What Podcasting Equipment Do I Need?
September 8, 2021
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Wondering what podcasting equipment you need to get started with podcasting? Check out this helpful guide for all the basics.
Micme University
The Ultimate Guide to Podcast Planning to Start a Successful Podcast
Monday August 30, 2021 | By Micme University
Table of Contents
If you’re here wondering if you should even start a podcast, go check out out post on why you should start a podcast. Find out some of the benefits as they relate to you business or content marketing strategy – Should I Start a Podcast? Why You Should Start a Podcast as an Extension of Your Brand.
Before you start recording content for your podcast, one of the most important things you can do to set your podcast up for success is spending a week podcast planning.
This isn’t only effective for when you’re launching your podcast, but six months, a year and two years down the line. You’ll be able to reference this stuff, again and again, to keep you on track and delivering perfectly tailored content to your potential listener.
If you don’t do this, you’re going to be putting in a ton of hard work with no clear vision on who you’re making your podcast for and why you’re making it and wondering why no one is listening and performing poorly on podcast directories. I guarantee all of the successful podcasters who host popular podcasts on Apple Podcast, Spotify or Google Podcasts spent at least a bit of time planning out their podcast content and defining their target audience.
What to consider when podcast planning:
- Figure out who you’re making your podcast for
- Why you’re making your podcast
- What incentive do people have to listen
- How to pick your name
- Cover art
- Description writing
- A little bit about equipment and audio recording software
Podcast Planning: "WHY" Are You Creating You're Podcast?
Get as clear as possible on your reason for starting your podcast. If you’re creating your podcast as a marketing tool, I suggest putting a little more thought into it than just to convert sales. If money is your “WHY”, you run the risk of creating subpar content that doesn’t connect with anybody, or worse, content that repels people and eventually leads to your podcast failing. The goal here is to set yourself up for success.
My “WHY” stems from the “WHY” I got into the music industry as an audio engineer and producer years ago. During that time, as I got further and further along, I realized that the people I was meeting and working with were in pursuit of a dream to make music and leave their mark on the world, and to create something. I always became an integral part of that pursuit. My “WHY” became helping these people achieve their dreams. In my opinion, starting a podcast means that you want to share something with the world. You want to create something. This, to me, says that you have a dream of doing something for the world that will leave a mark, a legacy, something bigger than you, and meant for other people to gain something from.
My “WHY” today is not far off from my “WHY” all those years ago in the music industry. I not only want to help you create your legacy and leave your mark, but I also want podcasting to continue to grow as a medium, so that anyone who wants the opportunity to also leave their mark can do it, including beginner podcasters.
So what’s your why?
Take some time and put some thought into why you want to create your podcast. Then create from that place. The quality of your content will be reflected in the reason why you started the podcast in the first place.
Decide Who Your Perfect Listener Is
Just like you’d make an ideal customer profile for your business, you should make an ideal listener profile for your podcast. This is especially useful if you’re using your podcast as an extension of your brand or as a marketing strategy. Or maybe you plan to use your podcasts in place of an industry newsletter and want to send it around to industry peers and colleagues. No matter what you want to use your podcast for, write down who your target audience is.
Write down their age. If it’s a wide age range make sure you are appealing to all ages.
Write down their gender. For example, if you’re an expert in men’s lifestyle, then you’ll probably have mostly men listening. It also may not be defined, so appeal to everyone, if that’s the case.
Write down where in the world they are. Is the podcast for a local municipality? Is it for your state or province? Will it be shared internally around your company? Does your company have multiple locations? Write down all your company’s locations, if this is the case.
Write down their occupation. Are they personal fitness trainers or accountants? Write down their income range.
Write down their interests and write down whatever else applies to your ideal and perfect listener.
For example, the perfect listener profile for The Podcast Mix is people ages 25 to 50. There’s no gender or race specification. Everyone’s welcome. It’s for people located in the US and Canada, or any English speaking country. There’s no specific occupation, but we are talking to high-performing entrepreneurs, small business owners, and people who work in branding and marketing who also have the means to start a podcast and outsource their production. And we’re also talking to people who know about podcasting and who are interested.
