Speaker 1: So, you want to start a podcast. I get it. Podcasts can be fairly low effort and actually garner pretty big rewards. And that is why it's one of the fastest growing styles of content that a lot of content creators are starting to lean into. But the fact that you clicked on this video tells me that you don't know where to start. So do not fret, because in today's video, I'm going to be breaking down exactly how you can start a podcast in 2023. Before we get to it, please don't forget to hit the subscribe button, like, comment, it depends how much time you have. Just do all those things for me because it really helps me grow and I upload new content like this every single week. So, as you can probably tell by my fancy setup, mostly referring to this amazing microphone, which has been provided by Elgato, who are the sponsors for today's video. More on them later. I have actually had a podcast for a little while now. I launched my podcast in 2022 and it has steadily grown ever since then. If you want to check it out, feel free to head to the link in my description. One of the first things that I done and one of the first things that you're going to need to do when it comes to the development of your podcast is to define the podcast value, but also the objective. So let's start with the objective. Why do you want to start a podcast? It probably sounds like a really simple question, but a few of you are probably thinking, Oh, I actually, I'm actually not quite sure what the answer is, right? You need to make sure you have a clear idea of the reasons why you are actually starting this podcast, but most importantly, the outcome that you want to get as a result of starting this podcast. Okay. Are you using the podcast to generate more sales for your business? Are you using the podcast to build a community? Are you using a podcast to interview and connect with like-minded people? What are you using your podcast for? Get it really clear on that first and then we can move on to figuring out the value. Now, if you're an OG of my channel, you know that I bang on about the idea of providing value all the time. This is like the most important thing that we have to do as content creators. We need to make sure that the content we are creating provides some form of value to our audience. And when I say value, I don't always mean educational value. I'm also referring to value which comes in different forms. For example, entertainment value, inspirational value, relatable value, right? These are all different forms of value that you could provide through your podcast. So which is it going to be for you? Are you going to create an entertaining podcast which people listen to and it makes them laugh? Are you going to create an educational podcast like mine where I'm helping people thrive as content creators? Are you going to create an inspirational podcast where you are sharing quotes of the days or you're interviewing inspirational thought leaders and it's going to give people the kickstart they need to really like tackle their day, right? How are you going to provide value to your audience? Get clear on it, write it down and then we can move on to step number two. Okay, so step number two is my favorite part and whether or not you like this step will just depend on the type of person you are. Step number two is where you come up with the title and the branding for your podcast. So if you're a creative person, this step is for you. If not, don't fret. There are other people who would happily take care of a few of these elements. So a few things that you need to look at when it comes to creating the title and your branding for your podcast. First of all, you want to make sure that whatever you name your podcast is related to the value that you're providing. This is important because you want people to be able to immediately recognize why they should be listening to your podcast. Okay? Now, if you are famous already, in which case, hi, famous people watching my videos, stop it. If you are famous already, you might not need to worry too much about this because you could probably use your name or create a title which says with and then put your name and that is enough to get people to listen to your podcast because you've already got the clout. So well done you. For us mere mortals though, however, we actually need to make sure that our podcast title is relevant to the value that we're providing so that people can hear it or read it and think, yes, this is going to be for me. When it comes to branding, there's a few different things. They're normally called assets that you will need to create for your podcast. The first thing is your podcast cover. Now this is literally a one by one square. I'll put an example of what my old podcast cover looks like up here. I'm sharing the old one because I'm in the middle of redoing it and I don't have my new one yet, but this is what my old podcast cover looks like, right? So it's a square cover which clearly states the title of my podcast and I decided to include my face. It's completely up to you if you want to do the same thing. The reason why I decided to include my face and why a lot of other creators include their face is because it sparks a deeper response from people when they see a human being. Humans like to see humans so sometimes it's a bit easier to bond with people when they know what you look like. In addition to that, I do obviously have this YouTube channel and other social media channels which have a bit of a following, so I knew that it would be beneficial for me to include my photo so that anyone who has come across my content before would recognize me and recognize that that was my podcast. So it's up to you if you want to do the same thing, but just keep those points in mind. When it comes to how to create your cover, luckily there is a tool that you can use which will make it super easy for you. That tool is obviously Canva. I'm sure you guys are familiar with Canva already, but there are a lot of podcast cover templates that you could find on Canva in addition to other resources as well and I will link to a few of those in the description. The main thing to keep in mind here is what is your vibe, also known as your branding, but what is your vibe? What kind of aesthetic are you trying to give off? And if you are not someone who does well with the whole designing element, even if you're using a Canva template, then find someone else who loves to design and who could do it for you. There's plenty of sites you can use to find