Six Essentials for your Podcast
Podcasting is not difficult, but it also requires adequate preparation and a good sense of operations. In my last post on the series, I wrote about how to begin conceptualizing your podcast.
In this post, we will break down the execution of a podcast, but rather than just talk through it, I have used six different artefacts as windows into the end-to-end process. These are not exhaustive, but they should provide you with a good sense of what you can build out for yourself.
The Episode Outline
Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.
Abraham Lincoln
All good shows benefit from some planning. If you are producing a high production value podcast, you may want to produce a concept deck with an overall show plan covering topics such as key messages, marketing plans, operational schedules and budgets. This deck helps align different stakeholders and provide a point of reference across production, technical and marketing teams.
But if you are just producing a show with some friends, I would recommend going to production and iterating through doing. The most basic form of preparation you would require is an episode outline, covering the flow and key themes of your episode, as well as possible questions and discussion areas guests can prepare for. Here is an example of an episode outline I produced for The Good Technologist – I have also embedded the final episode for reference.
I have found that the episode outline is a critical artefact for any show preparation. As a co-host, it is useful as a reference during the show to make sure you get some of the key messages you think your audience will care about. Perhaps more importantly, an episode outline presumes that you have also done adequate research on the topic and guest, which instils good discipline for podcast production. I have tried going to recordings blind with a “go-with-the-flow” attitude, but these rarely tend to make for interesting podcasts.
Episode outlines help your guests prepare for the show. Some guests will generously do additional research for you if you can tell them the areas you are interested in, within their field of work. There is also the added benefit of providing your guests with some reassurance of the parameters of the conversation, especially if they are representing their organisations or brands.
The Technical Set-Up
Most people who ask me about podcast preparation tend to ask me about my technical setup. To be honest, when you first start your show, this is not the most critical part of the preparation. All you do need is a good microphone which you can buy online rather easily. As I spent more time podcasting, I invested in better equipment. Here is a showcase I did for my employer:
As I use a home setup (and not a studio), my equipment is rather basic. Here is a breakdown for those who are really interested:
- Processor: iMac 24-inch (you need decent RAM and WiFi to record online)
- Microphone: Razer Seiren X (you can also consider Blue Yeti or other reputable audio brands)
- Headphones: Sennheiser HD400s (you want something that lets you pick up potential audio issues since that is your main product)
- Accessories: Desktop Microphone Stand (this helps me easily place the microphone for recording on my desk)
You can expect to spend around $200-$500 on your equipment, not including your computer, depending on the level of investment you want to put in. The key thing to remember here is that it is more important to get your concept right, compared to your technical setup.
The Recording Platform
If you want to record in-studio, most of the heavy lifting will be done by the producer in-studio so you can just focus on the content and await the audio clips. Here is a list of studios that have been collated already. Some studios will let you self-serve and use their tools such as Audacity or Garageband, like Hive, so do make sure you are at least decently familiar with the software. I used to record SGExplained in a makeshift studio in The Hidden Good’s office and we used a mixer to independently tweak audio inputs, but again, you may need some technical background to do this.
I have moved most of my recordings virtually now, spurred on by COVID-19 but now sticky due to convenience. It is much easier for hosts and guests to just click on a link and speak, especially since you can isolate audio tracks and edit them separately. I personally use Zencastr, which has been an amazing tool that I recommend to everyone. You can do both video and audio recordings, or even record audio and just show the video to encourage personability. If you upgrade, you can also do in-platform post-production. You can consider the other major platform for online recording which is Riverside.fm.
The Editing Platform
Editing is where I spend most of my time. An hour-long recording can take up to three hours to edit, mostly because you are scrubbing that same hour multiple times and you are also ensuring that the whole episode flows together.
I could run a whole course on editing podcasts, but I am going to let this YouTube video do most of the heavy lifting on topics such as adding intro/outro music, cleaning up audio, and exporting files:
For my audio editing, I use Adobe Audition which can be initially daunting to learn but gets comfortable very quickly. There are tons of online tutorials to learn tricks as well.
If you do not want to do too much technical editing and are just focused on the flow, you can also consider Descript, which allows you to first auto-transcribe your podcast and then edit the podcast through the text i.e. if you delete a word, Descript deletes the sub-clip. It is very cool technology, but I have personally not been able to dedicate the time to look through pages of text. I also do need to do technical editing most of the time, so I keep to Adobe for most of my editing needs. Perhaps when I build my team I can have someone finally transcribe all the episodes we have produced!
The Hosting and Distribution Platform
You are almost ready to launch your podcast but you will need a hosting platform. The podcasts of old used to actually just be audio clips that people can subscribe to using RSS feeds, which were easy to generate. You would share the RSS link with different platforms or if you wish to keep your podcast exclusive (i.e. only paid users), you would share it by email to individuals.
Now, there is a multitude of podcast hosting and distribution platforms. Podcast hosting covers uploading the file onto a single platform, such as Anchor or Libsyn, which will then generate the RSS feed for you. I use Anchor as the user interface is better, but most hosting platforms do not differ too much in terms of functionality. These hosting platforms also provide analytics, but these are often dependent on the data the distribution partners provide back. Because Anchor is owned by Spotify, if you see most of your audience coming from Spotify, Anchor is a good bet because the data is likely to be cleaner.
Podcast distribution involves where the podcasts are eventually listened to. Most people use Spotify, Apple Podcasts or Google Podcasts, but there are countless others. If you use a reliable distribution platform, you rarely have to worry about distribution to these platforms as they are done automatically when published. If you are using something more basic, you may need to manually link the RSS feed to the distribution platform.
The Marketing Assets
Finally, once you have published the podcast onto your hosting platform and it has been distributed on the various podcast channels, it is time to market your podcast. Because there are so many podcasts out there, you will need your show to stand out, not just to new audiences but even for your existing audiences to keep coming back.
We have tried numerous ways of marketing from Facebook to Instagram to TikTok to Substack, and they have all had various degrees of effectiveness. It is useful to choose one main marketing platform and maximise your audience there first before building out other platforms.
It is also good to reuse content and adapt it for different platforms. For example, even though our core product is the audio podcast for SGExplained, we also record videos to use on Instagram.
Some podcast producers market their shows on channels such as Telegram and Discord as well, especially if your topic naturally attracts a community. For example, our friends at The Financial Coconut have built a community on Telegram on the topic of personal finance – people actually answer each other’s questions on finance and also naturally become interested in podcasts when published and shared.
If you have a good product, marketing becomes easier because people do share relevant podcasts with their peers and network. You want to create compelling assets and an overall media brand that can help your audiences share your podcast proudly. This is why we have spent the time to work on our logo and social media, although we are far from being the market leader.
Hopefully, by the time you have reached this section, you are feeling a lot more confident about your next steps for podcast production. Again, the list is not exhaustive and there are many areas to double click on but these are the building blocks that are most necessary.
If you want to learn the nuts and bolts by being part of an existing podcast team before starting your own, do reach out as well! As you can see, the SGExplained team can benefit from folks who want to help prepare episode outlines and liaise with guests, transcribe and edit episodes and even help market our content. We would love to have a chat!
Let me know if this guide has been helpful by chirping below!
