Everything I know about…Creating a podcast

14th November 2019

Since I started my podcast Content Makers back in 2019 I’ve had so many questions about how to create a podcast.

Here I wanted to share everything I’ve learned about creating a podcast for your brand or business. I also covered this in a podcast episode which you can listen to below if you prefer.

Listen on Apple Podcasts.

Listen on Spotify.

How to Create a Podcast

1. How to record a podcast with guests

The first, is that the technical side of recording a podcast was much easier than I thought so don’t let this hold you back.

In terms of my tech stack, here’s what I use:

To record the podcast

To edit the podcast

To distribute and promote the podcast

Before I started I was paranoid about background noise and used to pad my little office out with duvets and pillows. Turns out, I didn’t need to.

Do look out for any “whirring” devices like watch boxes, laptops with loud fans, fridges etc. as we tend to block these out as ambient noise, but they do get picked up in the podcast background.

I always set up about 30 minutes before I speak to my guest as I’ve had occasions before where my laptop can’t find the yeti mic. In this case, I ensure the mic is plugged in and then restart the audio programmes and that seems to work. I’ve also had to order a few spare leads for my mic to laptop connection, as the lead tends to fail often, apparently this is a blue yeti issue.

I should also point out that I pay for pretty much all of those tools. This ads up to about £50 per month and obviously more than that if I have any episodes edited. I think this surprises a lot of people who assume that creating a podcast is free, but I would say it’s definitely worth the investment and this probably isn’t any more than you might pay for say, your website hosting for a blog.

2. How to plan each podcast episode

Planning each podcast is definitely the area that has been the steepest learning curve.

Before I interview a guest I try to do as much research as possible about their background. From this, I devise a list of questions and talking points.

At the same time, while it’s good to be prepared something I’ve had to learn is that you want to be actively listening while your interviewee is talking and get ready to dig into some of the elements they mention further. I usually make little notes when they’re talking of things to come back to and to ask about further. Often, this is where you get your great “soundbite” moments which are the quotes that others will remember or refer to as really useful. As I said, this is a skill and something I still need to get better at. Sometimes I’ll listen to an episode back after it’s gone live and wish I’d asked more questions around a specific topic.

I also learned that we’re naturally repetitive and you have to watch yourself from repeating the same question or response, as after a few times it becomes really boring to listen back to.

I also think it’s important to try and find an angle for each podcast episode, before you begin recording. This is something I learned while supporting the podcast that ScreenCloud’s founders record, called Behind the Screens.

Without knowing the direction your podcast will take, it’s easy to go over similar topics without considering why that guest or area of content is interesting. When I have a strong idea of what we’re going to talk about, the podcast comes out much better and the soundbites or editorial angles are easy to spot.

Although it feels like the podcast market is saturated, I actually think there’s a lot of scope for more podcast creation in the future. But you have to be able to find your niche and why your angle is going to be different.

3. Set up a podcast creation workflow

Recording a podcast is a commitment. There’s a lot of admin involved, particularly if it’s a podcast where you want to interview guests like I do.

I have to constantly have a rolling list of guests booked in, producing recorded episodes, guests who I’m reaching out to for future episodes, plus getting that week’s episode promoted.

Because I’m someone who loves organisation, I have a kind of rolling task list for each episode that covers the process end-to-end which is:

I’m also getting better at making notes while I’m editing or even while I’m recording, to streamline the process and make creating the show notes easier.

If you have the capital, I would imagine that having a virtual or regular assistant to help with the production of your podcast would be really useful. Even just to do the uploads, scheduling and to help create your assets for promotion.

I’ve also read that 80% of podcasts don’t make it past the first 10 episodes, which seems crazy but I can see why. It really is a commitment and one you have to be really passionate about, if you’re going to put the effort in that it needs.

4. Distribution

Podcasts are still notoriously difficult to distribute. I’ve found that users rarely come across my podcast in Apple Podcasts or Spotify, as discoverability there is low unless you get into the top 10 of one of the lists.

Instead, I’ve relied on word of mouth, social and newsletter shares to get my podcast out there. Apple Podcasts are also really bad at giving you any type of analytics of where your listeners are coming from. I get some insight via Podbean which is my podcast host, but it’s still not as straight forward, as say, website analytics.

It also goes without saying that if your guests are happy to share and recommend the podcast episode this increases your listener network. But this isn’t always a given and you can’t rely on your guests sharing the episode, you have to be prepared to build your own network and channels to help it get out there.

Having other channels where you can cross-promote such as social media really helps you and you’ll need to continue marketing the episode after it’s gone live to get more downloads.

Lastly, if you can encourage listeners to “Subscribe” this definitely increases downloads over time as they’ll see new episodes automatically downloaded in their podcast app of choice.

Over to you

My podcast has been a great source of lead generation, as I’ve had many emails from brands and business owners that have found some of the tips useful. That can be really rewarding and is one reason I would recommend looking at a podcast if you’re a business owner.

It takes quite a lot of trust for someone to go and download a podcast so you really need to give your process and content thought, in order to make the very best podcast content you can.

Happy to answer any questions you may have on podcasting! You can get in touch with me on beth@bethgladstone.com