Find the original archive of the video here: Podcasting Your Way to Profitability | Google and Beyond Webinar Archive.

Podcasting Your Way to Profitability

Podcasting is the new radio. It’s here, and it’s here to stay. The demand for audio content outpaces video content for many reasons (most importantly is that you can’t watch videos while driving, walking, running, bicycling, and in many other situations where you can listen to audio).

With the proliferation of smartphones in every pocket, and now home audio assistant devices (like Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and more) coming to homes and offices, audio is primed to be the content medium of choice for everyone. And, that means that Small Business has one of the greatest opportunities to get in the podcast market to spread the word locally or nationally about their products or services!

In this Webinar, we covered:
– Best-practices for planning a podcast with a marketing strategy that helps you make money;
– How to choose the right technology and equipment for your podcast; and,
– For those who don’t want to start a podcast, the secret to becoming a podcaster without launching a podcast.

These Webinars are hosted by the Virginia Small Business Development Center Network and presented by Ray Sidney-Smith, Author of “SoLoMo Success” (available on Amazon Kindle and paperback), Digital Marketing Strategist, and Managing Director of W3C Web Services, providing affordable Web hosting, Managed WordPress, email, domain and other related services for Small Business.

Raw Text Transcript

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Good afternoon my name is traced and I am with the Virginia S.B.D.C. I’m your facilitator for today’s weapon our for those of you who are not familiar with the Virginia S.B.D.C. is the largest and most effective provider of customized counseling and medication for small businesses and Virginia most of our services are offered locally in twenty eight locations throughout the commonwealth todays web an R. Is one of our educational offerings and as part of our ongoing web in our series Google and beyond marketing the man as you know on the web Today’s topic is pod casting first small business all of our Google and beyond webinars are presented by race that makes man a web and mobile strategist author of a solo most so low most success social media local and Web a small business marketing strategy explained president up to three consulting if you have any questions during the presentation please type those questions into the question window and Ray will do his best to answer them without further ado here is racist. Thank you Tracy and thank you she Virginia S.P.C. network for having me here on the web in our series so welcome everybody today we’re going to be talking about podcasting for small business as Tracy said and so this is the time that if you have a question feel free to ask those questions and we will reserve some time after the weapon are going to actually talk straight through this material it’s got a lot of information to share with you today so we’re going to we’re going to hold questions probably to the end but please ask questions along the way and I’ll be happy to answer them afterward on please feel free to follow me at three consulting and hash tag it be for us and be enough to let me know that’s about podcasting for small business I’ll be able to answer your questions on Twitter I am a Twitter person so I love talking and answering on Twitter but if you are not on Twitter feel free to shoot me an email I have my email address on the final slide as well follow at Virginia S.B.D.C. and that’s where they put out new information and resources and programs and events for you throughout the Commonwealth so make sure to follow at Virginia S.B.D.C. For those kinds of updates as well so with that housekeeping out of the way let’s kick into it the first thing I want to impress upon everybody is that podcasting is a twenty plus year old technology and in those twenty years it has been flourishing in relative obscurity but we are at an inflection point with regard to pod casting and so I cannot make this more you know emphatic podcasting is not a fad podcasting is here to stay and podcasting is going to be one of the most powerful marketing platforms that exist at that ever existed for small business businesses and there are really a strong number of indicators as well as some really great reasons for that being the case and I’m going to make the business case for that as we make our way through this afternoon’s web and are as you can see on the screen there is this is just one slide out of a larger presentation provided by Edison Research and I put the source there on the screen if you go to that website link you will see all of the information related to podcasts but the primary thing that I want you to take away from this data if you want to really dive into the data and look at all the statistics about podcasting is that podcasts are listen to a wide variety wide swath of the American population they are also people the people who listen to podcasts listen to a lot of podcasts right today we know that roughly about every regular podcast listener listens to about seven podcasts per week most podcast listeners are like I said they’re highly educated they are affluent they make it at least seventy five to one hundred something thousand dollars a year in household income and these are split demographics in terms of gender so you have half you know just about half male half female and and. It’s a it’s a good percentage of the population we currently know that about a quarter of the population listens to a podcast regularly and and those that quarter of the population so if there are three hundred twenty two million people on the planet a quarter of that you do the math and and that’s the buying population of luxury goods and services but also every day goods and services as well so a really you know keen population that you want to go after and it’s going to be much bigger than that soon but that’s the current statistics current data on podcast or podcast listeners throughout the world now there are a number of reasons why podcasting is growing and I want to cover a little bit of that today one is that podcasting for all that it is in terms of obscurity it is it is and having had flourished in obscurity for so long there are a number of reasons for that right podcasting is a highly technical tool that people have to kind of know where to look in order to be able to find it it’s not seamless to serendipitously or easily you know access podcasts and you have to kind of understand what the podcasts are going to find podcasts very soon and then you’ll get a better idea as to why it’s it has been so obscure why people haven’t jumped into the pod casting waters another reason for the growth in pod casting is the fact that we now have smart home devices so this Edison Research actually talks about the availability of Smart home devices in homes but also the smart technology within smartphones right So currently we have roughly about I think it’s eighty three percent saturation of smartphones in the U.S. market right so about more than eighty percent of the people in the United States have a smartphone which means they have access to the Internet on their mobile device that are carrying around in their pocket all day long so little computer in their pocket internet connected and so podcasts are now available to them where they weren’t wants. Right but beyond that we have we have Google home we have Amazon Alexa we have all kinds of Google Amazon assistant you know enabled devices and these you know products that are now sitting in our homes and now we could just ask Alexa or we can ask our our Google homes for a pot cast and then we can listen to it so it’s now reduced the barrier to entry to a simple verbal command and and that has of course dramatically increased the popularity and availability of podcasts the the next wave