The Art and Science of Podcasting: Unleash Your Audio Creativity

Podcast, if you do not know, is the audio version of, we can say, a YouTube. Not, not exactly the audio version, but the reason podcast has grown exponentially is, uh, there's something about you don't want to watch everything that you want to. Podcast allows you to listen to things while you're doing other things, and not every time you are doing this, no, very tedious or very brain-intensive thing. So when you are, say for example, gardening or washing dishes or walking, at that time you are more relaxed. And that time when you're listening to podcast, it directly goes to your brain. And that has been proven by multiple research. And that is one of the reasons that podcast has become— has grown exponentially. It started initially with US, but now Europe and India and other countries are catching up very, very fast. And you can find literally millions of podcasts now on almost any topic you go and search. And if you want to build an influence, that is probably the— this is probably the best time where it is now. People are getting aware about podcasts, and I'm telling it in the context of Indian, Indian context, that people are now getting really aware about podcasts, but at the same time it is still not very crowded. So if you ever have a thought that, no, how can I impact more people, how can I reach out, probably this is one of the time to start. So I put it in 5 things, 5 points that I want to talk about. First is what is podcast? We just discussed, it's more of an audio form. And there are— when I say audio form, it's not only audio. There are people who actually record and put it on YouTube, and they also call it, you know, podcast. So it's not only audio, but when we think about podcast, most of the times it is the audio part of it where you have it on, say, Apple, you have it on Spotify, you have Google Podcasts, people put it on YouTube, and there are so many other places where you have podcasts. So the question comes, why you want to do podcast? So first of all, it's a great marketing tool. And if you are having, say, YouTube, there's a good chance you will become a great podcaster. It's a rapidly growing industry and people are more tuning in to listen to podcasts versus watching YouTube. Because if you're watching something, you have to pay complete attention, close attention. You have to stop doing everything else. But if you're listening to podcasts, you can listen to podcasts and walk. And I take my own example. I've listened to so many podcasts while I'm going for a Morning walk, evening walk, even at times I'm going for grocery shopping, which I, yeah, which I really hate doing the grocery shopping. I have, I will download one or two podcasts and keep listening so that no, at least I'm learning or I'm having entertainment versus just going out there and yeah, trying to buy the groceries. So even when you are doing the mundane thing, it can really impact you and you can learn something. Uh, it can— it is still come to, but there is going to be a point where you will be getting directly monetized. So if I look at it, most of the times, I think in US, if you get a certain number of downloads, you get, get some money. It is yet to come into the UK or India, but there are a lot of times where people are indirectly making money. By in the form of, say, collaborations. So people collaborate with brands and say, okay, this podcast is sponsored by so-and-so, and then they talk about that. So that's another way. Uh, I'm gonna ask you to actually think about what is your why, because when you are clear about your why, it helps you plan your thing. And if you are just starting out podcast, don't worry about monetizing and other things. That happens over the course of time. But that should not be your primary concern. So that is the why part of it. Now let's see what it works, how it works, where. So I'm gonna actually, after this, I'm gonna switch to, uh, different gears. Uh, but podcast is different from YouTube. And how is it different is in YouTube, it is very simple. You create a Gmail or Google account and you create your YouTube channel. You upload your video and you schedule or you go through it, that's it. Podcast is different because podcast have something called a podcasting platform, and then you have distribution platform. And what I mean by that, uh, is that you have a place where you upload your podcast, recorded, edited version, and that platform actually send it to multiple places. So you don't have to When you say my podcast is available on Apple or Google or Spotify, you're not sending or uploading your podcast to Spotify or Google or Apple. You have something called— you can say, largely you can say it's an agent you have. And there are different such platforms. One of them is Anchor, then there is Buzzsprout, and there is— there are more where you at one place you upload your podcast and it becomes available. So what I'm going to do now is I'm actually going to open my own Anchor account where I am using, and there are reasons why I'm using Anchor, and, uh, and you're gonna see how it happens once I have the podcast published. So what you see here is the website called anchor.fm. This is one of the podcasting platform and you can sign up in there if you want to build. And this is my podcast, as you can see, Small Town Bigger Dreams Podcast. And you can see it is available on 9 platforms. So, uh, and you can see here I have it on Spotify and then it is also on Apple, Google, Overcast, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, and blah blah blah. So what Anchor is, is more like an agent in between. So every time I want to have a new podcast, I will go and I'll create a new episode, and