In this detailed guide I will walk you through every aspect of creating a podcast online and how to do with WordPress. I just recently started a podcast and while there are other guides online I don’t think you’ll find one as detailed as this one. At least I wasn’t able to find one when I was starting out.
It took me quite of bit of research, trial and error to get my podcast going so I wanted to detail the process so you can save time and get your own podcast up and going quickly.
Outline:
What is a podcast and why should you start one?
Define the Goals and Outcome Results of Your Podcast
Coming Up with a Podcast Name, Premise & Format
Getting Guest for Your Podcast
How to Record a Podcast
What Kind of Mic Do You Need
Setting up WordPress to Host a Podcast
Distributing a Podcast
How to Collaborate with a co-host via Google Drive
Emails Templates and Show Outline for a Podcast
Conclusion
What is a podcast and why should you start one?
A podcast is simply like a talk show but on demand. People can search iTunes, Google Play Music or other services to find topics they are interested in and subscribe.
Why start a podcast? You might want to start a podcast to share what you know if you have deep knowledge in a particular area. You may want to start one as an inbound marketing channel for your business? You may want to start one just as entertainment for people or to build a personal brand.
Whatever the reason you want to start a podcast you should know your goal or the outcome you want out of it. Which leads me to my next point.
Define the Goals and Outcome Results of Your Podcast
The first thing you should do when considering starting a podcast is to define the goals of the podcast. You want to know what the expected outcome is so that you’ll know after you have spent all this time and energy into creating and producing a podcast you are getting the results you want.
If not you’ll quite eventually when you don’t feel doing it or other things come up.
For me, I started a podcast with Phil Derksen for several reasons. We wanted to meet people in our community and explorer topics related to running a product business so we could learn and share that knowledge with others. Also reaching out, talking and meeting with others would help us become better known and help with future networking.
Why is networking important? Listen to this episode of our podcast :)
I read a few podcast guides that suggested starting a podcast is easy, “bullshit” it takes work and dedication to starting one and keeping one going.
So Step 1, define a Goal for the podcast.
Coming Up with a Podcast Name, Premise & Format
After defining a goal for the podcast the next thing you should do is come up with a name, premise and format.
So first decide a premise and target audience of the podcast.
Ultimately this should answer the questions, who is this podcast for? What kind of listeners do you want to attract? What do you want your target audience to get out of listening to an episode of your podcast? Do you want to do the show by yourself or with a co-host?
Google Docs is a great place to store this information as it makes it easy to collaborate if you do get a co-host. I’ll speak more about collaborating later.
Also if you are getting a co-host they should also be on the same page with you. So predefining your podcast is a great way to ensure you both know what you are getting into.
Next decide a format of the podcast.
Do you want to do a daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly show? How long do you want it to be: 10 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour or no time restraints?
This will help ensure you have the time to dedicate to creating and producing the podcast and the expectations it will demand.
Lastly choose a name based on the premise.
I’m not going to lie, this was an extremely hard process for Phil and I when we started the Hooked on Products Podcast.
What we did is both came up with 10 or so names in our Google Doc we were sharing and then we choose 3 of our favorites from both our list, then we ran those by others and eventually narrowed it down to one.
Tips on registering a domain name for your podcast.
If you need help choosing a name you can Google “domain name generator” or use a site like https://www.namemesh.com
As far a registering a domain name you can use a .fm domain or if the .com version of the podcast name is not available you can add “podcast” to the domain like what we did with our podcast.
The name of the podcast is “Hooked on Products” but since hookedonproducts.com was not available we went with hookedonproductspodcast.com
Getting Guest for Your Podcast
Phil and I decided to have an interview style podcast where we interview people on various topics. Since we have been around the WordPress community for a while we know quite a few people to reach out to.
If you decide to start an interview style podcast and don’t know a lot of people around the area your podcast is in no need to worry. Just craft an email and reach out to them. I have an email template below you can use.
Don’t reach out to top influencers at first. You’ll probably get a no if you are a new unknown podcast. Reach out to up and coming influencers. These interviews are more easy to land and will help you build your initial audience.
How to Record a Podcast
So now that you have defined what kind of podcast you want to create it’s time to actually record one.
How do you do this?
This was the challenge Phil and I faced when we recorded our first episode. So we decided to have our first episode be on How to Start a Podcast with one of our friends, James Laws, who has been running podcasts for a while. I suggest you listen to that episode in addition to this article, lots more great information on running a podcast.
Before we started recording with James we hopped on a Skype called to discuss how to actually record all our voices.
If you are recording by yourself the process if fairly simple. Just download Audacity and record. Here’s a video on how to do that.
But if you are recording multiple voices in different locations it gets a little more complicated. Initially I thought I could use Audacity to record Skype. It turns out you can’t.
Since we were in a pinch James suggested that we all record our own voices using Audacity then stitch them together in a post process. We did this but I will tell you the stitching process is not for the faint at heart. It does give you control of each voice channel but is labor intensive.
Fortunately they make software like Zencastr that lets you record multiple voices, but it’s not free. They also make software to record Skype call but it’s not free either.
After doing more research we have decided to use Google Hangouts to record our podcast. The Pros are that it records the Hangout’s video and audio as you do it and makes an archive of it when you are finished. So you can distribute the video to YouTube and then extract the audio for the podcast. Extracting the audio out of a Google Hangout is easy with some software called VLC. Here’s a video on how to extract the audio of a Google Hangout.
The Con is that while you can edit the video there is no way to edit each channel of the audio like you can with using software like Zencastr.
What Kind of Mic Do You Need
While you can use your computer’s mic the audio quality is going to be sub par. I suggest an entry level USB Mic if you are just getting started. I personally use the Blue Yeti. It’s is a great starter mic but it does pick up lots of background noises. Make sure you have a quiet environment when using this mic.
Setting up WordPress to Host a Podcast
So now that you have your first podcast recorded it’s time to post it to your site and distribute it. See this video on how to use the Seriously Simple Podcasting to host your podcast on your WordPress site.
Distributing a Podcast
The final piece of the puzzle when setting up a podcast is getting it distributed and making it discoverable. You can easily add your podcast feed url to iTunes and Google play using these instructions.
How to Collaborate with a co-host via Google Drive
If you have a co-host Google Docs makes it supper ways to collaborate and share notes with your co-host. See this video on how Phil and I use Google Docs to plan and run our podcast.
Emails Templates and Show Outline for a Podcast
Conclusion
So there you have it, a complete guide on how to create, setup and distribute a podcast using WordPress. Did I leave out something or not explain something in enough detail? Please leave a comment below to let me know.
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