The Socialize Strategy - How to Podcast
Welcome to the socialized strategy, May 10, 2024. Happy Friday. Today, we are going to take a deep dive into one of my favorite things to talk about, which is podcasting. So buckle up because we're gonna get started. And just before we put it in drive, I wanna talk about our sponsor which is Planable for this week.
Helen:Planable is a platform where you can organize. So if you are working on social media with a team, with a group, if you have helpers, or if you're trying to keep yourself organized, or if you're working with a client, Lendable is a great way to collaborate. So click and check it out. I'll put the link in the show notes, and the link is also in the newsletter. So you can check it out there.
Helen:Now let's get started. I love podcasting as you can tell because I'm here without fail twice a week. And I have the podcast with my daughter that we do once a week and it's called yours truly with Helen and Julie, if you are not aware of it. We do a mother daughter chat on a weekly basis and I really really enjoy it. So I'm gonna talk about how to get started with a podcast and really some tips to think about as you are moving forward in producing a podcast.
Helen:And I'm just gonna kick it off. It's a great way to share your expertise, to create content, to have fun. And the the thing that you can do with podcast is really complement your social media content, or you can use it for your social media content. So we're gonna get all into all the different ways, and I'm just gonna dive right in. Well, the first thing is pretty obvious, and that is to pick a topic.
Helen:So you'll wanna think about what is your podcast going to be about? And also think about how many podcasts there are, how many podcasts that there are these days. And so how are you going to set yourself apart from other podcasts that may be on the same topic. It's also helpful if it's something that you can talk about easily. It might be something you'll want to think about doing with someone so that you're not talking solo.
Helen:On this one, I do it solo, but on my other podcast, it's more of a back and forth discussion. So really just think about what you're interested in. If it's something that you think you can power through and talk about, in a solo basis, it's makes it a lot easier on some level because you only have to work on your own schedule. You don't really have to worry about coordinating files or getting someone, connected to a Zoom or different quality microphones. All of those things are gonna come into play when I get into the production side of it.
Helen:But first and foremost, think about what can be interesting to an audience that you may already have or you may want to create. So that's for starters to really really ponder that before you dive in. The next thing is to think about branding. And the branding has to take you into a few different areas because you're obviously gonna wanna design some graphics and a thumbnail. You your title is something that you really need to think about.
Helen:And I'm gonna give you some learnings that Julie and I have had doing both of these podcasts, which is when you're in a search on a Spotify, you wanna have something that's so unique. So for example, when we have yours truly with Helen and Julie, because it has our names in it, When you type in yours truly, lots of podcasts come up immediately. But once you put in one of our names, it goes right to our podcast. So the search engine is helpful when you have something specific in the title that's probably not used often and in the combination with your podcast title. So creating an unique combination of words is I would say helpful, just food for thought.
Helen:And the other thing is, you want your podcast to be searchable so that for example, ours is called the socialized podcast. In hindsight, I'm not sure that we might name it that because the word podcast is in the title and therefore, we need to put it on our thumbnail. But when you're searching podcasts, we're almost wasting a word. One of the our words is podcast. And we really don't need that word.
Helen:Because when you're searching podcasts, you know it's a podcast. So where we have an extra word in there that is probably unnecessary and it could have been used for something else. But you know what? We're not looking back. We're moving forward.
Helen:So I'm just giving you some learnings so you can think about the name of your podcast and realise that it doesn't have to have the word podcast in it. Okay? So ponder that. I mean, we don't have it in our other podcast. We do have it in this one.
Helen:And it's just food for thought. And take that and take that and do with it what you will. But when you think about your branding and your imagery, your thumbnail, although you think thumbnail, it's tiny, it's small. It should have information for the viewer to tell them what your podcast is about. Because if you just have, for example, if I just had the socialized podcast as words on screen, I don't I don't think that that's gonna be as helpful as now that we've changed it.
Helen:Because in the beginning, that's what it was, and we didn't really think too much about it. But then starting to see when you search and the logo comes up, other podcasts that come up in the same category are much more descriptive. And they say, you know, your social media updates, your weekly updates, or learn social media from this guru or whatever. So having more information on there that sets your podcast apart and tells your viewer what your podcast is about. That is helpful information.
Helen:So think about that when you're designing your thumbnail. It shouldn't just have, a title on it unless your title is that descriptive of your podcast. So really give that some thought because branding is key. You want to think about your thumbnail as how it's going to set you apart so that when people are scrolling podcast thumbnails, think about yourself as a viewer. You're scrolling podcast thumbnails.
