How to start a podcast: These 6 steps will make it happen!

You like listening to podcasts and now you want to make one yourself? But the topic of how to create a podcast is still a blur for you? Don’t worry, it’s not that com­pli­cat­ed. At least if you consider the podcast basics. It’s all about finding a topic that interests you and in which you are, in the best case, an expert. You’ll get the basics on equipment, (post) pro­duc­tion, and marketing here. Have fun!

1. Come up with a concept and know your own “why”.
2. Equipment? A USB mi­cro­phone and head­phones are all you need for now.
3. Record in a furnished rooms (don’t forget the mi­cro­phone check!).
4. Post-pro­duc­tion: Less is more! The main thing is that your recording isn’t too quiet and is in the WAV format!
5. Audience, where are you? Without podcast hosting it will be hard!
6. Marketing? Focus on 1-2 social media platforms and word of mouth!

Perhaps the most important rule when starting a podcast: Just do it!

The concept is the most important element when you create a podcast. Es­pe­cial­ly as a beginner, it’s easy to un­der­es­ti­mate the amount of work involved in creating a podcast. Because then many to-dos want to be checked off. Re­search­ing topics and target groups, deciding on a format, branding and marketing, podcast SEO, buying or testing equipment and software, possibly making ap­point­ments with interview guests, writing scripts for the episodes, recording, and uploading to the host, promoting on social media — a podcast is a lot of work. But if you write down a concept at the beginning, you will work in a struc­tured way, achieve your goals, and also have fun doing it.

The podcast concept also includes the following aspects:

• Go for the format that works for you (solo record­ings and/or in­ter­views, episode length, and pub­lish­ing frequency).
• Find an overall theme: Comedy, knowledge, news, fitness, and true crime are very popular.
• It’s best to occupy a niche (ideally, one you’re an expert in).
• If you are not an expert, you can convince listeners and inspire them with your per­son­al­i­ty and a new per­spec­tive on a topic or problem just as well.
• Content with value: Your content should inform, explain, entertain, be exclusive, and relevant (and never boring).
• Create an editorial plan.
• Podcast branding: Consider name, logo, and sound design.

Keeping all this in mind can be over­whelm­ing in the beginning. The important thing is to create a realistic schedule, implement the podcast basics, and don’t get lost in too many details.

Once the concept is in place, you can start looking for the right equipment. The crucial question you should ask yourself here: Does the equipment serve its purpose? After all, there’s little point in trying to get to grips with technical details right at the start of your pod­cast­ing journey. When it comes to audio tech­nol­o­gy, there are simply too many aspects that can (the­o­ret­i­cal­ly) be relevant to a pro­fes­sion­al podcast setup. Whether a podcast is or sounds “pro­fes­sion­al” doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly depend on the price tag of the mi­cro­phone. Rather, it’s about being able to handle the tech­nol­o­gy properly — that’s what makes a podcast pro­fes­sion­al and guar­an­tees good sound quality.

The good news: You don’t need expensive high-end equipment to create a podcast! There are countless reviews on the web about the “best podcast equipment” — the rec­om­mend­ed gold standard is usually an XLR mi­cro­phone with audio interface. But as basic equipment for podcast beginners this setup is only con­di­tion­al­ly suitable. Don’t make things too com­pli­cat­ed for yourself at the beginning. Get good head­phones and a USB mi­cro­phone from one of the leading man­u­fac­tur­ers such as Shure or Rode. Connect both to your favorite device for recording and post-pro­duc­tion of the podcast episodes. A notebook is best for this, but there are also podcast apps that enable pod­cast­ing on tablets and smart­phones. If you decide to use your cell phone for mobile recording, you should get an external clip-on mi­cro­phone. That’s basically all it takes to create a podcast for now. If you want to create a webinar, even a headset will do.

Once the basics of audio tech­nol­o­gy are in place and the first podcast episodes have been published, you can gradually move on to more advanced topics. The following questions might be of interest then:

• What are dynamic mi­cro­phones and what are condenser mi­cro­phones?
• Which mi­cro­phone type is suitable for which room en­vi­ron­ment? (Keywords here are e.g. re­ver­ber­a­tion, acoustics, di­rec­tion­al char­ac­ter­is­tics, back­ground noise)
• Which mi­cro­phones require a preamp? (Keyword FetHead)
• What is important for audio in­ter­faces? (Am I recording alone or with guests? Type and number of inputs, are features like direct mon­i­tor­ing or a level meter included?)
• What is available for mobile audio in­ter­faces to create a podcast on the go? (Keywords: Zoom recorders, podcast apps like Anchor or Podbean).

