The Best Way to Start a Podcast • PCI 333

0:00 Then you've really got the basis done. Because oftentimes people don't know on Apple Podcast, the name and the author are really the only two things that, that are searched. The description on Apple Podcast is not even a search topic, but other things. Search to description like Google and Google Podcast and other platforms. You are listening to, podcast Insider hosted by Mike Dell, Todd Cochran, and Mackenzie Bennett from the Blueberry team, bringing you weekly insights, advice, and insider tips and tricks to help you start, grow and thrive through podcasting. All with the support of your team here at Blueberry Podcasting. Welcome. Let's dive in.

0:40 This is Todd Cochran, c e o and co-founder of Blueberry. And I'm Mike Dell, VP of Customer Relations here at Blueberry. Today, we're covering the best way to start your podcast, everything you need to do before hitting record and after you published your first episode. So Mike, our topic of the day is the best way to start a podcast. And you know, you and I started and sometimes we've stopped a few over the years. I'm the king of stopping podcasts after a short time. So fortunately I only have one that, uh, his so-called pod faded and it was just really from a lack of time. But, you know, I think today is what we really wanna focus on is we're, as we're getting, as a podcaster's getting ready to start a podcast, and some of you that are listening to this show already have a podcast, but maybe this is the advice you can give to someone that you know, but sing about starting a podcast. I always, you know, as I talk to podcasters today, I always talk about what's the goal? Yeah.

1:42 And, you know, is the goal of the show that you're going to do is, is it gonna be number one? Is it gonna be for you to advance? Is it gonna be to pro one a topic? Is it gonna be, you know, what is the goal? And the goal will often lead to helping come up with that, that show name. You know, if that show name is gonna be the, you know, the Todd's Talk hour, or if it's going to be the Todd Self-Help Hour, whatever it may be, whatever the goal of that show is, if the goal is to provide help, you know, maybe the self-help show is the right name, but I think it's often important to figure out the goal and also what the topic's gonna be.

2:25 We always said at the beginning of podcasting, it was like, you gotta be passionate about what you're talking about. Well, yeah, that's true to a point. The thing is, is you don't want to pick a topic just because you think it's gonna be popular, and it's really not something you want to talk about over time. You know, if you want your show to last, you want it to be something that you know you're gonna be interested in long into the future. Like, this show's about podcasting. We're all passionate podcasters here, and getting people started in it and helping 'em out and all that is, is our goal, our topic that we always want to cover here. But it's, it's a little harder, you know, make sure that it's not something that you're gonna get bored with, but if it does, you, you know, it can pivot. But, uh, you know, for longevity, I think, you know, making sure it's something you're gonna want to talk about over the long term.

3:21 You know, and the title of that show should be pretty concise, you know, it, it's, it's gotta be something that people are going to potentially search for, you know, so it's, the title of the show has to be related to the content of the show. And then again, if you tie in the goal of what that show's going to accomplish, I think you're gonna be in the sweet spot. But at the same time, you probably don't want the topic of the show to be how to pour concrete footers for homes. You probably, that that's probably not. That's not a good title. , that's not a good title, but it has to be, again, something concise. And the best way I think about it too is, is if you're thinking about doing a show, and let's just, you know, we'll use the word entrepreneur because that is a word that's, you know, being heavily used in the podcasting space today. You know, if you want to do an entrepreneur show, that's great, but what type of entrepreneurial show then, maybe entrepreneur is not the word that you actually want to use.

4:25 Maybe it's a subset of the word and it's. Hard to spell. and it's true. So I always, you know, I, I think Google's your friend here where you go out and, and you google some titles and see what comes up because you know, there are, even though today there is so-called 4 million podcasts out there, there's really only about 400,000 that are currently active. So you wanna be able to find a name that's really going to describe what that podcast is, so that when people are searching for that, they have a very clear and concise idea. You know what this podcast is about? Yeah. One, it's just simply in the name. Yeah. One of the, one of the best places to look up specifically podcast names is go over to podcast index.org and you can search for just a title and you can see if somebody's already using it or if it's been used a bunch of times. You know, so you really wanna make sure you're not gonna get confused with a show that either pod faded or, or is active. That's even worse, you know, two shows with the same name is confusing, you know, and it doesn't help you any in the, uh, Google search.

