Monica Pitts 0:00
Hello again and welcome back to marketing with purpose. My name is Monica Pitts and this episode marks the first chapter of our ultimate guide to starting your own podcast. Now, if you've ever considered launching your own show, but you weren't sure where to start, you're in the right place. Since starting our podcast marketing with purpose where you're hanging out right now in 2019, the MayeCreate team has published over 200 episodes with 10s of 1000s of downloads under our belt. So we are getting this whole podcast thing figured out. And over the past few years, conversations about podcasting have come up more and more with our clients. Recently, I actually had the honor of being a guest for a group of associations considering starting their own podcasts. And while prepping for that conversation, I made an exhaustive list of suggestions for the attendees because I knew based on their list of questions that they sent me to be prepared to answer, we would never get to everything that they wanted to know inside of an hour. And I am nothing if not a quintessential prepper like I like to be ready for anything right. So now I'm flipping that list into a download for you. And with it, you can move along through this two part series of dedicated podcasting one on one episodes to jumpstart your podcast as well. So over these audio journeys for podcast prep all dive into the world of podcasting, offering practical tips and actionable advice to help you navigate the setup process. And this series is going to show all the ins and outs of choosing the right equipment, technical aspects of recording and editing, to the strategic decisions about your shows format, frequency and promotion. And then in the final chapter of this series, I'll share ideas to get your creative juices flowing. So you can put all of this into action. Now, this is just the first episode of this series. All right, so you can click the link in the show notes to get access to all the episodes and yes, it is completely free. And you can also grab a link to that PDF guide as well, because I'm all about giving you what you need to solve communication challenges through technology. And podcasting is one of those mediums. So if you're ready to embark on your podcasting journey, and make your voice heard in the digital landscape, Let's get to business. You're on mission, and you just need more people to know about it. And whether you're brand new to marketing or a seasoned pro. We are all looking for answers to make marketing decisions with purpose. I'm Monica Pitts, a techie crafty business owner, mom and aerial dancer who solves communication challenges through technology. This podcast is all about digging in and going digital. I'll share my marketing know how and business experience from almost 20 years of misadventures. I'll be your backup dancer. So you can stop doubting and get moving towards marketing with purpose.
Okay, podcasting 101 Friends, yes. So let's start at the top with why should you start a podcast, I always like to start with why. Because whenever you start into a new venture, things get itchy, it's not always comfortable, you're gonna have to learn some new stuff. And for some people, that's awesome. And for some people, it is not so awesome, because it puts you outside of your comfort zone. And it's just going to take time and effort. So I always like to remember why I'm doing it. So that way I make sure that when I hit those sticky points, I can move forward and push through them with this. Why intact. So the reason that I started a podcast and the reason a lot of my clients started podcasts was to feed their marketing, because they're talkers and talking is a natural thing for them. It's easy for them to do. So all they have to do is get that tech stuff out of the way. And then they get to do what they're good at, which is talking and communicating with people. And they use these conversations to feed their marketing. So it funnels out into their emails onto their website onto their social media, and it becomes this source of information while they're doing their marketing, then they become a source for information, right? Like just what I said. So you are becoming a an industry expert for your profession. Maybe you are talking to other industry experts, but you could be talking to new people as well who are considering you as a service provider, which allows you to educate your audience. You can educate them about your industry, what's happening in your company. Not everybody has a podcast that's public facing. Some of our clients have podcasts that are just meant to educate the members of their association or the donor base that they have for the nonprofit. Some of our construction companies use podcasts to communicate with their employees and build culture, right. So either way, it doesn't matter which one you're doing, you're still educating the people that are in your audience. Also, if you're looking to build relationships with people who might be great, strategic partners for you Whoo, this is a way to do it. So in your podcast, you can invite guests on, you can introduce them to your audience, but you can also learn from them yourself. One of my favorite things to do in my podcast is bring on experts that helped me learn about the topics that I'm trying to personally tackle in my business, whether it's how to stay positive as a team, or how to, I don't know, do SEO, right. So having