freelancers who could do this. For example, Fiverr or Upwork. Last thing to think about when it comes to your branding is this little thing called bumpers. Bumpers are essentially like snippets of audio or music that you use throughout your podcast episodes. So common bumpers that you might want to think about is like the snippet that you use to intro your podcast. Maybe you have a snippet in between your podcast and maybe there's something at the end and you basically pre-record this, you add some audio and then you merge it all together. This is really useful for creators who want to create something memorable so that any time their audience hears that bumper or hears that audio, they know straight away that they're about to tune into one of your episodes. However, I will say that you don't need this. I personally have not had any bumpers apart from an ad that I actually share in the middle of my podcast since I started my podcast. And the reason why was because when I start something new and I'm sure you guys can relate to this, I get a bit overwhelmed. And when I get overwhelmed, I tell myself, what would this look like if this was easy? A lot of the time when you tell yourself that you realize there's a lot of fluff and a lot of frills that you can get rid of that will make the process of you starting your podcast a lot easier. So for me, that was getting rid of the bumpers. So instead of having bumpers and this fancy intro and outro, I simply started my podcast saying, welcome to the creator's corner, the number one place to get strategic, get creative and to get results. And then I would just go into my episode. So I was still saying something memorable and I do advise doing something along those lines, having a strap line, but you don't need to have fancy editing or a fancy bumper. If you do want to do that though, and you want to go the extra mile, I respect it. Make sure it's not too long. And by too long, you don't want anything longer than 10 to 15 seconds because people will switch off. And also make sure that you obtained your audio from a platform like Epidemic Sound. This will allow you to actually have the appropriate rights to use that music because you don't want to get sued further down the line because your podcast is blowing up and Beyonce's on the line saying, Hey hon, you didn't get permission to use my song. Okay. And I want to talk about the equipment that you will want to get your hands on in order for your podcast to absolutely thrive. As I mentioned at the start of this video, I, I've got a pretty good setup. I'm not going to lie to you guys. I don't want to stand here and like toot my own horn. Hate that phrase. Don't know why I said it. I don't want to toot my own horn, but like it took me a while, but I'm pretty sure I've nailed it. So let me break down what I currently use to record my podcast, but also some other tools that I use that are absolute game changers when it comes to becoming a content creator. I'm going to start with my absolute favorite, which is this beautiful microphone. Now this microphone in addition to the other equipment that I'm going to show you is by Elgato. Now they are absolute leaders when it comes to audio and visual technologies for content creators, but also for work from home pros. So whether you are a content creator, a business owner, or if you're just someone who is on it when it comes to how they show up online and during work calls, these tools are going to be for you. So as I mentioned, this microphone is provided by Elgato. It is called the Wave DX microphone. It has so many different features, but I'm going to break down my favorite features for you. First of all, the audio quality is absolutely ridiculous as I'm sure you can already tell because you've listened to me speak and it sounds beautiful so far. My voice itself might be annoying, but the quality, the quality is there. One of the reasons why the quality is so amazing is because it has an inbuilt pop shield. So have you ever seen those microphones where they've got like a big thing over the front, almost like a mesh thing and you have to speak into that because otherwise you keep on hearing like a popping sound when you speak. Have you ever seen that before? You don't need that for this microphone. My old microphone used to have one of those pop shields and I absolutely hated it. You don't need it for this one because it's inbuilt already. It also has something called an optimized proximity effect. Look how fancy I sound. I used to be all the gear and no idea and now I'm like all the gear and like a bit of an idea. Anyway, the optimized proximity effects basically means that it will alter your voice depending on how close or how far away from the microphone you are. So the closer you are to the mic, the more bass you get. Can you hear it? And then further away, it will also alter your voice to make sure that it has less bass, but it still sounds absolutely amazing. So this is the microphone that I recommend any podcasters, content creators, work from home professionals, entrepreneurs, anyone who ever needs their voice to be like, should be getting this microphone. Now, if you want to take it one step further and I feel like you do, you're going to want to get the XLR mixer too. This is what the XLR mixer looks like. I feel like I'm on one of those like, what are they called? Like TV S, you know those shopping channels? This is the Wave XLR mixer. The best way to think about this mixer is a compact device that gives your microphone superpowers. That's like the way you want to refer to it, right? It basically allows you to really take control of all audio aspects of whatever piece of content you're creating. Now, there are loads of different features to the Wave XLR mixer, but I'm just going to show you a few of the ones that you'll probably want to get started with. First of all, you can minimize the amount of edits that you will be doing as part of your podcast because the Wave XLR mixer has a mute button on top. So it has this interactive mute button where you tap it, it will mute whatever you're saying, and then you can start speaking again without having to make an edit. I cannot put into words how incredibly useful that is. Also, when you use it with the Wave Link software, you're able to do loads of different things like pulling audio from different sources, mix them together, and really take control over how your audio sounds. So that's another thing that's gonna massively help you up level as a podcast creator. The last thing I want