't normally listen to podcasts on there are two places i recommend you link on social media in regards to your podcast number one your website preferably the show notes page where there is a player but also they could subscribe on all the different platforms in that one spot or two on social many people do this you can do a link tree link where when people click there's additional links there one for every particular platform and even other websites that you want to link to as well at the start of your podcast episodes you want to create an amazing hook a reason for people to stick till the end because if a person's not going to stick around well the rest of the episode doesn't really matter what could you say to a person to get them to put that phone in their pocket and then go on that run or go to the gym or go on that commute that's what you want to nail here's one of my favorite tips ask your audience on social media who listened to the recent episode every single person who comments reach out to them in a direct message and respond with a video and just thank them don't ask them for anything just thank them you're going to blow their minds you're going to build super fans and you're going to realize that there are real human beings on the other end who appreciate you in your podcast now imagine conducting a podcast interview and it just wasn't that great maybe the guest was a little dry or their answers weren't all that great here's the secret take one or two clips from the podcast episode and edit those into a show that's mostly gonna be you you can reach out to that person and say you know what i was so inspired by your answers to just the single question that i actually created an entire podcast episode just about that so i play your clip but i go deeper on it and i just want to thank you for that and now you didn't hurt the person's feeling and you have a good episode that's going to come out listicle episodes or episodes like top 10 this or the top five this or a list of whatever people love lists however if you want to take this one step further before you reveal what's on the list tell a story that leads up to it in fact the punch line will be the number or that particular tip all the music that you play on your podcast should be royalty free or custom made for you from somebody that you hired and you know you have the rights to use i had a friend who licensed music from a band that he enjoyed and that's all great right you could do that you could pay for that but those licenses often end and this person's did and as soon as that happened he wasn't allowed to publish any of those episodes anymore and he had to actually remove the entire podcast from all directories don't do that custom music royalty free that's it have fun podcasting is super fun you can connect with amazing people you can build relationships you can build an audience you can build super fans it is one of the most fun things i've ever done and this is why i've been doing it for so long it's just so so fun as you're ending a podcast episode don't spend too much time summarizing and going on and on and on about the things that have happened and the things that are coming up i mean you can mention some of those things to tease and get people excited call to action great but err on the side of quick here's why if you give clues that your stuff is ending people are more likely to be in that mindset to leave and maybe they're already going to try to find something else but if you kind of end almost abruptly i mean you want to close off right but if you end almost abruptly it's now an opportunity for them to already start diving into the next episode this is similar to the kinds of things we do on youtube to hold people's attention and get people into the next video speaking of the next video for you as a podcaster is right there thank you so much for watching appreciate you see the next one

Channel: Pat Flynn

Views: 297,048

Keywords: pat flynn, smart passive income, spi, how to start a podcast, podcasting tutorial, how to record a podcast, podcasting for beginners, podcasting tips

Id: 66hlDCRuqZs

Length: 15min 50sec (950 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 28 2022