Making a podcast requires a lot more than just sitting in front of a microphone, hitting "record," and talking with a guest--as I've learned over the past few years. To find out what it takes to make a good podcast, and make it grow, I turned to an expert: Colin Gray, the founder and CEO of ThePodcastHost.com. Colin gave me tips and advice that can apply to other podcasters as well--and many of his tips can be used by anyone, in any field: be a good listener, stop being a perfectionist, and more (listen to the interview to get his many other useful tips!).
In this episode:
Want to know more about Colin?
Making a podcast requires a lot more than just sitting in front of a microphone, hitting "record," and talking with a guest--as I've learned over the past few years. To find out what it takes to make a good podcast, and make it grow, I turned to an expert: Colin Gray, the founder and CEO of ThePodcastHost.com. Colin gave me tips and advice that can apply to other podcasters as well--and many of his tips can be used by anyone, in any field: be a good listener, stop being a perfectionist, and more (listen to the interview to get his many other useful tips!).
In this episode:
Want to know more about Colin?
Colin
The strength of podcasting is that we really engage people and people stick with us for years. But the sticking point is that because of that kind of commitment to get that engagement going, the time people have to commit to listen, it's more of a barrier to get folk to listen to you.
Elizabeth
Hello, and welcome to “What It's Like To”, the podcast that lets you walk in someone else's shoes and live vicariously through their unique experiences. I'm your host, Elizabeth Pearson Garr. In each episode, I'll be asking a new interviewee all the what, why, when, and where's of how they do what they do.
When I started this podcast nearly two years ago, there's a lot that I did know. I have a background in journalism and television and documentary filmmaking, so I felt comfortable with researching, interviewing, and editing, and many of the other aspects of producing the actual podcast. But there is a lot more that I didn't know, and a lot that I didn't know I didn't know.
Putting out this podcast has been a big learning curve for me. I did want to be challenged, but I'll admit it's also been frustrating at times. Well, today I have a guest who might have a tip or two for me because he has a lot of expertise in this area. Colin Gray is the CEO and founder of thepodcasthost.com
a company that both creates podcasts and teaches people how to make them. Colin, welcome to my podcast.
Colin
Hey, thanks for the invite.
Elizabeth
I'm so glad you're here. Do you find that there's a lot of people like me who kind of get into this with a lot of naivete? Not really sure what they're getting into.
Colin
yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think most people that get into podcasts, the majority of them, you just have a message to share, don't you? You just want to speak, you want to share, you want to teach, or educate, or even just entertain and therefore when you get in there and realize you have to figure out the microphones and the software and the editing and all that kind of stuff, it's a barrier and it stops a lot of people doing it, which is a shame.
So yeah, there's a lot around just trying to help people pass those barriers and get back to that first thing they wanted to do, which is just share their message. So yeah, that's a big part of it.
Elizabeth
Yeah, I think that that's exactly right. A lot of people say, I want to be a storyteller. I want to find out what other people have to say, or like you say, just to entertain. And there's a lot of technical aspects. There's a lot of marketing that needs to be done, very few people have a background in all of these areas and can just bring it to bear for a podcast and say, okay, I'm ready to go all these cylinders, are charging. So how do you recommend that somebody, gets their skillset up to understand all of these different aspects?
Colin
There's so many different parts to it. I mean, we tend to break it down into stages. That launch stage, even that breaks down into different stages too. So lot goes into that first part of it, which is planning out your show. You know, figuring out your ideal audience, figuring out your topic, your format, your angle, what the show is going to be like, the frequency, the length, all of those things. And actually a lot of that planning goes into not only creating the show, but the marketing as well, because the audience targeting, the topic, the angle, all of that goes into how you can then sell the show, essentially, we're giving it away for free, but you're still selling it, you're asking people to pay with their time. So you still have to sell the listen. So I think that's a big part of it is just breaking it down into those stages.
Elizabeth
For me, I came in certainly with that idea of I'd like to do the actual work. I love the interviewing, I love editing, I love talking to people, I want to tell people's stories. And I think it has been a real struggle thinking of the audience, what is the niche? How will I market this out and the technical stuff? You know, I feel like I can kind of learn along the way, but it's really been the marketing side. Getting the word out to, get people to listen to it, quite frankly, there's a lot of podcasts out there.
Colin
Yeah, definitely. And a huge part of it is that targeting, like knowing that you have a really specific, you know, niche of people that you can attract to it. And if you do that, it doesn't really matter how saturated podcasting is, I think, because you'll still find your crew of people that really want to listen to your angle and things. And that's always been the benefit of podcasting is we don't need massive audiences to succeed with the podcast because podcasting tends to be a much more engaged media than most others. They spend so much time with you, because they know you and trust you.
