If so, you need to start a podcast.

You don't have to be an expert to make a podcast that people want to listen to. You just need a few pointers, some inspiration, and the right tools.

This episode is everything you could possibly want to know about podcasting. We break down all the steps you need to make a podcast, from concept to launch. So if you’re looking for tools and valuable advice, then this is it!

As a bonus, we’ve also created a checklist with everything you need to get started. Click here to download.

If you’re ready to start a podcast, or take your existing one to the next level, email me at travis@christcentered.marketing. We specialize in creating quality, engaging podcasts that help you grow your brand and meet your marketing and sales goals.

Specifically, this episode highlights the following themes:

How podcasting works and the tools needed to get started
How to grow your podcast audience
The best practices for successful podcasting

Have an idea for a future podcast episode (or a guest in mind that you think would be a great fit)? Send me an email at hello@honestpodcasts.com.

Recommended gear:

Recommended software

Recommended podcast host:

Buzzsprout

Other links:

99designs (podcast artwork)

Travis Albritton 0:00
How do you start a podcast for your business? How do you make sure that aligns with your brand that it speaks to your customers and your prospects? And the people that you want to reach your ideal listeners? How do you grow it? How do you publish it and distribute it? And is it actually a good idea for you in your business? I'll be answering all those questions and more in this episode.

