Podcircle Podcast

Kyle Cummings: 00:00

Hey, friends. Welcome to the PodCircle podcast where we bring practical tips and insights for every podcaster.

Kyle Cummings: 00:13

From aspiring podcasters to experts with hundreds of episodes under your belt and everyone in between, these conversations dive deep into the topics that matter most to you. Let's get started.

Mickenzie Vought: 00:24

Alright, friends. Today, we are diving into some specifics about launching a podcast. I shared on our trailer episode that every person that wanted to start a podcast at one point or another Googled how to start a podcast. There's a lot that goes into making a podcast from ideation, I want to do this, to putting your first episode out into the world. From my own experience, it's a little bit of a daunting process.

Mickenzie Vought: 00:46

When you decide you want to do it and then as you start launching, you just realize there's so much more to get to it. So we have broken it down for you into 3 sections, strategy, production, distribution, and marketing. And if you wanna take notes for this, we would love it. But we also created a PDF for you to follow along, and you can literally check these off as you're launching

Kyle Cummings: 01:07

your podcast. Listen, it's a really good PDF. Mackenzie and I worked together on it. Yeah.

Mickenzie Vought: 01:12

We're

Kyle Cummings: 01:12

almost done with it. It'll be done by the time you all hear this. It's really good. I wish that I had this a long time ago for new clients, honestly. I think it would have been so helpful for them.

Kyle Cummings: 01:23

So I'm gonna stop bragging about the PDF, and we'll jump right in.

Mickenzie Vought: 01:26

It's so good. But I just feel like what I love about it is that we took our complimentary skills and put it together. And some of these things I remember being as a client of yours and starting a podcast, you walked me through a lot of those first steps and things I never even thought of. Like Yeah. Oh, I don't know how to host.

Mickenzie Vought: 01:41

I don't know that I need to do this. And so it was really helpful to have an expert in this space simplify it for me.

Kyle Cummings: 01:47

And maybe we should give a little bit of background on on that. I'm on more of the production end. So the audio editing, video editing, that's what my team does. You know, show notes writing, social media clips, those sorts of kind of the back end, I guess, what we call, like, the post production side of things. But Mackenzie is more on the front end of things.

Kyle Cummings: 02:05

So tell the folks a little bit about what

Mickenzie Vought: 02:08

your expertise is there. Yeah. So I run a podcast currently, but I really do love the strategy element of it. Like, really helping people figure out why they do what they do, what they're about, who their target market is, so that they can create a show that they love and that they're willing to put the work in to consistently show up and one that they actually enjoy because I think if you're not enjoying it, every week it's gonna gonna become a slog.

Kyle Cummings: 02:30

Totally. So let's

Mickenzie Vought: 02:31

get really clear about why you're doing it.

Kyle Cummings: 02:33

Absolutely. And I think no there's no better way to enjoy your podcast, enjoy hosting, planning for your podcast than to start out on the right foot with a really good strategy, and that's so much of what Mackenzie is excellent at among other things like marketing and all of that, but we don't have time to read your full resume today, Mackenzie.

Mickenzie Vought: 02:53

It's fine. But I think a lot of people start I wanna start a podcast and really do skip the strategy element. I have an idea. Let's push record and figure it out as we go.

Kyle Cummings: 03:01

Exactly. And I

Mickenzie Vought: 03:02

think it's really important to have some strategies. So what's the checklist? What are some of the the tasks that we encourage people to think of when they think about strategy?

Kyle Cummings: 03:09

Yeah. So the first few things is identify high level themes, goals, and strategy. I actually want you to speak to that just briefly. Like, what does that mean?

Mickenzie Vought: 03:19

Yeah. I think we've all listened to a show that's really haphazard. They jump around or, you know, like, this doesn't feel I mean, you can feel it. We can feel when someone's outside of, yes, outside of their themes, outside of what they actually do. So, I mean, the old adage of like, fail to plan, plan to fail.

Kyle Cummings: 03:37

Yeah.

Mickenzie Vought: 03:37

High level themes is like, hey, what are some of the things we're going to talk about? I I just encourage people like if you had 5 minutes with someone, what would you talk about? What are you known for? Just like start to make those lists and then if you've got those high level categories, you can build out topics underneath of those, but let's start with the high level like who am I? What do I good at?

