September 18, 2020 • Online
How I create my podcast
Back in August, I launched my podcast, ‘a podcast by Pawlean’.
Since launching, so many of you have tuned in! It’s quite overwhelming seeing how many people are listening to it on various podcast apps. A great feeling for sure! 😄
While I’m at it, please send your podcast recommendations if any!
— Enoch (@enyiiee) September 8, 2020
Mine at the moment are:
💁♀️ Asian Boss Girl
😊 the Happiness Lab
🐾 a podcast by pawlean @paulienuh
🥄 The Wooden Spoon
🕓 Beyond Billables
Also any true crime podcasts 🕵️♂️
Because I love sharing how I approach my creative process, I wanted to write this blog post on the process behind creating my podcast. If you’ve ever been thinking of creating your podcast, I hope that this blog post can help give you some guidance on what you can do.
1) Where do we start?
As with all great things, the best place to start is to organise your thoughts and plan.
Why do you want to start your podcast? What will the structure be like? Will you have guests? And most importantly, what will you be talking about? It is important to make sure that you have clarity in these questions before leaping in.
Don’t get me wrong though! I’m all for jumping in head first, making decisions and learning along the way but having some structure can be beneficial. Structure keeps you accountable and consistent!
I actually had a podcast before ‘a podcast by Pawlean’ where it was literally a dumping ground for ‘Inspiring Figures’. Although I plan on having Inspiring Figures snippets in my new podcast, my previous one just had no thought put into it. Overall, it didn’t leave me feeling proud of what I created instead lazy and unbothered! This is obviously what you don’t want to be feeling about your own content.
Plan, plan, plan!
2) Finding a podcast platform
Once you’ve got your awesome plan together, it is time to find a podcast platform! There are a few out there but my preference is Buzzsprout. The thing that I love about Buzzsprout is how easy it is to use! You can literally be set-up in minutes. All you have to do is upload your file, add a title, description and artwork.
There is also a feature that allows you to create your own website for your podcast. For example, podcast.pawlean.com is the front-facing website for all my episodes. It’s pretty cool that this is all autogenerated.
3) Recording your first episode
Your first podcast episode is always going to be scary to record! When I listen back to my podcast over time, I’ve grown in confidence and you can totally hear it. In my first episode I sounded frankly terrified. 😂 Recording and listening back to yourself does get better with time, I promise!
I use my Blue Snowball mic that I bought earlier this year to record my podcast. For around the price, it’s incredible quality! You can purchase one here off Amazon.
My production steps are:
- Record episode. Usually, this isn’t all in one sitting, I have multiple files that I merge into one when I edit.
- Edit episode. I use Adobe Premiere Pro for my first edit! (Yep, I pay for that hefty Adobe Creative Cloud subscription but for the number of things that I create every single day, it’s so worth it.)
- Edit the episode again after it’s all been put together. I use Audacity to further refine the audio and make it as high quality as possible.
- One more run through the whole episode. Yep, I sit and listen to the whole thing once more through.
- Done!
4) Uploading on Buzzsprout
Buzzsprout makes podcasting super easy. Directly from Buzzsprout you can link your podcast to the key podcast hosts such as Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Bare in mind that some podcast hosts need a few days for them to “accept” your podcast.
But that’s pretty much it when it comes to uploading and launching! Straight forward, eh?
5) You’re live! Share, share, share
On Buzzsprout, you can also generate visual snippets to share on social media. I always generate these for my Instagram posts! It can be a quick and easy way to promote your episode without having to create a graphic yourself (less work for you, Clark 😉)
In addition to these visual soundbites, I like to share my podcasts via the neat little feature on Spotify. If you head over to your Spotify app, search for your podcast’s latest episode then press the share button to Instagram Stories, you can get the cool “Play This On Spotify” ‘link’ on your stories. This makes it easier and more accessible for your Instagram followers to jump straight in!
I know that upon first glance launching a podcast can sound quite intimidating and scary, but it’s actually not too bad! Today more than ever, anyone is able to become a creator. Tools like Buzzsprout make it easy! If you’re thinking of creating your own podcast, you can do in a few simple steps! I hope that this post demonstrated that. ⚡️
Stay safe, thanks for reading and don’t forget to listen to, a podcast by Pawlean!
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