Setting up a podcast for your business

How do you set up a podcast?

Well you might ask what is a podcast and why should you bother. A podcast is simply a audio file made available on the internet whch you can download and listen to. Why should you bother? Well that depends on what your goals are in setting it up. A podcast is another form of content which means it is another way of reaching your audience. Survey after survey shows that more and more people are listening to podcasts so it makes sense to take a look at the value of setting one up for yourself.

To set up a podcast you will first of all need something to talk about; a topic or theme. Then you will need to record and upload your episodes and finally find a way of distributing them.

What tools will you need?

You might want to splash the cash on expensive equipment but you can do a lot with a quiet room (no airconditioner hum) and a phone. You will also need some good audio editing software. I recommend Adobe Audition which you can get as part of a Creative Cloud subscription. It’s great for geting rid of the hisses and background noise – like the airconditioner hum. Rode make great microphones, some of which can be plugged into a USB port so you can record directly into your audio editing software. The Rode NT USB is on Amazon at £124 if you are serious about gettting started.

How will you set up hosting?

Audio files will take up about 50MB of space for each episode depending on how long the recording is and the quality. Hosting on a dedicated platform or service is always a good idea. Blubrry and Libsyn are two popular platforms and they make setting up and publishing your podcast easy. You might also try using one of the major cloud providers like Amazon, Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud to host your files and then stream from there.

Publishing and distributing your podcast

You can publish on so many platforms but concentrate on the big ones. Content engagement is all about accessibility and making sure your podcast is accessible to your audience is important. If they have iPhones then you should consider Apple Podcasts. Likewise, if they are into Android, use Google. Nothing stops you from using all the platforms available so add Spotify and others to the mix.

These platforms all have their requirements before they approve your podcast so make sure you know what those are in terms of choosing the right category, artwork and description. If you can pass the requirements for Apple Podcasts then you should be OK to publish on most of the other major platforms.