Mickenzie Vought: 03:54

What is my message? And then what are the goals of this? If you go back to the last episode, we talked about some of the reasons like some of the goals you might have that you shouldn't start a podcast and some of the goals that if those align with you, you should start a podcast. So is it to expand your brand? Is it to you know gain more awareness?

Mickenzie Vought: 04:11

Is it to network? Those are some of the goals that we might identify in the front end and then let's put some strategies to that. And what I love about the strategy sessions that we often lead together and talk about the different elements of this is that we do. We help you go from the big idea down to let's put this into action.

Kyle Cummings: 04:28

Yeah. It's like a brilliant funnel kind of that you created starting really high level and getting really granulars and and people it's fun to watch people walk away with so much clarity about their podcast. So the next one is brainstorming guests, which I think is really important because and that's if you're a guest podcast. Yes. Some podcasts, you know, are kind of solo and some are both.

Kyle Cummings: 04:48

Some are just kind of a talking head plus intermittent guest and things like that. But I think it's really important to growing a podcast to consider what are our most audacious goals in terms of, like, who's our our dream guest? Yeah. Maybe you can get that guest, maybe not right away, but, you know, swing for the fences, brainstorm some really great guests that are gonna help you launch your podcast with a bang. Go ahead and get those episodes out right away.

Kyle Cummings: 05:13

I just think that that's gonna help in the podcast rankings. Yeah. And there's

Mickenzie Vought: 05:17

I feel like

Kyle Cummings: 05:17

there's a lot I could say about that, but I wanna move right through this list because we have a we have quite a few things to get to there. Okay. The next one is develop and outline a content plan. Ideally, plan your first few months of episodes and the more you have recorded, the better. Yes.

Mickenzie Vought: 05:33

I have been in a situation where you are like hand to mouth recording. And so if you can have a little bit of buffer, that's going to go a long way especially as you're as you're starting out and finding your footing. A couple more tasks in this like strategy section will be to determine your episode length and release cadence. So, length is how long do these conversations need to be? Again, we will all listen to a podcast that was an hour long that should have been 30 minutes.

Mickenzie Vought: 05:59

And so figure out, like, what is our goal and how do we structure our interviews, structure our intro, structure our segments around that, making sure that we're fitting in the ideal time for our guests and for ourselves. And then the release cadence. A lot of shows are weekly, but do you want to be realistic with yourself and say, hey, I'm going to start out as a monthly podcast because that's what I can commit to consistently showing up. It'll be better to consistently show up every 4th Tuesday rather than saying I'm gonna do a weekly show and then missing

Kyle Cummings: 06:30

weeks.

Mickenzie Vought: 06:30

Yeah. And then another task on here is writing a really compelling show description. That's a part of who am I and what is this about answering that question. We actually have a blog and a PDF for you that we can link to to help you figure out, like, what is the show description and why is it so important. And then another task in this strategy section that maybe you wouldn't have thought of that you're gonna need later on is a podcast artwork.

Mickenzie Vought: 06:54

So it doesn't have to be fancy. Canva can be your friend but just something that's going to help people know and recognize your brand and your podcast through this little

Kyle Cummings: 07:06

thumbnail. That's right. And it doesn't have to be your once and final podcast artwork, and it can always be updated later. No. And I'll put in a little plug for us too.

Kyle Cummings: 07:15

We have fantastic podcast artwork designers, so that's something that we can help you with as well as is, I think, just about everything else on this list. So now we're gonna move on to a set of about 6 tasks that are in the production realm, and this is kind of more my area of expertise here and experience. So the very first thing is to begin considering your equipment, your microphones, headphones, webcams, and we have a, a PDF here that I've spent a lot of time on really thinking through. It's it's updated. It's 2023.

Kyle Cummings: 07:50

I think it'll be relevant for a while, but we kind of break down for the different scenarios what the best gear is and link you to it. I've been a part of launching so many podcasts, and it always comes up. Which mic should I use? What about headphones? We're gonna record a video podcast.

Kyle Cummings: 08:04

You have a a webcam recommendation, things like that. We've got answers for all of that stuff and these are tried and tested things. So

Mickenzie Vought: 08:16

We called it our essential equipment guide because I, as a consumer, like, went to you and said, what do I do with these? What should I get? You don't have to be technically inclined for the majority of these. I love the mic that you recommend because it's so simple to use, and you don't have to be an an audio engineer to use it.

