Small Business Talk
The Podcast to Grow your Business Faster
How to do a Podcast?
Show Notes
Having a podcast series can be a lot of work but it does take a discipline to record it week after week, month after month.
One of the hardest things I find about doing the podcast is picking the topic. Not due to lack of topics, in fact the complete opposite. Narrowing the topic down to just one from all the topics swimming around my brain at the time.
Picking a Topic
Today, we are going to talk about a topic that lots of people have been asking about. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ’s) is a great way to pick a topic.
How to do a Podcast?
There are many different ways to do a podcast for many different reasons. Before you start, think about your why. Why do you want to do a podcast? What do you want to achieve by doing a podcast? Where are you going to put your podcast and many more questions we will discuss.
There are many options for podcasting so I am going to talk about my experience doing the Small Business Talk Podcast. I started SBT 2 years ago and doing a course called 6P’s with Ray Milidoni (which is now an Udemy). Regular listeners will I did it while on a family holiday which actually turned out to be perfect timing as it allowed me the time to implement between sessions.
Do a Course
Like most things, doing a course shortens your learning curve. A good course will also show you the things that you didn’t even know you needed to ask.
Things like:
- What do I call my podcast?
- How do I do the thumbnail?
- Do I need a thumbnail for every episode?
- Where do I host my podcast?
- How do I spread the message? Etc…
Each question takes you down another rabbit hole and opens up even more questions.
Do Podcast Need a Video?
Podcasting is traditionally audio, however, as human; we get a lot of our communication clues from body language. Ever noticed how having a phone call is so different from a video call or in person? We can easily get distracted and do other things while we are supposed to be listening because the other person can’t see us.
Recording a podcast can be much the same. Whether you are going to use the video or not (I will discuss that in a minute). I suggest you at least record your audio in person or with video as it gives for better interaction and a better quality audio result.
Should I do Video as well?
The short answer is yes.
The more ways/application you can share and repurpose your podcast content to, the better. Podcasting takes a lot of work. Unless you are a natural extrovert, it takes a lot of brain power and psyching up too, especially at the beginning of your podcast journey.
Podcasting Myths
- Press record and then you have your episode. Sorry to burst your bubble but not. Yes, some of the big names do record and the never touch the recording again but that is because they have a team to do it for them.
- Upload your podcast and your audience will come. Like anything on the internet, it is a very busy space. Just uploading your podcast to iTune, Stitcher, Spotify, etc won’t guarantee you some audience and thousands of downloads.
- Podcasting is Free. Yes and no. Depending on how you record and edit it can be free however for most people, it’s not. Even if you are using all free tools, you will still have to factor in your time. The less you do, the more it will cost.
- Podcasting will make you lots of money. Just like YouTube, only the top producers are making good money from their craft. Podcasting can be great for exposure and take you to listeners and an audience that you would have never reached but if you are not selling a product off the back of your podcast, you won’t make money out of it.
Why Podcast?
As you can see, podcasting is not as easy as some people lead you to believe so why do it?
- Exposure
- Brand positioning
- Showing your expertise
You need to have a clear reason or goal for your podcast. Go in with your eyes wide open to the amount of work that is required to do a podcast especially a weekly podcast.
Podcasts can be a lots of fun and open doors you never would have opened without your show, however if you think it is going to make you lots of money then stop right now.
Guests or Solo Shows
Should you have guests or do only solo show? Well, that depends on what you are trying to achieve and the value you want to give your listeners.
Some people do all guests and others none. As you know, I do alternating guests and solo shows that way, you are getting a mix of interesting people as well
When I started I thought getting the guests would be the hard part. No in my experience I have found that to be easy. Often people even come to me asking to be a guest on Small Business Talk, many pushing their own bandwagon and are unsuitable for the show.
Basics You Need for a Podcast
- The number one thing you must have for a good podcast is Good Audio. Good Audio is a non-negotiable, you will lose your audience so far if your sound quality isn’t good.
- To the point content. Don’t ramble, make it “the about me” show and give your audience value.
- Not too salesy. Unless you have a big audience, you won’t be able to run ads. People are moving away from traditional radio program to podcasts in droves because they don’t want to have threads.
- You need to produce episodes regularly and when you say you are going to, there is nothing worse than tuning in to find the next episodes hasn’t been released on the day is was due.
- Have a plan and strategy around why you are podcasting and how you are going to get it to your audience.
- Batch content. What that means is record more than one episode at a time. Batching content means that you should always be ahead with your episodes so that reduces the stress, gives you option and make sure your episodes are never late. Ideally you should always have a few episodes ahead of your publish date. This is really important when doing guests so that you are never left without a guest or can reschedule if a guest is unavailable or didn’t work out for some reason.
- Market your Podcast Episodes. You need to have a way to get your podcast out to your audience via other channels eg, social media.
Small Business Talk
I bet you are dying to know what we do.
I record my gusts on SquadCast, which is a paid podcasting platform. I like SquadCast because it gives you separate audio channels for both you and your guest which gives you more control over background noises.
My solo episodes, I use Audacity. Both of these are audio only at the time of this recording. SquadCast has a video version in beta because it does have a video stream when you are recording however, you aren’t able to download it at this stage.
Then the podcast is edited by myself or one of my team. Yes, it should always by my team.
If the episode is guest, I send the audio to scribie.com to be manually transcribed. Then that transcript in written into show notes by my team and uploaded to Small Business Talk.com.au website.
For solo episodes, the show notes and written from my notes.
Then we need thumbnails of the topic or the guest.
Once the audio is ready along with a summary and the thumbnail, it is al loaded up into OmnyStudio.com and set for release to all the different podcasting platforms we are on.
Then we market the episode via our social channels.
Repurpose the content from each episode
Sounds simple when you say it like that.
Basic Podcasting Requirements
Basic Podcasting Requirements
- Record audio – good quality audio
- Post to a platform for hosting and distribution
- Spread the word about your episodes
- Do show notes or transcripts
As you can see, a lot goes into making a simple episode and I could keep talking it for ages but it’s time to go.
Next week’s guests is all about Stopping the overwhelm in business with time management techniques so see you then.
Listen to Small Business Talk Episode 107 for the full episode.