Helen:What's gonna grab your attention? And it's the same way. It's funny because I think about this when you're making video content, you want those first 3 seconds or the first 5 seconds of your video content to grab your viewer. So in the same way, you need your thumbnail to grab your viewer in a podcast. Next category here is recording and production.
Helen:You'll want to think about how you were going to execute your podcast. I'm gonna tell you how we do it, but I'm also gonna give you some other options for how you can do it. The first thing is high quality microphone. I'm pointing to my microphone if you're watching this if you're not watching this on video. You want to use a microphone.
Helen:If there's one thing you invest in for a podcast, it is the microphone. To me, it's much less important to have quality video. Most people are listening. A lot of people are not viewing. I'd love to know who watches versus listens.
Helen:That would really be helpful info. I probably should do a do a little research on that. But the microphone is way more important than the video quality. So you can do it a few ways. Now I'm using right here a Shure microphone, s h u r e, and it's the m 7.
Helen:I will put the link in the show notes, and the link is probably also in the newsletter. This is a really helpful, tool because you just plug it right into the computer, and then I can record right in Zoom. But every time I connect it to Zoom, I always connect my I check my Zoom settings and make sure my microphone is selected for my audio my microphone input. It's really important because even though it's plugged into the computer, it doesn't mean that whatever platform you're recording on, it's recognizing it. So you can use multiple platforms to record your podcast.
Helen:Julie and I, and for this podcast, I use Zoom. The quality of the video is not great. It records in 7 20p, not 10 80p. It doesn't look that it look like crisp high def, but for what my needs are, I'm less concerned about video quality and I'm more concerned about audio quality and providing the information. So I want to make it easy.
Helen:So that twice a week, it is not a big production for me to execute this podcast and get it posted. So I'm gonna explain to you what my process is, but I just wanna let you know that even though you think, oh, I just wanna make an audio podcast. I don't need video. It's a really good idea to record video. Even if you don't really care where it's going, if you put your video of your podcast on a YouTube channel, a lot of podcast views come from YouTube now.
Helen:And there is a way to post your podcast on YouTube where it shows up in a podcast bucket. So there's a special area of YouTube now where people search for podcasts specifically. Again, that thumbnail is important and the thumbnail should be formatted acts as per the platform that you're uploading it to. So you make sure that you're searchable and findable. But there is a good percentage.
Helen:As a matter of fact, a podcast studio I recorded at once told me that, 50% of podcast views come from YouTube. I was shocked. So I immediately started putting my my podcasts on YouTube. So even though you don't wanna think about video, it's a good idea to be including video. And if you're a person that's terrified of being on camera you don't want you want it to be strictly audio you could always just have a an image on the screen and add your audio to it so that it is a video, but maybe there's just an image up there or photo or something like that.
Helen:But at least it's gonna put you in the YouTube bucket of podcasts. Alright? So I know maybe that sounds complicated, and I can dive a little deeper into that. We're gonna probably do some, some more work and talking about podcasts moving forward. But I just want to make sure that I'm giving you some of the basic information.
Helen:So now I'm gonna tell you quickly how I execute this podcast and then things to think about depending on how you're gonna do it. So this podcast gets recorded on Zoom with this microphone, and I just run straight through. I don't necessarily edit this particular podcast. As a solo doer, solo recorder, I don't need to edit from one camera to another. If you are planning to do a podcast, let's say for a client, you'll want quality editing.
Helen:So you'll want to especially if you're having guests, you'll want to cut from camera 1 to camera 2 from the one person to the other person. So you wanna be able to do some editing. And that is an important part of podcasting. But if you're just getting started and you wanna keep it super, super simple and you wanna skip that, you'll just have to buckle up and record. And if you make a mistake, you're gonna keep going.
Helen:And if you want to take a break on your Zoom, you can just click pause when you're recording. Click the pause button. Don't click the stop recording and you can do a pause and get yourself together and then unpause and continue. So you can self edit as you're going forward. But a lot I would say most podcasts do get edited.
Helen:So that takes me to my next point. After you record, you will need to edit your podcast. So you might have sections that you wanna remove, you might have interruptions, you might make mistakes, you might wanna start something over. It's good to have if you don't know how to edit yourself, it's good to have a podcast editor in place. So I will do a little plug here that if you're looking for a podcast editor, I do know a few editors that can help you out.
Helen:So you can feel free to message me, email, etcetera. My my con reach out on my on my platforms, and I'll hook you up with a podcast editor, especially if it's client needs and you know that they have a budget to pay an editor. It's it's certainly worth it because the editor will also create your teasers. You're gonna need short social media teasers created for your podcast. The other thing you can do when you're recording is you can be recording on Zoom and if you want to put a second camera set up to the side, you can record yourself with your regular phone camera in high HD.