5:34 Either. And it, and it actually may run a file of trademark. Yeah. Depending on what it is. So. Yeah, so if a show's active and being actively produced, they may have filed a trademark for their show. So you have to be, you have to, and you say, how am I gonna find a name? Believe me, you'll find a name. But the second part of this really ties into that, that searchability of the show. So if you're going to do a podcast that, as you name it, you can find a domain that's related to that, that naming that's similar. And again, today there is multiple levels of top level domains. There's dot coms, there's dot co, there's show, um, there's no dot podcast sadly, cuz I think that'd be a great one for everyone.

6:20 Yeah, it would. But, but there's dot net, there's lots of different extensions, but I think you also have to be careful cuz a lot of people kind of run home to mama and always put in such and such.com and really don't think about those subdomains. So if you can find a.com that goes along with that show name, I think it's, it's, uh, money well spent to reserve that, even if you aren't completely locked into the show name. So, so much doesn't snag that domain name. And again, short domain name the better. Yeah. And also make sure it's easy to say, you know, on the, because you're gonna be saying it on your show, like we say podcast insider.com, that's pretty easy to spell, pretty easy to say and people will remember it.

7:06 Yeah. Same thing with me. New media show.com, geek news central.com. You know, that was, and the show that I had that podcast in was podcast legends.com. So real easy to kind of remember, but again, associated domain with the name isn't really important. You know, I, I had a friend that started out right at the beginning of podcasting and he had, his first show was called the Paretta Cast. Now try spelling that. the Procast. I, I would, okay. He said, I called it. What? Procast cast or. Something. See that? See, see that we are, we're already confused , so don't make it too fancy. Yes.

7:48 You don't want it to add confusion. Something's hard to say or spell definitely is an issue. Yeah. And. The word podcast after it. So like you could say you're doing a business show about the septic pumping business, for instance, . Right. So you, so you know, if you type sep septic pumping.com, it's probably taken, but you could do septic pumping podcast.com. It's still easy to say. It'd be a weird show though, wouldn't it? Yeah. But it is still a little bit on the long side. Yeah. If you can, and, and you know, the, we've seen throughout the years where a show has come in, it would be like the example, the the Apple Podcast by Mary Jane Smith. That, that was the name of the, you know, it would be a, it'd be the topic in front with the person's name at the end.

8:44 And that might be a way to break your show out. But again, finding a domain name that's gonna go along with that might be a bit of a challenge. So again, just do research. Yeah. Take some time. Uh, you know, and what I often do is I just do a, a list. I just open up a doc and just make a bunch of names and then kind of go look what's available and see which one makes the most sense. But again, try to tie it together and being that you are gonna know your topic and you're gonna know your goal, then really it, what Mike and I are describing here is gonna make it much easier for you to come up with your list. Cuz we're just kind of ad hoking here.

9:28 Things that we're, you know, we're trying to give you some example descriptions, . But again, I think you're gonna have, uh, a much higher luck with your, by yourself. Just, you know, and another thing too is be careful who you tell, because oftentimes I'll see on Facebook, uh, pages where, and I've seen this happen before where someone says, I got an idea for a show and, and explain a paragraph about the show, and then all of a sudden someone's hijacked that idea. So be careful to share your show idea with someone that you trust. And again, when you're going out there and doing that research, two or three domains that you may purchase that you may never use, might be an expensive investment.

10:09 Even if you don't let those renew when it gets time later down the road and grabbing a couple of eight bucks a piece, uh, might be a smart thing to, if you're undecided sure. Then it's, and you start publicly talking about your show, of course, that domain name. And, and of course I wanna point out here that we do highly suggest when you're starting a show to get the domain name for it, whether you use it or not at that point. But, you know, of course, if you're doing it the way we like to do it, uh, you're gonna use it with a WordPress sight. So after you've come up with that great name, you've come up with a great description. And again, two or three sentences should be enough to describe your show.

10:52 And again, spend time on that, on that description, then you've really got the basis done. Because oftentimes people don't know on Apple podcast, the name and the author are really the only two things that, that are searched. The description on Apple Podcasts is not even a search topic, but other things search the description like Google and Google Podcast and other platforms. So you have to have a great description to go along with a great title of a show. But one thing that you'll want to think about then next is the artwork. Yes. And it's very important, and it's, it's not that picky tech-wise, but it's just a little bit picky, the artwork, and we'll talk about the text spec in a minute, but I think your artwork should be something that, and I, and I highly encourage you to go look at any podcast directory and look at like the top 200 shows and just look at their artwork and see what stands out.