I'm gonna go through the process in, in next point. But this particular platform, Anchor, is the one where my podcasts are uploaded, and then Anchor takes it to Apple or Google or Spotify and all. I don't have to go to 9 different places to upload. So that is a great thing about having this. Similar to Anchor, there is websites like Buzzsprout and others like that. Now the good thing about Anchor is it is completely free. You don't have to pay any money at any point of time. Other platform, most of the other platforms are either free to a certain limit or they are completely, you know, you have to pay money. Of course it has got its own benefits, but personally I don't see a reason why somebody should not be using Anchor. It has got very good features and a lot of things. So, so I hope this concept is clear that Anchor is the agent which is sharing to other places. Now the third point which comes when it comes to podcast, and feel free to stop me or put your question in the chat if you have any, uh, if I'm going too fast as well, is how do you actually get your podcast out? So the first step, and actually, uh, there should be a first step, is create account. So you can create account on Anchor or something, so which is very simple. Go to anchor.fm and create a new account. And then there's— there is a 5-step framework, my own 5-step framework, that I use for, uh end-to-end podcasting from the ideation to the, uh, finally marketing. But before that, what I want to cover is two more things, which is what are the types of podcasts. Now there are different types of podcasts. Uh, one is monologue, where you are the podcast host and you are talking to the people, assuming people are listening and there's only one person. That's one type of podcast. The other type is where you have two hosts. For example, one of our community members, Priya, she runs a podcast where she's having another host with her, co-host with her, and they both do a podcast on the legal stuff or legal entrepreneur and trademarks and things like that. So they, they are, there are two hosts and they are doing a dialogue. That's the second type of podcast that we have. The third type is which is an interview. So you become the host and you interview different people from your field, different experts, different subject matter, different, no, celebrities, things like that. So but ultimately it is your podcast, but you are asking people to come and join for the interview. They are sharing your detail, their details, their, their opinion, their remarks, and you keep keep posting it on your podcast. And the last one is a combination. In my case, I am probably— I'm gonna say I used to do a lot of interviews. So my podcast started in 2021, and it's an interesting story I'm gonna share. So 2020, after lockdown, I wanted to try something, so I went to YouTube, created my channel. Then I got to know about podcasting, and I said I'm a person who loves trying out. So I said, I want to create a podcast. I want to upload podcasts. So I signed up for an Anchor account. I created that, but I did not know what I want to talk about. So I started interviewing people. So if you look at my podcast, the old episodes of my podcast, most of them are basically I've done interview of somebody and it is there on YouTube and it is now I got the audio. And I put it also on our anchor and became an episode. So I've done a lot of interview podcasts, but season 2, which started from this January, and we have done I think around 5 episodes or 6 episodes, will be doing publishing the next episode tomorrow. I am mostly going solo, I'm talking about certain concept, and I am focusing very less on interviews but only getting some of the best industry leaders. So for example, I recently interviewed a person named Matthew Dix, who's the author of Storyworthy. So that interview will go on my podcast versus all the other interviews that I keep doing or all the other collaboration that I have. So that's how I'm building it to keep only 25% or less of interviews and 75% of the concepts and examples or actual stories. So That's how I am putting my podcast out there. So back to the mind map, you have monologues, you have dialogues, you have interview, you have combination, and you can do all more thing or all the more things where you can ask people to get quiet, give you a question, and you just answer that. I've seen such podcast as well. The most important thing is to remember whether it comes to storytelling, whether it comes to social media, whether it comes to YouTube or even when it comes to podcasting is remembering YFM. For anyone who is going to listen to your podcast, you should know why they are listening, what is it in it for them. If you remember this YFM, if you remember why you want to share and what they will get out of your podcast, it will make your journey easier. So that's the how part of it. Now I want to share my own 5-step framework that I use, and you can also make use of it. So I have this 5-step framework. The first one is the ideate, where basically I think about what do I want to talk about. I have not recorded a podcast for tomorrow, uh, but I will be this afternoon or this evening, I will be thinking about what is the concept, what is the idea that I want to share in this podcast. So first step is ideation. Where I will note down points, I will do my research, I will keep my, you know, pointers ready when I go and record. The second step comes when you have the recording, and even in recording I again follow a 4-step process, which is basically— and that you can use the same process for creating a YouTube video or any other articles, blog itself— and that is called hook, intro, main content, outro. And, uh, I'm actually going