For us, it’s a pretty wide demographic, which has made it hard to find our listeners. But the more you can narrow it down, the easier it’ll be to not only create the best content for your listener but to find them when you’re promoting your podcast.
Why Are People Going to Listen?
What sets your podcast apart from others? The first place to look to figure this out is to yourself. People are going to connect with you before anything else. If people are coming back week after week it’s most likely your personality or personalities, if there is more than one host, so be yourself. There’s only one you, and you’re like no one else. Your opinions, beliefs and expertise are going to be the best way to set yourself apart. So, it’s really important that you be your true self.
Other ways that will draw people to your podcast are, do you solve a problem, do you offer something like a Facebook group where listeners can go and chat and form a community? For me, in this podcast, instead of going deep into podcasting and the industry, and really talking nuts and bolts, I wanted to create something that is really easy to follow, and that people can use right away to start their podcast quickly and easily. I wanted to eliminate the steep learning curve of starting a podcast.
I didn’t want to get into what an RSS feed is, how it works, and how metadata affects the streaming platform like Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcasts, YouTube or Stitcher. There’s actually a lot of podcasts covering that stuff already. I designed The Podcast Mix to get you and your podcast going as easily and as straight forward as possible.
So, why are people going to listen to your podcast over someone else’s?
Up until this point, the stuff I’ve been talking about might be the most important part of it. It’s the stuff that’s going to become the basis of your podcast. Everything you do will stem from pre-planning who the podcast is for, why you’re making the podcast, why people will listen, and what sets your podcast apart from others. If you spend even a little bit of time thinking about this stuff, your podcast will be better than most of the podcasts out now on the podcast platforms.
Pick a Great Name for Your Podcast
Picking a name can be either super hard or super easy. For some people, the name will just pop into their head, but for others, it’ll take a little longer. And then there’s dealing with the possibility that the name you want to use is already in use. If it’s already in use, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t use it but I don’t recommend it. It will be harder to get your search engine ranking up if there’s already an established podcast with the same name, and the other person could have already trademarked that name, which is something that we’re seeing more and more these days in podcasting.
The first thing to do here is to make a list of possible names for your podcast. The possible names you come up with might be directly related to what you’re talking about, like The Art Of Personal Fitness if your podcast is for personal trainers. But it doesn’t have to be. Get creative. The more important thing here is that you choose a name that ideally hasn’t been used yet and it’s something that you can build a brand around and effectively market.
Once you’ve got a bit of a list going, jump on Google and start searching to see if you can find podcasts with the same name. You’re going to want to also look to see if there’s anything else totally unrelated to podcasting that might get in your way also. Search engine optimization is very important to leverage so the more unique, the better. Another thing to take into consideration that will help a lot is who are the podcast hosts. If you or one of your hosts are a person of note, including their name in the name of the podcast will go a long way for podcast search engine optimization and discoverability. Just searching that person’s name alone, which a lot of people are probably doing if they’re a person of note, will bring your podcast up through Google quicker.
How to Write an Effective Podcast Description
The description of your podcast is an overall summary of what your podcast is about . It’s going to help people decide if they want to listen or not. Now, this is different from your episode description or show notes. Those are for summarizing individual episodes.
The first thing to start with while writing your description is to write down the goal for your podcast in one to two sentences. From there, you’ll be able to better write a summary that will help your podcast listeners understand how subscribing to your podcast will impact their lives.
Try not to be too fancy with it. Just write in clear, concise and simple language. Make sure to include if your podcast is an interview-based podcast or not. If you are, quickly let them know what kind of people they can expect to hear from, or if you’re going to be making a solo show, let them know about what you’ll be talking about. The most important thing to achieve with your description is to make it about your listeners, not about you. You want them to say to themselves, “Yes, this is exactly what I was looking for!” They need to feel like you care about them first. That’s the only way to win them over.
The last point I’d like to make about your description is to not make it too long. People will skip over it if you do. Keep it short, simple, and easy to read and really sell it.
There are a few tools you can use if writing isn’t your strong suit. Both are free and and easy to use:
- Hemingway Editor is an online writing tool to help you write concisely.
