Think Before you Podcast

Are you thinking about creating a podcast? Do you know what goes into making a podcast?

Podcasts are growing in popularity. Many people want to start one based on this trend, but may want to better understand what it takes to make one before you dive in. Understanding some podcasting basics can save you a lot of time and money. We will break down the podcast process for you at a high level. If people do not have a plan before they podcast, they can unknowingly put a brand out there that doesn’t align to their vision. This article is intended to help you whether you are a future podcaster or just want to learn more about how podcasts are made. Just like a good movie, there is a series of events that lead to the final production on the big screen. This article will briefly take you through considerations for creating a podcast, as well as time and money factors.

First of all, what is a podcast?

A podcast is defined as:
An audio program in a compressed digital format, delivered via an RSS feed over the Internet to a subscriber and designed for playback on computers or portable digital audio players. Podcasts cover many topics and come in a variety of formats. Most of all the audio format allows you to connect with guests and your audience will feel more connected to you.

Why do you want to create a podcast?

As Simon Sinek will profess, it is always good to start with the why.

• Why do you want to start a podcast?
• Why will people listen to your podcast?
• Will you need to make money or will this be a passion project?
• What makes you listen to a certain podcast?

Really spending time on these questions and making sure your content has a compelling ‘why’ will help as you get started. In addition, I recommend using the business model canvas to understand things like: Key Partners, key activities, customer segments, value position, etc. After you complete this, try changing out the channels with things like LinkedIn articles, comprehensive social media strategies, etc. to take that extra step to make sure a podcast is the best format to express your topic. After you establish a solid reason for creating a podcast, it is important to understand the time commitment to maintain a podcast.

Time Commitments

In order to produce a podcast, there are a clear series of an events that happen. All of them take time to learn and complete. To start, you have a plan on the flow and content, then you record your podcast either live or remote. After that, you need to edit it and add an intro and outro.  Next, you will create the blog article or short form article to summarize the episode that will either be uploaded with your episode or featured on your website.  Finally, you publish your episode, and promote. These high-level steps, or a close combination will all happen before you, or anyone else, hears an opening jingle.

Here is an example of typical steps and empowering tools:

• Recording: Cisco Webex or Skype. Also, a live recording will yield good vivid audio and a stronger connection since you are face to face with the guest.
• Audio Editing: Audacity
• Podcast Publication: Libsyn
• Website Publishing: Square Space or Go Daddy Website Manager
• Social Media: Selecting the right channels to share (Linked In, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc) and the right scheduling tools to plan your posts across all media like Hootsuite
• Guest Relations: Email and Cisco Teams
• Digital Marketing: Google Ads, Leadformly and various web tools to boost
• Active Campaign: Email with Mail Chimp
• General Business Development

Although it is theoretically very simple to record a podcast and roll it out, there is an endless amount to learn from making your audio super crisp to using analytics to guide your business development strategy. As you read these considerations, realize that you either need to take on these responsibilities or outsource them. One pro tip is to create a publishing template to standardize episode naming, tags, articles, and all the images to be consistent. This can help greatly in case you have several people working on your project or just for consistency of episode flow.

In addition, make sure to research the name of your podcast and maybe search the patent office before you invest in branding and a name so you protect it in the future. Definitely check to see if the URL is available or one close enough to relate to your brand.

Also, think about your team. I was lucky to have two diverse women to kick start this project, but to maintain it takes two of us part time about 10 hours/month to dedicate to this project. That is why it is key that you are passionate about it so you can continue to produce episodes beyond the excitement of the launch date. It helps to have the diversity of voice when we are producing the episodes and definitely the teamwork while we maintain the project. The team that is working on it with you should be equally committed. In any team situation, you should consider a working contract that you all agree on as well that potentially outlines profit shares and how big decisions will be made.

Financial Investment

Everyone knows that time is money, but let’s dig into to some of the costs you encounter along the way. Although you can produce and publish for ‘free’, there are limits to the free space, posts, and general cost considerations. To give a real example, after three years of a podcast here are the main cost categories we have encountered:

•  Equipment
• Sound Cloud Storage
•  Libsyn Storage
• URL Purchase
• Website Domain
• Social Media Boosting
• Digital Marketing Tools

Clearly, these things take money, so that will drive a plan to monetize your podcast so it can pay for itself. This is tricky, but again there is lots of content out there to dive deeper and entire courses as well on turning a fprofit.

For example, check out this podcast monetization blog: here.

Besides the time and money it takes to publish a podcast, one underestimated area is guest or content management. When you really want to create something that stays fresh and relevant, it will require you to find new guests or develop full content on new topics constantly. This can be challenging, so start thinking about it to see if the topics area is something you can maintain for 50 episodes? 500 episodes?

This will also end up being the same for the podcasts you decide to listen to. As long as the content is solid and consistently good, you will continue to listen to it. Think about the longevity of topic content you can produce when considering a podcast. Creating a podcast can be rewarding, but taking these steps before you jump in will pay off in the long run. Now that you understand the key considerations for a podcast, you will be able to design your own podcast plan or have more appreciation for all the work that the podcasters dedicate to provide you hours of inspiration.

Happy Podcasting!

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About the Author

Nicole Scheffler, a member of the AWC Detroit Professional Chapter,  has worked across business units in various engineering roles within Cisco for over 12 years. and now leads Engineering Strategy for Americas Partner Organization.  She holds a Masters degree in Information Technology from University of North Texas.  She has also been an Adjunct Professor at Davenport University and Lansing Community College in various networking and security courses.  Nicole also highlights other women in tech with her Diva Tech Talk podcast and has founded two community organizations for technology locally. The podcast is available by searching ‘Diva Tech Talk’ on your favorite podcast channel or available directly from the website: www.DivaTechTalk.com.

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