of pod casting though is really going to be thanks to Google So Google has just a few weeks ago. Announced through an interview with Pacific content company that interviewed them about the idea that they want to double the number of podcasts listeners in the U.S. in the next couple years which means they’re going to create this floodgate of new listeners to podcasting that otherwise we weren’t there before so that’s obviously going to change the demographics it’s going to bring more Americans into the fold which means more middle income and potentially lower income people to pop casting and that’s fantastic that means it’s a bigger voice a bigger platform for you as a small business owner to be able to to access your specific audience with your marketing platform that is pod casting so I really recommend diving into the Edison Research stuff here this is why I left this on screen for so long so you could you could scribble it down and go over there look at the demographics and see who’s listening to podcasts right now in their behaviors and then and then look to see whether or not that’s something that would make sense for you but remember that over the next couple of years Google has plans of really making podcasting widespread they’ve already implemented some of that stuff the ability to to listen to podcasts without even. Installing application making podcasts a part of the search engine so now you actually have a you know where you normally would see in Google search you have your normal omni search you have maps you have shopping you have images you have video well now you’re going to have a pod casting section of the Google search you know results page so we’re going to see huge number of people now capable of accessing podcasts in a way that that weren’t available to it before so it’s an exciting time to be in podcasting but remember podcasting is is going to be around for the long term it’s not something that is just a passing fad technology. All right so today’s webinars going to be done in several parts and in part one would like to do is talk about podcasting and the multimedia content marketing strategy I’ll talk a little bit about the history of podcasting and then the equipment that’s going to be necessary I’m going to breeze through these things so I apologize I can’t go deep in this and this weapon are into each of these things I’m just going to gently touch them so you know that that there are things you need to take note of and and then you can do the research on the back end or of course you feel free to email me and I’ll be happy to either give you a resource or provide you with someone who can help you move that that piece forward so let’s kick into multimedia content marketing when it comes to podcasting podcasting is really about in the digital age appealing to two different audiences you want to be able to appeal to your target markets right you want to you want to be able to get humans to know like and trust you and podcasting is amazing tool for being able to do that and you want to be able to appeal to Google and the other search engines right you want to be able to put content on the web that Google and the other search engines can see give you credit for and drive traffic to your websites right that’s the whole point of having a website is to be able to get people to it for them to buy into your brand message then know that they have a wide. Felt want or need about your product or service and then convert them from just a lead in to a potential buyer you know someone who is you know going to contact you make make some kind of introduction of themselves to you and then for you to be able to close the deal OK and pod casting allows you to do all of those things all wrapped up in one neat little audio package. The content you give on a podcast establishes credibility of course when someone finds you via Google because if you are ranking on Google that means your ranking above somebody else right in naturally gives you credibility because of all the possible people who could have been surface by Google Google chose you right it’s kind of like every time someone finds you through Google search you’ve kind of won the Google lottery and podcasts now that they have their own section with a Google search is going to start letting you rise through the ranks because there aren’t a lot of there are likely are a lot of POD casters in your industry in your location so this is something I want to make sure you’re all aware of if you want to start a nationwide or international global pod cast that’s perfectly fine everything I want to talk about is going to be going to be relative but who I’m talking to right now today is I’m hoping you are a local business and you’re trying to get your local products or services sold and whether that’s B. To B. Or B. To C. Business to business or business a consumer this is going to give you the opportunity to be able to establish credibility when someone finds you via google OK And again this is whether someone searching globally or locally you can you can set up your podcast to be found in either you know modality. Next when someone finds you in a podcast directory so podcasts have directories where you can find this content and and subscribe to that continent listen to it all inside of those directories so i Tunes of course at. I Tunes is the largest podcast directory currently and so so people want to make sure that they create valuable content for their podcast and properly optimize that content write writing the appropriate keywords and write descriptions and so on so forth and putting out enough content to be you know recognized by those platforms so that you rise in the search engine rankings of those podcast directories as well and finally the ability to pod cast gives you the opportunity to meet people before you meet truly meet them right so it’s kind of akin to right now you know you’re not seeing me face to face you’re only hearing my audio here on the web an hour but in essence I’m talking to you right and there may be many of you on the web an hour right now or if you’re watching the archive your watch your your it’s just you watching the archive but I’m talking to you yeah you the one is looking at the screen right now right and that’s the power pot casting your recording in an asynchronous timeframe that is you’re not talking in real time and you know bilaterally because I’m just talking to you I can’t hear you but I am talking specifically to you only you even though many other people can hear at the same time so that’s how people feel the intimacy of podcasting And and so remember that you are in someone’s ears you know so there’s a majority of people who listen to podcasts at home and those people frequently will listen with ear buds in you can actually it’s funny you can see these these skits online and so and so forth and people have these anecdotes about families who are all listening to podcasts or listening to different types of entertainment and they all have their ear buds in listening to different things right and that just shows how culture is changing House site is changing we all want to be entertained exactly the way we want to and podcasting allows for that so you know sun. Daughter might be watching different shows on You Tube mom and dad might be listening to two different podcasts all sitting there in the living room together silent right so the reality is that podcasting is a very intimate medium and you are literally in your listeners head there’s a lot of science around the fact that you can’t listen to two things at once and fully focus on those things you’ve got to you’ve got to focus on one of those things because your brain can’t process that much information at once and interpret it and synthesize analyze then you know comprehend retain and you know reacts us that information recall it so your brain has to cut its losses on something so if you’re listening to me talking right now and you’re actually focus and focusing on what I’m saying