Kyle Cummings: 08:33

Yeah. You plug it right into your computer. Yes. Plug it straight into your computer. It's great.

Kyle Cummings: 08:37

You can have remote conversations, remote interviews, but also if you have a podcast guest that's in person, you can also it's got a microphone input in it. It's fantastic. It's a great mic. You know, you don't have to go out and spend 1,000 and 1,000 of dollars in gear. In fact, I have a client who did that.

Kyle Cummings: 08:52

She got some really bad advice. She spent about $5,000 on gear, and then I actually had her sell all of it and just get a $250 mic that sits on her desktop. Yeah.

Mickenzie Vought: 09:04

That is wild. Yeah. Totally. Okay.

Kyle Cummings: 09:07

So the next one here is selecting music for your intro, outro, and transitions. I think this applies to most podcasts. I only know of a couple podcasts that don't really have any music. They launch right in, but I like music in a podcast. I'm also a music producer, so I have really strong opinions about what the music should feel like and and does it align with the the tone of the of the podcast.

Kyle Cummings: 09:31

And so I what I will do is I actually like hand selecting a playlist of songs after I have a conversation with the podcaster. You know, I I we just brought on a, a client. She has a podcast called the Physical Feminist, and she's so fun and feisty. And she's like, I want podcast music that feels gritty, and and I was like, I got you. And, like, we talked about it for a little bit.

Kyle Cummings: 09:54

I'm like, I got you. Just let me roll. I'm gonna send you a playlist of songs. She loved it. We landed on the song right away, and now that's her theme music.

Kyle Cummings: 10:02

So

Mickenzie Vought: 10:02

Practically, where do you find these, like, instrumental music? Yeah.

Kyle Cummings: 10:05

So you want royalty free music. Okay. So a couple websites are Soundstripe. I really like Soundstripe. I think there's another one called Epidemic Sounds, and then there's one called Premium Beat.

Kyle Cummings: 10:16

There's a handful of them, but I personally I've got a subscription to Soundstripe. I just I find that their stuff works really well for the majority of the podcasts that I do. But if I don't find it the right song there, I will go I'll go digging. I'll go digging through some other libraries until I find the the one that feels right. So moving on, we've got the our 3rd task in this production segment here is to write and record your intro and outro segments.

Kyle Cummings: 10:40

You wanna speak to that a little bit?

Mickenzie Vought: 10:42

Yeah. And so I think there's a couple of different ways you can do this. You can create a static intro and outro that you have all the time. You'll notice on the top end of ours, it's we're recording every single time and kinda changing it up, but it's kinda similar words. If you listen to Armchair Expert, he's always starting with something similar.

Mickenzie Vought: 10:58

So just a way to signify and create some rhythm and consistency. And when I started the Living Center podcast, we had a static intro and then I recorded an intro for every single guest because we're a guest based podcast. I wanted to make sure that we had enough space and capacity to really talk about that specific episode and that guest. So I

Kyle Cummings: 11:16

love that and I'll I'll chime in really quick. I actually I've been telling people or advising loosely to record your intro every time you record the podcast instead of just having a standard one. Yeah. I don't think there's anything wrong with just having a standard intro, but I think a lot of people just kinda fast forward through it. And so if you have a shorter intro, if it's 15, 20 seconds, you know, there's nothing wrong with recording a bespoke intro every time.

Kyle Cummings: 11:40

I think it I think it just keeps things fresh, and then it's cool too because then you can, you know, if you need to adapt it a little bit as you go, you

Mickenzie Vought: 11:49

don't feel boxed in. Yeah. Something that I have loved from a production standpoint is just the capacity to do remote interviews. So

Kyle Cummings: 11:55

I this

Mickenzie Vought: 11:55

is going to be my plug for you to lean into remote interviews. I think there's a lot of pluses and a very few downsides. You can get guests without asking them to commit a ton of their time. They can hop on a call and give you an hour of their time rather than the commute and the travel and all of that. So you should do a remote podcast, and we will give a plug for our absolute favorite remote platform, Riverside.

