Should you start a podcast? Will it bring more people to you and your brand?
I’m gonna show you some of the very early test results that I’ve received since I’ve started taking podcasting a bit more seriously, so you can decide for yourself if its worthwhile.
But first, I gotta say that I’m quite pleased with the way things are going so far.
And I thought I’d share those statistics with you, so you can see the reality and the truth of what happens when you start podcasting.
Table of Contents:
Which Podcast Host to Choose?
For my podcast I’m using Libsyn to host it, but you can use any podcast host; I’m hearing good things about PodBean or you could even use SoundCloud if you wanted to.
I think it’s important to have a dedicated podcast host instead of your website hosting. Keeping things separate makes sure that both parts of your business run smoothly.
Podcast Statistics
I’m going to explain how you can set up your own podcast in a second, but let’s have a look at the stats that I’ve received:
These stats go back to 5th of December.
I actually launched my first episode in June or July of 2017, but I didn’t do it consistently.
And I only recorded and uploaded an episode whenever I felt like it, and that was only every couple of months.
So I wasn’t consistent and the results that I’ve gained as a result of that weren’t very good.
But in the last week or so I have gotten a bit more serious about the podcast and I have increased the frequency significantly.
In the analytics it’s fairly clear that when I increased the frequency of the podcast, more people start listening.
I know this is very early days for me, in fact there’s only been 275 downloads of my podcast so far and the best day was on the 14th of February – Valentine’s Day which saw 20 downloads.
We are not setting the world on fire at this point but this early growth is encouraging.
I just want to share this with you so that we can return to this in a months time, in two months, in six months, in a year, in five years etc and see how things have grown.
My Podcast – 100% Transparency
Very few people share this early stage of growing a brand.
And this is the very first time I am sharing my podcast data with you, but it won’t be the last.
What I am trying to do here is give you the reality of building a brand from scratch.
I’m being 100% transparent.
My promotional methods are minimal and I’m not advertising, I’m not using any industry connections, and I’m not even emailing my list with a link to the podcast.
I’m just putting the podcast up, letting it run and then watching to see what happens.
So hopefully this will encourage people to go for it, to stop listening to hyped-up sales pitches, and go into this with the right expectations.
Understand that it’s going to take time, it’s very rare that someone comes along and immediately builds a huge following – that just doesn’t happen very often.
This is the reality.
I believe that podcasting is absolutely worth doing, for the long term.
How to Start a Podcast
So how do you start podcasting?
Luckily it’s really easy.
What I tend to do is this; I start with a YouTube video.
Now, I understand that some people might not want to do that at the moment.
I understand that video is a bit scary for people and podcasting seems like a safer alternative. So if that’s you then I’ll give you a strategy you can use in a second.
When I make my podcasts I always start with a video – I shoot a video. I shoot from the hip, I don’t script it and then I upload it to YouTube.
After that I have the transcript of the video, and that gets turned into a blog post – just like the one you’re reading.
This is called repurposing content.
Next I extract the audio from the video and I turn that into a podcast.
It’s really simple; I turn the audio into an MP3 file and upload it to my podcast host.
Which Podcasting Software to use?
How do you extract the audio?
Well, thankfully most video editing software will give you an option to export, or save as, either an MP3 or WAV file.
If you’re stuck and you really don’t want to get your hands dirty with the tech stuff then most podcasting hosting environments actually allow you to upload the MP4 video file.
The file size is going to be significantly bigger, so bear that in mind.
But what if you’re not using video, and you’re just starting with a blog?
That makes things even easier.
You can take that blog post and record yourself reading it. Use it as a script for your podcast.
Audacity is the go-to software for Windows and PCs. Garage Band is most likely already installed if you’re using a Mac.
Using either of these, you can turn the blog post into an audio file, then save it as MP3 and upload to the podcast hosting account.
Which Podcasting Gear?
One more tip; invest in a decent microphone if you’re going to start podcasting.
The audio is gonna have to be pretty good, and you can’t rely on an internal microphone or the standard default microphone on laptops, computers, or DSLR cameras.
So bite the bullet and invest in a good microphone. I’ve done some side by side comparisons for you to check out.
I use a Blue Yeti, you can see hear what it sounds like here.
So I’m gonna leave it there for today, if you’ve found it useful then share it.