How To Start A Podcast In 2022: A Complete Step-By-Step Guide | From Idea To Launch

Podcasting is booming the industry and there is immense growth every year. Don’t you agree?

Let me ask you, what is a Podcast? A podcast is a series of episodes similar to a TV show and you can easily subscribe to them and get automatic notification via your favorite podcast app when any new episode comes!

Want to know how to start a podcast? But do you know the essential steps to start your own podcasting? I know there are various questions in your mind How to start a podcast on Shopify? How to start a podcast on Youtube? How to start a podcast for free? How to start a podcast with no audience?

Uploading a podcast needs a proper website builder so that people listen to your new episodes and easily share across various social media platforms.

If you are a business owner and looking for a guide on how to start a podcast then this article is a must-read for you! To grow your business and expand your audience reach you should know what are the essential steps to start with audio podcasting and why you create a podcast.

If you are interested in Video Podcasting? Now you can create 3D Avatars inside your videos, and get your videos to drive more traffic in the coming days! Engage your audience and get better results for your podcasting.

Here is a complete step-by-step guide,for you to have the basic knowledge, why you need to start your own podcast. Let us get started without wasting any more time!

How To Start A Podcast:

• The first and foremost step is Planning
• The second step is you should choose a topic name, format, and length for each episode
• The third step is to create a beautiful design, with a description to give a brand value to your podcast
• The fourth step is to record and edit your audio files such as in MP3 format
• The fifth step is you should find a place that specializes in podcast hosting
• Lastly, you need to group audio files into an RSS feed, so that they can be distributed through iTunes and downloaded on any device

Let us discuss in details for better understanding:

1. Planning

Before you start a podcast you need to spend a good amount of time here. Take your time and make your mind feel relaxed and note down all the essential steps to start your podcasting like a pro! Here, you should think about what should you podcast about? There will be several ideas but choose the one, you are excited about.

The second step, once you create a podcast, now you can decide who your podcast will be for! You can find your ideal podcast listener in online communities like Facebook and Instagram. But most of the time this initial step is often ignored, but to be true this is the biggest mistake you shouldn’t do!

2. Choose A Topic

If you want to be successful in your podcasting you should focus on a particular topic or niche. Targeting a specific niche is very important, while you want to reach a larger number of audience. Ask yourself, why should anyone listen to you?

Look, you should never select a topic that is hard to communicate and there is a risk to miss out right listeners! For example, if you talk about ” internet marketing” then you have to cover a wide range of niches. But if you target only ”internet marketing for newbies” then you are targeting a specific niche who are very new to this field. There is a chance you can expand your topic once you achieve that much attention to that field.

3. Pick A Co-host

If you start your podcasting with your friend or business partner, then you can have a more engaging conversation to share your viewpoints on a particular topic. It can be very helpful for you to keep things on track, plus there is an opportunity to distribute additional works such as promoting, editing, and much more. Make sure both of you are committed and schedule your recording every week. If there is any problem, you alone can continue with your podcasting or you can a solo or add a co-host later.

Recommended Article: Tips For Hiring A Podcast Voice Action

4. Choose A Name

Looking for how to start a podcast on Spotify? how to start a podcast on YouTube? But before you start you should choose a name for your podcast that will suit your topic that you will be covering for near future. For example, if you choose a topic name ”Dedication” and then you want to talk about any other topic that is completely different related to this name! Another option is you can purchase a domain name for your podcast or you can get a free domain from Bluehost web hosting.

5. Show Format

Podcasts are considered a popular content platform, as they get quicker attention compared to blogs. People are more interested in listening to audios, as any kind of time waste is triggered to listening to songs, that may be in the car, at the gym, or maybe at work.

Length

Now, there is a myth that big length podcasts are ideal. You can’t end a podcast that takes only 30 minutes or extend it around 1 hour as because people are generally not interested to listen that long! Make your podcast as long as it needs to be, otherwise it becomes far from the topic. There are both types of podcast, short like 5 minutes as well as 5 hours long. You to decide which one suits your topic and perfect for potential audience. Make your podcast between easy, good and not very much long.

Style

This step is vital, if you are wondering how to start a podcast and make money, then you must know interview podcast shows are much popular compared to others. I would advise you to keep a balance between your shows.