And you grow that credibility through the time you spend with them and the personality you give over. Whereas with a blog, say writing, you need a much higher number of people to actually convince a hundred of them to do what you asked them to do and with video as well somewhere in the middle a bit more personality but attention and video is so low that you know people don't spend that much time with you, distractions send them off elsewhere. So that's the great thing about podcasting is that we can find our little niche. it's never been that kind of really fast, rapid growing medium that video or blogging was. But it's been a real steady growth over the last 10 15 years and the people that do listen, they listen hard and they actually get to know you and trust you and
Elizabeth
That's such an interesting point about audio specifically versus video or the written word. You know, there's something very, personal and intimate about that.
Colin
Absolutely. It feels so much more one to one doesn't it? Because you don't have that screen in between you or the words on the page, it's just the person's voice which is the most personal thing about it somehow.
Elizabeth
That's true. Well, to be honest, what you were just saying, sort of hits a real nerve point for me the niche because I struggled a lot with, what should my podcast be about? I have so many interests. I remember someone gave me this bit of advice as an example, don't do a podcast about food, do it about mangoes and then go really deep in mangoes.
And I thought. Okay, but wouldn't I get sick of mangoes after six weeks or 12 episodes or something? but I understand the point, of course, you want to get the mango lovers, but I think that that is one issue that I have with my podcast is I'm exploring people who do all of these interesting things and it's not really niche. Like it's not just. You know, women over 55 or young athletes or, you know, it's not a super specified group. And so I think I've been fighting that this whole time. I'm sort of my own worst enemy because I'm interviewing people that I think are super interesting, but it's kind of hurting the growth of the podcast potentially.
Colin
So that's a really interesting avenue to go down actually, because that is a big part of defining a show that will grow an audience so do you know the difference between psychographics and demographics?
Elizabeth
I don't, but I like the word Psychographic .
Colin
Indeed, yeah. So, demographics are the kind of more traditional ways that you categorize people. So, age brackets, where they live, like race, religion, all that kind of stuff. All of that is demographics.
Whereas psychographics, it doesn't really matter, you know, who you are, where you live, what you look like, anything like that, any of your preferences, whatever it is, it's how you think. It's actually just more the way you think and what you like, essentially.
So, psychographics are a really interesting one in podcasting because it means that If you interview people that you're interested in, there'll be a common theme there because you'll have your own set of likes and dislikes and real interests and stuff. So you'll naturally gravitate towards a certain type of interview, and therefore there'll be other people out there with that same set of psychographics in their head that you have and yours it's the same kind of psyche, the same interests and values. So what you need to note and narrow in on is that that's your niche. It's people that are interested in a certain sort of... angle on life or angle on stories or angle on people, whatever that is, that really kind of fires you up as well. And the tricky part, though, is actually putting that in words, because that's what then attracts those people. So how do you define that in a way that you can put that into the title of your podcast, into the description of your podcast, into all the marketing videos you put out there on social media, on the blog, the video, whatever it is you use? That's the tricky part. People often can't kind of explain that interest or that angle. So do you have a way that you try and explain that? Like what is the common thread that ties all of those interests, all of those people that you talk to together?
Elizabeth
They're curious and passionate and focused so I just, I don't know how much you know about my podcast, but I interview people who have done things that most of us will never do in our lives. So summit Mount Everest, win an Olympic medal, sail across the Atlantic Ocean, these kinds of things. And so what I have found, is of course they have determination and drive, but they all also have this stick tuitiveness, for lack of a better word, because they all come up against a wall. Nothing is easy, right? We all get injuries or people say, you know, you can't do it and they all keep going. So there's this passion and determination to, fulfill their dreams and I realized a few months ago, part of what is drawing me to this topic is that I really love this message because that's kind of been a theme for me throughout my careers. And for right now, for the podcast, there's a lot of naysayers. Oh, podcasting is so hard. And when I worked in television, oh, you can't get into TV. It's so hard. And so I like this message of. keep going through the hard times. So I see that as a common theme. And then in terms of people listening, it's also curious people who are kind of fascinated dreamers about what is possible in life?
The feedback I get from people who listen is like: ‘That was inspiring to me’, ‘I feel like I should take more risks’, ‘I feel like I should, own my power more’, you know, and realize I can lean into hard things also.
Colin
Yeah, there's a lot in there that I bet you resonate so much with your audience. And I mean, your, title of your podcast, like to, that's kind of incites so much curiosity, which I think ties so much into what you're doing there, which is, all those things that people have been told they can't do. All those things that you think you can't do just through lack of confidence, all that kind of stuff. What is it like to do this? That's a really nice way to go about it. But it seems like that risk as well is a big part of it. Like, I think that a good podcast plan, a good podcast strategy, whatever you want to call the kind of description of what this podcast is really aiming at, really solves a problem of some sort.
What is going to really compel somebody to listen to this show. And the way they get value for their time is if you fix a problem for them. Some people that might just be entertaining. It's like, I'm stopping them being bored for half an hour and you have to just be the most entertaining person. And that's a, more hard one to do.
Elizabeth
Yeah. You have to be a comedian or someone that I'm not. Yeah.