Travis Albritton 0:25
Welcome to the Honest Marketing Podcast where you learn proven strategies to grow your business without selling your soul. And starting a branded podcast is one of the best ways to grow your business in 2023 and beyond. And the biggest reason why is that more and more companies are seeing the value of getting into content marketing, where instead of paying for ads and impressions, you are creating a media arm of your company that serves your customers serves your clients serves your ideal customer avatar, and helps them in their buying journey with whatever problems you solve, to make your company the answer to their problems. But it's not a sales-oriented content strategy. It's a service-oriented one. So we talked about growing your business without selling your soul content marketing, specifically podcast is a fantastic way to do that. And the reason that podcast is, in my opinion, the best medium to start with, is because when someone subscribes to a podcast, more than likely, they will listen to every single episode all the way through, which on average ends up being about 30 minutes. So imagine getting 30 minutes of uninterrupted quality time with your ideal prospect every single week. That's the power of podcasting, where with YouTube, you're lucky if you get three minutes to someone's attention on social media, they will measure video views as three seconds, that counts as a video for you. If someone reads a blog, you're looking at two to three minutes. And with all of those other platforms, you're fighting with an algorithm to get between you and the person you're trying to serve. Whereas with podcasting, when someone subscribes to your show, they automatically receive every single episode in their app, no matter what. So you have a direct connection with your audience, you get prolonged exposure to that audience. And because it's a newer medium, you have less competition, that there's anywhere between 150,200 1000 active podcasts at any given point in time. So even though there's a lot of podcasts that are out there, if you think about your industry, and the things that you're gonna be talking about, your competition is actually relatively low. And so podcasting is a fantastic medium for getting in front of your ideal customer, building a relationship with them, and then getting them into that buying phase where they're ready to do business with you instead of your competitors. So that's why starting a branded podcast is really, really smart. And in this episode, I'm gonna break down every single thing that you need to know, in order to successfully launch a branded podcasts and branded podcasts simply meaning a podcast, for your brand for your business for your company. Now, I'm going to cover a lot of information, if you want kind of a checklist that you can follow, I'll drop a link to a guide that I put together that has a lot of the information we'll be sharing with you. And helpful links for gear and software and things that I mentioned. So if you want to click on that you can access that guide with step by step how to go through this process. And then I'll also leave links to everything that I mentioned as well in the show notes for your convenience. All right, so let's dive in the first thing that you need to decide first couple things you need to decide. Number one, what is the key performance metric that you care the most about? Now, if you are starting a true crime podcast, or you're hoping somewhere down the line to sell sponsorships or ads, then the metric that you care the most about is downloads, how many downloads can you get per episode. But if you're a business downloads are more than likely going to be a secondary metric of success. Your primary metrics are going to be things like new leads, new customers, if you're in the b2b space networking with other businesses and other people. So the Honest Marketing Podcast is essentially a b2b podcast, where the strategy is interviewing people that could potentially be clients of mine. That's the strategy. You know, I'll just lay it out right here. And so if you're invited as a guest on this podcast, it's because I want to create a connection with you. Because you have something valuable to offer to the people that listen to my podcast. And then there may be some overlap, where you have a need in the in your marketing that I can fill. And so that's the value of this podcast. So how many downloads it gets or how popular it gets is secondary to the primary metric of success, which is, am I able to use this podcast to get access to people I wouldn't normally be able to access and build really good rapport with them and network with with them and connect with them. Alright, so if you're in a b2b space, that may be the strategy the metrics that you care the most about? How can you use a podcast to supercharge Arge, your outreach. And if you're in a b2c space where you have a mass market products, whether you're an E commerce or something like that, then your key performance metric is either going to be increased in sales as a result of your podcast if everything else stays the same, or providing some kind of free opt in, or unique coupon code that you can attribute to your podcast, and then track how many new sales you get, or how many new customers you get because of your podcast. So those are the kinds of metrics that as a business, make more sense for determining the success of your podcast. And the reason it's important to know that up front, is because you want everything to drive back to that. And you want to have a really clear understanding of what success looks like. So in my instance, for this podcast on us marketing, to I wanted to have a ton of downloads, sure, I would prefer that over the alternative. But if this show only gets 100 downloads, or 150, downloads or 200 downloads, but I am I able to track that like every single month, I get a new client that's worth, you know, a couple $1,000 or more to me and my business that makes it worth it. So it doesn't ultimately matter how many downloads I get as long as that metric continues to grow. And so you want to be super disciplined about bringing everything back to why are we doing this? How is this helping us grow the business? And be super disciplined about that. And that will also inform all the other decisions that you make about your podcast? With the second thing being decide who your podcast is going to be for? Who are you creating this? For? Who is your ideal listener? Who is the person that this podcast is going to serve and make their life infinitely better? Is it going to be your customers? Is it prospects? Is it people that know who you are as a company? Or people that don't know who you are? Is it other professionals in your industry? Are you trying to separate yourself from the other companies in your industry by creating a podcast by getting into content marketing before them and being an early mover in your space? Who is it for because ultimately when you start trying to decide the things you talk about and how you talk about them, you always want to come back to serving the person that you have in your mind. And so for this podcast, the ideal listener is a business owner, entrepreneur, or chief marketing officer. That is who this podcast is designed to serve. When I think about bringing on guests. When I think about topics to cover, that is the person that I have in mind that I'm trying to help and k and so you want to decide who is the person you're trying to help with this podcast? And then whenever you have a question about what to talk about how to talk about it, who to bring on as a guest. Answer the question from the standpoint of them of your listener? Is this something they would want to listen to? or not and let that be the filter? Versus is the this the thing that I feel like talking about? Now, once you have those things that are kind of like out of the way, some smaller things to decide up front? Are things like, you know, who is this ultimately? Who is this podcast ultimately meant to represent? Is it your business or your company? Or is it a personal brand that you're building? So if you own your business, or you're an entrepreneur and you want to start a podcast? Is the podcast going to be centered around you and your reputation and your social media reach? Or is it going to be for the company that you own is that going to be the primary brand that you're trying to build with this podcast. Now, if you already have a social media following, then I would encourage you to go in that direction of building a personal brand, as the owner or the CEO or the founder of your company, but if not, and if you're really trying to complement other pieces of marketing with your business, whether it's social media marketing, Google and Facebook ads, blog, other content marketing that you have, and it'd be better to center the podcast around your business. And then the last thing to kind of decide up front before we get into the nuts and bolts of what your podcast should be about is decide if you want to add video, or stick with audio. YouTube is becoming much more important in the content marketing space, as social media platforms are starting to get more and more serious about suppressing organic reach. You know, LinkedIn is probably the next one to fall where right now you can still get some pretty good organic reach, but in the future, it's gonna be pay to play just like Instagram and Facebook. Tick tock is very organic, but that is quickly becoming a monetized monetized platform. YouTube is one of the few social media platforms that has searched that actually works. It's the number two search engine in the world behind Google and wants to get your content in front of people is actually trying to help you with organic reach.