to shift to my anchor and to actually show how this actually works. So let me shift to one of the— so as you can see, I am now in the anchor and I am going to, let's say, yeah, this is the episode, last episode, which was 11 Places to Use Storytelling. And I'm going to show you how it works. So see, as you can see, the episode has got 4 different parts. One is the trailer or the hook, then I have my own podcast intro, then I have the main content, and then I have the outro. So let me just play a bit of all of that for you to go through that. Have you ever wondered where exactly can you use storytelling? Well, the answers are so many places, and in this podcast I am going to share 11 different places where you can use storytelling for effectiveness. So this was it. As you can see, it's a very small 2-3 line hook or 2-3 line trailer. If you can see this, only 23 seconds long, and there are probably 3 or 4 seconds of music before that and after that. So if you do this trailer, what happens is your, your listeners will know that what exactly are you going to talk about it. And this I've done after listening to hundreds of podcasts on different genre that know all the best, all the most interesting podcasts have this particular format that they gave a hook of 20 to 30 seconds. That, no, okay guys, have you ever wondered what are the different elements required for, uh, you know, creating a podcast, for example? Now that becomes a hook that will keep people listening to your podcast. So that's the very first thing. The second thing, which kind of I have standardized for everyone, which is our intro. So I'm gonna play probably a bit of the intro. Hey there, welcome to season 2 of Small Town Big Bigger Dreams Podcast.

I am your host Haritosh Srivastav, a public speaking coach, certified mentor, and author of amazing bestseller Small Town Bigger Dreams. I am on a mission to impact millions of lives by helping them find their true voice and become the best version of themselves. I'm so excited to launch the season 2 of this Small Town Bigger Dreams Podcast. If you have not yet checked out, we published 30 episodes in season 1. Now in this season, we will be focusing on public speaking, communication, and storytelling.

Okay, so I'm gonna stop here. So as you can see, in this is a generic intro, and what I've done is I've actually created this intro and recorded from the very first episode, and I put it in every single episode because it is doing multiple things. One is it is making it a standard thing that every time you go the through the episode, you'll see, okay, this is the hook. And then I talk about what is this podcast all about, what are the things you can get in previous episode. And then I also ask people to take action and subscribe and all those things. So that has kind of become a standard. It's about 1 minute 18 seconds. And now that comes the main content, which is, you can see, it's about 11 minutes 23 seconds. And I then put the main content over here. So this is the third part of it. I am very sure you would have heard the term that use stories for effective communication, use story for advertisement, and so on so forth. But have you ever thought where exactly can you use story? What are the different options when it comes to storytelling? Now let me tell you 11 different places or 11 different categories where you can effectively use storytelling, and that can become a game changer for you. Let's get started. So the first one, or the first place where you can use effective storytelling, is— let's talk about the obvious— it's the movies. The movies, whether it's the documentaries, the TV shows, or even theater, wherever these kind of performance arts are there, having a— let me share one quick behind-the-scenes something with you. So when I'm recording my podcast I am preparing my notes in advance. I'm not, I'm not one of those person who will say, okay, have word by word for whether your stories or whether for podcast. But if you can see, before recording this podcast, I have this notes in front of me. Now I hope it is visible. So I've already made my notes, which is part of the ideation and research. Okay, and first one I want to talk about is the movies, and then Public Speaking and Teaching. And what I'm doing is when I'm recording, I'm referring to these notes and adding few stories onto that, adding my favorite public speaker or adding my own experience. I have seen worst pitches, best pitches. So when you are recording your podcast, I'm gonna say that if you need to use a cheat sheet, there's nothing— nobody's gonna say, ah, how can you, how can you are using notes or something? Is no problem at all. And same applies for your YouTube videos as well. If you're planning to do that, you can very well use notes. Make sure that you're not only— I mean, with YouTube, because you have to also look at the cameras and don't read from your notes, but having your own notes in front of you can give you more confidence, and then it can help you structure your thoughts in a way. So back to sharing the episode details. So we saw that I had the hook and I had the podcast intro. Then this is the main content, about 11 and a half minutes. And then at the end, I'm also asking them to download or share and subscribe. So this is called call to action or CTA or outro, which is about 50 seconds or so.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Small Town Bigger Dreams podcast season 2. Hope you found this useful. If you did, rate us on Apple Podcast so that it reaches more people. Do share this episode with someone who may need to hear this. I can't wait to see you for the next week's episode. You can also take a screenshot and tag me on Instagram as Coach Haritosh Srivastav.