- Grammarly is an AI powered writing assistant that corrects your spelling and grammar.
- Quillbot helps you paraphrase words in one click, to get more done in less time.
How to Determine Your Podcast Format
There are many podcast formats to choose from. Which one you decide should be one that works best for you and your co-hosts.
Deciding your podcast’s format will help decide how long each episode should be, which is what we’ll talk about next. So, there are a few types of podcast formats.
This solo format, where it’s just you, one person speaking about their topic of interest. It’s pretty straight forward.
There’s also an ensemble or a round table type podcast where two or more people are together discussing a topic of interest, which is a little more complicated because of how you’ll have to have your equipment set up.
And then there’s the interview format, which can be one host and a guest, or two hosts and a guest or two guests and two hosts. There’s all kinds of combinations here. The interview format can also take on the ensemble set up because you and your co-hosts can invite people on to each podcast episode to interview them.
How you decide what your format will be, again, will stem from the goal or reason you’re creating your podcasts. For example, I wanted The Podcast Mix to be more of an educational, how-to type podcast, so the solo format really works for me. It allows me to stay focused and deliver the content in a very linear way. If I had a cohost, I’d be worried that we might go off on too many tangents, which would make it too hard to follow.
So, take a bit of time and think about what the best way is for you to deliver your message as clearly as possible when deciding your format.
Your Podcast Episode Length
One of the questions I get a lot is how long should my podcast be? There’s no one answer to this question, but in my opinion, individual episodes should not be longer than 60 minutes, one hour tops. And according to the people who have done the research, (Edison Research) the average length of a podcast is about 37 minutes, which means the sweet spot will be between 30 to 45 minutes.
Some things I’ve noticed that might help you figure out what will work best for you is if you’re going to be making an interview podcast, 60 minutes is usually the easiest way to go, especially if you’re interviewing more than one person. It lets everyone say their piece without rushing anything and keeps everyone a little more relaxed because there’s just no pressure. You for sure don’t want to go any less than 40 to 45 minutes for interviews.
If you’re making a solo podcast, 20 to 30 minutes on the top end is probably what most will be able to keep up with. It’s tough doing a solo podcast and keeping the energy up and creating that much content.
On the other hand, I’ve come across five-minute podcast episodes, and I always feel left wanting more and dissatisfied with not getting enough from them, so I wouldn’t go that short either.
Ultimately, the way to decide how long your podcast episodes should be is to think about what you’re able to handle consistently while creating high-quality content. One thing to avoid is promising something and not being able to keep it up, or worse yet, putting out useless information to your podcast listeners. You can always start and see how you feel about your lengths, and then adjust from there until you figure out what works best for you and everyone involved.
How to Set Up Your Release Schedule
When and how often are you going to release your podcast? This question is a little easier because, by far, the best way to figure this out is to sit down with everyone who’s going to be working on the podcast and decide what day of the week and time of day everyone can stick to consistently, without fail.
There’s any number of combinations here and will be determined by the people involved, and what they’re able to keep up with. Releasing an episode on Apple Podcasts one to two times a week is the best if possible. It’s not too little that people will crave more and look elsewhere, and it’s not too much that people won’t fall behind or get overwhelmed with it. Just make sure you can show up when you say you’re going to show up.
Where are You Going to Set Up Your Podcasting Space?
An important thing to consider when launching your podcast is where are you going to record your podcast, your podcasting space? Podcasting heavily relies on sound quality, so, your podcast’s audio quality is really important. Typically, people think that it’s the recording setup that matters the most when it comes to getting the best sound quality. It’s not. It’s the environment that you record in.
Let’s try something. Stop whatever you’re doing and pay attention to the sound that’s happening around you right now.
Maybe you can hear the fridge or the furnace or the noise from kids outside, or cars passing by. There’s a ton of noise happening. Now, if you were going to record your podcast where you are right now, your external microphone will also record every single sound that you can hear. That would cause a lot of background noise and reduce your audio quality.