Travis Albritton 9:42
And not only that, but recently one of the key institute's that tracks consumer behavior, did a survey and YouTube was the number one place where people said they listen to podcasts. So that platform is becoming much more important for podcasting moving forward. But in order to be successful, you really need to have a video component, even if it's just recording you recording your podcast like I'm doing. And so decide upfront if YouTube is going to be a part of your plans or not. Because it is great. It just requires some more resources to pull off and do it well. Audio Only is easier to start, but you lack a lot of the fine ability and the organic reach that YouTube gives you. So decide upfront, do you want to stick with audio and do an audio only podcast? Or do you want to add video? Because that will impact some of the decisions you make with your podcast? Okay, so those are the things you need to decide upfront. What's the key performance metric that you care the most about? And really be disciplined about? Pursuing that and measuring that? Who is this podcast ultimately going to be for? Who is your ideal listener? Is this podcast you're starting going to be tied to your personal brand? Or to your company's brand? And do you want to add video or stick with audio? Those are the things you want to decide upfront in order to set you up for success with your brand new podcast. So now let's talk about the podcast itself, the show concept, what's going to separate your show from every other podcast that's out there? And the thing that you'll have to answer up front is, well, what do you want to talk about? What are the topics? What are the concepts? What are the keywords that you want to go after? If you're thinking about search engine optimization, and SEO and find ability? And what is you know, what kinds of things are going to be serving your ideal listener? So are you trying to position your company as a trusted authority in your industry? More than likely the answer is yes. So then beyond that, what is your ideal listener need? That doesn't exist yet? What's a show that would serve the person that you're trying to help, whether that's a prospect clients, you know, trying to gain some market share? What is something that exists that would appeal to them, that doesn't exist yet. And then once you've identified like, Okay, this is the angle that our brand is in a position to help. These are topics we can cover. These are our strengths, this is our expertise. This is the wisdom that we have that we can offer that will be helpful for people in the buying journey. And a podcast is the medium we're going to use to do that. Then you want to identify kind of like a like a tagline that summarizes the value proposition of your show, why should someone listen to your podcast, and really succinctly put that in 10 words or less, and it takes some time, from when you start and give it your first shot at, you know what your podcast is going to be about and why it matters, until you distill it down to kind of like your final tagline. So for Honest marketing, the tagline is proven strategies to grow your business without selling your soul. That's 10 words precisely. And it communicates the value of this show. And so if you are an entrepreneur, a business owner, or somebody who's the Head of Marketing at your company, and you want to grow your business, like you care about getting more revenue, so you can continue to pay your employees and, and maintain and grow profitability, but you want to do it with integrity, then that tagline would really appeal to you and the things that you care about, right. And so when you have that tagline, you now have a filter for why someone should listen to you versus all the other shows that are in your category, right. So that would hopefully communicate why someone would listen to this podcast over any of the 10s of other marketing podcasts as they could, okay.

