Episode #3 Hosting and Transcribing

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Voxonic Studio Digital Marketing Podcast. Today we're going to be talking about choosing your podcasting host, and why you definitely should be transcribing your podcast. When it comes to getting your podcast out there for everyone to hear, you'll need a podcast hosting account, sometimes called a media host, media or podcast hosts are services that store your audio, and allows your listeners to listen, download, and subscribe to your podcast. One common misconception when learning how to start a podcast is that you upload your podcasts to places like iTunes or Spotify. When this actually isn't the case, you need to sign up with a media hosting service to host your audio files. And you can either have a website set up on their site to deliver them, or place them on your own existing website. For example, three of the best hosting sites out there are Buzzsprout, transistor, and Libsyn. Once you've created your show inside your media host of choice, you can then submit it to various directories. These are the places where listeners can discover, subscribe to and download your show. All three media hosts that are previously mentioned, have a decent setup of art or submit or guided submission tools, so they make it easy to get your show on to Apple podcast, Spotify, Google podcasts and other popular spots. When you sign up for media hosting, you often get a free website with a two Buzzsprout and transistor all give you a simple but decent looking site for your podcast. If you're running a hobby show, this is a good option to keep things nice and simple. You might also fancy taking a look at pod page, which can build a great looking podcast website for you in minutes. But if you want more control, more tools, your own branding, and to own the space where your podcast lives, then you'll want to create your own website for it. If you've already got a website for your business or your brand, then you don't need extra web hosting, you can just set up your podcast on your main website. Alternatively, you can set up a brand new WordPress website as a home for your podcast. And that's surprisingly easy to do. So next I'd like to talk about transcription. So have you ever tried to search for a podcast based on a quote from an episode you listen to? You type in the phrase exactly how you heard it, but you can't find the episode. It's frustrating that a searchable podcast doesn't exist. And after a few more attempts, you give up a new move on to something else. Now with the podcast had been transcribed, this wouldn't be a problem. You could easily find the exact episode and even what happens before or after the party remembered. It's just one of the benefits of making a podcast searchable via transcription and episode highlights. When podcast accessibility is enhanced. Since Google bots cannot yet crawl audio. It's up to the producer of a podcast to take the time to have a transcription of each episode created. transcriptions are a minor piece of the podcast production, but the benefits are plentiful. So I'm going to give you a couple of reasons for why you should transcribe your podcast. So chances are your podcast is hosted on a website and features your name or that'd be your business. Your audience can spread in a number of ways like word of mouth or through iTunes reviews, but part of your listenership will come from people searching for keywords or phrases that relate to your podcast. If your podcast is transcribed and searchable, it's that much easier to gain those listeners. Another reason for transcribing your podcast is 20% of the population that listens to a podcast have some form of hearing loss. Your podcasts may have fantastic sound quality. But if you're not offering transcription services, you're missing out on a significant portion of people that might enjoy your content. Don't limit your potential audience by not considering the various ways people might want to consume your podcast. Even if your audience isn't hard of hearing. They may be consuming an episode in any number of ways. A listener could be trying to tune in on a noisy train while listening for their flight to board or at a sporting event during a break in the action. Having the option to read the episode dialogue and take key takeaways in addition to hearing the audio gives your podcast an advantage over other podcasts that haven't been considered making their episodes searchable in today's podcasting landscape, audience made details like transcription could be what sets you apart from your competition. Transcribing your podcast is another way you can make your listeners lives easier.

