Starting an Audio Podcast (June 2023)

I love listening to podcasts and creating podcasts! I’ve been a podcast geek since 2005, which is getting close to 20 years, and the good news is there are more outstanding podcasts to enjoy than ever before, and the steps for CREATING and SHARING your own podcast have never been easier to use. In this post, I’m going to share a variety of tips for starting your own AUDIO podcast. These fall into these five categories or steps: Define, Practice, Create, Share and Amplify. In addition to the other resources I’ll reference in this article, I encourage you to check out the resources on the “Audio Interviews” page of ShowWithMedia.com, which I’ve maintained since 2013. Also check out resources from the September 2019 podcasting conference I keynoted and co-hosted in Oklahoma City. You can check out the “almost weekly” audio podcast show I now co-create with my wife, “Wes and Shelly Share,” as well as the weekly video podcast I co-create with Jason Neiffer, “The EdTech Situation Room,” as examples of current, regular podcasts which model and exemplify many of the podcasting best practices I’m sharing.

1. DEFINE

The first step in creating your own audio podcast is not creative, it’s consumptive: Identify one our more podcasts created by OTHERS which you enjoy, like a lot, and want to emulate in part on your own podcast. I subscribe to a lot of different podcasts which address eclectic topics, and the formats of the shows vary. Some are interview-based, some are just one person talking, some feature “on-site interviews” with others, some are recorded livestream videos. To create high quality, engaging podcast content, it’s important to CONSUME a large quantity of diverse podcasts, so you can better understand the different possibilities which podcasting offers.

Find and use “podcatching software” which can not only keep your subscriptions and track your listening history, but also make recommendations to you about other podcasts you might enjoy. My favorite podcast listening app is PocketCasts, but there are many other good choices. My wife likes listening to podcasts on Spotify. Apple’s Podcast App remains one of the most popular in the world, and when it was still integrated into iTunes, is the podcatching app I started with. Google Podcasts is available on the web, for iOS and Android. Amazon Prime features podcasts as part of its music service. Downcast is a popular podcatching app for iOS. There are many other options too.

After you have a sense of what you like and don’t like about audio podcasts, and what you might want to create yourself, it’s time to DEFINE your own show. These are REQUIRED things you need to define:

1. Show title: Make it short and sweet! You can also have a byline to provide more information about your topic(s) and focus. For the EdTech Situation Room, our byline is, “Where technology news meets educational analysis.”
2. Target Length: Pick a standard length for your shows so audience members will know what to expect. Podcasts like “Clockwise” are exactly 30 minutes every time. “This Week in Tech” (TWiT) shows often last over two hours.
3. Format(s): Will your show be a solo act or co-produced? Will you have an interview style with guests? Will you have different “segments” each episode?
4. Frequency: Podcasts are, by definition, episodic. How often will you create and post / share a show? What is your planned schedule? Most successful podcasts (with notable exceptions, of course, like “9 Days in July,” “Wind of Change,” and “Moonrise.”
5. Audience: Who do you want to make your podcast for? While you can never be certain who will listen to your public / openly published podcast, it’s generally good to define your target audience to help you hone your message and develop focused content.
6. Description: Write a short (several sentence) description of your podcast. What are your usual topics? What are your podcast goals? Who is your audience? Why are the conversations and ideas in your podcast important for others to hear?

In addition to these required items, several things are OPTIONAL to define but can be helpful as your podcast grows:

1. Domain / URL: Do you want to create a separate website for your podcast which you can share and is easy to mention online? If so, you’ll want to register a CUSTOM DOMAIN (for about $10 per year) and pick a web host. One affordable option is to register your domain with Google Domains (relatively affordable amidst many other domain registrar options) and host your site with Google Sites (free). I use WordPress to power most of my websites, but if you self-host you have to have more technical skills and may have to deal with your website getting hacked. Creating and maintaining your own website can get complicated and very technical pretty quickly. Web hosting services like WordPress.com, SquareSpace, Wix and Weebly can make the experience easier, but you may have to pay a monthly fee. Podcasting specific web hosts like Libsyn and Podbean can be better for podcast-only websites, but again, commercial costs must be paid.
2. Social Media Channels: Do you want to create separate social media channels / accounts / pages for your podcast, or just share it on your existing channels / accounts? Jason and I have separate / unique channels on Twitter and Mastodon for the EdTech Situation Room, as well as a Facebook page. Keep in mind the more channels / accounts you have, the more UPDATING you have to do each time a new episode is created.
3. Hashtag: I love using a variety of hashtags to share different kinds of content across different social media platforms. It’s easier to use a hashtag on any social media platform with an existing account, rather than create and update a new one. For our “Wes and Shelly Share” podcast, we use the (relatively) unique hashtag, #wsshare on Twitter and Mastodon. Keep in mind that ANYONE can use a hashtag, however, so there is less control with hashtags rather than unique accounts. Hashtags can increase your discoverability, but also include some risks, which can be a bigger deal for organizational podcasts versus personal ones.

2. Practice

After you’ve defined the basics of the podcast you want to create, you need to spend some time practicing the creation process before making and sharing your first “REAL” show. This is the philosophical essence of my 2011 book, “Playing With Media: Simple Ideas for Powerful Sharing.”

If you have an iPhone and just want to start practicing audio recording, download a free copy of “Voice Record Pro” for iOS and view this tutorial to get started. I use this app in the “Family Oral History” unit I teach to middle school students in my media literacy classes.

Consider recording an “intro” and “outro” audio snippet that you will use at the start and end of each of your shows. For “Wes and Shelly Shares,” as well as my “Moving at the Speed of Creativity Podcast” which I started in 2005, our children recorded the outros we use, which is fun. You can record these audio files or ask others to, or hire someone to make one professionally using a project outsourcing service like Fiverr.

The number one tool I recommend using today for a new podcast is “Spotify for Podcasters,” which was previously called, “Anchor.” It is completely FREE to use. Even though the tool is branded for Spotify, the podcasts you create with the app can be published and shared for global distribution on any podcast network or website. The “Quick Edit Podcasting” breakout session I shared in September 2019 at the Oklahoma City podcasting conference has some helpful resources for using the app, even though its name has changed from Anchor. This 9 minute tutorial video can help you get started with the “Spotify for Podcasters” / Anchor podcast creation app.

3. Create

Now that you’ve defined the key elements of your podcast and practiced recording, it’s time to create your first show.

Just like writing an essay, it’s always a good idea to brainstorm and create an outline of each podcast episode first. For our (relatively) new podcast, “Wes and Shelly Share,” we try to pick a Children’s picture book to use as our show theme, and then plan two “halves” of our show with topics to discuss. We also include a “Wonder link” and “Wander link” at the end of each show, similar to how Jason and I include a “Geek of the Week” segment at the end of each EdTech Situation Room episode. As a carryover from my college days of preparing exemp speeches and flowing CX debate rounds, I still enjoy brainstorming podcasts (and blog posts like this one) on yellow legal pad paper. Shelly and I now use the “Notes” app (built into iOS / MacOS) for each of our #wsshare shows. However you want to do it, PLAN your shows in advance at least a little bit!

The podcast production “workflow” can get pretty complicated, as shown by this flowchart I created in August 2016 for a presentation about podcasting for our local Oklahoma City WordPress meetup group. A “linked version” of this workflow (created and shared as a Google Drawing document) is also available. Thankfully today in 2023, you don’t have to use so many different software tools and manually go through nearly as many steps to record, edit and post your podcast episodes.

I like using the following four step model for creating podcasts:

1. Plan
2. Produce (record)
3. Post-Produce (edit)
4. Publish (share)

By using the “Spotify for Podcasters” app and service, you can do the last three steps of this process all on your smartphone. You can record your podcast segments, edit them as needed, insert audio bumpers and intro / outro clips, and publish the final show. It’s really pretty amazing. This is the workflow Shelly and I use each week for “Wes and Shelly Share.”