then you can’t be listening to somebody else or another conversation going on because it’s just too difficult for your brain to do maybe in a hundred you know thousand years maybe a million years of evolution will give us the ability to bifurcate our our hemispheres of our brain will be able to to listen to two conversations at once and I’m fully commit both of those processing power but right now today you can only really listen to one thing at a time which means that when you have a podcast listeners attention you have their attention and that’s a really powerful marketing opportunity how many times do you have a chance to fully have your customer potential customers full time and attention it’s only when they’re standing in front of you right maybe standing with you that you could do that or you have them on the phone but now think about being able to broadcast that kind of intimacy across many many more potential customers. Remember that producing audio content for four hundred cast purposes is almost purely for human consumption that some day Google and the other search engines will trans. Scriber in some way shape or form analyze the text of audio to be able to understand what is in the audio but right now when you produce an audio file for podcasts it’s just for the human the computer doesn’t know what that file is so we have to do all of the other work maining putting text elements around the podcast right so that Google and i Tunes and the other podcast directories and the other search engines know what that audio file is all about now it’s important for me probably here to recognize to kind of inform you that a pod cast is for all intents and purposes I’ll explain what a podcast is but the the really you know granular concept of the podcast is that a podcast is nothing more than a blog post with an audio file attached to it in a special way OK so you’ve a blog post an audio file attached to it so that means the text elements are all the things you would do for SEO purposes of a regular blog post and we’ve done webinars on this topic before so I’m not going to repeat myself but basically you’re going to use the text elements with good search engine optimization for blogging purposes for the blog post component of your podcast and in the local businesses perspective you’re going to localize your content so that it is tailored for Google to find you locally right so if you are a small business in Roanoke Virginia you’re going to obviously be talking about things in Roanoke and mentioning people places and things in Roanoke so that so that the search engine knows that this is about Roanoke you know and if you’re an Tidewater of Virginia Beach or in Danville or you know Charlottesville doesn’t matter you’re going to write about the neighborhoods and localities and towns and country counties that. Our situate around you plus landmarks and otherwise so that the text elements localise you for Google because that’s what people are looking for they’re looking for local content to buy your local products and services. All right very quickly I want to talk about the the specific definition I use for podcasting and a brief history of pod casts so podcasting or the non. Trademarked term podcasting is actually trademarked but Mark trademark by Apple service markets it’s a service mark of Apple because of the Apple i Pod Pod But but Apple allows people to use podcast and podcasting and now they don’t they don’t send you know cease and desist desist letters like they used to people so you can use the term podcasting without an issue with a neutral term the non-licensed term has been known as net casting for Internet broadcasting the portmanteau of Internet broadcasting and so basically podcast is the automated medium for audio video or other digital files like a P.D.F. or you know image of some kind or something like Le slide deck you can put a peak Power Point deck into a inch to a syndicated feed that are delivered to listeners watchers or readers on a regular basis it’s just serialized on tent that is that is digital OK So this is very similar to a magazine right you subscribe to a magazine and every month every week every quarter something like that you get the magazine delivered and then you read the magazine this is the digital equivalent of a magazine like that periodical like that as opposed to say of a blog which is is a serialized form of content but for smaller for smaller format write a blog post is going to be you know three to six hundred words and is going to be much smaller in terms of. Scope and it’s set more often. And the podcast is kind of that relative next point OK Of course Google in the search engines are Hungry Hungry Hippos as I like to say and so they’re always trying to gobble up the balls on the table on the game board and so pod casting now has kind of require that you have a faster publishing schedule so that you can Feed the Hungry Hungry Hippos so you might have a weekly podcast right just like you would have a weekly blog post schedule so so dissimilar to magazines that might be probably monthly or quarterly or otherwise we’re going to do it on a more more expedited basis more frequent basis OK I’m going to focus on audio podcasts because that’s the predominant podcasts that are out there and there but just know that there are other podcasts formats you know where people do video it’s very rare but people do do video podcast people to do P.D.F. stuff I guess like authors novelists will will release a chapter you know like once a month or something like that and have a serialized novel release so you can do really cool things with podcasts but the typical understanding of a podcast is the audio downloaded audio audio content and this is really the powerful part right because you can download a podcast you can’t usually download a youtube video or download other kinds of streaming content the thing that differentiates a podcast is that I can download that file and then disconnect from the Internet and have that content still available to me wherever I might be so if I want to go take a road trip and I know I’m going to go through spotty you know poor areas of the countryside while downloading the podcast means that I’m not going to lose that content when I get on the road because it’s downloaded to the actual computer locally the. I Phone right or could be a computer but the idea now is that I have the content on my phone I have it on my device and I can go off and do what I want to do and I’m not going to have to worry about being connected to the Internet Plus it’s cheaper if I download it on my wife I you know I’m already paying for my wife five but if it’s if it’s downloading over so you a data I may have to pay more to download all that data on the cellular network so be very very efficient for accessing content now and I can go ahead and say I want to listen to only these three shows I want to listen to only these episodes of that show you get to basically customize your own audio programming for entertainment education and otherwise and that’s the power of podcasting power pod casting allows you to be able to create bespoke kind of radio like access to entertainment and information and it’s excessive goal offline when you want it to be different from any other platform like. All right podcasting was actually created by the two gentlemen on the screen actually the gentleman on the right David Wiener I believe is a Harvard fellow or former Harvard fellow who coded the language or helped to code the language that eventually became the R.S.S. two point zero specifications that is the technology that underpins how websites tell. Other servers that are looking for podcasts that there is a media enclosure that there’s a digital file available that is a podcast OK so he developed that technology and wrote the language in in code for that to happen the gentleman on the left is out of the jury the former M.T.V. video jockey the M.T.V. V.J. and the two of them had started a podcast together in the early