Everything You Need to Know About Making a Podcast
Published on Wednesday 4 December 2024
A podcast is kind of like radio-on-demand. Listening to podcasts is only getting more and more popular, and the number of people that want to start their own podcast is growing every day. In this article, we’ll explain the basics of podcasting and not only show you how you can make your own podcast, but how to become a better podcaster while you’re at it.
What’s a Podcast?
A podcast is like an online radio broadcast. While some podcasts are filmed as well, it’s primarily about audio, so don’t worry about video cameras. Some podcasts are recorded live, while others are pre-recorded. Usually, episodes will have an overarching theme, which can help create a fixed fanbase.
Different Types of Podcasts
Just like a radio broadcast, a podcast can be about anything. The way that the content is presented can widely vary too. Some podcasters include long monologues on the topic they’re interested in, while other hosts stick exclusively to one-to-one interviews or interviews with talking heads that are experts in a specific field, like sports, politics, psychology, etc. Some podcasts are scripted but most podcasts are improvised.
Story-Based Podcasts and More
Some podcasts are all about storytelling, either in long-form or short-form, and about fiction or nonfiction. You can be creative here and, for instance, tell the true story of an old murder case and furnish it with interviews, audio fragments, music and more.
Videotaped Podcasts
Now that podcasts have been around for a while, more and more podcasts are popping up where every episode is filmed. As said before, it’s mainly about the audio, so unless you need video so your audience can make sense of your podcast, you don’t actually need a video camera. What’s interesting is that the use of cameras also blurs the line between podcasters and YouTubers.
Podcasting for Beginners
Can anyone start a podcast? Sure! All you basically need is a computer, phone or tablet, an internet connection and a microphone, which can even be the built-in microphone of a laptop or phone. The audio quality may not be optimal, but if you have really interesting thoughts or stories to share, people will tune in regardless. That said, listeners do value more professional audio. Thankfully, a good-sounding microphone won’t set you back a ton of cash and will massively upgrade the sound of your podcast.
What Do You Need to Get Started?
Honestly, not a whole lot. Let’s sum it up.
Bare minimum:
- A device to record and publish the podcast on, like a computer or mobile device.
- Software or an app designed for recording and editing audio.
- A website or platform to upload your podcast to.
Highly recommended:
- A good microphone.
We’ll look at the gear you need in more detail in a bit.
How to Start Podcasting
Here’s a trope for you: well begun is half done. While figuring things out as you go is one way to go about starting a podcast, it’s always better to come up with a plan first. Start by deciding the theme that your podcast revolves around and then draw up a roadmap of episodes that you want to do, including the topic for each episode. Then, figure out the talking points for each episode and your plan of attack. Is there any field research required? Will you need to interview certain people or experts? How long should each episode be? And so on. If you do it this way, you’ll never run out of inspiration halfway through a season. What’s more, it keeps things interesting for your listeners, but more on how to keep listeners engaged in a bit!
More Tips
Podcast Gear: Building Your Own Studio
You don’t need a lot of hardware to get into podcasting. A laptop or phone can be enough, because you can just use the built-in microphone to record audio. That being said, the audio quality of a built-in microphone might leave much to be desired. Luckily, there are various ways that you can upgrade your podcasting set-up.
Podcast Microphones
- The biggest upgrade would be getting a better microphone. If you go for a USB microphone, you can plug it directly into your computer — no audio interface needed. Most USB microphones are compatible with Windows and Mac, but always double-check the specifications.
- Want to use your phone or tablet? Then go for an iOS/Android microphone. Again, always double-check the specifications so you’re guaranteed that the microphone supports your mobile device of choice.
Other Essential Bits of Kit
You’ll immediately notice that a purpose-designed microphone gives your voice more depth and definition, and makes your podcast sound more professional. You can even refine the audio quality a bit more with the following tips:
- Plosive consonants like Ps and Fs can sound unnecessarily loud through a microphone. You can counter this by using a pop filter or a windshield that’s compatible with your microphone.
- If possible, record your podcast in a room with as little natural reverb as possible. The drier the sound, the more professional it’ll sound. If you can’t afford professional acoustic treatment, then record in a room that has curtains and carpet. You could also cover the walls with soft material like blankets.
- Position your microphone close to your mouth. This way, you won’t have to increase the input volume, making it capture less background noise and natural reverb. A broadcast microphone stand is a solid solution.
