How to Start a Podcast for Beginners in 2022 | Think Media

all right so we're gonna watch um another video from think media and they kind of directed us to this one because their last video um sort of was leaving some more info to be desired and this segues nicely into it so this is as you can see sponsored by buzzprout which is a podcast hosting platform which is where you actually upload your episodes and they then take those and distribute them out to Apple podcasts and Spotify and Google and all those different podcast platforms so that's kind of how podcasting works but the video is how to start a podcast for beginners in 2022 equipment setup software and where to host so let is let's check out this video and see what they have to say this video is brought to you by Buzz Sprout starting a podcast can be so overwhelming what gear do you choose how do you edit it and how do you distribute it to the world we just started a brand new podcast here at think media and I want to break down three easy steps for you getting your podcast started this year we're gonna be breaking down the gear the editing and the distribution so it's kind of funny they said hey we just started a podcast but now we're experts and we're ready to teach so I think that's actually okay in their case because they are experts in audio and video so I'm sure they have a pretty good understanding they might not know tons of the back end around podcasting but that's okay I don't think they're talking too much about that uh mostly gear and bus Sprout which is my um personally recommended platform and someone who I've been promoting for I don't know before I even started teaching podcasting actually I was uh I was recommending them so um kind of been in contact with them for a long time and if you want to check out Buzz Sprout and sign up I will leave a link in the description it'll be my affiliate link you'll be able to get a it's either 20 or 25 Amazon gift card when you sign up so good deal there and um yeah I would just be a little careful about where you get your info if someone says Hey I just started this thing and now I think I'm an expert I would be a little careful so that your podcast can get out to the world you got to just press record hey what's up it's Heather Torres here with think media where we help you build your influence with online video and on this channel we do YouTube tips video tutorials as well as podcast videos just like this so if you're new here consider subscribing we love podcasting here at think media it's such a great way for you to go deeper with your audience create longer form content and be able to grow your influence online and we're going to walk through a beginner setup so that you can actually start podcasting today that's a great point a lot of people on when I listen to a podcast we'll listen to in the entire episode or almost the entire episode and that can be 30 minutes or an hour long so if you think about that that's a lot of time that someone is spending with you um pretty intimately you know you're they have their earphones in you're in the car driving to work or driving home or whatever and they're just spending that time with you listening whereas on YouTube I don't know this stats exactly but I know people don't listen or watch for a half hour or an hour it might be two or three minutes if you're lucky so you definitely get a lot more retention with podcasting and it's you know it's a completely different platform but it's just something to be aware of is that you definitely get some engaged people when uh they're interested in what you have to say you don't need a lot of things to get started I'm going to walk you through these three steps I'll be talking about a lot of different gears so I'll link everything down below so if you want to go and check out those that piece of gear or the videos that we reference everything will be linked down in the description box below number one is the gear getting started with your podcast is all about the audio I'm guessing they'll probably mention the Samsung q2u that she has sitting in front of her and they mentioned that in the last video which is a great microphone that has both a USB and XLR connection so you can use it solo with USB or you can plug it into a mixer or audio interface through the XLR connection um and then record multiple people that way it's a great microphone uh Dynamic and let's see what else they have to recommend we're going to be talking strictly about the audio type of podcasting so the first piece of gear that you need is probably something you already have you can actually use the onboard microphone from your iPhone or you could use the headphones that come with the microphone to record a podcast now I don't recommend doing this outside or in an echoey room you can actually take your phone I don't think you can record a podcast with your headphones that you could listen to them into a closet and record a quality podcast so you can get started today with what you have but I'm