to show you is actually right in front of me, and it is the Key Light Mini. Now, guys, I want to tell you how much I love this, but it actually makes me sound like so vain. I absolutely love this product because it's basically a portable light, and it is so incredibly powerful. I'm gonna grab my phone right now so you can see what I'm looking at. So, this Key Light Mini is a very, very powerful portable light that you can use and attach to your camera, like mine is right now, or to your phone. I even use it as a light for when I'm on Zoom calls as well. It's incredibly powerful. Like, it's not like one of those portable lights where it gives you a bit of light but not really enough to fully illuminate the subject. This is, like, absolutely powerful. I would say right now I'm getting significantly more light from my Key Light Mini than I am from my Softbox Light, and significantly more light than I ever got from my Ring Light, right? So, if you're actually looking for a light that you can use in isolation, this is powerful enough for you to do that. Okay, so those are my top three pieces of equipment for your podcast and generally for your content creation journey. Let's get back to the steps. Step number three is time to map out your episodes. So, you've got an idea of why you're doing the podcast, what the value of the podcast is going to be, but you've also nailed your title and your branding, right? So, now time to move on to actually figuring out the episodes themselves. So, when it comes to outlining your podcast episodes, there's a few things you want to figure out. First of all, what is the format of your episodes going to be? For example, are you going to do interviews? In which case, how much prep are you going to do for your interviews? Some podcasters will do a lot of research and map out every single question that they're going to ask. Other podcasters will just make notes of key topics that they're going to discuss. That's what I do when I'm interviewing people. And then there's a select few podcasters who hardly do any research because they want the conversation with the guest to be super organic. Which bucket do you fall into and therefore how will you be prepping for your interviews and podcast episodes? Another thing to think about when it comes to the format of your episodes is the length. Now, I'm not saying decide that every single episode is going to be exactly 60 minutes and that's it, but what I am saying is to have a good idea of whether or not they're going to be long or short. Some podcasts can go up to an hour, an hour and a half every single episode. Those are usually deep dive episodes and they're a lot longer. Other episodes might create small snippets, so maybe you create 10-minute episodes that you release on a daily basis. Maybe they're weekly episodes and they're 30 minutes long. These are the things that you want to be thinking through before you get started outlining your episodes. Sorry guys, I've still got a cold. I say still because there are several other videos where I'm like, I got a cold, still there. So if I sound bunged up, it's because I am, okay? Thank you for your patience. An additional formatting question to ask yourself when it comes to your podcast is, will it be audio or will it be audio and visual or will it be mostly visual? What I'm referring to here is whether or not you're going to have an audio-only podcast. These are podcasts which have no video element, so this is when you're literally just speaking to the mic and that gets turned into an audio episode. Other podcasts might have audio visual elements, like for example, I'm revamping my podcast and there's going to be a visual or a video element to it, which means when I'm interviewing my guests, I'm actually going to film it and I'm going to upload those episodes onto a YouTube channel. So that's a visual element of my podcast. Some people will make it completely audio-visual, so there won't be any audio-only option. It will only live on a platform like YouTube, where you can actually upload your own podcast now they've got a new feature. It will only live on a platform like YouTube so that if anyone ever wants to consume the content, they have to watch it as well as listening to it. So which format are you going to pick? So now that you've asked yourself all of those formatting questions, it's time to outline the actual episode. Figure out whether or not you are a scripting kind of person or whether you're a prompts kind of person. I personally write prompts, which means I spend some time marking down the different areas or topics that I want to discuss in each episode and then I look at those prompts whilst I'm recording and I use that to prompt my next discussion on the next thing that I'm going to say. Other people prefer to script and that's totally fair too. What I will say is that in my experience working with a lot of content creators, when you script your content, it can become very restrictive and sometimes it becomes harder to get your personality across, especially if you are not super advanced in the world of scripting. There are some creators who can read a script, bring their personality to it and do it flawlessly. So again, for us mere mortals, that can sometimes be a bit tricky. So figure out which option is going to work best for you. Okay, so let's move on to the next step, which is all about editing and publishing your podcast episode. It's also worth noting that I use QuickTime to actually record the audio. So I plug my microphone in and then I use QuickTime to record the actual audio. So it's up to you what platform you want to use to record. When it comes to editing though, there are a bunch of different platforms you can use. The ones that I've heard a lot of creators have amazing experience with are one called Audacity, which I believe is free, and then another one called Audition, which is actually paid. So these are two editing softwares which people tend to swear by. I'm going to be completely honest with you, I don't edit my own podcast episodes. My video editor actually edits the episodes for me. Very grateful for that because I am not a natural editor. Now that doesn't mean that you can't edit if you're in the same boat as me because I did spend eight-ish months editing my own content when I first started on my journey of becoming a creator. It doesn't mean that you can't do it, and I do recommend that you give editing yourself a go because you might love it. But when you're in position to outsource something like editing, I do