days of podcasting and they are known as the pod fathers the. Fathers of podcasting like the Godfather’s pasta casting and so these are the projected years of of the of the podcasting space there’s lots of conflict over who was the first podcast and who was you know really podcasting versus doing Internet radio which Internet radio is a different thing and so there’s some conflict over that but these guys are the ones who really got the movement started and so let’s talk a little bit about how this all works I’m going to again I’m going to pick up the pace here so I apologize that on glazing over some of these things but but again feel free to email me if you have specific questions are asked questions in the panel and I’ll be happy to answer them after we break social a sitting so socialism is kind of the first step in the process this of getting started with pop up podcasting And the reason for that is that if you don’t listen to podcasts you don’t understand what podcasting is all about so you have to listen in order to really understand so I want you to go out there and do some social listening what I want you to do is I want you go to i Tunes i Tunes is a free application that you can install on mac and windows and and then once you install on backing windows you can go into the pod cast store as it’s called and you can search for pod casts that relate to your personal interests or your professional interests so if your you work in H.R. recruiting you would look for a human resources podcast or two or three you would then if you are if you are in sales if you are in retail if you are in whatever industry or business write whatever thought leader you are a subject matter expert or you know the industry that you serve you go look for podcasts that relate to those topics and go subscribe to them listen to them see what they’re doing and start to get a feel for what’s going on. The next step is to go out there and as I said I have been comments here reading commenting on podcasts and blogs the reason I say and blogs is because podcasts are basically blog posts with audio attached so blogs just like a blog or any blog post you have comments that you can comment on and have a conversation right so what I want you to do is I want you be reading those podcasts episode pages and I’ll talk about those in a little bit and I want you to read and comment on them I want you to engage in the conversation with those people the reason you’re going to learn what works what doesn’t work you’re going to potentially be invited to be a podcast guest on those and I’ll talk about why that’s so important shortly you’ll you’ll start to interact and engage with your future podcast audience right because some of those people who are listening to that podcast are probably going to want to listen to your podcast as well as I said at the top most people who listen to a podcast listen to at least seven podcasts a week so they are hungry for content and would probably enjoy listening to your podcast as well as just like was reading you don’t just read one author’s work and then decide I’m only reading Stephen King and I don’t read any other author in the world right if you read J.K. Rowling You probably read a whole wide variety of different kinds of Rowling type authors write in that you know teen. Fiction you know fantasy fiction space you don’t just read one author that means you’re not going to listen to just one pod caster so don’t think that you’re somehow taking somebody else’s pod cast listeners or anything like that you are sharing space with those people. Next up you want to go ahead and be a guest slash interviewee on other people’s podcasts and blogs right the reason for this you go out there you learn on someone else’s time and dime OK you’re going to you’re going to go out there and those podcasters who are already Pod. Lasting have got know the ropes they know what they’re doing or the hopefully they know what they’re doing and they can help guide you on how to get started with your podcast by being a guest because you’re going to have to make sure you have the proper microphone you’re going to have to make sure you have the proper systems in place and you’ve got to prepare for your podcast you know being a guest on as a podcast so you have to do all of the work on the backend that your future guests if you have guests on your show are going to have to do themselves and so you’re going to be able see it from the flip side but it also kind of gets you ready for how to do it yourself because you’re going to you’re going to experience what that pod kus host does with you and you going to be like oh you know what I really like the way in which they help to get me ready I’m going to follow what they do when I go to do my podcast as a host or I really didn’t like the way they were so ill prepared or they overprepared or whatever OK but by being a guest or an interviewee on a podcast you get the chance of experiencing it from the other end and I feel like that’s way more important so that you can provide the best experience for your guests and there’s a good reason for that and I’ll talk about that shortly. You also want to be a guest blogger on podcast on blogs and the reason for that is that you’re going to write some blog post or be interviewed for a blog and that’s going to let people know that you have an upcoming podcast or if you’ve already lost the podcast you want to be you want to let people know that the podcast is available. Make sure that you go out there and leave i Tunes reviews on the podcast that you start listening to OK And the reason for that is that it’s a little bit of shameless self promotion right you can let people know that you’re in the industry that you enjoyed this particular episode or this particular podcast as a whole it’s given you some really great ideas about the pod cast your starting insert your podcast name and then close it out now of course use discretion don’t be too sales easy right but you could certainly. Say Hey by the way I’m I’m a realtor and I’ve been looking to create you know that every realtor you know all real state is local so if you’re if you’re listening to a realtor who’s doing a bang up job in Tuscaloosa Oklahoma and another realtor who’s doing a podcast based out of Dallas Texas and you do reviews for those people you can let other people know that you’re going to be starting a pod cast in your area Virginia and that way i Tunes and the other people i Tunes and the other podcast directories are then going to see oh that person is in Alexandria Virginia that person’s in in Fairfax region or that person’s in whatever other region of Virginia and and so they’ll be able to then come across other people who are listening to realtor podcasts and they’ll say oh look this is a realtor who’s a podcast or in this area Virginia Let me go check out their podcast because the review is telling people about it and you’re already going to an established podcast to place the review where other people are going to be able see it right so use reviews for being able to get the word out about your upcoming or current pod cast. You must share your podcast episodes via social media there is an ability to do a little video clips right so you can use video to market it on Instagram as well as on Twitter and other platforms that allow for video and obviously you can do photo and video which are snippets of either you or of you or your guests. Doing the podcast. Next up make sure that your socializing when you’re doing your social listening as well as once you start your podcast what that means is that if someone if you guessed interview or guest post on a blog write guess. Interview on a podcast guest. Write for for a blog make sure that you are following the comments that are happening on those blogs you want to be able to make sure that you give gratitude thanks to the people who are commenting you know thanks for that comment that was very interesting I agree with you I disagree with you all those kinds of things