What to know before starting a podcast

so you're thinking about starting a podcast but you're not really sure what's involved don't worry I'm gonna run you through five things that you need to know before you jump in to starting a podcast keep on watching hey welcome to my channel my name is Katy second here on YouTube I love to share all my best tips and advice about social media strategy and content creation outside of YouTube I run a small creative agency that serves creators who have a vision and a message but not the tech know how to share it we edit YouTube videos podcasts develop brand strategy and more do you want to learn more about the services that we provide you can go to Katy Stickley comm - check it out but of course also make sure that you subscribe so you don't miss any of my future videos I upload twice a week to this channel and I wouldn't want you to miss a single one podcasting can feel pretty mysterious to people that have never tried it before there's a lot of technical stuff going on a lot of different ways that you can do it unlike many other popular content mediums online podcasting can be hosted anywhere there's many different platforms to listen to it on it is not just like having a YouTube channel or an Instagram because it's not just one social media platform it's all over the place so because of that it can feel a little bit intimidating to get into so today I'm gonna try to share with you five things that you need to expect so that hopefully it demystifies it a little bit and makes it feel a little bit more accessible for you to get started the first thing that you need to know about podcasting is that it can be free to start a podcast but that doesn't mean that you should go the free route anchor is a super popular app that allows you to start a podcast for free this can be an amazing option for beginners or people that see their podcasts strictly being a hobby but if you think that you might want to turn your podcast into something professional that you would eventually monetize maybe even build a brand around that podcast in a business then I would strongly encourage you to consider investing a little bit of money in hosting it somewhere else no shade on anchor but the reasons why I think this is because any time you are trusting a company for free to hold your content there's never really a guarantee that it's gonna be there forever and that you're always going to have access to it according to anchors policies you do own the intellectual property of your content like that audio file belongs to you however you never know if go to business and if they're going out of business and they don't have any money their first priority probably isn't gonna be sending out files for everybody to have access to their RSS feeds and their podcasts so not saying that's gonna happen not saying you should be totally worried if you are with anchor but I just think if you're getting started out it might be worth investing somewhere where you know that you have access to those files and you have control over that RSS feed and everything to do with your podcast in addition as far as I know if you use anchor to post to iTunes that spotify like their branding is going to be on it like because it's a free service they're gonna try to use the content that you create in there to advertise which totally makes sense like they need to get the word out there about their business and so that's why it's great as a hobby or as a sort of testing zone to get started but I would just really advise you to look into some other options for hosting your podcast it's really not as scary or difficult as you think it might be if you already have a website with wordpress or Squarespace then you can host your podcast on your own website and you have full control over how that goes if you have a website with Wix or you don't have a website at all then there are options such as simple cast which offers a really streamlined an easy-to-use service beautifully designed and it's about 15 dollars us a month for that subscription so there's lots of options out there that don't have to be that expensive but also I think that if you put a little bit of money into it there's a little bit more trust there so you don't have to worry about anchor or any other platform like that going down and then not having access to your podcast anymore so that's my little spiel for why you should invest a little bit of money if you really want to start a business with your podcast the second thing you need to know about podcasting is that people expect high quality audio it's really really important to focus on making your audio crisp and clear and easy to listen to because if you're expecting someone to sit and listen to you for like an hour you need it to be tolerable audio I really feel this so strongly because they've known people that are either local or like youtubers that I follow and I want to support them but then when I listen to their podcast it's clear that they've recorded it like I don't even know what they recorded it on but it doesn't sound good and it's really really hard to listen to so if you want to have listeners that are going to be dedicated to listening to your podcast the whole way through and act enjoying it then make sure that you get a microphone or use a strategy that is gonna make sure that your audio quality is good if you want some further advice on this I have a whole video about microphones for beginner podcasters you can check it out up here but the truth is you can actually make even just smartphones audio sound really good if you're in the right environment so watch that video I give some tips about that and just know that high quality audio is important if you want to have your listeners listen for your whole episode and be and enjoy that number three you need to promote your podcast a lot just because you publish a podcast and it's up on iTunes Spotify Google Play etc does not mean anybody's gonna listen to it there's actually not a ton of discoverability when it comes to any of those platforms the podcast app on Apple does have like an explorer page and you can browse and find new stuff but the majority of people learn about podcasts through word of mouth so in order to promote your podcast I would really really recommend starting an Instagram maybe even having a Pinterest maybe a YouTube channel these are all places where there's a little bit more discoverability and a little bit more of a chance to build a community that will then listen to your podcasts on other platforms it doesn't have to be a huge time commitment like on Pinterest you can commit to making a Pinterest optimized graphic for each of your podcast episodes and putting it out into the world and people might find that and then through that link to your website where you'll have your podcast linked that's a really good way to drive traffic building an Instagram community is going to be effective for anything like this my big advice for you if you're trying to make a Instagram account that's gonna be like around your podcast is make it not just about promoting the episodes provide value in different arenas like post content that people are interested in seeing whether or not they listen to your podcast I think a really good example of that if I do say so myself is the Instagram account that my friend Katie runs for our podcasts that we co-founded called bossy women I'll link it in the description if you want to check it out but Katie has done an amazing job of creating a community there and posting content that people find interesting whether or not they actually listen to the podcast and at the same time it's great promotion for our podcast so it really recommend taking that kind of approach if you do want to create an Grahame around your podcast to drive traffic to your episodes just know in general though it's gonna take a lot of promotion to get people over to your podcast so don't be discouraged if you publish it and you aren't getting the numbers that you're looking for right away number four I just realized that I miss numbered my list and I actually only have four tips but that's okay because they're all really important the last thing that you need to know before you start a podcast is that it takes time as with anything good it takes a long time to grow it just like a YouTube channel or an Instagram a podcast it's gonna take a lot of time and dedication and consistency to build an audience listening to your content you need to keep working on it promoting it networking a really great way to get your podcast out there is to have people on your show so you can exchange audiences with them there's lots of different strategies out there which I would love to cover in a future video if you're interested in hearing more about that let me know in the comments below if you want to learn more about promoting podcasts but at the end of the day it is gonna take a long-term time commitment to grow your podcast to the place where you want it to be so just stick it out keep working on it and it you'll get there eventually if you want a more specific breakdown of the exact steps that it takes to launch a podcast and you're going to want to check out my free podcast launch checklist which you can download at the link up here or in the description below it's a PDF that you can quickly print off or use digitally and check off as you go when you're launching your first podcast it includes all the details of making an RSS feed and creating promo graphics so you're gonna want to check that out so that you don't forget to do any of these important steps along the road to getting your podcast out there if you're still not sure what microphone you want to use then check out this video I made all about the best podcast microphones for beginners including this one get all the details about how to get awesome audio quality such as this but before you go make sure that you hit the subscribe button so you don't miss any of my future videos like I said I upload to this channel twice a week and I wouldn't want you to miss a single one thanks so much for watching and as always I hope that you're having adventures and following your dreams and I'll see you in the next one bye

Channel: Katie Steckly

Views: 171,195

Keywords: katie steckly, instagram hacks, how to start a podcast, don't start a podcast without watching this, what to know before starting a podcast, steps to start a podcast, how to start a podcast for beginners, how to podcast, how to podcast with someone far away, steps to podcast, steps to launch a podcast, how to launch a podcast, best podcast microphone, best podcast microphone for beginners

Id: zbfyb_Kp4SQ

Length: 8min 36sec (516 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 15 2019