Travis Albritton 13:20
So once you identify like the missed opportunity, or the opportunity, no one's really taking advantage of that you
can speak to and come up with topics really easily to talk about, then identify like a sentence or a tagline that clearly communicates that to your ideal listener. And this could be simply repurposing content you already have. And so if you've already done a lot of SEO research, and you have a blog, or you have handouts, and guides and video series that you know, perform well and that your prospects and customers and clients already like and appreciate. Just create podcast versions of those that can be the first episodes that you do as you get up to speed. But you really want to be disciplined about serving your ideal listener and creating content that's just for them. So once you know what you want to talk about, and you have that tagline, then you want to come up with the name of your podcast, something that clearly communicates the value of the podcast, but isn't too obscure or too obtuse or too cute. You want it to be really obvious when someone sees your podcast in a directory or an app like Apple podcasts or Spotify. You want them to immediately know if it's for them or not. And so you want the name of your podcast to communicate that. And so here are some examples of really good podcast names, how to buy a home. That's also the tagline of the show, but it would also be the name of the show. How do you want to buy a house? You want to buy a home? Here's a podcast just for you. How To Start A Podcast, another great podcast name, b2b Marketing Show. So if you run a marketing agency, and you work with b2b clients, b2b Marketing Marketing Show be a fantastic Podcast name. Because if one of your clients or prospects sees that they're gonna think that's for me, modern church leader this week in tech, these are all really good podcast names, because it clearly communicates the value of the show to your ideal listener. And they can quickly decide, is this for them or not? Now, should you put your business name in the name of your podcast, my recommendation is no, because there's another field called the artist field where you can put the name of your business. Now, if this is a personal brand that you're building, you want to put your name in that field, when you're setting up your podcast in your podcast host, and I'll tell you a little bit about that here in a second. But you don't need to put your name or your business's name in the name of your podcast. Now, let's talk about formats. What's gonna be the format of your show, there's two main formats that work really well for branded podcasts. The first one is interview style episodes, where you as the host, or somebody on your team is hosting the episodes. And they're asking questions about guests that you bring on. And you get a new guest every single week, this could be prospects, so people that are kind of in your industry, but you're not doing business with them yet. So this would be really great if you're in the b2b space, could be customers, trying to get testimonials and people to share their story of how your business has helped them and helps them make their life better. And you want to use that as leverage to then convince other people that are on the fence that they're you or the business to do business with. It could be other members of your company, or they're members of your team, and you want to highlights expertise within your company. So maybe it's not the business owner, or the founder that's hosting the show, it could be someone on the marketing team. And then they interview people from within the company to share that expertise in a way that's valuable to either the customers you currently have, if you want to, you know reduce churn or for customers that you are going to have, and you want them to get to know you as a company better, and to feel confident that you know what you're doing and that you can really solve the problems. Or it could be people that you're trying to network with, which is my strategy for this podcast. And so with an interview show, you just set up a time to record that interview, you come ready with some questions that you want to ask. And then you have a great conversation, all through the filter of is this helping my ideal listener and making their life better. On the flip side, another format you could go with is a solo format, which is exactly what this episode is. It's just me talking, sharing information that's either informative, or entertaining, to help you and make your life better in some way.

Travis Albritton 17:33
So comedy podcasts, it's all about the entertainment, right, but you're not learning how to do anything in particular, you're not acquiring a skill, or it could be more information focused. So like breaking down something desirable into steps that someone can follow, which is what this episode is. So you can either do only interview, only solo, or you just have one person talking, or a mix of the two, which is what I do on this podcast. So those are the two that I recommend to start with. There are other formats you can pursue. But when you're first getting started, those are the first two that I would recommend you start with just to eliminate complexity, and make it easy to get going. Then the last thing that you want to think about for your show concept is branding, specifically, the artwork or the graphic associated with your podcast. So when someone is scrolling and looking for new shows, and Apple podcasts or Spotify, the first thing they see is that square piece of artwork.