going to cover it's not a bad tip though if you don't want to buy anything and you just have a phone you can record a podcast with it it's fine what I would just be careful to do is um when you're recording get it close to your mouth like this so that way uh it'll pick up sound the best and then also recommended you get in a closet or somewhere really enclosed so you don't have a lot of Echo and it will absorb that sound and actually make it sound quite a bit better so good tip there though two other microphones that I think are great if you are just a beginner my next two options if you have a few dollars that you want to invest into your podcast setup would be the lavalier mic the deity lavalier and this USB microphone now what I like about both of these options is you can actually plug them both into your smartphone or your computer so depending on where overall I wouldn't recommend uh recording into a smartphone if you don't have to a computer that's your only option you know it is what it is but I find it can be difficult to edit and you don't have as much control but you definitely can do it and tons of people do I have a little lavalier mic here from rode uh basically works the same way plugs into your iPhone and then this Clips on the only thing with lavalier mics is they tend to pick up a lot more background sound and you know if you rustle them or something they're pretty sensitive so you have to be careful when using those and I wouldn't recommend them unless you have to use them or you're maybe on a trip or going on um traveling or something it's easy to just throw this in your pocket or a bag or something but otherwise I would probably stick with the uh more desktop Dynamic style mics or you're actually recording your podcast or how you want to actually collect the audio you have these two different options now the lavalier microphone can connect right to your shirt and you can record either into your smartphone or the computer but I actually like this USB microphone and I like it because it actually has a richer sound more like a radio show they're easy Compact and you can take them with you wherever you go now here's the thing you can get started with your podcast with just an audio file so while I think these microphones are great all you need is to just start recording I do think that it's great when you have different pieces of gear that can level up the podcast but really what you need to do is just get started now if you want to be interviewing guests or you want to have more of a pro setup I'm actually going to link a video below where Omar from the think media team did a video about how to record two people at the same time it levels you up from these two options but if it's something you want to do I highly recommend that you check out that video so step number one was gear and step number two is recording and editing really podcasting is not hard but it's just making a few simple decisions at the beginning so that you can have success with your podcast as you start to grow now we need to get into the recording nope that's a definitely a good point when you first start you know it might be all new little microphones and software and do you headphones and things like that what where do you put your files but once you get it figured out it's really kind of repeating that same process so once you get episode one figured out episode two is going to be 10 times easier because you're gonna know what to do you're just gonna hit record and then maybe make a few little minor edits and you're good to go so um not that it's a huge learning curve but it gets a lot easier once you get started and the editing you need to decide are you recording onto your smartphone or are you recording into your computer if you're using your smartphone I recommend downloading a free app called ferrite this app will help you to just record directly into it and you'll have an audio file that you can then use to upload later on if you are using your computer like I am right now I don't think I've used ferrite maybe a long time ago uh I definitely heard it recommended so that's a great way to go or if you use this rode lavalier setup they have their own app to rode reporter I think it is and you can uh customize quite a few things in there and update software and stuff so um there's quite a few apps but that's a good choice I've definitely heard good things about that one you want to make sure that you select the right input computers don't normally select the microphone that you want to automatically so you want to make sure you go into your settings and select the microphone that you have plugged in second that's a good tip uh make sure you double check your input and then the Right microphone is selected and you know if you don't it might use your built-in um laptop microphone and it'll sound 10 times worse it happens um I've seen it happen to the biggest podcasters it is what it is but uh definitely something to good to double

check but also I don't know if you saw but there's an output there and you'll want to select your microphone in this case as your output or your audio interface or mixer whatever it is because then the audio will go out through that and then through the headphones which you should be wearing when you record and then that will uh make sure that the audio isn't coming out of your speakers and kind of bleeding into your microphone so just an additional tip check the input and output once you've selected the Right microphone you want to actually do an audio test make sure that you're not peaking which means that your audio is too loud or that it's too low that will mess up your editing in post-production so you want to make sure that you do a few different audio tests just say anything into the microphone testing testing but I recommend that you actually talk like you're going to talk into the microphone one mistake that we see people make is they'll talk at like a normal level so if I were to talk at a normal level it would be like this like if we were having a conversation but if I'm actually going to put some enthusiasm into my voice like I am right now I project it further so you want to make sure that you are talking into the microphone the way that you're going to be producing your podcast and now that's a great tip do a test recording it can just be a few seconds um if you have multiple people make sure you get all the microphones tested but also you want to err on the input levels coming in a little bit lower if you're concerned about someone getting really animated and excited or talking really loud or into the microphone or something um you can always bring volumes up but if you overload the microphone and clip them as it's called or go into the red on your recording software or uh mixer you'll see it kind of goes from green to Yellow to red and if you go into the red it means the microphone's overloaded and it'll sound really bad and you can't really fix that um later in post-production whereas if you're a little too low you can just kind of bump the volumes up and they'll still sound fine so uh just a little tip there you kind of want to aim for between the green and the yellow on that uh that meter if you can now my friend it's time for you to press record hopefully you've scripted out your podcast and you know what you're going to say but now we need to capture the audio file into an actual piece um they've actually mentioned that in the last video don't script your podcast uh maybe have an outline but stay away from a full-on script of software there's one that I recommend if you're using PC only which is audacity this is a super simple user-free software that all you need to do is just press record and it'll capture your audio file for you now if you're using good choice there I recommend audacity and it's actually available for Mac uh and windows so you can use it for both platforms um as you could saw there it's not the prettiest software but it definitely works has tons of options and customizability that you can do so good choice there the name Mac you have two different options you can use GarageBand which is another free software that comes with your Mac or you can actually use audacity on that as well so either one of those are great simple and easy software for you to get started with your podcast uh agree definitely GarageBand I recommend for people if they want to get started for free it's you know it's already on your computer it's available um one thing you do need to be aware of though is that it's not really designed uh right off the bat for podcasting or kind of spoken word it's you know it's made for creating music so there's a little bit of customization you'll need to do and it can be a little tricky to figure out also if you're recording multiple people there's some hidden settings you have to kind of go the record enable and then make sure you're recording individual tracks and then record everyone so it's I don't know if I'd say clunky but there's just a little bit of a learning curve once you figure it out it's easy but just something to be aware of um especially if you're recording multiple people with GarageBand I'm sure if you search on YouTube you'll find videos explaining how to enable that stuff though what I love about this software also is that not only can you record into them but you can also editing inside of them as well now as a Creator it's up to you if you want to do one take all the way through and keep things like ums and mistakes or you can do like I do and cut out some dead space and some mishaps when I am talking through a podcast so both of those pieces of software are great for doing that you just want to make sure that when you export or you're done with your project that you export it as an MP3 file so that's not exactly true um certain podcast hosting platforms will want an MP3 file