Helen:So you can have good quality audio. And that's where an editor comes into play. You can record have one person recording with their side camera. The person that you're speaking to when Julie and I do it, I have my side camera set up because we do a lot of, posting on social media. So I want quality clips for that podcast.
Helen:And we have an editor for that one. So what I do is hi, Steven. I'm saying hi to the editor. What I do is I actually set up a camera. She sets up a camera.
Helen:We make sure the cameras are on opposite sides so that I'm so that it looks like we're facing each other. So my camera's on the right. Her camera's on the left of her. And then we supply those 3 files, the zoom file for audio for our editor, and the 2 camera files for each of our phones. And then the editor puts all three together and creates really nice teasers for us.
Helen:So that's where editing really comes into play, and it's important. If you have if you're doing this for a client or if you have video as a main point of what you need, you'll definitely want to consider your video quality. Otherwise, like I said, just run with the Zoom. Just let it fly and just post it to YouTube and don't really stress about it. Next thing is to pick a publishing platform.
Helen:This is really important because, I mean, you can do a little experimenting and you can do your own research on this to figure out what's best for you. There are plenty of people who do those publish, record and publish directly from a platform like Riverside or StreamYard, where the platform itself, you it records the podcast. I'm not quite sure how those work in terms of editing. I think I think there's editing built right into it, and you can edit things in the podcast. But since I don't use it, I'm not really as familiar.
Helen:And then you directly publish from there. There's also Spotify, which has a Spotify for podcasters now has a free option. But that one is more for beginners if you're just getting started and you wanna try something. Ultimately, if you really want to make a go of podcasting and make the little investment, it's not that expensive to do it monthly with a platform like Transistor. And we that's the our platform of choice.
Helen:Julie and I use Transistor for both platforms. But it does require a paid prescription subscription or prescription. Subscription. Alright. So you'll wanna think about that.
Helen:Do some research yourself. Look into each one and see if it will accommodate your needs before you make a decision decision about where you're gonna where you're gonna land. Little more about that coming up because I'm gonna tell you the process of, once you record on Zoom, even if you just record and you're gonna publish directly, there are a few steps. So let's talk about those steps. The steps are, number 1, I make my thumbnail.
Helen:Actually, I have a document that I follow, a checklist, so that I don't do it in the wrong order because it takes more time to do it in the wrong order. So number 1, I create the thumbnail. Number 2, I publish to YouTube. Number 3, I cut and paste into the YouTube description from a document that I have set up. I cut and paste the show notes and then I just edit.
Helen:I do a little, special show note per episode in the middle. But I have a basic template. I cut, I paste, and then I just change the little section in the middle. Then after I do it to YouTube and it's scheduled and ready to go, I copy and paste the link to the YouTube video. I go over to Transistor.
Helen:I then publish it. I I then drag it and drop it into Transistor. I then copy the YouTube link into Transistor because it has a place where you can add a YouTube link. That way if someone's on your Transistor and they wanna watch it instead, they can click right through. So it's pasting that link.
Helen:Then I go back to that document again. I paste the show notes in to process, and then I publish that one. Once that is published, I literally copy the link from the podcast into my newsletter so that I can share it with my audience. So there's a few steps involved. But once you get in a rhythm, it is very quick.
Helen:I know that sounds like a lot, but that's why I made a checklist because I wanted to not go out of order. I want to be able to not think about the steps. I wanna be able to go boom boom, step, step, step. And each week, twice a week, I do the recording, I post to all those places, and then I'm done. And it's all of about, maybe it's a total of an hour by the time I do all of those steps.
Helen:So it makes it very efficient. And so that is why you next want to determine your cadence. How often do you want to post? So first, if you're just starting, you'll want to bank a few episodes. You'll wanna record a few before you launch 1.
Helen:You don't wanna launch 1, and then you're panicking trying to record the next one so that you can have a few ready. It's so that you can have a few posting right away. So I suggest that you record a few. Record maybe 4 or 5 episodes before you launch. That way, you're not playing catch up.
Helen:You always have one in sort of in your back pocket to post so that you have some time, something comes up, you don't get to record, you have you have something to post. Give off some thought to have how often you wanna release episodes, especially in the beginning. When you're building an audience and you're posting weekly and only 10 people are listening to your podcast, it could be a little discouraging. The nice thing is that these podcasts are evergreen. So when you get new listeners, a lot of times they're gonna go back and listen to your older episodes.