and if people ask questions on a podcast episode you want to make sure that you respond to it either in text or maybe you come back as a guest on a future episode and answer that question for those people but make sure that you’re appropriate to the platform and make sure that you’re responding it’s really important for you to connect with your community All right next up getting equipped that is cover some of these things I believe that getting equipped should not be that difficult and it should be that expensive and so I always tell people start out with some starter microphones I like using headsets because that means I can move my head around I can stand and walk around and still get decent audio quality I’m not going to get studio audio quality that if I were a broadcast journalist sitting in a in a radio studio booth but you really just don’t need that level of audio quality for a podcast so I choose convenience and portability over audio quality and it’s good enough right I satisfies the good enough standard for my podcast microphone’s that’s not for everybody but it is what it is OK so here goes some suggestions one is the Plantronics audio three fifty five the one that I’m actually talking to you on right now is the Microsoft life chat L X three thousand and it you know the prices of these are very nominal these all plugged directly into your computer and then you open up the recording software and you record directly into the recording software that I’m going to talk about a little while OK So the range and fifteen to fifty bucks and you go. He said one. I tend to shy away from although it’s highly popular the blue snowball microphones and just the reason for that is that they sit on tables and people touch tables and they bang and they knock and that creates a lot of background noise that you don’t otherwise want with headsets unless you’re touching your face a lot or you know like whatever it’s relatively out of the way you would just the microphone so that you can stop plosives which are the six you know sounds that are happening on the microphone so you move your your microphone away from your mouth just enough so it doesn’t have that kind of you know too close to the mike feel and then you could talk you can move around you can stand I like recording standing up because it feels it feels like I project my voice better and I have a better if you know feel of almost like presenting to a crowd and or just having a natural conversation with someone you you know you stand out of you know the party you stand with with friends or standing with a client face to face you you have a better conversation so I like that here they are that’s what they all look like note that the life chat How’s the wind screen so the microphone I’m using right now has that wind screen and so I really like it because it helps filter out some of the the noise that might happen but the two Plantronics both are really powerful ones the the Plantronics six fifty five is really a nice upgrade and and I like it a lot and like I said Lousteau ball but only if you’re not a desktop or. If you’re going to record after if you’re going to record consistently right so I say start recording with one of those starter you know headsets get yourself going and then if you stick with it then like after the first ten episodes you can kind of buy yourself a little podcast gift which is by upgrading your microphone to a better one these are my recommendations again ever. Nobody is going to be different so you can do your own research but these are some that I like I like the Samsung C zero one you which is a U.S.B. studio condenser mike and there are different types of mikes there’s condensers and dynamic cardioids and so so so different ones have different sound for different spaces right so condenser mikes you have to have a really really quiet location you can’t have any background noise because it’ll all be picked up very very sensitive microphones will be picked up by the condenser mike so if you have a quiet location really great audio coming from a condenser but if you’re in a dynamic situation that is you have other background noise and other things then you would use a dynamic microphone and that means that you need to put your face right up to the microphone so that you can you can get the audio from it but that means the background noise is not going to be picked up which is helpful right so if someone’s walking outside your office down the hallway you’re not going to hear their footsteps where with the condenser mike you probably pick that up OK. So I have the Audio Technica the A.T.R. twenty one hundred it’s a U.S.B. Axel our cable standard and I also have a forty which I also love so you can see their prices range they have different reasons and different uses read the reviews on Amazon or wherever else you you buy audio equipment or electronics and do your research just note some of these especially the ones that are XO are like the high all P.R. forty and the Audio Technica if you use the excell are functions you’re going to need a mixer and preamp meaning you’re going to need something that provides Ghost power you know it’s not self powered it’s going to it’s going to need a power source and you need cables shock mount universal Mike arm and a pop filter OK so you’re going to need some other things so it’s not just the cost of the microphone it’s also the cost of all the other requests from all to make that microphone give you solid audio without background noise or. Big noises or any of those other kinds of things. If you’re going to record video and I do recommend that you get a good webcam and the reason for that is if you’re interviewing guests or if you have a podcast co-host you want to be able to talk to them face to face even if you’re not in the same room of Especially if you’re on the same room so if you if you’re recording someone who’s in a different city or even if in the same town but you’re not physically situate in the same space you want to be able to have a face to face conversation these microphones and these webcams have fantastic microphones and great video so that you’re able to have that kind of experience and then you don’t have to have a headset on you would just use the camera microphone and has noise filtering and all those other functions built into it so you can have a really clean audio file and then what you’re doing is you’re just recording the audio from the from the webcam you’re not recording the video using the video so you have a better conversation literally seeing the person face to face. These are the two cameras I have both of these actually have an older model so I listed on there the key to F.. The Life Cam studio webcam and both of these by the way work windows and mac but I’ve just found that the Microsoft one naturally works better on Microsoft products and the logic tech one works well on both Windows and mac but I have seen it work really well on the mac and the Microsoft one works really well on the windows so that’s why I put those those there but you could use either for either platform. But I have a prior version of the one on the left and I have the one on the right and again I think they’re both very very competent tools one of the right does have the ability to have virtual backgrounds so if you want to have a a video podcast where you like put a picture of your logo behind you you know it’s like a green screen in a studio you can actually do that with the logic camera of the sea. One twenty two X. So that’s pretty cool if you’re if that’s something that you want to be able to do or interviewing tools there are several tools out there that you can use to interview conferences one zoom dot us and send Castor the first two are free if you’re just interviewing. Little conferences free help all told you can have any number of people on and record audio but and. It creates a pretty good if everybody has a good microphone has headsets good microphone connected to solid Internet connection you can