Do you like listening to podcasts? I do! I almost always have a podcast (or YouTube) playing in the background while I work. So much great content to listen to, whether it’s for professional development or entertainment, you’re guaranteed to find something to listen to.
My homie, Ameet, and I used to have a weekly Instagram Live called Marketing Beet (mixture of Bev and Ameet, we’re so clever), but life got in the way and editing the recordings to repost them on YouTube got pretty time consuming. Don’t get me wrong, video IS important, but we decided to take a break after doing our Instagram Live for a year. A couple months ago we decided to venture into podcasting. You can listen to ours here!
Literally, it’s the easiest thing ever. Especially if you don’t have a huge budget and don’t want to buy fancy schmancy equipment like the pros. So here’s how I set up our podcast using the minimum requirements. Maybe it’ll spark an idea for you to start your own!
My Guide to Setting Up a Podcast
Step 1: Find a Podcast Host
The first thing you’ll need, besides an idea and a list of topics, is a place to host your podcast.
You can choose to pay for a podcast host or you can go the free way through Anchor. Some paid options that have great reviews are:
Transistor
Buzzsprout
Podbean
Libsyn
Sign up, set up your podcast profile page and then get ready to upload… But first, you need to record an episode!
Step 2: Get a Mic… or Not
Don’t get caught up in all the tech shit that people say you definitely need to have a podcast. Honestly. The sound shouldn’t be crappy but don’t feel like you have to go out and buy a zillion dollar microphone before you can record an episode. If you’re just dipping your feet into the podcast recording pool, you can literally use earbuds that have a mic connected to it. Will it sound as good as an actual microphone? Probably not, but it will still be good quality!
If you really want to go a step behind earbuds, try this USB microphone, the Snowball. It’s got a budget-friendly price point and you just have to plug it into your computer, no downloading software or anything fancy! You can find it on Amazon or even an electronics store, which is great because you won’t have to go searching everywhere to get your hands on one!
Step 3: Record Your Episode
There’s a couple of ways to do this. If it’s just going to be you, it will be easy peasy to record an episode using the voice recorder feature on your computer. If you’re doing it with a friend, like Marketing Beet, you can use a tool called Zoom. The free version of Zoom allows 2 people to be in a video call for an unlimited amount of time. You just download the Zoom software to your computer and you’re ready.
Don’t forget to hit the record button!
Once you leave the Zoom “meeting”, Zoom will generate a video of your call PLUS an audio file. And it’s obvs the audio file you want to use for the next step!
Step 4: Edit Your Episode
If you’re lucky you’ll only have to do minimal edits. You might want to download some license free music (YouTube Library has a ton) for an intro and an outro and maybe you made some mistakes while recording, so you’ll want to get rid of those!
I use a tool called Wondershare Filmora9 to edit our podcast. It’s made for video editing, but so what? You can legit just edit an audio file then export it to MP3 format. I don’t know if iMovie has the same capability, but you definitely do not need to use super fancy software for editing. The nice thing about Filmora9 is that you can buy a lifetime license, I love that there’s no monthly subscription cost to deal with!
Step 5: Make Cool Podcast Art
Using a free tool like Canva or Visme is an easy way to create a podcast or episode cover to upload along with your episode. If you’re not trained in Photoshop, Canva and Visme are great browser based design tools that have lots of templates to choose from.
Step 6: Upload Your Podcast
Upload your podcast to your podcast host you chose in step 1 of this guide. Create a title for the episode and a description, don’t forget to add in any relevant links like your website and social media handles so listeners can interact with you online.
Step 7: Rinse and Repeat Steps 2-6
Remember to keep it consistent! We upload new episodes of Marketing Beet every Wednesday, but we actually record a lot of episodes at once so we’re able to schedule them to go live. If you can do batch content creation like this, you’ll save so much time and make it easier on yourself to be consistent.
Bonus Step: Get a Professionally Recorded Intro & Outro
If you listen to Marketing Beet, you’ll hear that we have someone reading our intro to the podcast and also the outro to the podcast that reminds people to subscribe. I didn’t pay an arm and a leg for it to be done, I just went on Fiverr and hired a professional from Ontario to do it, I think it costed around $30 CAD.
And that’s it, well besides marketing it but that’s a whole other post. Have questions? Let me know!