Helen:So it's not a waste of time by any means. It's just that when you're first starting out and you're building an audience, it can be discouraging to go and look at your analytics and say, oh, shoot. I'm only getting 10 listens to my podcast, and I'm spending all this time doing it. So maybe initially you start with a biweekly or once a month podcast until you start getting a rhythm of listeners in, and see how often people how much they want to hear your content again and again. So really determine your cadence by thinking about your audience, thinking about your topic, and figuring out how you wanna do it.
Helen:Also think about if you wanna create a block of 12 and call it season 1. That's always a good strategy too. So that way you can allow yourself a break in between. You can record 12 episodes, and then you can have a little breather of, like, a month in between before you launch the next season. So you can ponder that.
Helen:It's a nice thing to think about in terms of cadence. It's all about managing your time, managing what is realistic for how often you can post. And so I think a lot of people just start running full speed, and then suddenly they're in a panic because they just can't keep up. And then it becomes a job and a chore. And you want it to be something you really enjoy doing and make and make it as easy as possible for yourself.
Helen:And then the final thing is to think about marketing your podcast. How are you going to promote it? Where are you going to promote it? And this is what I think I I wanna really emphasize this learning that I've had, which is think about who's listening and where their favorite place to view the type of content that you're providing. So it might be really think about it.
Helen:It might be your audience might be on LinkedIn if they're talking about something where it's business related. Or like, for example, with, Grace with as a culture coach. Hi, Grace, if you're listening. Grace is a, she calls herself the CEO the culture CEO, and she talks about, corporate culture. So her audience is probably over on LinkedIn more so than anywhere when it comes to the content of a podcast.
Helen:She does talk about culture on her TikTok and her Instagram channels, and she gets a lot of traction there from audience in terms of people in the corporate world. But when it comes to let's say, she's doing a higher level strategy thing in her in a podcast, Maybe she should be. I should talk to her about this. She is. If she's doing a podcast and it's geared towards maybe corporate management, etcetera, those people might more likely be found on LinkedIn.
Helen:So my point here is think about where your audience is for the type of content you're providing. So where are they listening to this type of content? And that's where you wanna make sure you're posting those teasers. And you can post them on all your channels because you never know. Something you post on TikTok and all of a sudden it gets traction and it was you didn't even think it would get traction.
Helen:So you post it everywhere. But the point is think about don't miss a channel. Don't miss an opportunity. And in the beginning, I didn't even think about posting on LinkedIn. And then when I started doing it, I got a lot of good traction over there.
Helen:And again, it's not how many people are listening. It's the right people. If you got the right people listening. So just think about where you might be finding those special audience listeners, members, people who wanna learn from you. Alright.
Helen:Now before I leave, because that's that's my wrap on podcasting for today, but I'm gonna answer some questions. And I also wanna announce that we do have another expert workshop coming up. There's gonna be 2 workshops coming that don't have the date set as of the recording of this podcast, but if you are on the newsletter list, you will get the email announcements. We have, a guest coming up who is a I call her Viva 50 influencer, Lorraine Laddish. She is an over 50 influencer.
Helen:I think she just turned 60 actually, but she has her platform is called Viva 50. So which I she started, I think, shortly after she turned 50. So she's an older creator who is a full time creator influencer. That is how she makes her full time salary and in the 6 figures. So this is not like she's just making little side money.
Helen:She's a full time creator. So what I love about this is I'm gonna learn from somebody who has made this work as an older creator. And I know a lot of times it's difficult for older creators to get the same types of brand sponsorships as the younger creators. And Lorraine is amazing on Instagram. That's where she has her bigger following.
Helen:And I want and she she even has an agent, so I wanna definitely get into the mindset of how she thinks about it, how she chooses what brand deal she's gonna do, how she secures those deals, which ones are return sponsors, how she determines when she's gonna say yes or no to something new, a new opportunity. I'm really curious to learn from her. And so I'll be announcing the date for that soon. And as well, we're gonna do another editing workshop in the editing series. So you can keep an eye on that.
Helen:Always check the website, and click the workshops tab so you can see what new workshops are coming. Alright. Next, I'm gonna answer some questions. Pretty happy about the questions because we did get a bunch of questions today. I'm gonna power through a lot of them because I have some time.
Helen:Alright. First off, I've been using my phone to do videos on TikTok and and also my personal and only phone. Do I need another phone for videos on TikTok? What I thought think is interesting about this is the person, Sofia, who who, provided the question, says that she notices on a lot of videos and lives, people are answering their phone. So she's thinking they must have 2 phones, and that is a really, really good question.