Travis Albritton 18:31
And that is your first impression that matters. So so much for podcast discoverability. And for when you're sharing the the show to actually get people to listen to an episode. And the reason the artwork is so important is because listeners will determine if your show is worth listening to based on how much effort you put into that piece of artwork that single graphic. And if it looks like you know you gave it to a college intern who whip something up in Microsoft Paint, then that's going to be what they think the show is going to be that's going to be their impression of the quality of the show that they're listening to. If on the other hand, you have really professionally designed artwork, then that's going to give the opposite impression that this is a show that they can be confident is going to be worth their time. Because remember when someone subscribes to listen to a podcast, and they listen to an episode to decide if it's good for them, they're listening for like 30 or 40 minutes. Like there's a there's a lot of costs account. There's a lot of things they could do with that time, and they're trying to decide if they should spend listening to your show. And so you want the artwork to leave a really good first impression to convince your listeners that it's worth listening to. So either have a professional graphic designer on your team, create something or if you don't have a graphic designer on your company's payroll, you can use a service like 99 designs where you can get professionally designed artwork done for you. And it's relatively inexpensive typically around $300 litres per artwork. And it's really fantastic. I've always had good results with that particular service. So your podcasts cover are super, super important. So just to recap, when we're looking at your shows concepts, you have to identify what are you going to talk about? What kind of topics? What kind of, you know, things are important. What kinds of things can you speak into? What does your listener want to hear where they want to learn about? How can you make their life better? Then you want to identify your tagline the 10 words or less that describe your show, and nothing else? Once you've identified that tagline, where are you going to name your podcast? And how do you make it really clear who it's for, and really appeal to the person you're trying to reach. Then decide which format you want to lean into more either an interview format, or a solo format. And then make sure you set aside some resources to make some fantastic podcast artwork, because that will really go a long way in helping grease the skids once you launch that show, to really gain some traction. Now that you've got all that out of the way, let's get into the nuts and bolts of the things that you're going to need to actually produce this podcast starting with gear. And gear can be one of the things that really overwhelmed people when they're first starting a podcast. So I'm just going to give you a shopping list of things to buy. So the first thing you'll need is a microphone, you don't want to use the microphone on your phone, or you know, on your laptop, it's not going to be the high quality that you want to represent your company. The microphone I recommend is the Samsung Q2U. You can find it on Amazon for less than $70. Typically. And it comes with everything you need. It comes with a microphone comes with a little Stan comes with a USB cable, so you can plug it right in your computer. And it comes with an XLR cable, which is the traditional analog kind of music cable that can be helpful if you have more people that you're recording in the same place. And we'll talk about that here in a second. But that microphone is the perfect beginning podcast microphone. Are there others that you can pursue? Sure, are there more expensive models that you can buy and give you some measure of increased audio quality? Sure, but nothing that you'll notice the Sansa cue to use sound quality is just as good to the average listener as those really high end multi $100 microphones. So just get the cue to you don't even think twice about it, and you're good to go. Now, you'll also want a set of headphones. So that way, when you are recording interviews, or you're setting up and getting ready to record your solo episode, you can hear yourself in your microphone to know that all your audio levels are good that you're getting a good strong signal that the guest has the right microphone input selected, all that kind of stuff, and just be able to continuously monitor your sound any headphones will do. It can just be a pair that you have laying around, it can be those Apple earbuds, which also have a little microphone in them. If your guest is in a pension doesn't have one. But any headphones will do. But you'll definitely want to get a pair of headphones to help with monitoring your sounds. Now if you are recording multiple people in the same place, so let's say that you're doing in person interviews at your company's office building, you will need an audio interface. So laptops and computers in general do not work well when you are plugging multiple USB microphones into them. There are some workarounds, but they're not very reliable. And so instead, what you want to use is a USB interface where it takes multiple microphones with XLR cables, and then shoots out a USB cable that you can plug into your computer and record with. And the interface that I recommend is the audience EVO eight. Again, I'll leave links to all this gear in the show notes, if you want to go and check it out. It's $200. And it can take up to four microphones, so you don't have to worry about you know, hey, we have an episode where we want to interview two guests. And the interface that we chose only had two microphone inputs, just get this one interface. 200 bucks, give you four mic inputs, and you'll be set you won't have to worry about it at all, I should say that you should buy a Samsung Q2U for every person that's going to consistently be on the podcast. And so if you are consistently going to be doing interviews in person at your office, get to Samsung Q to use or get three of them.