those experts come on is an incredible resource for you. And it helps you build relationships with them. Okay, so every single example that I've given you so far, though, is all kind of feeling a little intangible, right? It's all about building relationships, feeding your marketing, being considered as a resource for information, you know, those are all relationship, building intangible things that you can't really touch. So let's talk about why to start a podcast from a marketing perspective. That is concrete. One is that every episode that you make for your podcast stays out online for ever, okay, it's there forever, and it can work for you 24/7. It's not just like a social media post, it is going to be out there forever. And if you're putting it out on YouTube, or you're adding it to your website, it can show up in Google searches. For ever, there is no window that Google closes your Google searches for right? If you are answering people's questions, and you're serving the need that the searcher has, like they will serve your information in Google searches. Now, I'm not saying that it'll never sunset your information, because it's out of date. But your reach will build with every single episode getting you in front of more and more people with every episode that you publish. So you're going to see over time as you keep doing it, this gradual rise in listenership and in downloads in visits back to your website, if that's where you're housing, your main podcast information. So who doesn't want that? Right? Who doesn't want to create something that's going to live on almost forever? And show up 24/7? To answer questions whenever people need it, that introduces you to more people and brings them back to your website, so that you have the opportunity to build a relationship with them and potentially solve their problem through yours product or service. Who doesn't want that? Right? So a podcast can do that for you. That's awesome. Okay, so I mean, I don't know, are you on board yet? What's your why? Why are you starting a podcast, I encourage you to write it down, write it down, put it on a post it note, put it someplace, you're gonna find it later. Because you may need to pull it out when you remember whenever you're in that sticky spot. And if you're still on the fence about whether or not it's right for your organization, I do have a few episodes, one specifically for nonprofits, and one specifically for construction companies diagnosing that. So go on over to mayecreate.com Search for even something as simple as podcasts. And those episodes will pop right on up for you. So you can listen to them make that final decision about whether a podcast is right for you or not. Okay, so let's say now you're on board, you're ready to do this, what do you need? What do you need to get started? Okay, from a tech perspective, I'm going to go over this from a big picture perspective. Okay, and I'll dig into the tech in the next episode, you need a microphone, right, you're also going to need some type of audio software that you're going to record and some type of interview recording software, if you are going to have guests. And you're also going to have to have a human that is going to be able to do some of your tech things for you. And when I say tech things, I think I'm kind of limiting it a little bit because for each podcast, there's a lot of different things that are involved in it right. And let's take a big picture, look at those, you're going to need to have a podcast host. So someone's going to need to be able to take that audio and put it up to your podcast host and then the host will distribute it out to all of the networks where your audience might be listening on. This person would also be gathering your show details like your podcast title, they might research keywords, they're going to need to have artwork for you potentially for each episode, you might need to have them create a transcript for you put a photo together or a video to promote the podcast. You will also need someone who's going to decide what the episodes are going to be about right and put that all together for you. So that way it's organized and you're getting them published in a timely manner. This human will also need to be responsible for podcasts promotion. Now it doesn't have to be the same human. I have different humans doing different things for me. But promoting your podcast is a big part of the success of your podcast. People will find it through the networks. They'll find it through searching because if you have it on your website, it's going to show up in Google searches. If you're putting it out on YouTube, it's going to show up on YouTube when people search out there, but somebody's got to put it out there. You can Certainly automate parts of this process, but there's going to have to be some human involvement to make it happen. And whilst people will find it organically and naturally, you also want to have regular communication with your audience. So that way they know that you've put stuff out there, because they might not subscribe to your podcast, they might, instead sign up for your email list, they might follow you on social media. So someone's going to have to put those emails together, make those social posts and promote your podcast in the way that you feel is the best way for it to be promoted. So you have to have a human, that's going to help you out with this whole thing. And you