logon to pre-conference and have a really solid recording OK So this is not this is a web based phone system so people can call in by phone but the ideal is that people are dialing in quote unquote to the conference line from their computer OK with the headset on so they’re they’re giving you clean audio and it doesn’t really really great shop Zoom is a video conferencing tool so you would be on webcam but it can record the audio file and then you get an audio file from it now as Zoom has premium plans that you pay for like I pay for a Zune but there is a free plan that it gives you unlimited one to one I think access or maybe it’s limited to some number of minutes but you know you you could you could work with that that limit then caster is is a paid platform I think it’s twenty dollars a month at the time of recording right now but it allows you to basically have many people on together so that you’re all sharing that stuff currently don’t use Skype there’s something wrong with their Terms of Service and and so don’t use Skype I know that many people use Skype for podcasting but right now I do not recommend it use one of these other platforms so you can protect yourself there’s image editing that’s going to be needed to be done I can’t get into it but I highly recommend Kanva there are other tools out there obviously but canvas. An awesome tool for podcast covers editing guests head shots feature images and more if you’re going to do any stock photography for for a video podcast or if you’re going to do any promotional posts like Instagram videos or Twitter videos then you can go to dreams time for stock photography i Stock Photo Shutterstock for soccer tada free you can even go to Google images as long as a label for use and you go out there and ask for permission from the from the owners of those images if it’s not explicit on their website that you can use them then you can use google images that are labeled for reuse not just any google images and so you can go ahead and do that. And same thing for stock audio you can use the built in sounds in Garage Band if you have a garage band you could record your own sounds and music so. By typical example is that if you need say the sound of a of a drum or for some part of your pod cast are you going to have sort of a drum beat or if you need the sound of a symbol crashing Well you just walk over to your local high school and go into the band room and open up your phone and record you know a smash of the symbols or smash of the of the of the drum to get yourselves make your own sounds you have vailable resources you don’t pay for these things if you can get a good audio recording with with your phone. And the same with music if you’re musical if you have a sibling or somebody in your in your personal life who is musical have them record their own music and give you the rights to be able to use that in your pod cast you can use a tool like audio jungle where you can buy stock audio which can include all kinds of things I’ll get to shortly and you can go to the Internet Archive community audio project where in the community audio project those those audio files are free to use because they’re no longer within the copy. Right role OK if you want to do stock video I recommend recording your own as I said earlier and most photo sites also include stock photos of the ones I mentioned earlier dreams time and I stock and so on so forth they’ll have Stock B. Roll footage so if you want to create a you know Instagram post or something like that or if you really are creating a video podcast you can use those for transitions and otherwise All right let’s get to part two and I’m going to again I’m going to speed up a little bit because we have a lot more to cover in the time we have left on the talk about some of the recording techniques suppost production and hosting and then talks about getting on i Tunes Google and stitcher so recording techniques you have four options in my opinion there’s obviously many many ways to look at this but in general I look at it as four different formats for hosting a podcast you can host alone it’s you plus a co-host or a series of co-hosts maybe you plus someone who has specialties nationalization in a related field right so say if I’m a nutritionist that I would have someone who is a fitness trainer and maybe someone who was was a massage therapist and maybe someone who knew Reiki and some of the other ancient healing practices spiritual practices and so you have this kind of you know a group of people with different specialties and you all come together to bring that health and wellness perspective to the podcast you can you can host even with a co-host and just have guests who regularly come on to your show so you can have a you plus guest format and you can have a call in show this is the least used of all of them because it requires some management of schedules and making sure that you have a existing platform of people who are regularly asking questions so you know people who are willing to call in literally then they call in and ask questions and you can do this in a live broadcast environment where people listen you’re recording for the podcast purposes what people. Could listen live or where it’s in a closed session people are calling in live but it’s not being broadcast it to anyone you’re just recording it and then publishing it after the fact. So you really want to think for yourself what is going to be your typical show format you could always do a show here and there that are going to be in a different format but you really want to pick one of these four top you know formats and stick with it consistency is important for making sure the people who are listening to your show are getting the thing that they want right there listening to your podcast for a reason they want to make sure that they’re getting the product they subscribe to you could record using different platforms you can record using Audacity which is a free open source software you can record directly into your computer as well using Garage Band if you have it it was pre-installed on your back or you purchased it there are audio recorders you know the handheld devices as well as desktop based devices that allow you to record from your microphone directly into those devices you could use voice memos on your on your i Phone or i Pad or i Pod those are really fantastic microphones and with proper placement you can actually get really good audio if you’re on Android and you have a high end Android I mean you know if you’re using one of the essential oils one of the essential phones if you have Google pixel branded phones if you’re one of the Samsung Galaxy S series phones if you have one of those high end of the Nokia six you know those kinds of high end. Android devices those typically have good microphones on them and you should be able to use one of these three apps the audio recorder app author AI and parrot OK so you can if it’s just you you could probably record directly into one of these apps on your mobile phone and be just fine all right postproduction Let’s talk a little bit about editing you’re going to have to edit the audio once you get it and you can edit again using Audacity or garage band so if it’s. If it’s just you recording into your computer right you alone you can you can go ahead and record into one of those apps like I said but if you are once you’re done now you need to edit it and if you’re already in Audacity or already in Ben you can edit it right there so that works out pretty well what are you going to edit though that requires us knowing a little bit about the audio terminology and so I’m going to try and cover these really really quickly intro and outro is basically the audio portion that begins its the podcast The show is the audio portion that ends it right and just natural right you know usually sometimes you have a voiceover artist or some kind of music that brings people in a segment is a question of a podcast so it’s just a specific portion of Audioboo