How To Get Started In Podcasting 2020 (The Right Way!)

Today we are going to talk about how to get started in podcasting in 2020 the right way. All right, so sure, you might see other people talking about this. They're gonna be talking about on other podcasts, you can be talking about this on YouTube, but the reason why I'm talking about this is because I have 2 podcasts. One gets about 80,000 downloads a month, the other one gets about 1.1 million downloads a month, right? So I know a little bit about podcasts and I'll just kind of share the, the things that have worked really well for us and that will carry you into a this year and beyond. So the first thing I'll say is this: I didn't realize how important it was to have the right equipment in the beginning. I was using a Blue Yeti. It was a $100 microphone, but I was plugging it in directly as a USB connection, and I realized that I had to have a mixer to make it sound really good. So what I learned over the years was I switched over to a Scarlett mixer. So a mixer is something you can USB plug in, and then you plug your mic into the mixer. So Scarlett is again the mixer that I use. There's 2 Ts at the end. And I upgraded my mic to a Heil PR 40. That's about a $400 $100 microphone. But if you're just starting out, you can get a Blue Yeti. It's like $100 or so and you can get the mixer. I do recommend it because it's going to make you sound much better. Because keep in mind, there's 2 things that matter when it comes to your podcast, your content. And then the second thing that matters is the, your audio quality. Sound quality is all you really have. You don't need to worry about video quality or anything like that, but that's super important. You also need a pop filter as well. So when I say P, like, like I'm spitting all the time. Like for me, I spit everywhere. You need to make sure that there's something to filter that out. So the pop filter will filter out the spit. Or like the nasty kind of— because if you do the— it goes into the mic and actually sounds like there's like a distortion with it, right? So you want to make sure you have some kind of pop filter to help you out. The other thing too is make sure you have a set of headphones. You can use AirPods if you have AirPods, or you can just buy cheap headphones, plug them in, and then just— you don't want any interference. You don't want any echoing coming out when you're doing podcasts with people. You just don't want weird stuff happening. And if you're doing interviews, you want to make sure you're hardwired at least. Um, and you want to have some kind of template if you're doing interviews where you give people an idea of the questions that you're going to ask and then also tell them, hey, here's like a housekeeping list. Like you want to make sure you're plugged in, you're in a, you're in a quiet area, you're ready to go. Um, you want to, you know, prep them, give them as much info as possible. And then from there, um, you're off to the races. And I would also say that if you're going to do an interview podcast, um, I would suggest you don't really do one unless it's in an industry that, that, uh, where it's not being covered right now. Because the problem with the interview podcast is everyone does interview podcasts nowadays. It's, not that hard to do. You have all the amazing people out there. You have the Joe Rogans of the world, the Tim Ferriss of the world. They're, they're, they're interviewing all the most amazing people. But if you're going to do one, um, maybe find you in your business niche. Maybe you can find someone in your local area, your chamber of commerce, whatever. Let's say you're selling, uh, I don't know, Barbies or whatever and there's like a Barbie niche and then like you get all the Barbie influencers. I don't know. I'm just making things up right now. If you're going to do any type of interview podcast, you want to have a list of people that you want to reach out to and then you can use Something as simple as Mixmaxx, or you can use, there's a lot of these different tools out there. You can use Airtable and then link it up with Sendible, and then once you put in the email address there, then it'll automatically start sending out to people. But you wanna have a system and process for doing that. That's what I did in the early days. And if you're like, man, I really need to learn how to do podcasting, I'm really not sure where to go, you can check out the other videos we have on this channel, or there's a lot of people that actually teach how to do podcasts, right? So I believe John Lee Dumas of Entrepreneurs on Fire, He has a Podcaster's Paradise and it's basically a group where you can ask your most burning questions. And I used to be a part of that group when I was first starting out with my podcast and it was great. Also I would say is you should try to get into the new and noteworthy. That's a section in Apple and obviously you can go on Spotify podcasts and that's something I'll talk about in a second. But for Apple you want to appear in the new and noteworthy and what you can basically do is launch with 5 episodes so people know what to expect. You know, launch it to your audience, launch it to your email list, launch to whatever audiences you have, Instagram, whatever. And then that way what you can do there is when you start to take off, Apple's actually going to show you in that section and you're going to get a bump. You're going to get even more downloads in the beginning and that's going to help you for the long term. Once you launch with the first 5, you want to be consistent. Too many people, I see them launch and they actually end up giving up after the first 6 months or 12 months or so. You have to be consistent. You got to, you got to play the long game with the podcast because after the first year on the Leveling Up podcast, I actually, I was only getting 9 downloads a day. After the second year, I was only getting 30 downloads a day, but I was consistent with it week in, week out. I kept going because I had the right motives for it because I was trying to learn. So keep in mind, if you're going to do the podcast, ask yourself, why are you doing it in the first place? Are you trying to build a brand? Are you trying to build an audience? Are you trying to make money? Because I can guarantee you, if you're just trying to make money, you're probably not going to do that well. You got to do it for the right reasons initially, and that's going to keep you going for the long term. And because I did well with the first podcast, Uh, got it up to 80,000 downloads a month. We're able to parlay it into the Marketing School Podcast, which is at 1.1 million downloads a month. Also, don't put all your eggs in one basket. Go omnichannel. Um, not even just omnichannel. Omnichannel is kind of spreading out, but you want to go vertical first. If I'm saying Apple Podcasts, you want to get on Spotify too. You want to get on Google Play. You want to go down vertically first and you can— your podcast host should allow you to publish to these different channels, but also you want to spread out too. This video that we're doing right now, this will go to, uh, you know, the Leveling Up podcast. This might go to, uh, we might repurpose it into a blog post. We might make it into something else. We might promote it on Twitter as well. So you've got to figure out how to go omnichannel because a lot of people nowadays, they don't have the, the attention split everywhere. So you want to make sure that, um, you're kind of protecting yourself by going omnichannel. And I can tell you when I look at the stats for the Marketing School Podcast on Spotify, is actually pretty impressive and I can see that we're, we're building a pretty big following on that and I'm hopeful that we can do something with that following in the future. All right, so that's how you get started with podcasting in 2020. Those are just a couple of tips. Let me know what you think I missed in the comments below. If you're coming from YouTube, don't forget to check out the next video over there if you want to grow faster and don't forget to subscribe and hit the bell button if you're coming from YouTube and I don't know, rate, review, subscribe, whatever platform you're coming from helps us grow and we'll see you tomorrow.