- Who is this for? What would your ideal listener be like? What are their challenges? How do they feel because of these challenges? What are their goals?
- What would you talk about and how should that ideally make them feel?
- What do you want them to get at the end of the podcast? Are you giving them any tips sot hat they can act on things? Or are you going to leave them with a new perspective to think about? Or just assure them that they are doing just fine? (It can be all of the above too and it can also vary slightly for each episode. Like one could be about tips, one could be about perspectives etc)
- How do you pick a routine for your podcast? As in are all episodes going to have the same structure? If yes, that makes it predictable for the audience.
- How serious are you about this? You can record with your earphone or get a decent mic for about 1k or go for even better mics to improve the audio. As a general rule better the audio, better the experience.
- How often do you want to do an episode? And how long with each of these be? Once in a week is good enough. Less than that will be too hard
- Who will speak? Just you or will you host guests? (Just you is good because there is not much dependency)
- Where do you want this podcast to be available? Spotify? Learn to host.
- Learn to edit. Download audacity. Record yourself randomly. Learn to do noise cancellation for that clip. This is the only most important editing you will have to learn. And also adding intro/outro music, which is easier
- Can you go to canva and do one version of your poster? How will you market this? Which social media channels can your audience see the updates from? What do you want the feeler of this to be? I chose Instagram. I used to do polls etc
- How long will you be podcasting? Some folks do 100+ episodes. I did about 15. I had very defined space and specific topics to cover. But not all topics are as defined.. you can go on for as long as you’d like. Eg: interviewing entrepreneurs
Some basic things
You don’t have to have 100% clarity before you start. I just knew very clearly that I have a book written but not a lot of people read it. So I’ll convert those book chapters into episodes so that more people consume my content.
I knew my audience, I had all my content planned and I just recorded myself reading those chapters without making it boring.
So if you want more clarity, definitely plan ahead with your topics and revise them as you go. Even write blogs around it if you’d like so that you obtain clarity.
Next is to ensure your batch produce and invest in the right tools. Get your workspace ready by signing up to the right platforms. Know where you’ll post it. Make a logo on Canva and have a template for your posters.
When you record yourself, if it is only you, record multiple episodes together. That’s more productive. After I got a hang of the podcasting I recruited a student to edit and publish my episodes and create posters for me. In return, I have him 1K for his personal website domain name.
I started off by recording just and trailer episode where I said I’m going to podcast. People seemed to like it.. So then I did 3 episodes in a row. And from then I slowed down to one every Saturday.
It is perfectly fine if you don’t exactly know how to go about it and do a few trial episodes to get a sense of whether your audience is liking it. In fact, I would recommend this.
As you plan to get started, I would highly recommend that you listen to a few good podcasts and start thinking from the position of the creator – as to how they are going about creating the podcast.
My personal favs are Dear HBR and Adam Grant’s Work-life.
Want to see how I engaged my audience of Instagram? I’m sharing two-story highlights that were somewhat like my mini journal. You can see my posters too.
Podcasting 1 | Podcasting 2
Listen to my podcast
Need help with planning your podcast? Write to me at hello@aryamurali.com!