What nobody told you about launching a podcast

1. It is about YOU, not the podcast.

I needed to gain confidence in my voice. Then I learnt that even if my voice is slow, dreary, whatever, I needed to find it within me that people would like to listen to what I have to say rather than how the voice sounds. It took me a while to believe that my perspective was important to be put out there. People don’t connect only to what is being said, but they connect invariably to who is saying this. If you don’t like me, you won’t like my podcast. duh.

2. Podcast is hardwork at the backend.

As the audience, you may hear only the audio clip and wonder how much work it can be! But trust me, there is a lot of preparation that goes into putting up any episode. Each minute of podcast you hear has seen hours of work behind it. For me, it took almost an hour to produce a minute of content. Ideation, writing the script, editing, finalizing, recording, post production, episode artwork, publishing, distribution, marketing, etc. Phew!

3. Contextualizing feedback is crucial.

I recorded my first few audio clips and sent it out among friends and family for feedback. Got loads of feedback. Most of it was useful. They mean well. There were some audio/ radio/ podcasting experts too who shared what they thought. It was important to understand who was coming from where. And for a while there, I was lost in the sea of feedback. Analysis paralysis hit me. I doubted every tone, every pitch, every word that was coming out of my mouth.

I went back to point 1 to help move forward by breaking the deadlock.

4. Technical expertise does not ensure a good podcast.

There are some technical tasks to be performed at the back-end. Like recording on a particular software for certain uses. For instance, you use Audacity to do the back-end audio editing. You don’t use zoom for interview recording. You use some other tools like Zencastr or Squadcast. You can still use zoom as the input there. But you will need a unique audio track for each voice on the podcast so that you can adjust them to sound similar throughout. Then understanding how media hosts work. Dealing with podcast distribution then digital marketing, blah blah. All of this can be learnt. But that’s not the key at all, it still is basic hygiene factor to have a podcast.

The key, ladies and gentlemen, is understanding what the audience wants and finding within that what makes it exciting for me to talk about it. That intersection is the holy grail. My understanding is that this understanding will take a while to build. How much time? Your guess is as good as mine.

In order to make it sound well-rounded, I tried to find a 5th thing that nobody tells you about launching a podcast. But I couldn’t find one. So, you are spared. If you have read till here, then please do listen to my podcast. Subscribe to it. Follow it. And share it with your friends and family. I will make it worth you while!

Here’s a small preview of the podcast. Let’s get talking!