Five Lessons From a First-Time Podcaster

Have you ever met an entrepreneur that had a tendency to bite off more than they could chew?

It’s not always a bad thing. That tendency is also what gives them the chutzpah to start their own business in the first place.

But even so, as a small business, when we decided to start our own B2B digital marketing vodcast (video-podcast) for industrial manufacturers…we soon realized that we’d done it again.
 

1. Start Small

Of course, “start small” is pretty vague, because honestly: how much can go into a podcast? Quite a bit, as it turns out.

Social media, blogs, captioning, thumbnails, and SEO are just some of the many tactics that can be involved with a podcast release.

If we had to do it over again, would we still want all those things? Probably – but we would work our way up to them gradually.

We would start small(er), focusing on the podcast itself above all else, and then go from there.
 

2. Two Speakers Are Better Than One

The second thing we learned was that having two or more people on a podcast – whether that means a co-host or multiple guests – offers a much better dynamic.

Having multiple people interact, especially if their personalities are complementary, really boosts the quality of the show, and allows a broader audience to connect and relate.

Besides, multiple voices means multiple perspectives, so even your hosts may end up learning something new and exciting!
 

3. Don’t Be Afraid

There’s something to be said for throwing yourself ‘out there,’ where you might end up subject to criticism.

You may worry about sounding cheesy, or about discovering that you don’t know as much about this subject as you thought you did…but you need to stop second-guessing yourself.

Take that leap of faith and lead with confidence.

You might be surprised how many people will surround you and even thank you for daring to share what you know.
 

4. Batch Everything

When we initially started our show, our library was about two months deep: we had everything prepared in bulk and prepped in advance…and then we couldn’t schedule more shoots for quite some time. As a result, our collection of content was distributed faster than we could replenish it.

Nowadays there are some weeks where we can’t create multiple episodes at a time and we end up living “podcast to podcast.”

Part of the issue came from, as mentioned in Lesson #1, biting off more than we could chew. We wanted to begin with an aggressive schedule and release episodes on a weekly basis, but in reality they might have been better on a bi-weekly basis. Still, what’s done is done now.

Have we managed? Absolutely. But there have been some stressful moments. It’s a lot of material to generate, and content will always be a challenge, whether weekly or monthly.
 

5. It’s More Work Than You Think

Adding a podcast to your repertoire may sound like a nice hobby or side-business, but in all honesty it could easily be a full-time job for a single individual.

Podcasting might not just ‘happen’ as quickly as you think it might.

One of the main reasons for this is that podcasts, by their nature, are free resources, so you’ll have to look deeper into the data to calculate any sort of ROI. And iTunes doesn’t help with that, because while it’s the #1 hub for podcasts, it doesn’t offer deep analytics like other hosting platforms might.

Podcasting is as intense as creating any other vlog or even television show, but we assume because of the lack of visuals that it takes less effort. Don’t be fooled. You need just as much visual appeal to draw your audience in before they even hit the ‘play’ button.

It may sound like we’re raining on your podcast parade, but to the contrary: we’re six months into our vodcast, and we’re not stopping.

We just hope that if you want to start your own series, you’ll be able to learn from our own experience of doing the same.
 

But we did have one major advantage…

One of the main motivators we had for creating a vodcast, and one of the great engines that has kept the series turning…was our new multi-camera studio set, where we were able to set up and film multiple episodes with speed and ease. Even the live-cutting arrangements helped shave hours of time off the editing process!

Having a customizable studio at our fingertips made all the difference in producing a series that was high-quality and easy to keep consistent.

In fact, we’re not even sure if we would recommend starting a podcast without some sort of structured environment like that, because you need to have a crisp and clear audio quality that comes from professional recording devices…and at that rate, you may end up wanting visual content as well, since videos are increasingly more popular and highly-regarded by search engines, including iTunes.

This studio has made it possible not only for our vodcast to start, but for it to keep going and maintain a steady pace.

So if you’re looking into your own thought leadership or podcast series, then we definitely wish you the best in your endeavor! Feel free to reach out to us if you want to hear more about our podcasting experience, or about how our studio can help!