Do solo or co-hosted shows half the time, and interview shows on the other half. If you want to grab new listeners, then interview shows will do the rest for you. Just present your shows with pre-made templates and attractive graphics to engage more.

Episode Format

Podcasting doesn’t mean you just record, edit and upload. There are lot more things you should keep in mind, depending on how you go about doing it. Below is complete guide of an overall podcast workflow:

• Record Episode
• Edit Episode
• Add intro/outro to your file
• Export audios as MP3 file
• Tag with ID3 editor
• Upload your MP3 file
• Schedule your episode
• Publish your episode

Play smart in this part, to make it more easier you can share small clips on social media. But there is one thing to remember, you should speak for both your old listeners as well as new listeners.

6. Preparation

Now you have got decided your topic, format with a secured domain name, there are certain steps you need to get prepared before you launch your episode. See them below:

Create Cover Art

Before you think about how to start a podcast with no audience, then let me tell me you friend without an audience you cannot create a good podcast. Always keep in mind that the design you made as a cover image will blow out the eyes of the audience as most of them will browse from their favorite podcast app or apple podcast.

They can also see the image you have shared on social media. If you want to have professional-looking artwork, then you need to invest some amount of money into hiring a professional to design your podcast work.

Use perfect words and attractive images that are large enough and clearly visible at almost any size. You can hire a graphic designer to create something beautiful for your podcast, and get hundreds of different designers to produce a draft, and then you can choose the ones that best suited your podcast topic.

7. Get A Professional Intro

Now it is very important, to get professional quality voice overs and intros. If you start your first podcast show, referring to a third party podcast and this can be a great way to stand out from others.

8. Choose A Intro Music

There are many royalty-free music and sound effects for podcasts, PremiumBeat is great for podcast music with good quality background music, jingles or sound effects. This is easy to search, and comes with different styles with full license. Here, you can get everything whether a podcast intro music, outro music, segment transactions, background music that you can use for podcasting.

9. Get A Microphone

If you are sure about podcasting, and looking for how to start a podcast, then you must need a microphone for podcasting. Every laptop or PC has at least 1 USB port that allows you to connect a device. But do you know what is the good news? Now it is very easy to get a USB microphone of reasonable quality.

Still, now most popular podcasts use simple setups, but the problem is those simple built-in microphones were not designed for podcasts. If you are serious about starting a podcast, I will recommend you to use Samson Go Mic that is a basic plug-and-play microphone and a great choice if you don’t want to invest much. Audio Technica AT2020, which will help you to produce very high-quality voice recordings.

10. Podcast Guests

Once you are done with your interview and recording, now is the time to jot down the names in a list whom you want to have in your podcast. But make a confirmation, that your guest doesn’t have any questions about the interview. You can use app like Acuity, so that people can book considering your time and then schedule. There is an opportunity , you can ask them for skype user name or to share a short intro so that they can schedule with you.

11. Recording And Editing

Now comes the most vital part before you start a podcast. Look, editing is something you can deploy like you can edit your every breath, every pause, but guys this looks more unnatural as you can’t forget that you are a normal human being! You have breath, and if you want to connect more with your listeners you need to improve each and every aspect which you find that is not up to the mark.

In this case, you can use Audacity, a podcast-making tool that automatically builds a fresh episode for you, and works on any computer whenever you connect to the internet. You just need to upload your recordings and use the podcast editor to check out any kind of mistakes if there.

12.Podcast Intro And Outro

Again, before you start a podcast, then you must need to add intros and outos, that will basically introduce your show, and the episode with mentioning a call-to-action. It is recommended to hire a pro voice artist, to help you to record your intro and outro that will add reliability and some amount of professionalism to your show. If you want to do it by yourself, you can opt for royalty free music sites like Audio Jungle for your background music and record your own intro and outro.

13. Exporting Your Episode

After your editing process is complete, the next step is to export your file as an MP3 and prepare it for upload to a podcast media host. Once you export your audio, the next step is to confirm your settings for small file size, otherwise it can cost you more money in hosting. Finally, after you have recorded, edited, and uploaded, you can easily launch your podcast.

If you are a serious businessman and want to create your own brand value, then podcasts will play a huge role for you. A podcast allows you to reach a brand new audience and helps to drive traffic and position yourself as an authority in your targeted niche.