Travis Albritton 24:07
If you have multiple people and you're gonna be recording from different places, each from your home offices, and you're going to record over the internet, we're gonna talk about that here in a second. Then send every person a Samsung Q2U, but you don't necessarily need an audio interface. It's just if you're trying to plug in multiple microphones into the same laptop at the same time, you'll need this interface. And then if you have some extra budget and you want to get the most out of your cue to you, I highly recommend also buying a boom arm which is what I use to basically hold up my microphone and put it right next to my mouth so I can get really crisp audio quality and the one that I use. The one that I recommend is the Rode PSA1, boom arm. It's a fantastic boom arm it'll run you about $100 And so it is an accessory that's a nice to have. It's not exactly cheap, but it's really well built. I've had mine for I think five years and have had no problems with it. You can buy cheaper ones, but they typically will will wear and tear pretty quickly and will start to get squeaky on you, which is not what you want for audio quality purposes. So that's one that I recommend. But don't feel like you have to have it. It's just a nice add on, if you wanna get the most out of your cue to you. So that's all the gear that you need, you know, microphone sounds cute to you. Any pair of headphones you have laying around. If you're recording multiple people in the same place, you'll need an audio interface like the Audient EVO 8. And if you have some extra money to throw towards some gear, get a boom arm for your microphones. That's all you need. That's literally all that you need to start a podcast. But what about video, if you're doing a video podcast, you can start with your phone. iPhones and Google pixels have pretty fantastic cameras nowadays, you can just set it up in landscape mode, so horizontal, and just record the video, at the same time the recording the audio, or if you're doing long distance interviews with people over zoom, for instance, you can just record the video with your webcam. And that's a perfectly fine place to start. Again, this is about starting a brand new podcast, you can get more professional down the road. But as far as gear to get started with video, just use a camera that you already have, whether it's your cell phone, or a webcam that you can use to record your episodes. Now, once you have all that gear, how do you actually record your episodes?

