Look for the... Bear Necessities of Podcasting

First things first, what do you want to podcast about? It’s important to pick a topic that you’re passionate about so you don’t lose interest after the first 2 episodes. There are podcasts on literally EVERYTHING so don’t go thinking that whatever you’ve chosen is “too weird” or “too out there”.

Then think about how you want to present this topic. Do you want to do a talk show, and have experts or experienced people voice their views? Do you want to have a game show, and create a whole game for different guests to play? Or maybe you want to create an entire audio drama around the topic? Choose whatever interests you, and present it in a way that will keep you engaged and wanting to challenge yourself to make it bigger and better than ever!

Careful Planning

Creating a strong structure for your podcast episodes is vital. If your episodes are unorganised and all over the place, nobody is going to want to listen for more than a few seconds. Plan out your episodes. When starting out, try to plan the first 10 episodes. What are they about? What guests will you invite, if any? What specifically will you talk about? How long will they be? Once you have a very clear idea of how you want your episodes to be, it’s time to move on!

Bold & Beautiful!

Get a nice logo. By nice we mean a few different things. Match the colours to your podcasts aesthetic. Are you a comedy podcast? Use bright, bold colours to catch your listeners eye and show that your podcast is a laugh a minute! But maybe you’re a podcast about serial killers? Perhaps stick to darker, scarier colours with a touch of red to show danger and mystery. You can say a lot about your podcast through colour choices.

Also, don’t over-clutter your logo with words or small images. We see this a lot. Use one main image that shows your listeners what your podcast is about, and maybe have the title on the logo. That’s all you need. If your listeners want any other information, they can find it on your podcast listing anyway.

3...2...1... ACTION!

Now it’s time to get recording! We usually recommend creating a trailer before any episodes. Just something that’s about 30 secs long just explaining what your listeners can expect from your podcast. That way, you have something you can share about to attract an audience to your podcast, and your listeners have something that they can get hyped about. It’s a win-win! We have a whole guide on things to look out for when recording, but here are a few quick tips:

• Make sure you have a relatively quiet area to record in.
• Get Audacity, a free recording and basic editing program.
• Get a USB mic, doesn’t have to be expensive but built-in mics aren’t great for recording voices.
• Export all files to WAV if you’re editing afterwards, or MP3 if you’re all done!

Clean Up Your Audio

It’s important that you do at least a little bit of editing. This way, you can get rid of any stumbles, pauses, and restarts, as well as fix up things like microphone rumbling, and make your voice sound sharper. Also, adding a little bit of music to the start and end of your podcast episodes can help to make everything sound more professional. There are plenty of good tutorials out there on how to edit your audio to make it sound top-notch! But here are a few quick fire tips:

• Gain: Boost the volume if you’re quiet, reduce it if you’re too loud! Aim for about -3db max.
• EQ: It looks complicated but if you have a play around with it, you’ll get it! Find those annoying frequencies and cut them out of your life!
• Kill the Silence: Silence in the wrong place is awkward. Grab a cutting tool and get it gone!

Psst...want a free editing magic trick? Check this out!

Find The Best New Home

Finding a good hosting site is next on the list. Your hosting site will be where you upload your podcast episodes and store them. They should also provide you with a ready-made RSS Feed so you can start submitting your podcast to different directories, like iTunes and Spotify.

We actually have our own hosting platform! You get unlimited listeners and storage, a ready-made RSS Feed so you don’t have to deal with a bunch of code, a landing page for your podcast, and even some customisable players for your website.
Interested? You can Create an Account by clicking the button at the very top of our website!

Now Spill The Beans!

Now it's time to time to tell the world exactly what you've been creating by...

• Get your podcast everywhere you can. 
• Share your podcast on the social channels that work for you.
• Promote new episodes and updates through those social media channels. 
• Create a conversation and get people talking and sharing your podcast.
• Submit your podcast to different directories like iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher (basically, everywhere).

We can actually help you out with that too! If you're with Podcast.co, to save you a bit of time that could be spent working on creating more awesome content for your podcast, we can submit your podcast to different directories for you. 

We also run a Podcast of the Day from Monday until Friday each week on our social accounts, and round all of these up each Monday on our blog!