you know you talking or whatever the content is of the pod cast and they’re usually fungible they should stand on their own it’s almost like a mini episode of a podcast teasers are the radio technique of being able to cue people into something that is upcoming So you’re teasing them about something upcoming promos are the parts of the podcast where you talk about your business or service right what’s your product or service or if you have a guest on your show maybe you talk about their product or service right that’s a promo or if you have an ad if you actually end up selling ads for your podcast the promo would be the ad spot OK the thirty second sixty second ad spot fifteen thirty second you know thirty sixty second ads Bob ID tags you need to really pay attention to what is an ID ID tag you’re going to look for what’s called an ID three I as an igloo T. Isn’t David the number three you’re going to look for an ID three editor for podcasting And so you going to look for an ID three editor and the ID three tags or the ID tags are the tags the metadata that’s with that’s held inside of the M P three file that you produce for. Cast’s and that tells the podcast directories and and all the other places where your pod cast lives some really key information the title of your podcast where your website is copyright information what your podcast feed is the image file associated with your M P three and so forth very very important tagging functionality bumpers transitions in bed music or all the various types of music that that accent or provide a motion to your podcast so bumpers tell us that something has ended and something is beginning right so you might start and a segment with bumper transitions tell us that something is happening it’s a pause or a change in content and it may be longer right so you might have a bumper that leads into transition where you have maybe a few seconds shoot up to you know thirty seconds of some kind of music I don’t know why would be so long but there there are opportunities you know situations where that happens where you have transition music and then bed music is music that’s played underneath the audio file so like if if I was really monotone speaker if I just if I use one tone the entire time I gave this weapon are right that robotic voice you might put bed music underneath it was those that was funny cheery and energetic and cool in that way it made my voice sound more energetic and interesting than listening to my monotone voice so I try to use vocal variety so that I’m changing tone and pitch and I’m getting excited about the material because I am so excited about podcasting I really do love podcasting and and I hope that you can hear that in my voice when I’m talking about it so I don’t need that music but some people do because some people are just sound boring. And that’s OK It’s understandable if you do and but music can be really useful in other cases where you want to provide maybe some some. Like music that sounds like you’re in a child’s bedroom when you’re giving a bedtime story right little little tickle tickle little star you know provides a sense of emotion or if you’re saying something really dramatic and you want to you know Wagner or a faulty playing in the background that kind of thing just make sure you own the rights to play the music OK very very quickly because I’m We need to close up soon some of trying to give you as much information before we get to that point post-production you’re going to edit background noise you’re going to clean up any background noise that happens as you’re able to you’re going to close out any long you’re going to shrink long pauses take out any arms flubs and ticks and only the ones that are that are the most you know caustic to the ear you don’t have to take out every now every like you know basically all the the words that people use as as filler. And then you would add logos bumpers transitions and bad music all the different types of audio musics that tell us that you know about the about the transitions and the emotion happening within the pocket just you could have no music by the way I have several podcasts where I use no music whatsoever so you know you could totally use music to for emotional effect and polish where you can have no music whatsoever so don’t think you have to use music here it’s something that you can work you can do not do for a while and then graduate into. Many people ask me how much time it takes the podcast I usually say as a baseline one hour plus twice the length of the episode OK so if you have a thirty minute podcast if you do the math take an hour two times a half hour podcast is another hour that’s two hours of time so that’s how much time once you get everything set up right all the infrastructure all the stuff in place for the podcast to be set up that might take many many hours but once you have it all set up and you’re efficient with the tool rights. If you’re if you’re just doing it you only podcast where you’re recording into Audacity and editing in Audacity and you know how to use the tool well it’s going to take you for a thirty minute podcast about two hours so you know what I tend to say to people if you want to kind of limit yourself to the amount of time you have necessary to be quality while still having a good substance you know to also have a good substance of that you can have a good pod cast but you could do a five minute podcast you can do for our podcast but generally this is about the amount of time it will take then so for our podcast is going to take ninety nine hours two to administer OK it’s going to take the four hours to record four hours to edit at least sixty minutes in at a time. Episode formats always tell him what you’re going to tell him give people an agenda upfront what are we going to talk about how did I start this weapon are I told you what we’re going to talk about right now I’m telling you what we talked about right and if I have the time in this web an hour I would go ahead and summarize what we talked about but I won’t have time so I’m not going to. And then finally you want to tease people at the end of this weapon are Tracy is going to tell you next the next topic and the next date right she’s going to tease you to let you know about what’s going to do what’s what we’re going to talk about next time and that’s going to get you to register sooner rather than later so that you can be sure you have a seat for the next weapon are OK So you want to basically tell everyone in every episode what you’re going to tell them you want to then do the episode give them the information and then tell them what you told me of a quick summary of what you covered and this is keeps people alert to where they are in the podcast and then teasing of course is really really important you want to do this for segments and episodes so if you have longer segments that are that are contained right you’re doing a segment on it just like a radio show or like if you watch the Today show right or if you watch S N L Right each skit on S N L. Is a segment right and has a beginning middle and end and then they stand on their own right and then S N L When they when they cut to break they’re going to show you a little a little teaser to show what’s coming up so that you stay tuned between commercial breaks where you still need to do that same thing in pod cast to keep people’s attention. I’m going to skip some of these items just because that’s not necessary for today so one remember that your blog post is for Google so you can do a transcript you could have your guests BIOS and pictures of your guests on your blog post portion of your podcast you can do summaries of the episode where you actually type up a blog post that’s a summary of the episode and then the audio files attached and you can see teasers at the end of those blog posts about the upcoming episodes rights to get people excited who are subscribed about what you’re going to talk about in the future the show notes portion of any podcast episode