Helen:I will answer this by saying, no, you do not need 2 phones. And I, as a person who has 2 phones, didn't get 2 phones because I'm doing TikToks. I I had 2 phones in my life because when I was first in the pandemic and I was had to film, I had to do some filming on my own without my camera crew because we had to go and do some interviews with some NFL players. And I couldn't bring a camera crew, so I said, I'll shoot it with my phone. It'll just be me.
Helen:I'll wear gloves. I'll wear a mask. And I went to have an interview with some NFL players, but I was so worried about my only phone as I'm filming if it was to start ringing, if I was to run out of storage, I was completely panicked about it. So since it was a professional thing for my production life, I made the investment into a second phone, which didn't even have a phone number on it for, I think, 2 years. I didn't put a phone number on it.
Helen:It was just my content phone. So that was strictly for work. So then what happened is I started making tutorials and that second phone really came in handy so I could record my tutorials with the one phone and I could be using my other phone to demonstrate. So thus, the whole thing for me was like a perfect storm. How I ended up with 2 phones and I ended up teaching tutorials.
Helen:It all sort of happened by happenstance. But you do not need 2 phones. You don't have to invest in that. Oop. If you have enough time, my light just went out.
Helen:Alright. Well, we're gonna have to fly the rest of this without my light. I could probably turn a lamp on. Let me pause and do that. Right.
Helen:We have light again. Next question is you mentioned downloading a song if you edit outside of TikTok or Instagram, and then once you complete, you add the music back in the app. But how do you download a song to your phone so you can edit in CapCut? Alright. The easiest way to do this is simply to save whatever the TikTok is or the Instagram reel is that you have liked the music from.
Helen:So you save it to your phone. And if you can't save it in in the case of Instagram, you can maybe screen record it. And what you're gonna do is that video will live in your photo library. So you go into CapCut, you click add audio, and then you tap down below where it says extract audio, and then you select the video, and it will grab the music from the video that you've downloaded. I know sometimes hearing those steps is harder than seeing it visually.
Helen:So gonna mark this as a needed tutorial, and I'll do a tutorial on this for you soon. Teegarden, Tiffany. I remember your name. Be impressed. Okay.
Helen:Next question. I have a creator account with over 2 k followers and still can't add music inside the app. This sounds very strange and very glitchy, and I'm very confused by this question. So my suggestion is if you don't have any drafts in your in your drafts, make sure you don't have drafts. If you do, they're gonna go away.
Helen:But I would uninstall and reinstall the app. This sounds like there's something amiss with the app and the way it downloaded on your phone. You should certainly be able to select music. That's the whole point of TikTok is to be able to pick music. It makes no sense.
Helen:If you're a business account, you may not be able to pick really good music tracks if you've created a business account. But if you are just a creator account, as you say you are, you should be able to just pick a music track. And you can pick it from the circle from someone else's video and see if that works. Strange to me that you can't add music, so I think there's a glitch unless you don't know where to to find the music. Be merry 506.
Helen:I hope that you get this message and hear this answer, and you can get back to me with another question once you once you do those steps and let me know if it works. Alright. The next is and the last question for today is from Wendy. I would like assistance with growing my account. Wendy, I love this.
Helen:And I probably will do another episode, another newsletter coming up about how to grow on your platforms. But what I will tell you is I have done 5, sort of 3 other episodes about growth, engagement and optimization and how to grow your your account in social media on social media. So I'm going to give you the episode numbers of the podcast for those three episodes so you can listen to those for starters. And then we'll probably tackle that topic again coming soon. So the episodes are episode 5, episode 9, and episode 13.
Helen:So please go and listen to those podcast episodes so that you can at least learn some of the tips and tricks that we have shared previously. And let me know if if that is helpful for you. That is it for today. As you can tell, my voice kinda came back since Tuesday after the wedding. However, I'm recording this a few days early because I do have clients in town for editing.
Helen:So even though today is Friday that you're listening, I am recording it on what is today? Tuesday. So that's why I still sound a little hoarse. So you don't have to worry. I'm sure by Friday, I'm gonna by the time you're listening to this, I'm sure my voice will be back to a 100%.
Helen:Anyway, lovely to see you. Thank you for being here. As always, thanks for listening. Thanks for your support. And if you landed here by via the podcast platforms, make sure you're subscribed to that newsletter, hellosocialize.com, so that you're getting the newsletter with the links to the things that I'm talking about and that you're updated with the upcoming workshops as soon as they're announced.
Helen:Thank you again. Have a very happy weekend, and I will see you next week. Bye.