11:52 And the the thing that really stands out on most artwork, in my opinion, is a clear and concise title where you can see the title of the show and something that infer what the show is about. You have to be careful because people are gonna look at that for two or three seconds and make me make a quick judgment that, hey, I wanna check this show out just because of the artwork. There is lots of places to get artwork created. I'm not artistic at all. I'm not gonna make any specific recommendation because there's lots of places. But I will caution you if you do go out and use some of the more inexpensive artwork creation site somewhere where you pay someone, you have to be really, really careful about your artwork graphics.

12:39 Yes. Because if you don't wanna get a copyright violation by using someone that's reutilizing art. Uh, so be very, very careful on who you pick and who you deal with if you decide to have someone create artwork. Now, most artwork creators, at least that I know of in the United States, charge about $300 to create artwork. Now there's those other places you can go and get stuff created much cheaper. But again, caution, well, Rogers, you know, you gotta be careful on again, where that artwork is. And if, my advice always is, is try to, if you're un not artistic, like me, sketch something out of what your artwork's gonna look like.

13:23 And then when you get ready to have it produced a 1400 by 1400 pixels square, mike, you know, what's your experience with artwork? Well, a again, that 1400 by 1400 is actually just my recommendation. That's the minimum size. And the reason that's good is it makes the file smaller, it makes it load faster and, and all that good stuff. Now you can go up to 3000 by 3000, but think about it, even on the biggest cell phones, your artwork shows up by, you know, like an inch and a half by an inch and a half. So the quality is not, you don't, don't get crazy about the quality, uh, because it's not, I mean, quality content and make it look as good as you can, but 1400 by 1400 is plenty. 3000 by 3000, you could blow it up to billboard size and it would probably still look pretty good, .

14:20 But one of the big mistakes I I see in support here is people will upload an image that is like eight megabytes. It's just huge. It looks wonderful. And you could, you know, like I said, you could make a billboard out of it, but you, you gotta also take into account file size. This is a, an internet thing and most people are on their phones, so it doesn't have to be big. It's file size wise, it should be kind of small. You know, I'm kind of on the geeky side of this stuff, so, you know, I don't wanna bore you with all the geekery. If you need help with your artwork, I could sure help you out. There's sites like Fiver, that's the one that, uh, a lot of people use. And.

15:02 Again, I caution Yeah. Just be careful with that . Yeah. And again, you've got the ability to do your own. And I, I made my own artwork in the beginning and it was pretty horrible . Um, but I was not, I'm not artistic at all. I draw stick figures, but I try to keep my, my album art as they call it, or your show art, I, I try to keep it below about 500 k I try to keep the size at, at around around 500 k. So get that artwork created. And again, this can be a work in progress. The artwork is not required to get started, but we highly recommend to have the artwork ready when you're getting ready to start your show.

15:44 But once you've got a title domain and your artwork figured out, it can be time to set up your hosting. And if you're hosting at Blueberry, obviously we allow you during that process to create a free WordPress site. So you really have a couple of options. You've got the ability to, uh, just have a dedicated landing page at Blueberry. You have the ability to get, to get a free WordPress website that we include with every hosting plant. Or if you have your own WordPress site already, you can use our plugin PowerPress. But the key here is, is if you so decide to have a dedicated website, which we again highly recommend, and here's really the reason being behind the, the thought of having a dedicated website and why we give all of our customers a free WordPress site.

16:37 It's really kind of the best in class option because it's going to give you the best seo, the best Google results over time. But maybe you're gonna say, oh, that's too much, Todd, I I don't wanna do that. That's okay too. You're not ready to get to that point. You can definitely just have a dedicated landing page at Blueberry, and then if you want later to graduate into WordPress site, you can't. But if you do decide to set up your own website in which design is crazy, we're not gonna get into that in this episode. Yeah. It's, it's, there's just too many options. Yeah, sometimes it's just start out simple and any of the WordPress default themes will work. And again, you can always pick one later.

