How to start podcasting for free? An Easy Step-by-Step guide
Updated: Oct 30, 2021
It is not too late for you, the reader, to create your own podcast. However, every day you spend analyzing and scheming will undoubtedly kill you.
So let me show you how to launch your podcast in 2021. I hope this post has inspired you to get out there and MAKE IT HAPPEN.
But before, ask yourself the following questions:
What will it be about?
A podcast is similar to a radio broadcast, only you can listen to prior episodes. What topic do you want the podcast to cover? Find a theme, a cornerstone of your goal, and stick to it.
For example, it is far easier to create a podcast that focuses only on finance and stock markets than it is to grow a podcast that focuses on technology in one episode, history in the next, and passive income in the third.
This is the most important question to ask yourself if you want to build an audience for your podcast.
Which kind is best for you?
Podcasts come in a variety of formats, including interviews, tales, monologues, mashups, and so on.
Decide ahead of time if you want to have guests on the programme, or if you want to just chat to the listeners, or if you want to share stories.
Because my programme is all about interviews, I'll be covering how you can get started with your own.
7 Steps to Creating the Perfect Podcast Episode
This is a model I've taught hundreds of people to get their podcasts off the ground.
1. Inviting Guests
This is the first and most difficult step in completing your first episode. If you are not an influencer (or do not already have a significant following on social media platforms), it might be extremely difficult to get prominent people to appear on your programme. And this is when the majority of folks lose up. Before you can talk to well-known people, you must to take the first step and publish at least a few episodes of your podcast. I discovered my first guests by emailing folks and being real rather than spammy (this is a skill you'll master as you email more and more people).
You may locate emails using programmes such as Rocket Reach and Lusha.
I also utilise LinkedIn DMs and Instagram DMs to invite individuals to my podcast, depending on their age.
I would advise you not to wait for the greatest people in your profession to accept your invitation. They will appear once you have accumulated a sufficient number of episodes.
Assuming you have the guest, proceed as follows:
2. Scheduling
I schedule the recording with your visitor using resources like Calendly. It is a free plan, so utilise it to conveniently block off times for the episode with your guest.
It's a good idea to remind your visitor about the episode a few days ahead of time.
3. Conduct Research
Spend as much time as possible researching the guest you wish to interview. This involves researching him/her on Google and examining their social media accounts.
This will assist you in developing interview questions.
A pro tip for developing questions: I look to see whether my guest has appeared on other podcasts or interviews. I then look through those interviews to learn more about that person and make sure I'm not asking him/her questions that have already been posed to him/her.
4. Recording
This is it! Make sure that you are on time, jot down your question on a piece of paper, then push RECORD!
But How?
There are various methods. If your visitor is in person, you may simply utilise your smartphone’s microphone to record the chat. If you have some money to spare, I would strongly urge you to acquire a microphone from amazon(available for as cheap as 1000 bucks);check it out here - Microphone for podcasting. This would boost the production quality of your episode by a notch!
If your visitor is on the opposite side of the planet, you should utilise technologies like Zencastr.
Zencastr gives 8hrs of free audio call records every month, which should be plenty for most of you. If you want to produce a video podcast, Zoom or any other video call provider that allows you recording capacity.
These tools are fantastic for starting started, but you should attempt to produce better episodes after each one.
5. Edit your Episode
One of the most critical components of crafting a fantastic episode is its post production. This is where you’d add an opening and outro along with a song for your episode. I urge you to learn programmes like Audacity for audio editing and Premiere Pro for editing video.
Later , you may pay a podcasting service/team to do it all for you.
I wouldn’t go into further information on how editing works, you can search it up yourself.
This might take quite a long time to be done correctly.
6. Publish it!
Thanks to Anchor, you can now publish your podcasts on all platforms at once for free by only posting it to anchor. Anchor was just taken out by Spotify, which implies this service is here to stay.
Publishing is as easy as uploading your episode, picking a cover image for your podcast, adding description, tags, and then press publish. Just wait for 3-4 days for your podcast to be up on apple podcasts, spotify, etc.
7. Marketing
This is the most critical component of crafting a good podcast episode. Many individuals broadcast their episodes, but very few are truly able to generate momentum and advertise their podcast efficiently.
Use tools like Headliner to produce short teasers with audiograms in them that you can use to sell your podcast on social media platforms of the present.
Kapwing allows you make short video teasers from my video podcasts that I use to sell my show on visual networks like Instagram.
Podcasters often utilise otter.ai to produce blogs from episodes to boost discoverability of your show.
Pro tip for promoting your podcast : It’s very much probable that your guest will share the episode with their audience. This delivers free exposure to your podcast. Many podcasters also utilise their guest’s tweet/post as an ad to display to more people. This is a terrific approach to advertise your episode for very low money.
Conclusion
That’s how you build a good podcast episode, from concept through execution and then promoting it successfully. Podcasting is still in its infancy in India, but new podcasts are sprouting up every single day, increasing the competition.
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