NerdBrand Podcast
The NerdBrand Podcast is at the intersection of nerd culture, branding, and advertising. Nerd culture is no longer an isolated subculture; it’s THE culture of the day and makes its way into our daily lives through the entertainment we seek and the technology we rely upon. Listen as we discuss our views on visual design, branding, and advertising for movies, comics and novels, video games, technology, and other nerdy passions.
NerdBrand Podcast
Podcast Tips: From selecting equipment to creating the IT factor.
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NerdBrand is a national branding and advertising agency based in Louisville, KY.
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Welcome to this episode of the NerdBrand Podcast. I'm your host, jason Davis, and I am by myself and I'm gonna record a quick podcast for you today, because it's all about podcasting. Yay, welcome to this episode of the Nerd man Podcast. We're talking about podcasting. So I've talked about podcasting a lot, but you know it's still popular, and one of the things we talked about was, I, I believe, how to brand and come up with one, and blah blah. So on this episode, I want to talk about, basically, um, let's talk about some equipment. Let's talk about, uh, you know topical things that you could talk about and how unique you can make it. So let's start with equipment. So you have usb mics and then you have XLR I think it's XLR mics. Anyhow, ace, you're going to notice the difference right away, just because of the cables that you need in order to plug this equipment in.
Speaker 1:I recommend a good soundboard, depending on how many people you want to have on your show. You can do two channel or four. I have a four channel Rodecaster Pro. It's older, but it does the job. It's awesome. I like four-channel. Uh. Roadcaster pro. It's older, but it does the job. It's awesome, I like it.
Speaker 1:Jacob likes to push the buttons and to make it do sound effects. He's not here today so he can't actually do that right now, but if he were here he'd be pushing a bunch of buttons and uh and, and that's what would happen. So, just just saying, the mics that we have are just their roadcaster mics, I believe um, I'm trying to look for the name on them and of course I did not do that before recording, but they're about $100. So, yeah, it's an expensive microphone. Your cables, those could be separate, it just depends. But you can get an entire kit probably for about a couple thousand dollars. Just being honest with you, if it's a four-channel setup like we got, and that's just what we use, there's really nothing secretive about that or anything special.
Speaker 1:We also have a USB mic. For that I bought the Yeti. It looks like a giant pill. I mean, it's something that you literally could assault a person with. But I like it because as a USB mic you can do remote shows and because all you need really is a laptop and garage band. But for the Yeti it's got directions on it. So the microphone, the way it's situated, it, can be omnidirectional, which means it can record. Let's say you have four people sitting at a table, or even three, put it in the middle of the table and records everybody around it. Or you can have it directional to where it only faces the direction and captures sound that's coming at it. That's kind of basically the idea for the mic.
Speaker 1:You want to get a pop filter, and a pop filter is a funny little gadget that kind of goes on top of the microphone. You've probably seen some singers use it. Some microphones have them built into them so you can pay a little bit more to get the pop filter that is in a built-in mic, or you'll have to get one separate and mount it to the microphone yourself to get rid of that pop, pop, pop, popping sound that you hear there. So that's something that you want to maybe consider. Depending on you know how strong of a pucker your guests. Have that sounded wrong, but I'm keeping it in the edit. Have that sounded wrong, but I'm keeping it in the edit.
Speaker 1:On that note of that, not the puckering, but the uh equipment. Um, you know usb cables. Uh, you want to make sure that if you're using that um with your laptop, say macbook pro, you want to have a um, let's say, if you go usb, and of course you know mac looks like that fun little usb-c type, right. So if you go USB and of course you know Mac looks like I've got that fun little USB-C type, right. So if you've got an old school USB and you're like, oh no, it won't fit into my MacBook, well, you get you a converter cable, but just get one without a power or resistor in it and it, well, you can just kind of jack that baby in and there's no interference between the microphone and picking up sound and the processors and all the doodabbies inside of the laptop. Yes, I said doodabbies because that's the way I talk.
Speaker 1:Podcasting is supposed to be fun. It's not supposed to be something that it feels like work. And if it feels like work, well that's because you've probably, I guess, are making lots of money doing it or you turn it into it. But podcasting is something that's very difficult to do. Right now. I'm actually doing this show on the fly, without notes, which is very scary because it will be a short episode.
Speaker 1:But at the same time, you just have to get used to just talking. And if you have a hard time talking, if you're very shy, then I recommend several exercises to go overcome that, and one of those is actually go outside and talk to people, go to networking groups. There's one that meets every other Friday at Dave and Buster's. It may meet now at main event, I'm not sure here in Louisville, kentucky, but Third Circle Networking Club is a good one to go to and you can meet a lot of business owners, from micro to large businesses, and connect with them and just kind of practice your social skills, because when you're doing podcasting you got to be social and even if you're by yourself, like I am right now, you need to be able to talk and you got to be able to do it fluently, without the and maybe, and like okay, like all of those things.
Speaker 1:We all have those tics and it's really hard to not do them. But you have to work them out and you'll have a cleaner, much more fluid show, because the editing that it takes to do a podcast can be very tedious. But if you do it this way and you work out all these things and you do it on the fly like this, you'll find out oh my god, I'm not working, this doesn't feel like work, this actually is fun and that's where that happens. Magic that you look for in a podcast. The it factor is not something that can be manufactured. I have no answer for this one. I know a lot of people want to do a show and they want to be popular and they want to have all kinds of listeners and I want to have all kinds of friends and you know I want to have all kinds of listeners and I want to have all kinds of friends and you know I want to have, you know, my belly rubbed at night after having a good meal. But that's not going to happen and if it does, then someone come help now. So there's a lot to be said about the it factor in a show. I think about it was, I want to say, 2004,.