17:24 And the thing I like about those default themes is it's pretty simple. You put in the site title, you maybe put in a little description and really, it, it doesn't take too much maybe under half hour to kind of configure and maybe put a little color in and they'll have a chooser there where you can actually pick the colors. And, um, and maybe you wanna make that match your, your cover art. So maybe you've already got some starter colors because you've done your cover art. Don't go too crazy, but just do the basics, get things up where you're not cringing when you look at it. But at the same time, a basic design is okay. Yeah. One, one of the, one of the big things that stop podcasters or potential podcasters from starting is, you know, paralysis by analysis.

18:12 So they want everything just so perfect and you know, it, it's better to get started and then tweak afterwards. So, you know, again, with WordPress, what's great about WordPress is all your content's in there, you could switch themes and all the content's still there, right? So you can redesign on the fly, you know, find another theme you like, or, you know, hire someone to, to do it. Now be careful when you're hiring someone to do a website for you. Some web designers say, well, you should really be on wics, or you should really be on, you know, some other platform. Don't let them move you from WordPress if you're doing your podcast from there.

18:53 Yeah. If you've already started, yeah. And then you talk to our team before you make that. Move. Yes, definitely. But backing up a little bit though, one thing to think about and is something I've told content creators for many, many years is you record your audience for your show and you write for Google. Yeah. Your, your website's not gonna be like this mecca of traffic immediate, unless you're already pre-established and have had a website for many years. Maybe you've already got a mailing list, but you, if you're starting brand new, this is a place to build upon. And what you're really doing is you're saying, I'm hanging my shingle out. I've started a new show, you're still gonna tell people, go to Apple, go to Spotify, you know, go to the different locations, Amazon, all these different locations where your shows are gonna be consumed to find and subscribe to your show.

19:40 Your website ultimately is gonna be the place where you can, again, build your brand, start your mailing list, all these things to help build your show over time. Rome wasn't built in a single day. Your podcast and your website will not be built in a single day either. So that's why we say maybe use default template, just kinda get it up, get it working. But the main thing is if you decide again to do the WordPress round, is that from the time you post your first episode, you start building credibility on your own website and building your brand on your.com. If you're not ready for that, don't worry. No pressure. You can still use the landing page at Blueberry. And if you, again, if you've already got a WordPress site of your own, that's where your show should live, especially if the topic matches the website that you already have, and you can just add power press to it.

20:32 And the integration is quite a beautiful thing. Yeah. And we'll help you out for sure. Uh, if you're hosting with us, uh, we do Zoom calls a lot and support Dave and I so we can, uh, we could certainly help you add WordPress to your existing or add Power press to your existing website. So with that comes really getting your word, your RSS feed set up. And really, if you set, if you're on WordPress and you set up Power press, your feed will be set up. Yes. And if you're on blueberry and you are doing your just a, a basic page, it's the simple fact that when you create your new show by entering your title, your description, your artwork, you've got about 90% of the stuff done.

21:16 You may wanna go back in and add your author and where the show originates and some of those things, but those are all in the managed show area on blueberry. If you're hosting your show@blueberry.com, if you're doing on your own WordPress site, then that's within the settings of Power Press where you add that Maita data to kind of refine everything that's gonna be about you in your feed. But, you know, really, we've talked about the mechanics, Mike, of really getting to this point, but now is the moment of, uh, re hitting record. Should you just do your first episode and go blast, or should you do a trailer? Or what, what should the podcaster do when they're getting ready to launch their show?

21:57 Well, I've always subscribed to the, uh, theory that podcasts don't really launch, like this big launch thing and you have a party and you know all this, but some people think that, so if you're gonna do something like that and you've got a date that you wanna go live with episode one, you should do a trailer or what we call Episode zero. And that lets you get into all the directories you want to get into before your official launch date. But if you're not that worried about a big launch event or whatever, then you probably don't need a trailer episode or an episode zero.

22:38 You know, you could just start with episode one. Hey, here I am. Maybe do a little description at the beginning of the episode of what the show's gonna be about and be done with it. I do kind of think that Episode zero is good because what it does is say, Hey, I'm, I'm Todd, or I'm gonna launch a new show about this and maybe in two minutes, three minutes. Mm-hmm. . And the reason for the episode zero is you get it up there, you're really not ready to do the first episode, but it allows you to submit your show to Apple Podcast and kind of get set up, get in the gate, get ready to run, right? Sure. It's like you, you've done everything to get ready and now you've got your, you got all your listings out there. It's like the prime, the pump is primed. And then when you record your first episode or however you decide to do your first few episodes, you've got, you get those done and then bam, you're all you have to do is all you have to worry about.