Let us have a look, what are the reasons to start a podcast:

If you are here to learn about how to start a podcast free, you have to know first how podcasting works. In the next section, I will discuss a detailed discussion to make you understand. See below to learn more.

Podcasting has full control, and you can easily listen to episodes on the specific podcast website! You just need to download the app on your phone, tablet and you can subscribe to your favorite shows too. There are millions of podcasts out there that are all free to use!

Podcasts are free to listen on your phone, computer or tablet. You just need a strong internet connection and a podcast app to listen to thousands of podcasts made around the world. Let us now see, how you can use podcasting for your content marketing.

There are 2 ways, you can listen to a podcast:

1. You can easily download the podcast from the RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed on your blog or the website itself where the podcast is hosted. With this technology, users can set which programs they would like to record and then automatically records those programs for later viewing.

2. Another way is to use a player such as iTunes and load up the RSS feed into the player and play any episode on your devices such as smartphone or tablet. After this, the podcast player coordinates the data from the RSS feed and prepare a list of episodes with episode name and show notes, artwork with a link to MP3 file.

To start a podcast, you need to spend on equipment that is needed to be completed and if you are looking for how to start a podcast under 1000 USD, then it is very easy to get a basic set up if you already got a computer, a microphone, audio recording, and editing software. Moreover, podcasters don’t require a license to broadcast their audio content and don’t need to conform to the Federal Communication Commission’s broadcast decency regulations.

There are some steps you will need to consider while you are creating a podcast:

• Artwork: Artwork plays an important role in your podcast, it is suggested to hire a professional designer to create beautiful-looking artwork. Apple and iTunes are more focused on professional-looking artwork. Use words and images that are highly visible and look more catchy to your eyes. If you are doing your own or hiring a professional, you shouldn’t neglect this part.

• Podcast Name: Next important is to give an ideal podcast name that will help your listeners understand what is your podcast all about. You can give a broad descriptive name, or a short description with your podcast name which will increase the search results on various platforms such as iTunes. You must relate your podcast name with your podcast show.

• Podcast Category/Subcategory: If you are confused to choose between categories you can look at other podcasts that are similar to your category and choose the best theme that suits your category. You will find a wide range of categories and sub categories that includes everything that you search for. Such as religion, comedy, politics etc.

• Podcast Description: If you want to make your podcast visible to all, then you must put each and every keyword related to your podcast and create an attractive podcast description including all applicable keywords so that you appear on search results if anyone searches for your topic. One of the popular search engine for podcast iTunes, which is used by most of the podcasters. It totally depends on you, how your podcast will appear on search result page!

• Prominent Guests and Collaborations: If you want to grow your podcasting and gain popularity among your listeners you should strategize how to include names of popular guest appearance who had visited earlier and also mention the topics of the most popular episode. In this way, you have the opportunity to include new listeners to your podcast listing and convert them as your fan followers in the near future.

• Podcast Rating: This plays a vital role, and identifies audiences for which your content is perfect. Each episode need to clean and you must maintain a consistency with it. Moreover, you can adjust the rating for each podcast episode.

If your question is how to start a podcast on Apple? Then here is a complete guide for you! With the microphone included in iPhone, you can easily record the audio but it may not be clear as a professional podcast audio recorder. There are many audio recorders, that provide in-app audio recording facilities such as Podbean and SoundCloud.

If you are wondering to start a podcast on Android devices, then you can use apps such as Opinion(iOS), Anchor(iOS and Android), Spreaker(iOS and Android), iRig Recorder( iOS and Android).

If you want to start a podcast with no money, then you can start your first episode with the help of your microphone or you can use your laptop’s USB port to connect to external microphone. If you want to start a serious podcast, then you have to use XLR microphone that will provide better sound quality for your podcast.

Now, let us jump into the next section , where I will guide you how to record your podcast show.

Whenever you struggle with how to record a podcast, first and foremost thing is to plug your USB microphone and simply you need to open the audio recording software in your computer. Then you need to be sure that your microphone is plugged in and your microphone is the default input device for your recording software.

You don’t need to pause the recording if any mistakes happen, because you can edit your mistakes later on using this recording software. You can use GarageBand which is free and can be used with all Macbooks and is highly recommended for your audio editing needs. This software allows you to record the audio from your microphone and save it as an MP3. Preview a demo video below for a better understanding of how to record your first episode on GarageBand:

After you finish your recording, the next step is to save your podcast. MP3 files are best suited for your podcast format and they can be played on any device.