Once the equipment is in place, it’s time to test! The im­por­tance of test record­ings is often un­der­es­ti­mat­ed, es­pe­cial­ly among beginners. If you think watching one or two unboxing or how-to videos on YouTube is enough, you might be thrown off by the tech­nol­o­gy involved in recording. As long as you’re only planning solo record­ings, it may not make much of a dif­fer­ence. But at the latest when others are guests for a podcast interview, you should know how the mi­cro­phone and other equipment works.

Now it’s time to get serious! The setup is set up, you’re familiar with all functions and have tested them, and now it’s time to record. To make your first recording session a success, keep the following aspects in mind:

• Record in a small, sound­proof room if possible.
• Do not forget to charge batteries or bring a charging cable for the notebook.
• Switch cell phone to flight mode or mute.
• For remote record­ings, you need a stable Internet con­nec­tion.
• Level the volume before recording (target: -6 decibels, “dB” for short).
• Instruct podcast guests (mouth-mi­cro­phone distance, posture, flow, etc.).
• Always test listen (check if there is any noise).

If the audio track contains too much noise or your voice sounds too quiet, possibly even over­mod­u­lat­ed, this is not nec­es­sar­i­ly due to the podcast setup, but to the incorrect distance to the mi­cro­phone. If the mi­cro­phone is too far away, the audio signal (es­pe­cial­ly with USB mi­cro­phones) is too low; if you get too close to the capsule of the mi­cro­phone, the risk of clipping increases — the audio signal is distorted by the audio level being too high. As a rule, this problem can be avoided by leaving about a hand’s width of space between your mouth and the mi­cro­phone. Since USB mi­cro­phones are somewhat more sus­cep­ti­ble to clipping, you can also place the mi­cro­phone slightly below the direction of speech. This way you minimize annoying breathing and popping noises at the same time.

In principle, there are two options to record a podcast episode: Either you use a software — in technical jargon this is called Digital Audio Workspace, DAW for short — with which you record locally on your own PC, or you rely on web-based recording tools. The latter are divided into programs that record the audio signal via the Internet con­nec­tion (e.g. Zoom and Skype) and those that are web-based but still record locally. This may sound confusing at first — and it’s also a hotly debated topic in the podcast scene. While some pod­cast­ers decry programs like Zoom and Skype because of their (too poor) audio quality, others use and recommend them.

So, what to do now?

Fact is Zoom, Skype, etc. are called video con­fer­enc­ing software for a reason. They were developed to allow meetings to take place online without taking up huge amounts of data. In short: Audio quality can’t be superior. That’s why web-based recording tools that record in­de­pen­dent­ly of the Internet and thus guarantee (or are supposed to guarantee) con­sis­tent­ly high, lossless audio quality have been around for a few years.

As mentioned at the beginning, however, you can also record your podcast locally via an installed DAW. Unlike the online tools just mentioned, these have the advantage that they are often free and still offer the most important audio op­ti­miza­tion features. If you’re recording solo, this is the better way to go. For in­ter­views, either both of you would have to use a DAW or you just rely on web-based tools.

But back to the local DAW method. In practice, Audacity (Windows, iOS, Linux), and Garage­Band (iOS) have proven most useful here. If you have a sub­scrip­tion to Adobe Creative Cloud, you can also check out Adobe Audition. Without the sub­scrip­tion, however, it is not really worth it — one of the first-mentioned freeware programs will do.

Once the podcast episode is recorded and the audio track is saved, it’s time for editing. Again, the tip is to always record audio tracks sep­a­rate­ly (a so-called double-ender recording) so that post-pro­duc­tion does not take an un­nec­es­sar­i­ly long time. Load the audio file(s) into the DAW, for example, Audacity. There are many helpful tutorials on YouTube for this, so post-pro­cess­ing the sound­track shouldn’t be too much of a gray area. At first, the many functions and effects can seem over­whelm­ing — so it’s best to con­cen­trate on the basics. These include:

• Cutting off the start and end of the audio track and replacing them with intro and outro sound effects.
• Avoid pauses in speech that are too long.
• Make the audio track louder (if necessary) to give you more room for post-pro­duc­tion — Audacity has a “Boost” effect for this.
• Optional: The audio signal should be free of noise and re­ver­ber­a­tion — for this purpose there are the functions “Noise Reduction”, “Equalizer”, and “Com­pres­sor”.
• It is best to save the edited audio track as a WAV file — this is an un­com­pressed, high-quality audio format.

Simply put, a podcast host brings your episode(s) to your audience. In principle, this can also be done manually, but the podcast hosting saves a lot of time and provides many features that help with dis­tri­b­u­tion and marketing.