are basically the references and citations of what you talked about in audio so if I told you about some websites to visit and some other kinds of items in the show notes I should put links to those things that they think that you can access them for example if I said hey you should go check out this blog post I wrote or hey here goes this product we’re talking about the products on my website has a link to that product product and that should show up in the shows. Segments every talked about segments but basically segments are they should be episodes within episodes right they were represent and complete construct even if it’s just part one of two part episode where Part one are these three topics about this topic and then Segment two is parts three four and five four five and six of that particular topic you want to segment those pieces so you can you can have different segments that can stand on their own you should make sure that you have guest guidelines I actually have a. Yes guidelines document and I’m more than happy if you e-mail me you’ll see my e-mail address shortly when we get to the Q. And A and you can go ahead and e-mail me and I’ll be happy to send you the guest guidelines document a link to download it you can totally just copy it and use it you know change the information to be tailored to you but at least you’ll see what one looks like but provide your guests with with some with with guidelines to help them help you look good think about adding marketing swipe files these are files that you create with documentation so that you’re able to give people the the marketing language rights you can write some tweets from their perspective as a guest you can write some you can create some Instagram images Twitter images Facebook images and give that to them so that when their episode comes out they can share them and they don’t have to do any additional work all they have to do is posted to Facebook and they’re good to go right make it make it stupidly simple for them to share your content with their community before recording always remember to preview the show with them this helps them produce nerves and have an understanding about how about how the flow of the podcast episode will go so that requires you to prepare ahead of time so that they know what you know about those things OK so where we’re running a little bit of time so I’m going to I’m going to jump to just a couple other items that are really important and then I’m going to turn this over to Tracy So just another minute for I just want to cover some of these things. In relation to getting on i Tunes Google and stitcher which are the three primary podcast directories that you want to get on you want to make sure that you go to. Pod casts plural pod casts Connect dot apple dot com and you will submit your podcast there you have to have at least one pop guest episode before you can submit to Apple and the other directories usually so make sure you do that have an episode. Already published and then go to pod casts dot pod casts connect to Apple dot com and then Apple gives you the instructions for submitting your podcast from there OK really simple. Solution there if you go to G G is in google dot ca is a no Charlie Oscar forward slash pod cast portal then again will logon to the system and Google will walk you through the process of submitting your pod cast to Google Play music podcasts for stitcher you’re going to go to partners plural partners dot stitcher dot com And again create a username and password or log in if you already have a secure count and you’ll be taken in and then they’ll give you the tools to be able to register your podcast with stitcher OK So after after you do all of that make sure that you are doing all the things you normally do to promote your podcast the way you would a blog or a youtube channel otherwise take advantage of all of the the the marketing channels that are available to you so that you’re being you’re able to do this you know be able to create your platform so make sure that you’re talking to your customers adding your podcast into your email signature make sure that you put your pod cast on your website you know up in the front just like you would have blog in the navigation thing make sure that you have all of those things available to you and spread the word about your podcast so with that I’m going to turn it over to Tracy for Q. And A In closing out and I’ll be happy to stay as long as we need to answer questions great thanks Ray We just have a few questions at this point. The first is did I miss a suggestion on the length of the podcast. Oh so so the length of the podcast is as long as it needs to be to get across your point. And so there is no there is no one length Now remember that there are some people out there who say that you should stick to about twenty two minutes which is the general length of the commute of the average American right so the average American has about a twenty minute commute and so a lot of people talk about that however there are a podcast podcasts out there that are TWO HOURS LONG There are pockets out there I I have a podcast that is two minutes long there are podcasts out there that are thirty minutes long and sixty minutes long you pick the model that fits the general type of content you want to share so if you’re thinking about sharing an interview right how long does it take for you to really warm up with a podcast guest and get into the interview do a few interviews see how it goes see what content is good is that forty five minutes of of discussion time is it five minutes of discussion time for the for the topics that you’re discussing feel it out get those episodes ready and then try to stick to that length for the rest of the time just remember the rules about segments right so if you’re going to have multiple segments just make sure they do all of the requisite things so if you’re a guest on you’re going to start you’re going to tell people what questions you’re going to and talk about you know what topics are going to talk about what the guest then you’re going to talk to the guest and then you’re going to close out with this is what we just talked about in the next segment we’re going to talk about these things right have a break come back hey we’re going to talk about these things with this guest talk about those things and then close out again with a summary of what you talked about people about what you’re going to talk about the next episode right what are the image editing platforms that were listed on that slide once one was canned that and then what were some of the others. Yes. So so so all you need to know is can I mean the reality is that if you need to do anything more sophisticated than kava you probably will will naturally go to Adobe Photoshop within the Creative Cloud Suite but if you have if you have specific questions about what you need to do shoot me an email my email address should be on the screen now I’ll be happy to answer specific questions but you shouldn’t need more than can OK And what time frame does Google accept expect a double podcast listeners. They said two years. Which is amazing. Yes that is amazing Well Ray thank you all for participating today todays web an hour was recorded and I’ll be posted on the Virginia S.B.D.C. website under live webinars recordings tomorrow you’ll receive a follow up email on the web at our and the be an evaluation link to in that email if you could please help us to continue to improve our training by taking the time to complete the. We do appreciate it if you want to complete fill out the evaluation now I did post it in the chat window and here’s my teaser are Next Web and are is June fourteenth and it will be on documentation I mean sorry document automation and the cloud Thanks everyone for participating today thanks right.

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Podcasting Your Way to Profitability | Google and Beyond Webinar Archives

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