Are you thinking of starting a podcast?
It seems like everyone is starting a podcast these days. Well, there’s a reason. It’s a great vehicle to promote your business, be seen as a subject matter expert and create an engaged community. While it is a fairly cost-effective marketing tactic, it takes much more time than you would imagine to launch and maintain a regular posting schedule.
When my colleague, Dakota Kidby and I began discussions of starting a podcast, it was a year-long process to get from discussions to posting our first episode. Ladies Who Launch launched (lol) in March 2020 but the planning and strategizing began in mid-2019. Dakota and I learned a lot and made mistakes along the way so I’m sharing some tips that may help you with your podcast launch.
Define clear goals and objectives
What is the purpose of your podcast? What void are you trying to fill? It is important to create a comprehensive marketing and communications plan for your podcast that includes your target market, key messaging, brand style, and an understanding of your topics and guests.
Within the plan it is important to identify key tactics and who is responsible for completing those tasks. With busy schedules, Dakota and I rely on our calendars to manage our business life. Ladies Who Launch recording sessions, meetings, content creation and editing are calendarized to ensure each of us understands our deliverables and timelines.Develop a posting schedule…and stick to it
Ladies Who Launch is released every other Wednesday. We chose bi-weekly, as we quickly realized weekly episodes were just too labour intensive to keep up. Consistency is extremely important when launching a new podcast as listeners need to know they can find a new episode regularly. Whatever date and time you choose to release episodes, stick to it.
Recording episodes is time-consuming, so we have found that batch recording works best for our schedules. That means we will record two or three episodes at each session, allowing us to have episodes in the bag if either of us is on holidays, gets sick, etc.Music and tech
Oh, man…there are a zillion blog posts around what tech to get for your podcast. I won’t bore you with a list of tech options, I will just say that you don’t need to spend your retirement funds setting up your podcast. The one element that is imperative is a quality microphone. The Yeti mic seems to be the cool choice these days but we use Audio Technica mics that we purchased on Amazon for about $35 and they work great.
Your podcast needs theme music. There are royalty-free music sites all over the internet it just takes A LOT of time sorting through the clips to find what style and format work best for your brand. Our podcast is casual and fun so our theme music reflects that feel. I would recommend pouring a glass of wine…or two as you listen to hundreds of music clips. I had narrowed it to about 10 options that I shared with Dakota and we finalized from that list.Recording, editing and hosting
In the days of COVID, we have been recording our podcasts on Zoom. It is easy and effective. The two tips to recording off of Zoom are to ensure you only record the audio and that audio files are recorded separately for each speaker. This is done through Zoom settings.
If you are able to meet in person, Audacity is the best software for both recording and editing your files. You can use Garage Band, but it doesn’t always provide the best quality MP3 files.
Editing is probably the most important piece of any podcast. We have all listened to those podcasts where the hosts talk over each other, the dog barks, a host or guest goes off on a tangent. It takes away from the discussion and you probably fast forward or completely stop listening.For beginners, editing can be quite frustrating and time-consuming. We made the decision to hire a company that edits, uploads and manages our podcast. It has been a lifesaver, as navigating Apple and Spotify to get your podcast approved is a whole job in itself. If you have the time and are interested in learning the process of editing, it is worthwhile to know how it’s done.
Ladies Who Launch isn’t a slickly edited podcast, as our style is more casual but we do edit out any long pauses, laughing fits (yes, really) or anything that doesn’t project a guest in the best light. The purpose of a podcast is to engage in conversation, and overly editing that conversation takes away from the intimacy of the medium.
Did you know you have to have a place to house your podcasts? Yeah, we didn’t either. Apple, Spotify and Google pull your podcast from a server. It doesn’t live on those platforms. We use SimpleCast to host our podcasts as it also provides full analytics of downloads, location of listeners and what they are listening on. Apple Podcasts accounts for over 70% of our listenership, so we focus more marketing using our Apple link over Spotify.Promotion
Do you want to have people listen to your podcast? Yes? Well, you have to tell them about it. A lot.
The first thing to do is to create social channels specifically for your podcast. You want to be able to share upcoming episodes and stories and create an audience specifically for your podcast. Then develop a content plan for those channels and be consistent with posting and sharing.
Ideally, you would be pre-promoting your podcast for at least two weeks prior to your first episode. Be sure to leverage your personal and professional networks to push out information and encourage subscriptions and channel follows.
A structured guest “onboarding” process whereby guests are clear on their responsibility of promoting their episode and linking to it on their own platforms is helpful. Also, encourage your listeners to leave ratings and reviews on your podcast page as it increases its credibility with Apple and Spotify which may lead to your podcast getting on Apple’s “New and Noteworthy” list.
But most importantly, have fun!
For more tips and tricks on creating a podcast, please connect as I am happy to assist. To listen to Ladies Who Launch, visit https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/ladies-who-launch/id1502758579 or connect with us on Instagram @ladieswholaunch.yyc