So you have an episode that your audience wants to share with their network to show that they listen to your podcast. The only problem is that your monologue runs for five minutes, it's highly unlikely anyone will take the time to transcribe word for word what you've said. If you remove that step for your listeners, and include a transcription, it's much simpler to copy and paste to court while sharing the episode. By making it easier on your audience. You're increasing the odds, they'll promote your podcast. You're also arming your audience with lots of interesting tidbits to share beyond just a link to the audio file. If someone wants to reference what you've said, each episode has a corresponding transcription that people can search for. other thought leaders can quickly grab that content and disperse it to their network. Our recommendation is a lot more impactful with a direct quote to back it up. When someone links to your podcast, they can share an example of the content listeners should expect, your new potential audience doesn't have to go skipping through an episode to find just the right insights. They're laid out in the open thanks to the fact that you've taken the time to make your podcast searchable, accessible, and easy to share. Using your blog and podcast in tandem can help you level up your SEO game to how by creating content focused around keywords, whether it's content for your podcast, or blog post. As I've said before, Google can't listen to podcasts. So growing your podcast will become easier when combined with a blog or show notes. Post transcripts with timestamps of your episode on your blog. Also, your conversations are very likely to contain a natural level of keywords around the topics discussed. These will be indexed by Google, and included in the results. people searching for the topic will land on your episode pages for the transcripts, but are also much more likely to listen to episodes as well. Another benefit comes from the guests names you are using in the transcripts, you are very likely to introduce your guests as part of your normal conversation with these the end up in the transcripts and are picked up by Google Similarly, other potential guests in the niche will likely subscribe to Google Alerts on their competitors and see your episodes. This could lead to new guests coming on the podcast automatically. Another tip to boost your SEO by using podcasts with blogs, you should structure your podcast format around a blog post structure. For example, three questions that become headlines. To take this further. You should go into the podcasts with a keyword in mind for your blog. What questions need to be answered to hit the SEO with that keyword in mind? So for example, you could ask your guest, can you define that term for me? This will help turn your transcript into something discoverable. Okay, we're gonna wrap it up there for this episode. So I told you before I like to keep them short and sweet. In the next episode, we're going to talk about repurposing your podcast audio for blogs, and more. Why double or treble up your work when you can make your podcast audio work for you. Once again, thank you so much for listening, and I'll see you next time.

Hello everyone, and welcome to the Voxonic Studio Digital Marketing Podcast. Today, I'm going to pick up from where I last left off from the last episode. And I'm going to talk about recording your audio for your podcast and uploading that audio to the hosting site. So before we start talking about mics or software, your best bet for a podcast that sounds organized and professional is to practice beforehand, by figuring out what you're going to say and coming up with an outline of your recording. You don't have to go so far as to script things out, just have a general roadmap for where you're headed, and what you want to touch upon. When it comes to the actual recording. The easiest solution might be just a simple recorded Skype call, you can call up your co-host or guests via Skype or record the call with Skype recording software. When you're finished, you have your choice of multiple editing applications to help you with the cleanup, processing, music, and publication. So depending upon what type of computer you have, for Mac users, you can use Call Recorder for Skype, or LinkedIn machine notes. And to edit use GarageBand. Free for Windows users, you can use Pamela and edit with Audacity. Again, links in the show notes. Now, if you have co-hosts, you might consider each of you recording your end of the conversation, your audio separately, and stitching the separate audio files together in post-production. This makes for far cleaner audio because each of you has a separate track for your own voice. After you're finished recording, editing, and producing your podcast, you can upload it to hosting sites like Lipson, SoundCloud, anchor, and Transistor. They'll generate your RSS feed for you. So you can submit it to Apple podcast, Spotify, and other players. What's an RSS feed? Well, Apple podcasts and Spotify actually don't hold any of the audio on their sites, or they are shop windows for your products. So you need somewhere to hold your audio and the aforementioned sites like Libsyn like SoundCloud, Link anchor and transistor are where your audio is being held just like Dropbox. The RSS feed is the link in between the hosting site and Apple Podcasts and Spotify. If you log on to my website, www.VoxonicStudio.ie, you can download a free PDF guide that will take you through all these steps to get your podcast published. So step one in creating an RSS feed for your podcast is you upload your files to Libsyn anchor or transistor and the feed creation is done automatically for you. Step two, log in to Apple podcasts connect using your Apple ID login at podcasts connect.apple.com. Step three. Enter your feed URL and then click validate. Apple will pull your podcast feed details. This will include artwork, title, descriptions, etc. And then click Submit. Apple will give you a confirmation message letting you know that there may be a review process for your podcast. So this typically takes about 24 to 48 hours, but sometimes it can take up to five days. You'll then receive an email letting you know if you've been approved. Three to five days after that people can begin searching and finding your podcast in the Apple