Travis Albritton 26:16
What, what do you need to do that what kind of software do you need. So if you're recording either a solo podcast, or you're recording an in person interview, then you'll want to use an audio software like GarageBand, which is an apple specific software. So if you have a MacBook GarageBand already comes on your computer more than likely, or audacity, which is a free software that you can download that works on Windows computers, Apple computers, and even Linux machines if you're one of the four people in the world that uses Linux, and when you open up that software, it'll ask you to select your microphone inputs, your audio outputs, which be your headphones. And then you can start and stop your recordings. And you can record all the microphones into that software and capture your audio episode. If you are recording in different places, though. So let's say that you are at your home office, and you want to record a guest that's on the other side of the country doesn't quite make sense to fly out there for the episode. To do that interview, you can use software like zoom or Google meets, if you already have those software options available to you if you already have subscriptions to those. But if you want that high quality audio, that's really going to set your podcast apart, I recommend Riverside.fm, where for between 20 and $25 a month, you can get super crisp, high quality audio over the internet. That's what I use when I record interviews for this podcast. It also records video. So if you end up doing YouTube and doing a video podcast, you can also use it for recording the video portion as well. So that's the software that I recommend. And again, all the links are in the show notes below. And in the guide that there's the link to if you want it all in a simple checklist that you can use to start your podcast. Okay, so that's how you're going to record, you're just going to use some software, whether it's local on your computer, or an internet based software like zoom or Riverside. And then once you have recorded your episode, how do you edit it? How do you polish it up to kind of cut the beginning and the end off remove any pieces in the middle that you don't want to make it into the final episode? How do you do that? How do you accomplish that? Well, the software that we use to record typically will also allow you to edit so audacity and GarageBand, both free software's that allow you to cut pieces and move things around and add music and things like that. So you can use those software's to do that. And when you're thinking about music for your podcast, because typically you want to find a music file that you know jives with the vibe and the feel of your show that reflects kind of the personality of your business, you want to choose something from what's called a royalty free music website. So rather than choosing an Ariana Grande track, or Taylor Swift track or a Brad Paisley track, you would have to pay royalties to those recording labels every time you use it, which makes your podcast prohibitively expensive. So rather than doing that, you want to go to a website like Soundstripe, or Epidemic Sound, where you can purchase the rights to use a track in perpetuity without paying a royalty, hence royalty free. And you don't have to worry about getting sued or taken down from platforms like Spotify and YouTube. So when you're editing your podcast episodes and trying to figure out like, how do you add music, that's the kind of music you want to go for. And but then ultimately, what I encourage most businesses to do is to outsource editing your podcast. The reason being that you want your time to be spent growing your business, getting more clients, and you know, increasing the efficiency of your team to increase profits. That is enough work in and of itself. You don't need to also become an audio editing expert. It's much it's a much better use of your time to focus on building your company versus editing a podcast and so there are podcast production agencies like mine on his podcast that work with companies take those files that you've recorded in Audacity, GarageBand, Riverside, resume, and edit all the thing, all the episodes, create show notes, social media, promotional graphics, thumbnails, for YouTube, all of that. So if you're interested in potentially working with me, you can go to the link in the description below. And instead of a time, we can get on a strategy call and kind of talk through what that would look like. But ultimately, you want to have a budget set aside to edit your podcast episodes. With a podcast production agency, that's gonna be the best bang for your buck as a branded podcast, because you're going to get better quality, because it's not going to sound like somebody just trying to figure out how to edit an audio file for the first time. So you want to really reflect your brand well, and it's gonna be cheaper than bringing it in house. So for me, and my company, our Packages start at $1,500 a month to do everything, all the editing, all the publishing, shownotes, social media materials, all that kind of stuff. If you were to hire someone with that skill set for your company, you're looking at at least 50 or $60,000 in salary, plus benefits plus taxes. So significantly more expensive. Now, once you've edited your podcast episodes, and you're ready to put them out there, how do you actually distribute them? In places where people can listen? How do you get them off your computer, and into places where people can subscribe to your show? Listen and share it. So you're going to need what's called a podcast hosting platform, in the same way that when you set up a website, you need a web hosting platform, a company that will store your website on a server somewhere, and then make it available to to internet traffic, you need a company that will store your podcast episodes, and then distribute new episodes out to directories and apps like Apple podcasts and Spotify. And the podcast host that I use that I recommend is Buzzsprout. It's by far the easiest to use has the best feature set that I have found for branded podcasts, and is relatively inexpensive as well. So you're not paying an arm and a leg to store your audio files. And you can start on a free plan as well. If you're just dipping your toe into it, they have a free plan to get started. And Buspar also has lots of guides and tutorials for getting set up and getting started entering all the details, uploading your artwork, getting distributed in those different apps and directories. They have some great tutorials. And then also if you're going to get into YouTube, you want to create a YouTube channel for your company.