know, people keep asking me like, Hey, Monica, will you be that human for me? And the answer to that is probably not, I can totally help you, like, get stuff set up and rolling and give you all the advice you need on that. But what my company does is websites, the reason that we interface with podcasts is because podcasts go on websites, now their production of podcasts. That's something I can do a lot of advising on, because we've been doing podcasts for years now. Right. But that doesn't mean that we are a podcast production company. There are companies that do that. And maybe you hire one of them, and they might be the perfect answer to get all of these things fulfilled for you. Okay, so now that you know, some of the tech decisions that you're going to need to make, and I will dig into those details in the next episode. Okay, stick with me. Next episode, I've got you all tech, I'm gonna geek out. I love it. I love it so hard. But right now we're trying to stay big picture. And we've also talked a little bit about the human resources that you're going to need and the things that they'll need to do to make sure your podcast is successful. Let's dig into the decisions that you need to make before you start your podcast like what do you need to make decisions about when it comes to your show? Once again, starting big picture? Before you start your podcast?
I'd say you need to figure out your publishing schedule, right? Like, how often are you going to produce these things? And I think that the answer to that question is twofold. Like how much bandwidth do you have to produce them? And how often do you need to produce them to make sure that you get enough information out to satisfy your audience and also satisfy the goals of your podcasts like why you're doing it? Right. So as I said before, publishing your podcast is like a multiplier effect, you will get more and more traffic to your site, more downloads, the more podcasts that you have out there. So if you're only going to publish one a month, it's going to take you a long time to see the full value of that multiplier effect. However, if what you're doing is creating an audio newsletter for your membership, and you only need to publish it once a month, then that's fine, right? Because you have a set audience, you're not trying to drive a bunch of traffic back to your site, different goals, different audience, right. So there's different publishing styles and different strokes for different folks, obviously. So the first publishing style I would call monthly or weekly. So this is like continual publishing. And your topics can vary. They can come in a series just like this is but they're released based on the day of the week, or the month. It's just a consistent publishing style. Okay, you're releasing once a week or once a month, always consistently doing it. The second publishing style, I would consider a series. So people will publish multiple episodes at once as a series to cover a topic in depth. So I could publish four episodes on podcasting, and then I might not publish something for the next four weeks. So that would be a series based podcast. And then other people actually publish seasonally. So they publish a whole season of episodes at once the topics usually build on one another. And this can be pretty cool for people who may just need to, like publish it and move on. But it also allows your audience especially at first to kind of binge listen to your episodes. Now also, though, even if you're not doing a seasonal approach, and you're releasing a whole bunch of episodes at once, then I would still say when you launch, you need to have a few podcasts ready for launch. So you're going to prep podcasts beforehand, I would release three to begin with. So that way your audience can listen to more than one episode from you. But then I would also have three to five more ready and like set and reserve before you click publish on the first episode. And I say this because you want to set yourself up for success. It takes time to do all the work. That's why we have that human right who's going to help us do all this work. So we want to make sure that your audience can listen to your message to begin with. And then we have a very consistent flow moving forward and if you have them pre recorded, then you can set them up to run least in the future, and you can just work on your next batch coming out. Okay. So I would say like first suggested frequencies, if you were like a pro level mumbo jumbo like you want to have a ton of traffic back to your site, you've been podcasting for a while and you want to like amp it up, you might do two a week, I don't know a lot of people who release them daily, most podcasts do around one a week, that's ideal, right? So that would be like 52 episodes out a year. That's, that's a lot of stuff over the course of time that you can get out there and start building some good momentum on. And it's pretty doable. I think that if you think you're gonna have a hard time getting to one per week, you could set a goal of two per month, and that's still a really good spot to be okay, because that's 24 year to a month, you can absolutely do that. Absolutely, I think the two month is extremely doable. And I'll give you plenty of stuff to talk about in your marketing. Or I would say the minimum amount would be one per month, I do have some people that are like, well, Monique, I just think I want to do it quarterly. Well, if