If you would choose the variant without a host, you would have to create a creator account with each streaming service and upload each episode in­di­vid­u­al­ly — this is tedious and not very useful. Hosting works like this: You sign up with the hosting platform of your choice and upload the audio file there. All audio files are stored on the server and a so-called RSS feed of your podcast is also generated. This is passed on to the streaming platforms, also called “pod­catch­ers”, so that the podcast feed is updated at the re­spec­tive streaming service with every new episode.

Which of the numerous hosts is the right one depends on the specific use case and your own pref­er­ences. You should ask yourself the following questions when searching for the right podcast host:

• How user-friendly and intuitive is the service?
• If the host is fee-based, what features are available?
• Do I want my audio file to be au­to­mat­i­cal­ly encoded according to the hosting guide­lines?
• Does the host limit the monthly upload count (in episodes or hours)?
• What marketing features are provided? (e.g. Audiogram gen­er­a­tion tools or col­lab­o­ra­tions with external crowd­fund­ing platforms such as Patreon
• What analytics tools are available to evaluate podcast sta­tis­tics?

The most popular podcast hosts are Libysn, Anchor, Buz­zsprout, Captivate, and Tran­sis­tor.fm.

The podcast is ready and the first episodes uploaded to the host. And lo and behold: They appear on the streaming platforms. But what now? How do others find out about your new podcast?

You can’t avoid beating the ad­ver­tis­ing drum. But this doesn’t mean paid ad­ver­tis­ing. Running paid ads can be an effective marketing tool for getting more audience, but it doesn’t need to be at the beginning of your podcast career. Instead, word of mouth helps — and it’s com­plete­ly free! For example, you can share your podcast project in advance with your friends, co-workers, and family. If it’s well received, they’ll likely au­to­mat­i­cal­ly share your podcast with others.

Also, since you’ve already thought about your target audience, you should promote your podcast exactly where they hang out. So find out which social media platforms potential listeners are active on. For example, if you’re creating a podcast about pho­tog­ra­phy or fitness, Instagram is probably the ideal platform for self-promotion. With the story function on Instagram you can share your podcast episode and, since recently, directly place the link to the streaming service.

On the other hand, if you’re covering a business topic, LinkedIn might work better for marketing. It can make sense to focus on one or at most two platforms in the beginning — even though there is often talk on the web about being rep­re­sent­ed on as many social networks as possible. The reason for this is quickly iden­ti­fied: the lack of time!

And here’s some food for thought on marketing:

The podcast is ready and the first episodes uploaded to the host. And lo and behold: They appear on the streaming platforms. But what now? How do others find out about your new podcast?

You can’t avoid beating the ad­ver­tis­ing drum. But this doesn’t mean paid ad­ver­tis­ing. Running paid ads can be an effective marketing tool for getting more audience, but it doesn’t need to be at the beginning of your podcast career. Instead, word of mouth helps — and it’s com­plete­ly free! For example, you can share your podcast project in advance with your friends, co-workers, and family. If it’s well received, they’ll likely au­to­mat­i­cal­ly share your podcast with others.

Also, since you’ve already thought about your target audience, you should promote your podcast exactly where they hang out. So find out which social media platforms potential listeners are active on. For example, if you’re creating a podcast about pho­tog­ra­phy or fitness, Instagram is probably the ideal platform for self-promotion. With the story function on Instagram you can share your podcast episode and, since recently, directly place the link to the streaming service.

On the other hand, if you’re covering a business topic, LinkedIn might work better for marketing. It can make sense to focus on one or at most two platforms in the beginning — even though there is often talk on the web about being rep­re­sent­ed on as many social networks as possible. The reason for this is quickly iden­ti­fied: the lack of time!

And here’s some food for thought on marketing:

• Use dis­tinc­tive episode titles, e.g., "How to," "7 Tips for", "How to start a podcast?" (the keywords here are podcast SEO and evergreen content.
• Col­lab­o­ra­tions with other pod­cast­ers can increase your own reach.
• Community building via social media (consider listener requests and feedback).
• Produce snackable content that teases key messages of the podcast episode.
• Create a custom website so you show up in search engine rankings.

Sure, having your own podcast website means a lot of work again, of course. But es­pe­cial­ly if you don’t have a reach at the beginning and thus nobody knows your podcast, an SEO-optimized website can be useful. It is important that it provides in­for­ma­tion about your person and mission and that the podcast can be sub­scribed to on subpages for the various streaming services. For this, there are numerous WordPress podcast plugins that can help you better integrate your podcast content into your WordPress website.

If you decide to set up a podcast website, then it should def­i­nite­ly comply with the mobile first approach and thus be optimized for mobile devices.