Also, when you start to talk, your voice is going to bounce off all of the hard surfaces, like your walls, that are found in the room, and also be recorded along with that noise as echo. It’ll sound like you’re in a parking garage. So figure out where you’re going to record your podcast. Choose a quiet room in the back of the house or in the back of the office, where there isn’t a lot going on, and choose a room that has a lot of soft surfaces like couches and carpets or rugs, heavy drapes, things like that. I’m going to talk much more about this stuff later, but start thinking about where the quietest available room is and plan to make it your podcasting space. It’s very important.
If you’d like to learn more about how to acoustically treat your room there’s a lot of great resources like this guide from Soundproof Silence: How To Soundproof A Room For PODCASTING: A Fun Tutorial
Podcast Artwork
I find a lot of people have problems with this one when starting their podcast because the specs for podcast cover art are very particular. If the specs are off, your podcast won’t be accepted onto places like Apple podcast, Spotify and Google Podcasts. So, I’ll give you the specs right now.
The dimensions of your podcast artwork have to be:
- No smaller than 1400 pixels by 1400 pixels, and no bigger in 3000 pixels by 3000 pixels.
- JPEG format
- In RGB color space
- Can’t be any larger than 500 kilobytes in size
If you stick to these specs, you’ll be fine, but double-check before you submit to the podcast platforms, which we’ll talk about later on because you risk wasting a lot of time on something so small and it can be hard to find. These specs will most of the time fit your social media accounts when promoting your podcast.
So, what should your cover art look like? Well, that’s up to you. In my case, with The Podcast Mix, I’m using it as part of Micme’s brand. So, I’m creating the content for the community to use to their benefit. So, the artwork is aligned with Micme’s branding. The colors, the fonts, the pictures, all designed to reflect what Micme is all about. So, take into consideration why you’re creating your podcast. Again, go back to the who and the why, and design your cover art so that it can be packaged to round out your branding and make it marketable.
If your podcast is part of your company or business, use the same type of designs, and if your podcast will be left to stand on its own, it’s definitely in your best interest to create a marketable brand around your podcast. Choose colors and fonts, and make it into a package.
The big question I get all the time is where do people go to have their cover art made? You may know a graphic designer already that you can use, which is great, but if you don’t, you can hire a graphics designer from Upwork or Freelancer. You can go to places like Fiverr or any of these online marketplaces for where you can find graphic designers will work. All these options will come in varying levels of quality and price, so shop around a bit.
This is something that we offer as an option when you join us with our podcast launch package, where we work with you to launch your podcast. So, if you go with a company like us, they might offer the option to do this as well.
If you’d like to design your podcast’s cover art on your own, here’s a couple tools:
- Canva is an online drag and drop graphics design tool that’s really easy to use.
- Adobe Spark is similar to Canva. An online graphics design tool that makes it easy to design graphics.
A Bit About Recording Equipment
I’m not going to go too far into this right now because there’s a whole post about it, but start to plan now and educate yourself a bit. The things you’ll need for sure are an external microphone or microphones depending on how many co-hosts you’re recording with (There two types you’ll find for podcast equipment: USB Microphone and XLR microphone).
You’ll need a computer. Laptops work well because you can stay mobile (for remote recording) with them. Apple or PC will work just fine. You’ll need podcast editing software like Garageband, Audacity or Adobe Audition and that’s it.
Those really are the mandatory pieces of equipment.
In the equipment episode, I’m going to go into detail about all the other options because there are other options that might work better for you, and you’ll figure that out later on, but that’s really it.
The only other thing I can think of is choosing a service that lets you connect to people remotely like Zoom, Zencastr, Squadcast or Riverside. Again, I’ll talk about this later on, but it’s only needed if you need to have someone on the podcast who lives elsewhere in the world.
So, start Googling things like microphones for podcasting and audio editing software for podcasting, and podcasting equipment in general, so you’re ready.
Conclusion
So, these are the steps on how to preplan your podcast. Now, of course, you’re probably going to have questions, so please get in touch and ask. If you have questions right now, before you get started, or maybe you’re in the middle of podcast planning and need some help, or if you want to make sure that we include something specific in the future, go right now and get in touch via social media or email.
What’s Next?
Find out how much starting a podcast is going to cost you. Hint, it’s not as expensive as you think: How Much Does it Cost to Start a Podcast.
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