you want to do it quarterly, you just need to make sure that that type of cadence is something that your audience is going to remember and come back to, it's all back to your goals. Right. So once again, if you're doing it to establish culture in in your company, or to communicate with a membership, then maybe once a quarter is enough, okay. But also, like think about building culture, sometimes it needs to be a lot more consistent. So you might actually break that longer episode down into tiny parts and release it once a week. So they they have a bite of culture every week, right? So I mean, it's just in how you slice it, just make sure that if you're only going to do once a quarter, it really makes sense for what you're doing. Other than that, I think you need to have a minimum of really one per month. But what I would want you to do is to per month, okay? Because we want it to be consistent. We want to show up in people's feeds consistently, we want to have just enough time in between episodes, that they're still seeing our brand, and they're still seeing the name, it's coming back in front of them, right like an ad, there's a reason that when you watch TV, the ad, they play an ad. And then at the next commercial break, that ad comes on again, like that exact same ad. It's so that way you remember, right. And in case you checked out the first time here it is again, for you yay. Learn all about our dryer sheets, right? Okay, so it's the same thing with your podcasts. So just make sure if you're not going to do it very often, you have a really good reason behind that. Or maybe don't do it at all. Like you don't have to start a podcast, nobody's telling you, you have to right. So when you're considering your frequency, just remember, your episodes have a multiplier effect. So if you're what you're trying to do is meet more people or build business, you're going to have to put stuff out there consistently, regularly or else you're not going to build the way that you want to you're not going to see the results unless you have stuff out there. Right? Theory and consistency is key. Yep, better to be consistent than have a bunch at once. And then none for a really long time. We've all seen those blogs. It's weird. It's like you just dropped off the face of the earth podcasts are the same way. Now, when you're trying to determine your frequency, I would really consider your episode length as well. Because how much time can your audience really justify consuming? What how busy are they right, so a lot of business podcasts, they're shooting for like a 20 minute mark to a 45 minute mark. So if you have shorter podcasts, you probably can publish them more frequently, because it's easy for people to consume. But if you have hour long podcasts, I wouldn't have more than one a week because you're asking for a lot from people. And they might skip a lot of your podcasts because they're too long. You can also adjust your frequency based on the time of year. And you can release more of content when your audience needs it most or like maybe leading up to the time that they're prepping for something that you're really experienced in. So for example, during urine giving, we'll actually start talking about that on our podcast sometimes in September, because that's when they're thinking about it even though you're in giving doesn't generally happen and and get hit hard until Giving Tuesday at the end of the year. So we could release more episodes at that full timeframe, late summer fall timeframe about year end giving to educator nonprofits and make sure that they're ready to go for the end of the year. And it could be the same thing for construction companies, right? They might talk more about culture and the offseason because people have more time to listen to it. And they might talk more about safety when they are in the buildings using because they need people to remember all the safety rules, right. So yeah. And then last but not least, just make sure that you're going for quality over quantity. It's better to have a great podcast great topics that are well planned out than to have a whole bunch of weirdness right because you Want to make sure that no matter where they enter into the podcast roll like, right, because they're not always going to start at the very beginning of your podcasts and work their way through them all. They might be starting today, because that's what they found when they were searching, or with a specific topic, because that's what they need an answer to right now. So we want to make sure that regardless of where they meet you in which episode it is, it's a great one. It's a great one where you sound great, and you sound like you're put together and you're a smart person that they want to listen to. That's what we want to have happen. Quality over quantity. So once you have an idea of how often you're going to publish your podcast, then you need to consider how long it's going to be. And I know I touched on that briefly a few seconds ago. But really, I want you to consider the attention span of your audience. Like I personally, while I am a business owner, I don't find super short episodes awesome. Because they just don't give me enough to chew on, I feel like it kind of gets my wheels turning, but they don't dig in enough for me to get an example or find something actionable. So it's hard for me to get into these little five minute podcasts, right? Episodes. Now, when they're