After making your first podcast video, you need to submit it to the right channels, there are many directories where you can list your podcast. Here I am listing some of the most popular podcast channels, where you are asked to put your podcast’s name, description, category, artwork, etc.

Once you are done with your podcast recording, the next step is you need a separate host for your audio files. There are two media hosts that are affordable, one is Libsyn and another is Blueberry that provides you enough storage with unlimited bandwidth. Again, once you upload a new episode to your media host, RSS Feed will automatically update it to iTunes, YouTube, Spotify, and other directories you have submitted your podcast.

How To Start A Podcast On iTunes

One of the largest Podcast directories is iTunes, where you can submit your directory. If you want to submit your podcast to only one channel then iTunes is the best option you can go for. It is very easy to submit your Podcast to iTunes.

How To Start A Podcast On YouTube?

If you want to reach more people with your own podcast, then you can out your podcast on Youtube. Like any other YouTube video here you can use a branded image that will make your artwork more attractive like never before. See an example:

How To Start A Podcast On Spotify?

Recently, podcast has added Spotify to their of channels to reach a larger audience than ever before. But if you want to get your podcast on Spotify, it depends on your media host as you have to submit the content through them. Most important is that your host should have a support page on their website. See below:

If you want to get your podcast get noticed by iTunes, you need to launch your podcast in such way where there are options to get featured and receive good amount of listeners in a very short period of time. There is The New and Noteworthy section where iTunes features new podcasts for 8 weeks.

In this way, you can grow your podcast in such a way to get featured, launching your podcast through iTunes will help you to grow organically. Another way is to launch your podcast by an event and create a landing page for your podcast and let your audience know what you are planning. There should also be a chance to opt into a mailing list for your audience, so that you never miss a chance to reach them on launch day.

You can create a snowball effect, by creating small audience before you launch your podcast and this will give a boost after you launch your podcast. Finally, when you are about to launch your podcast, you can launch it with a few episodes for getting more viewers and listeners as only with one episode you may not get the amount of listeners you want.

Another important thing is that, you need to be consistent at your work. You need to ensure your listeners that there are new episodes coming on the way. Moreover, if you have more than one number of episode say episode 1, episode 2 then your listeners will understand that there are more to come on the way.

Lastly,you should announce your launch date to your email list, and ask your subscribers to the podcast and leave a review after listening to your podcast episodes. You must encourage your subscribers to leave their review, as the more reviews and subscribers you have the more you will be noticed by iTunes.

After launching your podcast, the next step is to grow your podcast and have more subscribers more reviews that can help you to get listeners. Keep in mind, that you need to have patience and must be consistent in your work so that your audience feel that you are serious about your content.

Only having subscribers to your podcast is not enough for your business growth, if you need to promote then an email is an effective option compared to social media. There are multiple ways you can grow your podcast, and if you are looking for how to start a podcast for fun then you must start a podcast with few types of equipment such as an external microphone, and record a short episode today where you need to introduce yourself and your podcast idea.

We all know, to grow your business for a long term you need to spend a huge amount of money for your podcast episodes as there are expensive microphones, call recorders, headphones which together makes a great podcasting episode. If you are one of them, and struggling how to start a podcast with no money, then you must start your first recording with your microphone and get an idea on which topic you are interested to talk about.

For now, if you are very new to this field, your first focus should be on improving your content, get more engagement with your audience, and grow your reach worldwide.

Hope, now you have got some clear idea how to start a podcast today, and there are many options you can get if you follow iTunes for podcast! Look, starting a podcast is not that easy but everything need to be started guys!

I would suggest you start with your own episode today, with the help of your microphone, and record a short episode introducing yourself and your podcast idea. It will take time to be familiar with the entire podcasting process. First, you need to get comfortable talking with a microphone for a longer period and listen to your own recording after that.

To become a successful Podcaster you need to be a pro in your intro, outro and also you need to be consistent at your content. Your listeners must feel that there are more episodes on the way for them. Bu this way, you will grow your audience list who knows, likes and trust you.

Thank you so many guys for being a part of this guide. If you have any questions about starting a podcast or have any suggestions about this guide please leave your comment below. Happy to respond and engage with you.