but bus Sprout the sponsor and who they're recommending here um we'll take an MP3 wave and I think even other file formats too and I would actually recommend exporting as a wave because it is a uncompressed file so that means it hasn't already been shrunk down and you know missing little pieces of data and Buzz Sprout will in on their end convert it into an MP3 and because they are converting it you want to give them the highest quality file that you can and let them convert it down if you give them an MP3 that's basically a compressed file then they're possibly going to compress it again and you can have issues so I would just stay on the safe side and upload a wave and you'll be good but otherwise um should be good let's keep watching you're going to want to save it to your desktop because then we're going to jump into number three which is the hosting and distribution of your podcast now hosting just basically means where does your podcast live where do you upload it to the Internet so that it can then go out to the world we love to use Buzz Sprout we've worked with them for this video because it's such a simple and easy software we love Buzz Sprout because it's so easy to create and publish your podcast to every major podcasting platform including Apple podcast Spotify Google podcast and so much more it also gives you analytics across those different platforms so you can make better podcast episodes for your listener so now that you have your MP3 file the next thing is to actually upload it or wave file to the software so when you do that you're going to want to put in your title and description and give Buzz Sprout and the world as much information as you can about what your episode is about next is going to require your podcast setting so what does your artwork look like and your name of your podcast you'll want to make sure you have these things dialed in before you get started so have those in a separate file ready to be uploaded and then third is the directories where do you want your podcast to go to iTunes to Spotify to Google podcast so yeah this is kind of a quick run through for the episode you know you want a short title there's some other things like episode numbers you can put in the description links and other resources similar to YouTube for your entire podcast title in description that's something you're really going to want to think about and it ties more back to the theme of your podcast what it's about who's with there's some categories to choose so um there's quite a bit more that goes into it and if you spend a lot more time up front kind of figuring that stuff out you'll have a lot more success and I talk a lot about that in my course podcasting simplified but we can talk about that another time um just wanted to point out that there is quite a bit of if info that kind of got skipped over here that's okay they're trying to just get to the point and show you uh the basics here ask you'll have to select those so you know where you want your podcast to go when you upload that first episode and that's all you need you just need the gear you need to record it and edit your podcast and then distribute it to the world and here's the thing you just have to get started don't think too much about what's the artwork look like or did that sound good this is the first of many podcast episodes that you're going to record and I just want to encourage you to just get started you know podcasting is taking off and it really does help you build that relationship with your audience I love the version of audio podcasting only because it just allows you to not have to set up the video camera and get pretty to do your podcast but you can just start recording today but if definitely agree just get started um you like she said you can always update your podcast artwork later so you know get something decent um make sure you follow the guidelines and everything but you can always update it later um same with your episodes I would just get them out there and focus on improving for the next episode or the next episode and don't worry so much about making that one you know perfect because it's not going to be you're just going to keep improving so um get it out there I definitely agree with that and um as far as uh this she mentioned video if you want a video podcast I would just start with audio because there's a lot more work to do video and edit and have multiple camera angles and all that stuff lighting um I clearly I'm still working on that but I would just do Audio Only and then add video in as a component later it uh sort of a big barrier to entry especially if you're just getting started so um I'm gonna stop the video

there and thanks for watching