Every time you get together with your friends you talk about it: the old “we should start a band” has become the new “we should do a podcast“. Of course we should: if you are willing to face a crowd of professionals and amateurs working their throats out on a weekly basis with the most varied topics for a hundred or two hundred listeners, this is the thing for you. But, if you have made the decision, surely you have asked yourself more than once… How do we set up our podcast? Don’t worry: we’ll tell you.
Choose the right topic
There is a podcast already created about literally everything. Cooking, travel, manga, international politics, Roman history, Tom Cruise movies. Think carefully about what you have to contribute to the world: Is it going to be informative or chatty? Comical or serious? Scripted or improvised? Do you know something that you absolutely have to share with the rest of the world? Find that topic you want to talk about and define the tone: then create a list of titles and choose the best one. Let’s say, for example, you decided to talk about gardening with a comedic tone and called yourselves ‘What a Planter’. This was the easy part.
From here, define a structure for the podcast: Is it going to be free-form and different for each show, or are you going to have sections? If you have sections, who is going to present them, are you going to set boundaries for the length of the episodes or will ‘Qué plantón’ last as long as it has to? Once you have everything defined and you are sure that what you are going to do is unique (either because of your natural wit, the subject you deal with or the way you do it), it is time to get down to the technical stuff.
Microphone, camera, action
In the past, explaining the requirements for recording a podcast was much simpler, but the advent of Twitch, Youtube and TikTok and video podcasts has made everything a bit more complicated. At this point in the 21st century, you can’t record a podcast with a computer microphone and over Skype. Pamper it a bit, come on. If you are recording in person, get a mixing console with as many audio outputs as members of the podcast (plus at least one for computer music) and the same number of microphones (preferably all the same to avoid sound variation).
If, on the other hand, you have decided to do it online, each one from home, make sure that each one has a good microphone and records his track alone, so that the editing is cleaner. It’s more work, but it’s worth it: although Skype, Zoom and other alternatives have improved a lot since confinement, you will have more control over the audio if you have each track available separately.
You will also need at least one computer to record the audio, for which you can use a free program like Audacity, which you can then use to edit in a terribly simple way. And now comes the problem: if you also want to record the video, you will have to get at least two or three cameras and learn how to use a video editor to synchronize the audio (this is easier if you have already broadcast on Twitch) and make small clips for social networks. Don’t forget to look your best: ‘Qué plantón’ deserves nothing less.
We’ve already recorded an episode, now what?
Now comes the hardest part: you’ve already had fun recording, editing and preparing the podcast. You have to upload it to the different platforms: iVoox, Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, prepare videos for Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook. Get ready to familiarize yourself with the concept of RSS, thumbnails, comments and regularity.
And now you just have to wait for success! And if it never comes, don’t worry: focus on having fun. After all, there are only a few people who make a living with podcasts. Come on, become a radio star!
