This is a basic introduction to how to start a podcast.
Before you start anything you need to think and ask yourself some important questions:
- Why am I doing this?
- Do I have enough to say?
- How long do I want to do it for?
- Is it a priority?
- How will I sustain it?
- What’s my plan/strategy to execute this?
These are important because it is important to start something that you can finish or in this case sustain.
This is a personal project, you will learn and you will grow, the success of this is all in your hands, literally.
So you want to start a podcast? That’s great!
How often will you post?
- One episode a day? Once per week? Once every two weeks? One a month?
- What are you going to talk about? How much do you know about this topic? Are you willing to research these topics?
- What style will it be? Will you do interviews? Discussions? Or will you always be by yourself?
These are questions that you need to ask and answer by yourself.
All that matters to your audience is your consistency and authenticity.
In other words, the only thing that truly matters to the person listening is VALUE. What value are they gaining from this?
- Are you challenging them to think a little deeper?
- Are you entertaining them?
- Are you offering new information?
- Are you educating them?
- Are you giving them something they can use in their life?
- Are you simply sharing something so that they can learn from your experience?
- Do you only want to make money?
why are you really doing this?
What is the value that they are gaining from this?
Remember that no one’s opinion is universal, everyone is learning as they go in life and that the truest commonality we all have. So always be sure to state “in my opinion / in my experience” if it is such a topic.
In other cases back your opinions with facts/research for more credibility, E.g “The university of Ibadan did a research in 2009 and they discovered that dinosaurs were on this earth 10 000 years ago.”
You want people to know you as an expert in your field, even if your field is YOU.
I'd like to give you an exercise: take some time to write down 20 topics that you want to talk about on your podcast.
Each topic needs to be something you feel is important to address. If it's important to you, it will be important to your audience too.
Write down everything that comes to mind, no idea is stupid, ‘too obvious’ or irrelevant.
For example, If I were a doctor and I wanted to start a podcast to educate people about their basic health:
-Exercise
-Food
-drugs
-Alcohol
-How to talk to your doctor?
-Dangers of self-diagnosis
-How to explain my symptoms to a doctor?
-And many more...
Writing down your topic ideas is important because:
1. You won’t sit and waste time thinking of what to speak about on a podcast.
(remember that your schedule is important, no time to sit. You have to be on point.)
2. Your list will keep growing and improving.
(you might replace topics or decide to research one and find other things you want to speak on as well.)
Your list is sort of like a guideline and keeps you creating content.
Let's say you post once a week.
20 topics mean you have 20 weeks worth of content to post.
One episode a day means you have 20 days of content.
This is important because that's your schedule and it's part of your strategy.
We know that social media consistency is major.
Your engagement and momentum need to be consistent.
The second crucial point to plan out is your social media strategy.
- What is your social media strategy going to be?
- How do you plan on promoting this podcast?
- Who will promote you if you don’t promote yourself properly?
You might have gold in your podcast episode but how will people know of it.
I'd like you to think about what ways you will promote what you do.
Podcasting is basically hosting your own personal radio show in the comfort of your own space.
All you need is an app, with this you can start recording episodes even at this moment.
Before we go further, have you thought of a name for your podcast yet?
Mine is called Talks with Comfort Ajibola.
That's basically what it's about. Me talking, with friends, family, anyone or even myself.
When you come up with a name, let it be something you can build a brand about or something that's easy to understand.
Even if you name it Pineapple, you get to create a story around it and that's it becomes. (that's also the beauty of branding something yourself- You are in control)
Creating a story around your brand is important.
People love to feel connected to you personally and you can use your story to create that bond.
The app we are going to use is called ANCHOR, please download it to your phone.
Once you have the app downloaded, please sign up and play around with it.
Familiarise yourself with the app as much as you can. It’s very user-friendly but you have to use it to get used to it.
Naming your podcast
It can be stressful to think up a name to represent your entire podcast and that force that it is (will be), but the strategy to naming your podcast is to think of the simplest way to describe ith with the least amount of words.
For example:
- Red Table with the Smiths.
- DesiringGod
- Jesus and Jollof
- The Joe Rogan Experience
- The Pineapple project
These are simply names, and titles to represent the platform. What comes out of that platform is the most important and that what defines the name at the end of the day.
The kicker is that a name doesn’t really mean anything until you add substance and make it something.
So pick a name and get started working on your trailer.
Trailer
59 seconds to introduce yourself and what the audience should expect from your show. Remember to use emotion, sound excited or intrigued or interesting,
E.g: Hi everyone, I’m Sharon, a podiatrist and this is my podcast, Walkable shoes. Have you ever wondered how shoes are made? Then this is the show for you. Stay tuned for exciting and interesting episodes about how shoes are made!
Keep it short and sweet.
Creating your cover art.
You can create a cover art with the anchor app or you can create one and upload it, it’s your choice.
You can also use free platforms like Canva (website and app), Spark, photoshop or any design software to create cover art for your podcast.
Use whichever you feel most comfortable with. You can also design a quick one with Anchor.
That’s the exercise of the day, figure out a podcast name, create your cover art and record your trailer.
Good luck!
Don't forget to check out my podcast!
Also, check out my Youtube Channe: Comfort Ajibola
Don't be ungrateful, give me a S/O in your first episode and share this with everyone who you think should have a podcast.
If you have any questions/comments please feel free to write them below!!
Create content for what you want to be known for.
1 Comments
It's amazing to have read this is educative indeed and helpful to craft my prototype as a beginner it's a jerk to my courage to begin my ever plan I had been having . This is a great opportunity to many for life improvement.
ReplyDelete