Even More Tips
Recording and Editing Podcasts
App for Phones and Tablets: Spotify for Podcasters
The Spotify for Podcasters app for iOS/Android is a free and easy tool for recording podcasts. While the built-in editing features aren’t too extensive, it’s a surprisingly useful app. What’s especially practical is that you can upload your podcast with the app as well.
Software for Windows, Mac and Linux: Audacity
Audacity is a free piece of audio editing and recording software that’s supported by Windows, Mac and Linux. If you have a Macbook or iMac, then Garageband (also free) is another great option. To keep things simple, we’ll focus on Audacity only. Here’s a quick rundown of how to record audio using Audacity.
Prefer a paid alternative? Check out our DAW software.
- Installation: Go to the Audacity website, select your operating system, then download and install the software.
- Picking a microphone: After booting up the software, you have to select an input source (e.g. a USB microphone or the built-in microphone of your laptop). In addition, you need to set Recording Channels to Mono.
- Testing: Find the microphone icon at the top and click on it to test your microphone. Create a habit of having the input level meter stay below -6dB when you’re speaking in your normal talking voice. This way, the sound won’t immediately distort when you speak loudly. If the sound is too loud, then you can adjust the input level using the slider on the side.
- Recording: Hit the red record button and create a test recording. Hit the stop button to stop recording.
- Checking your recording: It’s a good idea to double-check your recording to make sure that the input volume is on point. If it’s too loud, the sound might get distorted or warped. You can check your recording via the View menu. Select ‘Show Clipping’ to identify any excessive loud parts and, if there are any, make sure to lower the microphone volume next time.
- Deleting a recording: You can delete the test recording via the Edit menu (select ‘Undo’).
- Saving a recording: You can save your recordings via the File menu (select ‘Save Project’). Bear in mind that Audacity projects can only be opened using Audacity. Finished projects can be exported to create a file that’s compatible with other software.
- Exporting a recording: You can export a recording via the File menu. Select ‘Export’ and export the recording in the preferred format, e.g. MP3. MP3s are used universally and keep the file size small. The downside is that you sacrifice a bit of audio quality, but that’s nothing to worry about for fresh-faced podcasters.
You can obviously do a lot with Audacity, like copying and pasting chunks of audio and recording to multiple tracks. The steps outlined above are simply a quick and dirty tutorial.
More Info
Multi-Microphone Podcast Set-Ups
Whether you’re all sitting at the same table or you’re meeting up online via Skype, Zoom or Teams, it’s crucial that you’re well prepared so that everyone can be clearly heard and recorded. For optimum audio quality, it’s best to give everyone their own microphone if you’re all in the same room, which requires an audio interface with enough microphone inputs. When it comes to talks and interviews that take place online, you need to find a way to get the audio from all ends to your recording software. One of the most commonly used solutions for Windows users is a program called VoiceMeeter in combination with VB AudioCable. If you’re running MacOS, then you can go for Loopback by Rogue Amoeba. Use the Spotify for Podcasters app mentioned earlier? Then getting online guests on your podcast is as simple as sending out an invite via the app.
More Info
Putting a Podcast Online
If you’re serious about podcasting, you can do the following:
Free Podcast Account
- Upload episodes in the form of an audio file (e.g. MP3) to a podcast host/platform (e.g. Spotify, Buzzsprout or Spreaker). With Spotify, it’s important to remember that you can’t use any copyrighted music on your podcasts.
- Register your podcast to Apple Podcasts or Google Podcasts. You only need to do this once. After that, you can upload new episodes. Anyone who’s subscribed to your podcast will get a notification when you put a new episode online.
Can I Also Upload My Podcast to YouTube?
Sure. Any platform that you can upload audio to will work. The only thing is that a platform like YouTube requires a video file. If you don’t have any video to add to your podcast, you can just convert your MP3s (audio) into MP4s (video) using something like Online Converter to add an image. You can then upload the MP4 file to YouTube and start sharing your podcast via social media.
So Publishing a Podcast is Free?
It is if you do it as described above!
How to Make a Good Podcast
You can make a podcast about literally anything, so pick a topic that interests you. From there, it’s about growing your audience, keeping your listeners engaged, and making sure they can’t wait for you to drop a fresh episode.
Have Something to Say
While you could talk about what you had for breakfast this morning, that’s probably not going to do it for most listeners. You need to talk about something that you’re really passionate about and have a lot to say about. Got a really interesting topic that you don’t know much about yet? Then be sure to read up on it. Talk to experts. Watch videos about it on YouTube. Go out and experience it. Hell, you could even listen to a podcast about it.