23:28 It's going in and write your post, uploading your media and hitting publish. And it's kind of like, duh duh, the pressure's off and you're live and well, so I'm a believer in Episode Zero just from a pressure standpoint, but if you're just kinda getting start and say, I'm gonna put episode one up and we'll get out there as we can, that's fine too. But again, the, there's no rules here and you can do it your way. That's the. Best. I always, I always tell people when I'm, uh, helping 'em set up something like that and if they got their first episode or their trailer or whatever, they're gonna put up first. As soon as they hit publish, I go, okay, so now you are a podcaster. Now nobody knows about it , so now you gotta go submit it to the directories.

24:13 The main ones that I would say get on first would be Apple Podcast, Spotify and Podcast Index. You get on those three that covers a lot of apps that people use and then circle back and get on all the other ones. We have a destination section in both of our systems. So in publisher and or Power Press, we have destinations and we have articles on how to get on each one of them. They're all kind of different. Some of 'em are kind of a pain, but you know, it's always good to be everywhere, but don't fret about being everywhere right at the get-go. If you get on those three, Google will take care of itself for the most part. There is a way you can kind of force 'em, but, uh, we can help you with that later, but then, you know, circle back and get on some of the lesser ones. That's, that would be my suggestion.

25:04 My, my main thought process been for many, many years is I don't care how they listen as long as they listen and I want them to listen wherever they listen to podcasts. Sure. So even though Amazon might be less than 1%, I still want my show on Amazon. I still want it on Pandora, iHeart, all those locations. But again, it's not where the majority of people listen to shows. It's a location where you can be found later on. It's not that big of a deal. So, like Mike said, you, you don't have to be the first outta the gate with that. And you can do that later. You get those other ones. Yeah. I, I like, I, I'm gonna be doing, uh, some research that was, that's on my list of things I want to check out, but I'm guessing that 90% of your listeners will be covered if you do Apple, Spotify Podcast Index and Google Podcasts.

25:57 I I bet you that's a 90% right there. And Google Podcast pick shows up automatically after the first couple of episode cuz we do some magic. We basically send out a signal that says, Hey, there's a new episode out here. And Google is, uh, is listens for that signal and uh, that's why it's pretty quickly before it's called we SubHub Hub. It's real geeky . But uh, basically Google says, oh, there's a, there's a new post over here and it, it's used for blogging and everything else. Yeah. Of course. We send out another single signal to, uh, podcast index. Yeah. And that basically could get your show updated very, very quickly so that you don't have to wait for the RSS feed to be, uh, basically, uh, pulled by the, uh, the platforms update. But anyway, that's getting real deep, deep in the weeds here. Certainly. So best way to, I think we've covered everything on the best way to start a podcast, haven't.

26:50 We? Yeah, I believe so. But uh, if you have any suggestions or anything, yeah, be sure to get ahold of us. And the next thing we got coming is the pro tip from the Blueberry Pro production team. Take it away. Thanks Mike. And what a great conversation you and Todd are having about all of the things that it takes and that you can do to make it easier to start publishing your own podcast. The only thing I'm going to add to that is setting up your social media and batch recording your episodes and maybe integrating a tool like Canva where you can create social posts for each episode and schedule them right in Canva to go out every time your show airs.

27:33 It's kind of one stop shopping and this isn't a promo for Canva. There are lots of different sorts of publishing platforms, but the one I find to be most convenient is the one that gives me the ability to both create the posts and the art that goes with them and publish from the same platform. And the best one I've found to do that with so far is Canva. So the pro tip is batch record, your podcast batch, create your social media posts, set them to release automatically and it's a set it and forget it until you batch record Again, this is Kate from the Blueberry Pro production team and I'll see you next week. Thanks for joining us. Come back next week and in the meantime, head to podcast insider.com for more information to subscribe, share, and read our show notes to check out the latest suite of services and learn how Blueberry can help you leverage your podcast. Visit blueberry.com.

28:24 That's blueberry without the ease because we can't afford them.