podcast app. For promotion and sharing of your podcast, a lot will depend on the site where you upload. Places like SoundCloud, for instance, offer a fairly robust set of sharing options built-in. You can share directly to Twitter, Facebook, and more. And you can embed the audio directly into your blog posts. In my opinion, embedding audio is perhaps the best way to sync your podcasts with your blog content. Many top blogs use their podcast as an additional blog post, adding the audio directly into the body of the post and providing either the full transcript of the podcast or a list of topics and resources covered in the podcast. Complete transcripts are so helpful for SEO and accessibility. It cannot be understated. If you're going to have a podcast, you must transcribe it. Otherwise, Google has a much harder time trying to find your podcast, audio is still nowhere near as easy to find as the written text. As a business owner or service provider. If you understand the value of creating content, like blogging, for your business and brand, then you understand the value of podcasting. Creating a podcast allows you to reach a brand new audience, people who might otherwise never find consume your long-format content because they just prefer the audio format. You don't need to be an established content creator or have a blog to become a successful podcaster. A podcast is an excellent way to build an audience from scratch, and position yourself as an authority in your industry. Podcasts also provide the potential to drive traffic back to your website or store. Every Podcast Directory gives you a link back to your website. And since it's your podcast, you can direct listeners to your website at the end of each show. On Apple podcasts, there are dozens of categories and subcategories where listeners actively seek new content. This means your podcast content will be highly targeted. People who are interested in your topic can seek you out. Having a podcast these days is vital. It used to be in order to position yourself as an authority on a topic you needed a book. But that's no longer enough. Starting a podcast allows you to position yourself even further as an authority on your topic by being more current. As you publish your podcasts every week, you're staying up to date with current topics and trends. It helps build your audience and it also makes it easier to sell your product or service. Since you're a credible source. being seen as an authority can really help influence potential customers to purchase your products. So let's talk about cover art. Your Podcast cover art needs to be beautiful. Don't neglect this aspect of your podcast, as Apple podcasts, in particular, seem to only feature podcasts with professional-looking artwork, you may need to invest a little money in hiring a professional to design your cover art. Whether you're doing it yourself or hiring a pro use words and images that are large enough to be clearly legible at almost any size. Take a look at the artwork that catches your eye on Apple podcasts and model your cover art after it. If you don't have some artwork, I'd recommend trying Fiverr or hiring a graphic artist from Upwork. To create something beautiful for your podcast. Your cover art should be a minimum of 1400 by 1400, and a maximum of 2048 by 2048. Now there are dozens of categories and subcategories on Apple podcasts, everything from Arts and politics to comedy and religion. Choose the category that suits your theme. It doesn't need to be the exact topic. Again, if you're struggling to decide on a category, look at other podcasters on Apple podcasts that are similar to yours, or not which category and subcategory their use. As mentioned in the previous episode, the podcast description or summary is the most important part of the promotion of your podcast. You don't want to skip on the description of your podcast, you'll want to include as many relevant keywords as possible. This is going to help with search engine optimization SEO of your podcast listing. Apple podcasts is a search engine. So many people who find your podcast will find it through a simple search. So when it comes to recording audio, can you record your podcast with an iPhone? The short answer is yes. Since iPhones have microphones, they have everything you need to record the audio. However, the audio will not be as clear or as professional sounding as you'd like. That being said there are several apps out there that you can download to turn your iPhone into a podcast audio recorder. Podcast hosting services such as pod bean and SoundCloud also offer in podcast recording capabilities. Many of these apps are available for Android devices too. So Anchor, Spreaker, and iRig Recorder are all apps that you use. I don't want to talk too long about r...

Hello everyone, and welcome to the first episode of the Voxonic Studio Digital Marketing podcast. That's a lot I know. And on today's episode, we're going to talk about all things, podcasts, and how to get you started. So I'm going to start off with some quick and easy tips to let you know how to get started. So the first question you have to ask yourself when you're starting a podcast is why am I starting a podcast? Are you a freelancer, a business, a marketing manager? Let's say you might have identified podcasting as a great way to build authority and provide your customers and target audience with valuable and entertaining content? Or are you looking at podcasting from a hobby point of view, it might be the reason you're creating a show in your spare time, and the subject would be something that you're passionate about. In either case, you can identify your why that's important to keep in mind. So you can stay motivated, even when you're finding it difficult to get a shirt. So who are you making this podcast for? That's another thing. Unless you know exactly who you're making your show for, and why you're doing it, you've got no chance at all at growing an audience. If you're coming at it from a business point of view. And you're, for example, working in the health industry, Europe, you're a personal trainer who wants to make a health and fitness podcast, then your target audience might be people who are interested in healthy eating, weight loss, exercise, or bodybuilding. Or if you're creating a hobby show, let's say it's are in your love of cars, then