Make Things Interesting
Even a really interesting topic can be made even more interesting. After all, a good story told by a bad storyteller isn’t going to get people hanging on to their words. Some people are born raconteurs and others aren’t. Luckily, storytelling is a skill that you can work on. And if you’re thinking that you don’t care about storytelling because you just want to gush about your hobbies, then think again. Whether you like it or not, people love a good story, which is not to say that your entire podcast should consist of stories only. Simply borrowing from a few storytelling techniques can make your podcast much more appealing to a much bigger audience. Here are some tips.
- Almost every story is about a dynamic character, so about a protagonist that undergoes change of some sort. Say your podcast episode is about learning to play the ukulele. While you could simply list the steps (purchasing a ukulele, tuning it up, playing your first chord, etc), things get much more interesting if you can frame the info around a protagonist, which can be someone you know, or someone you made up for the sake of the episode. This protagonist (be sure to give them a name) has never played an instrument before and feels a bit insecure at first, doubting their music-making skills. Slowly but surely, they find out they’re not all that bad at it, and that getting to grips with the ukulele is just a matter of practising and going to experienced players for tips and tricks. That’s the change they undergo, and that makes for a story. Needless to say, this is just a short-and-basic example. You can embellish things as you see fit. The big takeaway here is that minor storytelling elements can make your podcasts much more appealing.
- Plainly listing facts isn’t very appealing, not to mention that it makes the info harder to remember. A better way to engage listeners is to focus on their feelings, emotions and senses. Talk about things that can be felt and experienced. About things that can be seen, heard and smelled. So, instead of talking about how your friend played on his ukulele for half an hour, talk about how desperate he became after his fingers started hurting so much that he felt like tossing his little pink uke out the window.
- Zoom in on details. “After a while, the fingers of his left hand started hurting. He looked at them and noticed the deep marks carved into his fingertips — except for his little finger because he didn’t need it for the three basic ukulele chords that he had been drilling for over 35 minutes now. He looks at his watch. It’s bedtime. He can’t wait to pick it back up in the morning.”
See Also
Having People on the Show
You can make your podcast much more dynamic by having people on the show, either via Skype or by having them over in person. The specifics are up to you. Some podcasters prefer to dedicate an entire episode to interviewing one person, while others tell their own story supported by snippets from an interview. Whatever you do, make sure you talk to someone who’s got something to say. Every good interviewer knows that everyone has something to say, it’s just that sometimes, it’s a matter of putting them at ease and asking the right questions. That said, proper interviewing isn’t something you can learn in a day. At the very least, you need to do your due diligence and come prepared, so see what you can find out online about the person before you interview them. If you’re interviewing a friend or a family member, then you obviously won’t need to do any research, but you will want to put them at ease. An interview can be a bit intimidating so be sure to create a chill vibe without resorting to in-jokes and chit chat about things that you normally talk about. In other words, don’t shut out your listeners.
See Also
Plan and Edit
Even if you’re a smooth talker, that doesn’t necessarily mean that people like listening to you ramble endlessly. That’s why it’s always a good idea to come up with a plan. After deciding on the overarching theme for all of the episodes (e.g. music), you’ll want to come up with a roadmap for the various episodes so you can zoom in on specific topics. If music’s your main topic, then you can easily split the episodes into subtopics like the history of musical instruments, famous musicians, the various styles, and so on. Stick to a consistent schedule (e.g. one episode every two weeks during the next six months) and flesh out the episodes with detailed, emotion-evoking stories, interviews and more, using the tips mentioned earlier. You also have to decide if you want to write it all out and narrate your episodes, or if you want to write down keywords and speak more freely. Writing a script for each episode might seem like a ton of work, but so is editing an improvised episode. And yes, some podcasters can get it right in a single take, without any notes and without things getting boring or stale, which is pretty impressive. Of course, using a script can come with a few downsides too: it can get monotonous and leaves less room for jokes and spontaneity. Anyway, what’s most important is that you cut out all of the bits that don’t add anything to the episode. You can either do so by scripting each episode, or by editing the recordings. Whichever road you take, remember that it’s quite a bit of work, but the results will be worth it. You’ll also get better at it as you go, and your listeners will no doubt be grateful.