So here basically I'm giving a lot of call to action for them. They can subscribe, they can download, they can Tag me. And this is what you want to do at the end of, you know, one of the best ways, whether it comes to presentation, storytelling, or YouTube or podcast, is give them something to work upon. It could mean you're, you're subscribing or downloading. It could also mean that, no, go ahead and list down things, write in a comment, whatever it is. People want to be guided. And if you give them a plan, you give them a path, they feel really good about it. So back to my mind map, you can clearly see that in the second step where I have the record, I'm using this same 4-step formula. You have the hook, you have an intro, you have the main content, and you have the outro or call to action. So that you can use. And the third step comes, which is editing. Now I want— I am recording my podcast on a tool called Audacity. So I'm going to share again screen and show you how Audacity looks like, and that makes it much easier for me to record and then also remove some of the ahms and etc. like that. Because when you're speaking in the flow, a lot of time these unwanted words come. So, so this is the tool called Audacity, and I am recording all my podcasts and everything in this tool. So it's a very easy tool you can install on your computer, on your phone as well. And I use here to record. I don't know whether it's going to capture that, but you can see these waves. So whenever there is a sound going inside that, it will capture that, and then you can pause and you can actually play. And then if there is unwanted sound, you can do. So it is little bit of tedious process at the first time. But once you get into— and I know a lot of people who just go about it naturally, don't do much of editing, and that is also completely fine. But Audacity is a great tool if you are looking for a place for recording. Not everybody wants to record on Zoom and use it, so you can use Audacity. You can do a little bit of editing as well. There's some unwanted section you don't want, some words that was not supposed to be there, you can just select and click on delete and it will go. And You can copy paste, a lot of things that you can do. That comes the editing part. So once you have done ideation, once you have recorded, and once you have edited, this fourth step comes where it comes to upload. So if you saw the Anchor, there's an option called New Episode, and whenever your episode is ready, you can go ahead and upload there, put a title and description And let me share again. For example, I want to do a new episode. I actually have to do a new episode for tonight. So I'll go here and this is where I will start bringing in my audio files. You can use some of your previous files, you can record over here. And once you do that, I'm gonna just Go to library, and I'm gonna go to— so two things I, as I said, I always have something called intro and outro. So this is intro, and then you have outro. So my episodes, high level I need two things now. I need a hook and I need the main content, but my intro is there and my outro is there. I'm gonna actually save this. I can come back always and, and update that. So once I save, it will come here and then here is what I'm going to share all the details like what do you want to call this episode? What is the description of the episode? When do I want to publish? I publish my episode on every Monday and you can choose your date and time. So you can choose when, when you want to publish. Uh, if you have a Spotify, you can add some polls and all. And this is where, uh, you can add a new episode art and basically, uh, graphics. You don't have to really every time. And this is where you can say, okay, this is season 2 and I'm gonna record the 7th episode. So this is Season 2, Episode 7. Is it a full episode? It is just a trailer, or it is a bonus episode? And it's a clean, or you're using some explicit language? You can also specify that. And I'm gonna actually save it as a draft. So I'll record my podcast and, and, uh, okay, I need to put some I'll put the detail later on. I'm just gonna put the storytelling in the two column. I'm gonna save it as draft. Now if I go to the episodes tab, I can see there is a storytelling which is saved. And anytime, whenever my recording is available, I can go ahead here and click on edit audio and upload those files as well. So that's the upload part of it. And okay, so is my screen visible? Can you see the mind map? Okay, great, thank you. So once you do that, once you upload, the next part come, which is the share, which is where I share the podcast. So that is why you get all my broadcast, all my notification. I have a Telegram community, so Once I said, say, on Monday 9 AM or 10 AM, my podcast is live, that's where I will go back to Anchor and I will be able to, uh, let's see, I go here and I can see, okay, my podcast, this podcast is published on this. And also I can go here and say podcast availability. I click on this Spotify, open a new tab, and I can see, okay, if I go to Spotify link, So by the way, if you go to Spotify, you'll find it exactly the same, Small Town Bigger Dreams Podcast. And I can go and I can say, okay, my podcast episode is now live. And I can click on, okay, 11 places to use. There is, in all the places you get something called this, which is basically you can share and you will get a link, and