If you do not use the Spotify podcasting app, you’ll need to use some software (unless you want to create a “no edit audio recording” to edit your show. This is often easier on a laptop or desktop computer, rather than a smartphone or iPad. Audacity is free / open source software which I’ve used to edit hundreds of podcasts over the years, and works GREAT. Adobe Audition is an example of a commercial software solution specifically focused on audio projects, like audio podcasts. I’ve used Apple’s GarageBand software (the MacOS version) to create some podcasts over the years, and it’s free. I prefer using GarageBand to create music, however, and stick with Audacity for laptop-based audio file editing.

4. Share

Once you’ve recorded and edited a podcast episode, it’s time to PUBLISH or SHARE your file for the world to download and enjoy.

If you use the Spotify podcasting app, you can simply click PUBLISH to share your file publicly online and allow others to access / download it. If you do not use the Spotify podcasting app, however, you’ll need to POST it somewhere so it can be shared and downloaded. This is to a “web hosting service” which I previously addressed.

This is important: Simply putting a link to an audio recording on the Internet is NOT “podcasting.” That is just “file sharing.” To be a podcast, your audio file (or other rich media file) needs to be EMBEDDED within a “subscribable feed,” which is updated each time you publish a new episode.

For my “Moving at the Speed of Creativity Podcast” through the years, I’ve used separate MacOS software programs for this, as well as (now) a plugin for WordPress called “PodLove.” Doing this is geeky and requires a lot more technical expertise than just using Anchor / Spotify for Podcasters. I’ve also hosted by podcasts with a variety of web hosts. At some point, I figured out that I could host my actual podcast files on the Amazon S3 Cloud, and then LINK those podcasts to my website, wherever that was hosted. (I’ve changed my main web hosting company several times through the years, and it’s wonderful to NOT have to migrate multiple gigabytes of audio podcasts to a new host.)

Sharing your new podcast episode is more than just posting your audio file online. You also should “share your feed” for your podcast on multiple podcasting platforms. As an example, Shelly and I share our “Wes and Shelly Share” podcast on Anchor, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, PocketCasts, and Amazon Music.

This process is called “podcast distribution.” This support article from Spotify describes the process of finding and copying your “feed address” for your Spotify-hosted podcast, and then submitting it to as many other podcast listening platforms as desired. Once you’ve submitted your podcast to these different platforms (like Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts) then those respective directories of your podcast episodes should AUTO-UPDATE each time you release a new show!

5. Amplify

The last step for podcastings is to AMPLIFY or share your podcast via email and social media. Copy the DIRECT LINK to your latest podcast episode and post that on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and/or other social media platforms you use. If you’ve setup separate channels / accounts for your podcast, you’ll also want to create a new POST on each one for your new podcast episode. While this step isn’t required, it definitely can help “get the word out” about your new episodes and your podcast overall.

Share links to your podcast on email newsletters! This is one way hosting guests on your podcast can be helpful, after being on your show, you can invite your guests to share the link to the recorded episode with their followers / fans on social media and via email newsletters. I am personally rather terrible maintaining email newsletters, but they remain today (in 2023) a HUGELY important way many people receive information and updates about many things, including new podcast episodes to check out.

If you don’t have an email newsletter already, consider setting one up for your podcast or for a larger project or theme. Substack is a free platform that sends email newsletters, and does NOT require a monthly fee. Jason and I use a Substack newsletter to help amplify / get out the word about the EdTech Situation Room.

Concluding Thoughts

Podcasting can be wonderful and transformative. I have learned SO many things over the years because of podcasts, and I’ve made many fantastic connections with other educators and friends through podcasts I’ve shared. I hope these tips, links and ideas are helpful to you in your own journey as a podcaster and sharer of ideas that matter! Please let me know via a comment here (or via other means) if this article was helpful to you.

Happy podcasting!

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