recommend doing so because it does give you a lot more time back into your schedule. When it comes to publishing the episodes, this means actually getting them live on things like Apple Podcasts, Spotify Podcasts, etc. I currently use a platform called Spotify for Podcasters. This was previously known as Anchor. Spotify recently acquired Anchor, so now it's Spotify for Podcasters. I have always used this platform because it's free and maybe I'm a cheapskate, I don't know. It's free and it's so easy to use. You can simply create an account and it will guide you through the process of uploading your podcast episodes, giving them a title, writing a description, uploading your podcast branding and setting it live. You can even schedule in advance, which I think is incredibly powerful because if you're getting started with the world of podcasting, I do recommend batching at least three episodes in advance before you even launch. This will give you a bit of grace period to get your bearings, to take some feedback on board and then apply that to your future episodes without you having to worry about running out of content too soon. So try and batch in advance and when you use a platform like Spotify for Podcasters, you can schedule that content to go live automatically without you having to lift a finger. Final thing to talk about before we move on to the final step, when it comes to publishing your podcast episodes, I want you to pay attention to the titles and the descriptions because I think these are often overlooked. Your titles are really your main opportunity to convince someone to click on your episode and listen to it. So if you're interviewing someone, think about the most important takeaway from that interview and call that out in your title. If it's a solo episode or it's something different, think about your audience and what you can say to them which is relevant to your podcast episode that you know will make them want to stop scrolling and listen to that episode. When it comes to your description, this is a rich area, okay? People sleep on their descriptions all the time. Your podcast episode description should be used to explain what your episode is about and to spark curiosity amongst your audience, right? So you want your audience to read your description and think, oh that sounds interesting, sounds like a bit of me, right? You want them to have that reaction because then they're going to go ahead and listen to that episode. It's also an amazing opportunity for you to cross sell, include things like links to your website, links to your social media channels, so that if they do want to support you afterwards, they can go ahead and find you on social media and do so. Okay, we're at the final step. Thank you for staying with me to this point. Congratulations, I'm super proud of you. We've almost launched your podcast. The last step is to promote it. Another step that is often overlooked when it comes to podcasting. The thing is with podcasting is that it's pretty difficult to get an organic audience without you having to do some other form of cross promotion. So if you're just thinking, I'm just going to create great content, upload it and just let Apple and Spotify and Amazon Music do its thing, then I command you for your faith and your optimism, I really do, but I'm going to need you to rethink that strategy because there's more that we could be doing, okay? What we're going to want to do is use other platforms like social media in order to drive traffic towards our podcast. Now there are a few different ways that you can do this. If you decided to have a visual element to your podcast, so maybe you are recording your episodes and there is therefore video footage, I want you to cut this video footage down and focus on the most interesting, shocking, valuable element of that episode and upload that as a Reel, as a YouTube Short and also onto TikTok, okay? If you didn't record your episodes, fine. Spend some time creating content specifically to promote that episode and that content has to be valuable in its own right. What I don't want to see is people uploading like a static image or a graphic and then overlaying the audio on top and uploading that as a Reel, as a TikTok, as a Short because that does not work. If there's nothing visual what's going to capture your audience's eye, they're not going to listen to that piece of content either. So think about what you could share on the screen that's going to make people want to listen to your audio. Is it vlog style clips from your day? Is it a separate piece of content where you're talking about the podcast and talking about the interesting takeaways from your recording session, right? Don't sleep on your social media content when it comes to promoting your podcast because this is going to be one of your best ways of increasing your listenership. The second tactic that I want you to consider doing is to encourage your podcast listeners to share your podcast on social media. So you want to include a call to action, which is basically when you tell someone to do something, in your podcast episodes where you're saying, guys if you found this useful please share this podcast on your stories and tag me, please DM me and tell me what was your favourite part of this episode and use that content to repost it, repurpose it and turn it into content that you can share on your social channels to drive more listenership. Third and final tactic when it comes to promoting your podcast is to talk about it everywhere that you can. So this includes mentioning it in your email signature and having a link to it there. It includes including it in your link in bio, in your YouTube banner, sending an email to your email list telling people, hey guys new episode up. Do not underestimate the power in telling people that you have a podcast. There is an old marketing saying, someone needs to hear about something seven times before they take action. So I can tell you right now if you think you've spoken about your podcast too much, I can tell you with certainty that you haven't. Okay, talk about it more. Okay guys, I hope you found this episode useful. I absolutely loved recording it. Do not forget to check out Elgato and all of their incredible accessories that they provide for content creators. The link is in my description. If you feel like hanging around I recommend watching this video. It's all about how you can become a six figure content creator. Thank you so much for watching. As always, I can't wait to see you in my next video.