over an hour long, it's also difficult for me to get into them because I get interrupted, my commute to work isn't that long. So really think about it. Like if your audience does a lot of commuting or listens while working out, then a longer episode could be ideal. And it might work really well for them. My husband listens to super long broadcasts, because he listens to them while he runs. But other people don't. Okay, so really, really dig into your audience, what's their attention span, and make sure that you're giving them enough in the episode, but you're not making it so long that they're like bored out of their minds, or that they get distracted. And with that in mind, just know that all of your episodes don't have to be the same length. But they should probably cycle through relatively consistently because you know who your audience is, and you know what they're willing to listen to, right. So, for example, every other week, you might publish a 20 minute solo episode. And then on the opposing weeks, you might publish a one hour guest interview. Now guest interviews usually go for like 30 minutes to an hour, I always shoot for under 45 minutes after they're edited. It's tricky, because you want your guests to introduce themselves, that's going to take like five minutes or so. And then you want to get to the meat of the conversation. And oftentimes that takes a little bit of back and forth as well. So they just tend to be a little bit longer than solo episodes. Usually solo episodes for me and for a lot of other business podcasters are going to be between 20 and 40 minutes. My goal for solo episodes is always 30 minutes or less, because you're just listening to my voice and it's pretty easy to tune my voice out if you have been listening to it for too long. Okay, so with that in mind, I want to get to the last thing that I feel like you need to make decisions about before you start your podcast. Okay, so like the last of the decisions that you'll make from this episode, because obviously in the next one, we're going to talk tech which requires more decision making. But to wrap this one up with these bigs. To wrap up this episode with big picture thoughts, we need to talk about your show details. So things like your title, and your subtitle and your keywords and your description. We have to make decisions about those too before you ever release an episode because before you start recording, you got to know what you're going to call yourself, right? So first thing you're going to need as a podcast title, and 40 characters or less is the recommended length. Now most titles relate more to the topic of your podcast than your business name. This is a trend that I see most people don't just start a podcast and call it MayeCreate sign podcast. Instead we call it marketing with purpose podcast. Why? Because you're not ever going to look for MayeCreate design, unless you already know us. I want to meet new people with my podcast. So most of the time, those podcast titles are short and sweet and have something to do with the topic that you're talking about. Now, if you want to generate a whole list of titles and kind of sort through them and mix, match and marry I would suggest using chat GPT you can describe your audience what you think you're going to talk about on your podcast, and then it will spit you out a whole bunch of titles and you can start from there. And chat. GBT is like pretty much my bestie I use GBT to brainstorm all the time. You can't do. Okay, so the second thing that you're going to need are some keywords. Yep. Because the way that the the networks work, and the way that YouTube works the way that Google works, it's all on a search like they're all search engines basically, right? So we need to find five to seven keywords that are going to relate to Your Podcast topic. And I like to do this before I do the next things because then I can integrate them with my podcast subtitle and description, and anything else that you're going to use to generally promote your podcast to make sure that people will find it for the purpose that your podcast has, right? So, five to seven keywords related to your podcast topic. They can be really broad keywords. We're not talking like longtail super specific things here, but remarketing with purpose, but the marketing website, you know, that kind of thing. Right? Okay. So then the third thing that you're going to need is your podcast subtitle. This is a one liner description of your show. We want it to entice people to want to listen. But also it needs to give them an idea of what it's about, especially if your podcast title is not super descriptive. So if your podcast title, we're like, wow, me. But your purpose of your podcast was sales pitches that convert, then that might be your subtitle. And I would know that wow, me is a podcast that is all about pitching. Right. And that's great. So that's what your subtitles, therefore, it's to support your main title. But I'd also want to incorporate those keywords into it. Okay, so next, we need to have our podcast description. So this is one to two paragraphs about your podcast, we want to include those keywords in it. But really, friends, this is a sales pitch. Okay, so we want to write for humans. This is what they're going to read before they press play. And we need to make sure that they read something that makes them want to press play, okay, so I always want to have keywords in all