then you can share it on WhatsApp, on Facebook, on other places. So that's about marketing. As they say, unless you market, nobody is going to know that you're doing this. So it's very, very important that you market your podcast. Now, the last bit that I want to share is some of my lessons and best practices. So not too many, but 3 things. Number 1 is the consistency. If you are planning to start a podcast, and this is where my failure also came. I started a podcast in 2021 and I was very ambitious. I didn't plan ahead and I said, okay, I'm gonna upload a podcast every fortnight. And it went on for a few months. And then because I didn't had a plan, I didn't know what I was doing. After a few months, it became a chaos. I was putting it anytime when I get a chance and it was not structured. And I thought podcast almost— my podcast almost died at that point of time. Nobody knew there is a podcast. So that is why when I was doing my research and looking at places and analyzing the best podcasts, I found out that they have a set schedule that, okay, it is every Monday or every week, three, every Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, or every fortnight. They have a set schedule that they tell to their audience or to their listeners as well. So if you are planning to have a podcast, think about it. What is a reasonable consistency that you have? Things happen in life. You, if you say, okay, I'm going to put a podcast episode every day, unless you are superhuman, there are chances that you may not be able to do, unless it is your full-time job. That's a separate thing. So you have to be practical. You might want to do 3 episodes per week. But I'm gonna advise, if you want to start a new podcast, don't have something which is less than a fortnight. So you publish a podcast every fortnight. So that's a first learning of best practices, that at least have it for fortnight. If fortnight is a good time, it's not too long but it's also not too short as well. So people can actually go through your podcast and go to that. The second learning that I had is in terms of audio equipment. Now, uh, people can forgive you for bad video in YouTube, but they don't forgive you for bad audio. So it is very, very important that if you're listening to a podcast which is all about audio, the one thing that I did was I invested in a good quality microphone. Now this is little costly one But you don't have to. Yes, I am using Blue Yeti, that's correct, and I love this Blue Yeti. You don't have to have Blue Yeti. This is, I think, ₹10,000+ or something like that equivalent. But at least get a proper earpiece, get a proper, you know, good quality, uh, lavalier mic or something which is capturing your audio in a way. I think there are some now softwares also that helps you with removing the noise and other things. And secondly, make sure that you are recording at a time where there is no honking, there's no banging on the door, or dogs are not barking. So, and that depends on place to place. I'm not going to say only record at this time, but try to find out at what point there is less noise in your area. Because if there is lot of, you know, lot of noise on the background and, and your listener get distracted, they are not going to listen to your podcast. And that is the reason more— many of the podcasters, they actually record late in the night, like, you know, late in the sense 11 PM or 4 AM, where there is very less chance of distraction. Otherwise, you have to do a lot of setup. You have to have a sound absorbing roof and foam and all those things. I'm not going to recommend all of this. But see which is the time when you have less noise outside. When you're recording, keep your doors closed and make sure that you're using a good quality microphone which is capturing your audio more than other audio. But make sure that try to record at one— at that time when you have less noise outside, less distraction, which will directly show up in your audio quality. And the third best practice that I'm going to share with you is plan ahead. If you want to start a podcast, don't publish a podcast unless you have material for next 4 to 5 episodes. And a lot of podcasters I know, they say, okay, if I'm doing a weekly podcast, I need to have material for next 6 weeks or so, so that at any point of time I still have 4 to 5 episodes ready to go. And then I'm going— because what you don't want to do, which I'm gonna admit that I'm not recorded for tomorrow's podcast. I should have, should have been recording that, uh, but you don't want to get into the place where you are almost there and you don't have anything recorded and you are worried that whether I will be able to do it or not. And if you're not able to do, then you feel guilty. Nobody tells you anything, but you feel like, okay, I promise to everyone 'But I'm not able to publish, it is looking bad.' It's our mind playing with us, but you don't want to get into a situation. So if you plan to have a podcast, make sure that you are having enough material for next 3, 4, 5 weeks. That helps you and that really gives you more confidence. And once you— and even from the podcast perspective, once you go live with 3, 4 episodes, this is where your— the platform starts looking at, okay, this person is consistent. He is constantly sending a new episode to my platform. I should probably promote more. This is where algorithm comes into the picture.