Travis Albritton 32:23
So remember before when we talked about the the name of your podcast doesn't also need the name of your company in it. For your YouTube channel, you want the name of your YouTube channel to be your company or the name of your podcast, if it's a branded podcast, put your name if it's your personal brand. And so if it's you know, I'm trying to grow Travis Albritton, then the YouTube channel would be Travis Albritton. And the videos on there would be from whatever the podcast is that I'm producing. But if I want it to be for my podcast, then I would create an Honest marketing or an artist podcasts YouTube channel. So similar for you, if you're creating this podcast is a part of your business's brand. You want the YouTube channel to be for your business. So you can also post other videos there, like feature videos, testimonials, you know, webinars and events and things like that, and use the podcast as a way to drive traffic and awareness of those other things that you were doing. So you'll definitely also want to set up a YouTube channel to host and distribute all of your video content. So then once you've got all that setup, you've got the name of your show, you know what you're going to talk about, you started recording episodes, you've edited some of those episodes, and you've put them into distribution platforms like Les Brown, and YouTube. It's time to launch it's time to get the word out there and actually get this thing going. The best thing you can do right off the bat is create in publish a short teaser early. So the reason that you will want to do this is one when you're getting listed in apps like Spotify and Apple podcasts, they need a Live episode in order to publish in that app. And so and each one has a different amount of time that it takes to get approved in their platform. And so that allows you to start the process early to make sure you're available everywhere. Once episode one comes out. The other reason is that people can already go ahead and start subscribing to your show on the platform that they enjoy listening to podcasts on so that when episode one comes out, you can get a lot of downloads right away. So create a short teaser trailer that you can publish everywhere ahead of episode one. So you can start getting the word out and then use every single marketing lever at your disposal. So mentioned that your newsletter for the weeks or months leading up to the launch of episode one. Use your social media platforms, both personal and the company's social media platforms to let people know what's coming out. Share that great podcast artwork that you came out with in order to raise awareness and so people know that it's coming. internal team communications if you have a team or a company of 100 150 employees, that could be your first 100 150 listeners if you tell everybody about it and give them willing to go into Subscribe and listen, share it with your friends and family. Ask yourself, who do I know who would enjoy listening to this show, even if it's simply to support me and share a link directly with them, you can run a contest or a giveaway, giving out an Amazon gift card or something like that as an incentive for people to subscribe to the show, and maybe even leave a review and a place like Apple podcast and featured on your website, you're already getting website traffic to your business, why not also tell them they can go and listen to a podcast. And so if you have a drop down menu, somewhere in the top right corner of your website, or a feature section or something like that, put your podcast your new podcasts there and have a page on your website dedicated to your podcast. In short, every marketing lever you can throw at your podcast, especially at the beginning, take advantage of it because that will help you build momentum early on. So that's it. That's all you need to start a branded podcast. Now, I know that was a lot of information, like a fire hose amount of information. So again, if you want this in a written form that you can follow along and kind of check things off as you do them. Make sure that you go and get access to that guide. There's a link in the show notes below. You can do that and download it. And then two last pieces of advice that I'll give you as you're starting out. Number one being try to stay at least four weeks ahead on episode production.

Travis Albritton 36:17
So when you are publishing an episode, you want at least four more weeks of episodes done. The reason is because hey, what if you want to go on vacation? What if you want to take a break? What if you're sick and you can't talk for a week, if every single week you're on the treadmill trying to create a new episode, that's a stressful place to live. But if instead, you can focus on getting ahead and staying ahead, that's going to make it a lot easier to take breaks to not get burned out and to stick with it longer. The second thing that I'll mention is don't try and make it perfect, right out of the gate, especially if you're doing it all yourself. If you're paying a podcast production company, you want it to be fantastic immediately. But if it's up to you, you're recording it, you're editing it, you're doing everything. Don't feel the pressure of trying to make it perfect. Just make it as good as you can right now, knowing it will get better. And episode 100 of a podcast is always different than episode one. And you can't start working on things, tweaking things experimenting, unless you put something out there and see what people say. And then one last Bonus tip now that I'm thinking about it here at the end, how frequently should you publish new episodes, my advice is always to publish on a weekly cadence if you can't. So that means picking a day of the week, and every single week publishing at that time. So for the Honest Marketing Podcast, it's every Tuesday morning, every single Tuesday, when you get in your car to go to the gym to go to work to go run errands, there's a new episode waiting for you. And if you can create that routine for your listeners, they're much more likely to come back and continue to listen to you. If you're publishing sporadically, if it's every week, and then you do twice a week and then you take a month off and then you come back. It's really going to kill any momentum that you build with your marketing, because there's no sense of, you know, anticipation of new contents. If you can't do weekly, then every other week is fine too. But whatever you choose, stick with it, because then you'll create an expectation for your listeners, and they'll know when to check back in. So I hope that was really helpful and gave you everything that you need in order to start a branded podcast for your company. If you want to reach out and potentially utilize me and my expertise to help you launch and start a branded podcast, you need to send me an email hello@honestpodcasts.com And I'd be happy to set up a strategy call and kind of talk through your marketing and if a podcast makes sense and what my advice would be and if it's a good mutual fit, then we'll explore what that could look like launching and producing a podcast for your business. But hopefully regardless of whether you use me on other podcast production agency or do it yourself that this episode gives you everything you need to feel confident that you can start a podcast for your business, and it's going to be worth while well I hope you enjoyed this episode. And as always, be honest.

Honest Marketing

How to Start a Branded Podcast in 2023

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