your target audience will simply be the same people with the same passion. They might be fans of TV shows like Top Gear, or fifth gear, Wheeler dealers, and such. Those are the people that you will be targeting for your hobby podcast. So the best way I find in trying to figure out who your target audience is is to sketch out or create an avatar of the type of person that you would like to listen to your content. So that persona is something to keep in mind every time you want to plan an episode, where John or Mary, our listener persona like this, is this content focused on what he or she likes, what they're interested in that persona. And those questions help you to keep your show focused and on track, both of which make for much more engaging content. So once you know who you want to reach, how do you reach them? Well, you need to give people a reason to listen. This means creating content that they will get something out of when they hit play. Before we get into that there's a couple of questions that always come up. So one of these questions, when you're starting a podcast, do I need an audience to start a podcast comes up time and time again. So some people already have an audience in place when they start a podcast that could be anything from a business or a brand to musician, athlete, author, blogger. If you already have an audience built around something other than your podcast, then it's a good opportunity for laying the foundation of the fan base. This assumes, of course, that your podcast is relevant to that audience already. You could reach out to this fan base already. If you have one. If you could ask them, what's your biggest pain? What are you struggling with right now, this could help you shape your content going forward? No, this is great. And all you know, just don't let it become a source of procrastination or you know, some sort of design by committee. Because the sooner you start, the better you have to throw the pebble into the water to make those waves so people can hear you. And here's the other side of the coin. What if I have no audience? Well, welcome to the vast majority of people who started a podcast of all the things that made put you off launching your own show, please don't let it be this one. Most podcasters do start it this way. But if you follow the next episodes in this podcast series, I'll show you how to steadily grow your audience from scratch. So first off some good news. Okay, so in the 2002 podcast discovery survey, the data showed that potential new listeners don't give a damn if they've never heard of you. In fact, it's the least important factor they'll consider when weighing up whether or not to hit play, you can check out the survey in my show notes. So know that you're starting to get over your anxiety and starting a podcast and the reason for starting the podcast. Now you have to give them a reason to listen. Whether you're providing information that will help somebody to lose weight in the case of our personal trainer podcast, or you're doing a really entertaining interview with a mechanic about cars. You're providing value for your listener. Not only have you given them a reason to listen, but you're also giving them a reason to come back for more, it's really important to think about this in the planning stages of your podcast, can you write down 1015 potential episodes that you think your target audience would love to listen to? So now you've got a rough idea of what you want to talk about and who your target audiences are. So now, your podcast description, also known as the short summary is the most important thing potential new listeners will judge you. So if that's the number one thing they're gonna judge you on, then you need to get it right. Go to my show notes, and I'll show you how to write the perfect summary for your podcast. So now that we know who our target audiences are, we know the content that we'd like to put out, what are we going to call the podcast. So you might think, have a really clever name for your show. But remember that people need to be able to find it when they're searching for made information about your topic. If you have a catchy name for your show, fairplay to you, then try to also incorporate a description into the title. There's no point in putting out great content if nobody can find it. For example, one of my clients is Brian kin. And he has the Brian Kean Fitness Podcast, simple, straight to the point, incorporates his name, and incorporates what he does. This is something that everybody should try and do. So now that we've got our title. And we know what we're going to talk about, how long is our podcast going to be? So there is no wrong or right answer to this, but many will reference the time of the average commute to work, which is 20 minutes to 30 minutes, which is a good length to shoot for. But don't really worry about these figures too much. Ultimately, your episode length should be decided by just two things, your content and your audience. If you have an hour of valuable relevant content, we chop it down to 20 minutes or 30 minutes. Likewise, if you said everything you need to say in 10 minutes way padded up to 25 minutes. In other cases, so you do an interview. And it's a really good conversation from start to finish, but it runs for two hours, you can always chop it up in half and create two-three episodes. So finally, for this episode, I want to talk about how often should you release new episodes. This is another one of those How To Start A Podcast questions. And so here's the answer. The best schedule is normally the most frequent one that you can stick to on a regular basis. So if you can only manage once a month, fair enough, if you can manage every two weeks, that's even better. If you can manage weekly, then that's great. You can still have a big impact with a fortnightly or monthly show. But people plan their lives around what day of the week it is, it's the routine at the forefront of our lives, and tapping into it can be powerful in saying that sticking to a deadline just for the sake of it is pointless, you'll have a bigger impact if you just put out one excellent episode a month instead of an average one every week. Quality over quantity every time. What I encourage my clients to do is to batch record their episodes. So if they have a particular amount of time where they're ...