Kyle Cummings: 12:16

We're using it right now.

Mickenzie Vought: 12:18

Yes. We are. Create a Riverside account, get yourself acquainted. We've got a checklist for you of how to create remote podcast when you download our complete podcast starting kit. And then 2 other tasks in here that feel a little daunting, but I want you to celebrate when you accomplish them is planning, recording, and editing your trailer episode and your first episode.

Mickenzie Vought: 12:39

Those are kind of the first two things that you're launching out into the world. Kyle, can you tell us what a trailer episode is? Yeah.

Kyle Cummings: 12:46

A trailer episode, I tell people, you know, a 3 to 5 minute kinda teaser of what the podcast is about. Some people, if they are already have a couple episodes recorded, they might even find, like, key moments from those and then compile them. Like, we do that for for clients sometimes. Yeah. But sometimes they just, you know, in the case of of you and I, we just hopped on and we just kinda gave our background, you know, like, why should anybody listen to us?

Kyle Cummings: 13:12

And so we just talked about our our personal and professional experience, how I started PodCircle, how I met you and worked with you on the Living Center podcast. So it could be you could go one of any number of of routes there, but I would just keep it pretty short and to the point and just make sure it's a kind of like a high level. So plan, edit, and record that trailer episode, and then the next one is just to is to go ahead and record that first full episode, and I'll be getting ahead of myself just a little bit here, but when it comes to distributing the podcast and getting it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, all the major players, you actually need to have that first full episode ready to go. So maybe that's a good dovetail into our next section right there, Mackenzie, which is distribution and marketing. So setting up your podcast host.

Kyle Cummings: 14:01

Our favorite podcast host is a platform called Transistor, Transistor. Fm. If you wanna go check it out, we'll also drop a link in the show notes, and it's you know, we have links and in our PDFs that we've been mentioning as well. We're gonna record another episode just about podcast hosts, in particular, Transistor. But like I said, in order to get that episode that first episode up and to get it distributed, you gotta have that first episode recorded.

Kyle Cummings: 14:24

So podcast host platforms are really important because they're not all created equal Yeah.

Mickenzie Vought: 14:31

And, as I mentioned, I think

Kyle Cummings: 14:32

in our trailer episode, some of them are built for the future and some have just not iterated to have the kind of advanced features built for a modern podcaster. So rather than migrate to a a newer podcast host later, just start on a really good one, and that's why we we know and love and recommend Transistor. So

Mickenzie Vought: 14:51

I love that. As a novice, can I speak into this? Because Yeah. Absolutely. I didn't really know what a host meant.

Mickenzie Vought: 14:57

Like, what what am I hosting? How do

Kyle Cummings: 14:59

I do this?

Mickenzie Vought: 14:59

And so Nobody does. No one does. So basically, all it's doing is is then going to distribute it to all the places. So you don't have to upload every single week to Apple Podcasts and Spotify and Google Podcasts and, and, and, and. It's just one upload and then it distributes it to all the places.

Kyle Cummings: 15:15

Exactly. And some podcast hosts make that process so much more difficult than others, and that's so much of the reason that I love Transistor because you do, you've gotta get it pointed to all these different places, but they basically have, like, a checklist. They make it so easy. I could talk about it for a while, but I've just set up so many podcasts now. And Yeah.

Kyle Cummings: 15:34

I just kinda got tired of beating my head up against the wall with some of these hosts. And I found Transistor, and they just made it so easy and so straightforward.

Mickenzie Vought: 15:42

And the other thing that we can brag on because one of the tasks that we'll tell you to do is to build a basic podcast website and you don't have to overcomplicate it. Transistor creates a really easy way for you to set that up. So you don't have to have a web dev person develop an entire website for you. You can do that through Transistor.

Kyle Cummings: 15:59

And you can domain map it to your site if Right. If you want to. So there's so many options there. You can customize the colors, the themes, and all of that, but it's it's really great because they produce a, like, a social media sharing link for each episode so so that when you go to promote that episode, say on your Instagram, you just drop that link in your Linktree or however you do it, and it goes right to that specific episodes web page where people can subscribe. They can actually listen to the podcast straight from there.