Speaker 1:Kevin Smith started podcasting, but Adam Curry was the first one and we call him the podfather. He was actually recently on Joe Rogan's podcast, by the way, if you want to go and watch that, and he'll talk to you about several things during the MTV era, because he was in a. I think they called it a V jockey or video jockey, I don't know. There was a weird term, being of the MTV generation, you'd think I would know this, but anyways, he told a story where he was on a plane with Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne. He was with Ozzy peeing himself. I couldn't imagine this plane ride. The Scorpions a band was on there and it had a lot to do with the Berlin Wall coming down and he told a story about, you know, our favorite night rider from the 80s, hasselhoff, and him singing in Germany when it happened, and so this guy's been around quite a while, but he's the podfather. I mean, if not for him, we wouldn't be doing what we're doing now with this microphone and me talking to you about it honestly. I mean, if not for him, we wouldn't be doing what we're doing now with this microphone and me talking to you about it honestly. I mean, it's the Wayne's world of television. So as a result of that, you know he also was able to connect with a guy that was technically inclined and on the Internet it wasn't really a thing to be able to sync audio or to do that. So they had to create a new tag in order for that to work, and once they got that done, you had the floodgates, and so later on, kevin Smith 2004, started podcasting. Joe Rogan came after him.
Speaker 1:Now, in those days you had to pay for your own web server to host your podcast show Today. You can apply and pay a service and it's affordable. It is. I mean you have limits on how many hours, of course, in a month you can upload. In a month you can upload. However, it is still very, very far cry from what it used to be, where you had an old PC in your basement and God knows where from who was accessing the files to listen to them. But that's sort of how it was and that became quite costly, especially when you move to that and it's all for the cloud servers and all this stuff happened right. So you've got an entire thing happening here with back in 2004. Also, remember that's when YouTube, I think, began.
Speaker 1:So the Internet had just become a different place. You know we had moved from the read-only era Web 1.0, as I call it, to Web 2.0, which is read and write, where we're adding content. Web 3.0, we're still not quite there. It's a bit of a different animal and I know a lot of people like to use it as a fancy keyword or fancy word to kind of sell you something. But quite honestly, it's decentralized web and it's a whole other show.
Speaker 1:Everyone but for now, I think, for podcasting is to understand that if you have a show and you have something worth talking about and people want to hear it, they'll tune in. I may be talking really fast because I don't know what you're doing right now. Maybe you process things quicker, maybe I'll capture your attention and you can rewind the tape and see what I did. So think about a show. If you want to do one, you know how to find us at nerdbrandagencycom and just reach out. We actually have a podcasting service line that we provide audio only because, honestly, podcasts have always started out in audio At some point.
Speaker 1:If you roll video in, do you really need the headphones? If you have a sound engineer off camera, probably not, but I would say that it is optional to ramp up and do video, but you need a studio for that and so you can start to go to triple quadruple your costs real quick, based on the production costs, because production costs are production costs. I mean you got time, people, equipment, I mean it just everything starts to change. But if it's just you and some guests and you want to talk about what you know in your business and it's something you want to help generate content that you can put out there for the internets to consume and to get found on Google or whatever it is you have in mind. It's not a bad platform to jump into as long as you can talk and as long as you have the right equipment, and that's something worth listening to. That's the magic of podcasting. I know 10 minutes. We're at 10, 20, 21, 22. All right, I'll stop. So that is the some of the magical tips of podcasting that I could recommend.
Speaker 1:Um, we are developing a couple of shows for people right now. So book now, reach out to Jacob Moeller. You know how to find us, like I said, nervebandagencycom and uh, we'll be happy to talk to you about that. Get you booked and start, get you scheduled for sort of recording some shows and then walk you through the process on how to name the show, how to brand it and, uh, get it out there and market it If you really really are wanting to put your foot on the gas.
Speaker 1:Anyhow, if you liked this episode, you can go to nerve brand agencycom slash podcast. We have a? Uh a form on there. You can scroll down from the first five shows and then, on down on the page, you'll find a newsletter you can sign up for and we'll send you some stuff. If we get merch and you want merch, we'll sell you some merch. If you subscribe to that and you say, hey, I'd really like some merch, you know, um, we'll work that out, we'll'll figure something out. We're not giving away a huge bunch of stuff. Can't afford it, Just being honest, hats are expensive. But I know a few guys, I know some guys. So, anyhow, go to nerdbrandagencycom slash podcast and sign up for the newsletter.
Speaker 1:Let us know you're alive and you're a person We'd love to touch. Reach out, reach out, touch our audience. That is's so weird. Um, anyways, we'd love to know what you think, what you'd like to listen to, uh, or hear us talk about. I'm gonna have jacob and mitch back on soon for the show. Um, I have had them tied up. We've been buried in projects now for six months and we're ready to come up for air. So, uh, stay tuned for the next episode. Uh, we'll see you Fridays at 11, even though the show syndicates and goes on in the air earlier. But still, you know what to do and remember, keep your nerd brand strong.