Tone of Voice
As far as the right tone of voice goes, we can be brief: stick to your natural voice. You’re not reading the news, you’re not voice-acting and you’re not recording the voice-over for a commercial. The only thing you need to ensure is that you’re intelligible. If you’re receiving feedback from listeners who complain about not being able to understand what you’re saying, then you’ve got something you need to work on. This problem can have one of two causes:
- You’re speaking too fast. Make sure to listen back to the recordings and try to slow down. Continue asking for feedback from listeners and you’ll quickly get better at this. Also, some podcasters can speak extremely fast without sounding unintelligible, which comes down to good articulation. That said, talking fast isn’t necessarily better. Fast speakers often lose the melody in their sentences at the expense of ‘feeling’, making them sound more dull. In short, don’t act like you’re someone you’re not. Stick to your ‘own’ voice.
- You’re not articulating properly. While slightly sloppy articulation can add a personal touch to your podcast if that’s simply the way you sound naturally, slurring will make you completely unintelligible. If your articulation could do with improving, then stick a cork between your upper and lower teeth before you start recording your podcast and try reading a short text while you attempt to articulate the words as well as you can. Obviously, you won’t be able to at all, but keep trying! After a minute or so, take out the cork and you’ll notice that your articulation is noticeably better than before. The effect is only temporary, so your articulation will fall off again as the podcast goes on. This is normal, but if you work on your articulation every day, you’ll make strides in no time and get lasting results.
The Optimum Distance From the Microphone
The farther away you sit from the microphone, the thinner your voice will sound, and the more background noise – like passing cars and the sound of your laptop’s cooling fan – is picked up. The fullness of your voice is partly a matter of taste, so feel free to experiment with it a little. As a rule of thumb, try maintaining a 15-to-20 centimetre gap between your mouth and the microphone. This is roughly the distance between your thumb and little finger when you spread your hand.
More Tips
Marketing: How to Make a Successful Podcast
Listeners aren’t going to be magically attracted to your podcast as soon as you publish the first episode. There’s so much choice that most people who are browsing through the list of available podcasts will overlook it.
Quality over Quantity
If you’re dreaming of a large fan base, then you’ll need to continue improving your podcast. We’re not just talking about the quality of your microphone here, but the quality of the content. Set your enthusiasm and creativity free and aspire to make every next episode better than the previous one.
Gaining an Initial Audience
So, listeners don’t automatically flock to your podcast, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t get your actual listeners to stick around. Start by telling your family, friends, colleagues, house mates and everyone else you know about your podcast. This group of people will be the most willing to give your podcast a chance. In addition to putting the word out via social media, you’ll also want to approach people personally — without being too pushy, of course. Just be honest and say you’re working on a podcast and want to grow your audience a bit. Or even better, ask them for feedback. Usually, people are honoured that they’re asked to give their opinion on someone’s work, which increases the odds of them thoroughly listening to your podcast. Also, if you then take their feedback to heart, you give them a reason to listen to another episode so they can see if you’ve actually done something with the feedback. In short: get the word out, keep it personal, and persist. Hopefully, you can pique people’s interest and turn them into loyal listeners that can help create some buzz!
More Tips
See Also
» Audio Interfaces
» Mixers
» USB Microphones
» Condenser Vocal Microphones
» Dynamic Vocal Microphones
» Portable Recorders
» Pop Filters
» Reflection Filters
» Studio Headphones
» Absorbers
» Broadcast Microphone Stands
» Microphone Floor Stands
» Microphone Desktop Stands
» XLR Cables
» What Are the Best Audio Cables For Me?
» What’s the Best Microphone Stand for Me?
» What’s the Best Windshield or Pop-Filter for Me?
» What is the best USB microphone for me?
» What is the best studio microphone for me?
» What’s the Best Microphone Shockmount for Me?
» What’s the Best Audio Interface for Me?
» Tips for Keeping Podcast Production Costs Down
» Finding the Right Guest for Your Podcast
» How to Tell a Good Story on Your Podcast
» How to Use Your Voice as a Podcaster
» How to Get More People Listening to Your Podcast
» How to Get Into Podcasting
» Editing Podcasts: Cutting, Correcting, Enhancing, Limiting and Adding Music
» Record Your Own Voiceover
» Common Voice-Over Problems: 5 Pro-Tips
» How to Record an Audiobook
» The Mixer: Functions & Connections Explained
» How To Make a Pro-Grade Podcast on a Budget
» How to Record a Podcast with Guests
» How Loud You Should Record Audio
» Plug Two USB Microphones to One Computer? Is That Possible?
» So, Can You Connect a Microphone to Your Computer?
» What’s The Best DAW For Beginners?
» How to Record Audio on a Budget
» Podcasting Tips and the Gear You Need to Make it Happen
» Polar Patterns Explained
» Compression: What is it and How Do You Use it?
No comments yet...