If like me starting a podcast has been on your mind for a little while I thought it would be helpful to record my thoughts and feelings at this early stage. Whilst it is still fresh in my mind I can share my experience and what helped me get started.
Something interesting that I heard was that many podcasts end by the 10th episode, and in fact when I researched that statistic there was some suggestion that it was actually by the third or seventh episode! So it’s kind of an interesting, especially at this point to reflect on how things are feeling.
I’m up to recording my ninth episode, which you can listen to below, with every intention of recording a tenth one and more 😉
Listen to this episode on Substack
Where to Listen:
“Podfade”
Apparently there’s a term called podfade, which is when a podcast suddenly without warning will just stop releasing episodes or episodes become more and more sporadic until ‘fading’ out entirely. Now that I’ve been doing a podcast even for a mere nine episodes I can see how people start it and then the podcast just fades out because it is actually a lot more work than you might anticipate. Sometimes you can imagine that something will be a lot of work and then the reality is even if you had thought about it that it takes even longer.
And obviously like a lot of things you don’t perhaps get much initial reward as you this is a long game and likely will need a lot more time before you might see any sort of outcome. For some people it might also be that they realise that they maybe don’t have much to talk about on the theme of their podcast or don’t enjoy the format as much as they thought they might.
All of the steps take a fair amount of time… coming up with ideas, researching, outlining, recording, editing, exporting, uploading, creating a blog post and social media promotion.
Consider how you will keep going:
- Writing a list of lots of ideas of things that you could talk about
- Really think about the time commitment and whether you can keep it up
- Something that I actually forgot to mention is to consider whether to do proper seasons or assign breaks after a specific number of episodes (which is actually something I am thinking about)
- What format will your podcast be – solo, guest interviews, co-hosted etc
What are your intentions and objectives with starting a podcast
Something to consider if you all thinking about doing one is the why behind why you want to start one. Are you hoping for it to have a certain objective, like bringing customers to your business or is this something that you just feel called to want to put out there? Will you be aiming for certain download numbers or metrics or do you just want to do it for fun?
If you’ve listened to the first episode, I discussed some of the reasons why I was starting the podcast. And how for me it was something that I kept getting a nudge to do and had about various ideas over a few different years. Sometimes it’s hard to tell isn’t it, whether an idea is coming from your own thoughts and truly a nudge that you should do it or if it has been influenced. For me as well I just wanted to see it as a chance to practice using talking more about the things that I’m interested in and finding my voice.
I would say that it does feed into the work that I’m doing a little bit. So obviously there’s that bit of back and forth that is relevant to my design business. I’m talking about conscious brands and all the sort of topics feeds into the design work I do. However at the moment there’s no expectation that it’s actually going to have an impact.
Finding the time to podcast
For me, one of the hard things is just finding the time. Especially where I am a stay-at-home mum to my toddler. But I also work part-time around that too and then Elm Leaf Studio is also part-time. So it’ can be tricky finding the time which is often then in the evening or at the weekend. And maybe by that point in the day that I might be thinking that I don’t want to sit and record
So definitely consider the timing of when you start a podcast as well. And do you have the Headspace? Do you have the time for it? Can you put in what you want to?
Worrying about how you will sound on your podcast
I’m sure something that might come up for you is in some form worrying about how you will come across on your podcast. That could be whether your voice sounds okay, whether you sound knowledgeable enough talking about different things, whether you’ll come across well, will you say something that someone might hold against you etc. And I think it’s natural that a lot of these things are going to come up for you.
There’s not really much you can do other than just allow yourself to think about these things and feel them. But then decide whether they matter and whether you can overcome them. Then just get going anyway and just go for what you want to do, which is start a podcast!
How I finally got started with my podcast
Once I had been thinking about starting this podcast quite a bit one of the things that actually really helped me was Lucy Lucraft ran a podcast called Nail Your Podcast Niche. So I joined that and it was all about getting started podcasting and picking your niche in particular. Because that was something slightly holding me back about exactly what my podcast would be.
I was able to join the workshop live which was valuable as I could ask my questions and it was just great to get to talk to someone else to have that reassurance of what you are trying to do and why. There was also a few bonuses that helped to plan out your podcast a little bit. Giving me enough of a push to feel prepared and then to get started.
So I recorded my first actual episode based off a blog post I had already written but trying to make it sound a bit more off the cuff (the episode about greener websites, which was two episodes ago). Listening back I thought, okay, that’s not too bad! And that then enabled me to start recording more.
Hosting your podcast
It wasn’t that long after my test episode that it was Black Friday and I saw that Hello Audio, black Friday deal, which was some sort of discounted rate. The cool thing about Hello Audio is you get both a public and a private feed for your hosting fee. I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do with the private one but I liked the idea of maybe creating something a bit behind the scenes and more personal. For now, what I actually have done is on my recent challenge with used it to record, the audio for that. And then people can access it like a podcast.
A private podcast could be a really cool option as well. You might like the idea of doing something that’s not completely public, maybe it’s as a bonus for your customers or clients. And it’s a bit more about behind the scenes and helping people to build more of a connection with you or your brand. Hello Audio actually have quite a lot of content and advice on this at it is something they do well and specialise in.
Staying organised
I use notion to organize everything. It allows me to create a progress tracker, so I can create whole list of ideas and then track where I’m at with it. Whether about outlined to the podcast or recorded it etc. And with Notion you can make use of templates as well, so I have templates for solo episodes and a template for a guest episode which obviously has different steps and things that need doing like preparing questions! But it could be Trello for you or something else. Just find something that helps you track your ideas and systemise the process of creating a podcast.
What you need to get started
Equipment I’ve been using
One thing about podcasting is that you can start with quite minimal equipment, in fact you could even just record directly into your phone if you didn’t have a microphone!
- Blue Yeti Snowball Ice microhone
- Logitech webcam
- Ring light
- Laptop
Tech
Descript – I’m so glad I heard about descript before I started. Descript is an app that you can record directly into, or you can import your audio into, and it will create a transcript. Then that transcript is what you edit to edit the podcast or video, you literally delete a word and it will take out that bit of audio clip. So much easier than the typical way you’d edit audio or video!
They also have the ability to create audiograms, which is those shareable animated graphics that has your audio clip, the texts come up and often have an animated audio wave. I highly recommend if you are intending to do any sort of podcast or even probably for video editing, at least getting that initial first draft of your video edited before maybe taking it into another program.
Mentions:
In Summary…
If you are thinking about doing a podcast, like everything, it comes back to your why. It comes back to what you intend with it and what you think you might talk about, whether you have enough to say, if it’s something that you have time for and the head space for, and it’s something that you can keep up for awhile.
There’s maybe a bit of stigma about only putting a podcast out for awhile but I think you could consider intentionally (or not) just putting a podcast out for awhile – it’s all about experimenting and trying things sometimes. So if you feel kind of called to podcast then why not give it a try? You might find that you love recording it, or you might find it really hard. But you won’t know until you try!
Let’s Connect:
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Hey, I’m Kirsty McGill the creative behind Elm Leaf Studio. I’ve been a designer for 13 years now and building websites for most of them.
Elm Leaf Studio is a creative studio that exists to help small, ethically-minded businesses grow and thrive.
When I’m not designing I mostly spend my time running around after a toddler nowadays, and if I get a spare moment I enjoy reading, learning and making art.