content in the website, anything that's going to be found out online, we want keywords in it. But it also has to be enticing, okay. So make sure that you keep humans in mind, as you're writing your podcast description, you'll create podcast artwork. Now, this will be like a 3000 by 3000, pixel JPEG or ping graphic, you can create them out in Canva, there's all kinds of templates out there, you can do it for free. What I would do is I would go out to whatever network you listen to podcasts and and I would search, just search for a podcast that's covering the topics that you're going to cover and look and see what all those other podcasts cover images look like, right? Do they have a picture of the host and a big title? Are they more graphically oriented? And then ask yourself to like is, are you going to be part of the podcast brand, because if you're part of the podcast brand, then you probably do want to have your picture on it because you want people to see you as the host and start associating you as a human being. And that picture can really humanize you. So I would first do some research for the podcast, artwork and make sure that you're kind of in line with your industry. And then once again, really think about how you want to be branding. This podcast is your host part of the brand. Like you know, marketing with purpose, I'm part of that brand. I Monica, I'm the host every single time. But if that's not the way it works, and maybe it doesn't make sense to have your picture on the front of your podcast artwork, if you're going to have different hosts coming in and hosting the podcast for every episode. Okay, so then last but not least, before you start recording, I would create your intro and your outro. So this is a script for recording both your introduction and the outro for your podcasts that you would see in which the main meat of your podcast in between. Now a lot of people have music with it. And if you're going to use music, make sure there's royalty free and just make sure that it really sets the tone for what you want your podcast to have. Now, I have some clients that just read their script at the beginning of every podcast, and so they whoever's hosting it reads it. And that's how it works. And then we have like a little music segue and we get into the meat of the podcast, you can do that too. So you don't have to have it pre recorded. You don't have to have it professionally recorded. But do make sure that it sounds like upbeat and cool. I mean, like we don't want to turn people off just because you're like reading. And you're not a good reader for the intro and outro if that's not you, and you know, you want to have like a very specific introduction, and like call to action at the end of every podcast and have someone else read it for you. It's okay to have a different voice recording the intro and the outro of your podcast for you. We did that for a long time. My friend Dave did it for me. And now I just use my own right because I got more comfortable in like this setting in front of my microphone and talking and reading from a script right but but at first I wasn't And so Dave did it for me because he's an actor, and it was great. So just think about that. You're going to need to have an introduction and when add a call to action for the end of your episodes, you'll probably want to script for them, you'll want to decide how you're going to record it, whether it's pre recorded or having someone just read it, and pick some cool music that goes with it. And just remember that you don't have to be the one that reads it if that's not you. Okay. So yeah, I think we've covered a lot here. Friends, we have covered a lot about podcasting. So hopefully now you have a better idea of the decisions that you're going to make. Obviously, we stayed really big picture with those tech decisions. Stick with me for the next episode, I'm going to dig in finding the right podcast host for you different microphone types, recording styles, that kind of thing. And also, we will dig into how to manage this production, right? Because it's a thing we want to make sure that it happens. We talked about our human resources, the person that the end their responsibilities, that they're going to have to make sure that this podcast goes out and goes out successfully to reach your goals. We talked about frequency, length. And last but not least, your show details. So head on over to mayecreate.com There's a link in the episode show notes and grab the PDF. Okay, grab the PDF, everything that I talked about is in there. There's even the stuff I'm going to talk about in the next episode in there. And join me for the next episode. So we can dig into tech and really get that sorted out for you use these resources. And man good luck on your podcasting journey. If you need to have it integrated with your website, I can help you with that. Okay, and remember, there's other people that can totally help you with all the other setup and and all that too. We've even featured a few on our podcast recently. So if you need a referral to a company like that, you can totally send me an email
[email protected] That's ma y ECREA t.com. I'm super happy to send you their links and contact information. Okay, so thank you so much for hanging out with me. I look forward to talking about tech in the next episode. And until next time, go for it and mark it with purpose.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