Kyle Cummings: 16:26

They can re read the show notes and all that good stuff too, but they can also subscribe to their preferred podcast player straight from that that landing page, which I just think is so key to connecting the dots of your social media following Mhmm. And making them converting them into subscribers, which to me is the name of the game. We all want subscribers.

Mickenzie Vought: 16:45

It's the reason we're doing it. Yes. Speaking of social media, one of the tasks we're going to encourage you to do is create social media templates and you can use these on your own socials. If you are a guest interview based podcast, I have found so much value in creating social media templates and, like, assets that our guests actually wanna share. So pulling in a video, pulling in a quote.

Kyle Cummings: 17:06

Canva is your friend. Yes.

Mickenzie Vought: 17:08

Canva is your friend. And create a template and a consistent way to just plug things in every week that feels a little bit different but feels on brand with your podcast, that will point people back to your podcast if your guest is sharing it. But create it in a way that's pretty and your guests want to share it.

Kyle Cummings: 17:23

Absolutely. Also

Mickenzie Vought: 17:24

utilize video. Utilize video, especially if you're doing Riverside. It's really easy to utilize video. I'm gonna

Kyle Cummings: 17:30

jump in on that. Even if you don't have a video podcast, still record video. Mhmm. Even if it's just for your social media assets, people wanna see you. You know, you've you've seen the podcast and these are fine.

Kyle Cummings: 17:42

We create plenty of these at PodCircle that are audio only, and you just kinda see the waveform and the subtitles and stuff. And I think those are fine, you know? I'm not gonna knock those. We I think we do really well at making those look great, but there's still just nothing like seeing a face.

Mickenzie Vought: 17:57

Video wins on social again and again. So we've had a lot of these these tasks in this distribution and marketing, and the last thing is to push publish to schedule it. Something that I discovered I'm so thankful for. You can publish in advance so that it goes live at 5 am to everyone's feed and then I want you to celebrate. I want you to celebrate because you did it.

Mickenzie Vought: 18:18

This is a big task to get from I have an idea to let's do this and it's going

Kyle Cummings: 18:23

out into

Mickenzie Vought: 18:24

the world. Yes. And as we're running out this episode, I wanna encourage everyone to celebrate along the way, not just when you hit this huge milestone. So in your mind, you're you're gonna say, like, I wanna have my first 1,000 or whatever. Whatever that goal is, celebrate along the way because that's gonna keep you showing up consistently and help you have a sustainable podcast.

Mickenzie Vought: 18:46

So let's think of, like, some non download milestones. The first time a guest says yes, surviving your first remote interview tech issue because you're gonna have 1, and we encourage you to be prepared in advance for that. There are some ways to do that we'll talk about later, but maybe you just wanna celebrate. Hey, I wrote my show description. I know what I'm about and I got it in Transistor, like, let's celebrate along the way.

Kyle Cummings: 19:09

Yeah. Small milestones. When you release your first 10 episodes, that's an achievement. It's a huge

Mickenzie Vought: 19:14

thing. You're in

Kyle Cummings: 19:15

the, what, the top 80 percentile? I think we were talking in our last episode how I think it's only 21% of podcasts don't even make it past their first 10 episodes. So one of my favorite emails to send to a client is those milestones a huge accomplishment. Huge What a huge accomplishment. Huge culture.

Kyle Cummings: 19:39

And it's really cool to get that reply email back too of about how much oftentimes their podcast has, like, changed their business or their Yeah. You know, their nonprofit or whatever, you know, whatever reason that that why that they came in to start a podcast and to see, like, it did what it was supposed to do, and it's doing what it's supposed to do. It's moved the needle for them. So Yeah. This has been a really fun episode, Mackenzie.

Mickenzie Vought: 20:01

I loved it. Alright, y'all. It's time to launch your podcast and we wanna help you every step of the way and that is why we created a complete podcast starter kit and in it, you will find everything you need to launch a successful podcast. All the way, we've talked a lot about content and production and we talked about being a good interviewer and so we've created a lot of resources from remote interviews to in person, helping you find the equipment, everything you need, everything you don't need. You can download that in one beautiful download with all the things that the experts at PodCircle think that you need to get started.

Mickenzie Vought: 20:36

So you can get that in our show notes, we'll give you the link and also you can find it at podcircle.com/start.

Kyle Cummings: 20:42

Alright. We'll talk to you next week.