Colin
Yeah, that's a harder one to tackle potentially, but equally you can solve the problem of, people are out there thinking like, oh, I feel a bit, kind of stuck. I feel a bit kind of scared of doing something new or I feel like I kind of haven't tried anything in a while or I'm not satisfied with where I am right now, but it's scary, It's risky. to do something different, how can I solve that problem of getting over that barrier, of being less scared, of being confident to just go and try something, make a change, even if it's small to start with. Maybe there's something around that kind of risk taking related to life and career and things like that, that might be a good compelling message in that, for example. So, I feel like that's how you kind of hone in on it. You just try and listen to those listeners. You try and think about really what it is that interests you like that and that, really what powers the title of your podcast, the description of your podcast, goes into the artwork, starts going out and all the messaging and the social media and all that kind of stuff.
Elizabeth
Yeah. It really makes a lot of sense. Yeah. That's super helpful. You mentioned the social media and the artwork and all that. I think that's another thing that I have found challenging and that maybe other podcasters do as well. You read all the conventional wisdom about the best ways to get the word out. And of course there's no roadmap that works for everybody because if there were, everyone would have, you know, a hundred million listeners. And so I think that that is a frustrating thing or, I guess just an opportunity depending on how you look at it there's so many things you can try to get your podcast out there and a lot of them are dead ends and you only have a limited amount of time because podcasting takes a lot more time than you anticipate at the beginning. And so you think, should I put all my eggs in this basket and go heavy into social media? Oh, that's not paying off. So how do you advise people of how to develop sort of a strategy to get their podcast heard?
Colin
Yeah, yeah, it's a really good question. I mean there's so many different things you can do. You're absolutely right. Picking the right one is a tricky one but I think that is part of it, is actually picking the right just one, two, three approaches and not trying to do everything. The ways that I've seen work the best in the past is actually just starting by talking to your listeners, talking to your audience. If you're pre launch, you can find people that are just like your ideal audience. So once you've figured out who that ideal listener is, whether it's A person you've made up, you go and try and find people like that at clubs or societies or events or things like that. Or you can do it online, join communities, that kind of thing.
Or if it's somebody you know, quite often an ideal listener will actually be somebody you know. It's like a friend or it's somebody in a club that you're a member of already or something like that. And you go and ask them and you start figuring out where do they hang out, online. And a big part of that is, what social media is most common with this person. Maybe they're all in discord, or maybe they're all on Twitter, or maybe it's LinkedIn, that kind of thing. And then you can concentrate your effort on the one that does seem to surface the most within your community. And then you actually go to communities as well. it always used to be Facebook groups, for example, maybe LinkedIn groups, joining in with these can make a big difference, you know, starting to contribute, getting known, and then kind of getting your show out that way.
So, I think that's a huge part of it. Because if you start to build that, like we've already said, you don't need a whole lot of listeners to make a podcast successful.
So if you manage to go to an in person event and meet 5 or 10 people that you talk to and realize that they'd be ideal listeners of your show and convince them to listen. Then, because they've met you in person, they're more likely to listen, they're more likely to get into the show because they've already been kind of convinced that you're a decent person that knows what you're talking about. The kind of marketing methods really scale with podcasting because those people then go and word of mouth talk to another 5 or 10 people and then those people go and talk to another 5 or 10 people. So in the early days, certainly it's kind of those approaches that don't necessarily scale very well. You're not going to get to a million people by going to events and talking to one person individually. But again, podcasting, we don't need a million people in the early days, certainly, or long term even. So. I think that's how I would approach it certainly early and once you've got that on the go, that means once you get up to kind of a hundred, five hundred, a thousand listeners per episode, you can start to talk to them more and then try and figure out maybe the more widely spread, more scalable ways to market from there.
Elizabeth
Yeah. The word of mouth I think is so key, especially in the early days or at any time, I guess, because truly that's who you trust, right, is people saying, Oh, what are you listening to these days? You know, if something were to just pop up, it could just seem like a random podcast on your scroll. But if your friend or someone at the party that you go to says, Oh, I heard this great podcast. You're gonna take that a lot more seriously.
Colin
It’s the kind of medium that needs more of that in person referral, you need your real bit of enthusiasm behind something to listen to podcasting because it's so much more of a commitment. This is the trouble, the strength of podcasting is that we really engage people and people stick with us for years, But the sticking point is that because of that kind of commitment to get that engagement going, the time people have to commit to listen, it's more of a barrier to get folk to listen to you. And also people don't necessarily listen to dozens of different podcasts because of the time commitment to listen again.
So you've only got so many hours in the week. So having that kind of really enthusiastic referral is even more important than podcasting than anything else, I think.
Elizabeth
I've often found also that there's Podcast people and just not podcast people. I was at a party the other night and somebody said, you know, Oh, what do you do? And I said, I host a podcast and and a few people just sort of had this blank look like, I almost don't even know what you're talking about.
That's not in my world. And there was this one guy who said, What? Tell me about your, he's like, I love podcasts. I need more podcasts. I'm a runner. I want, and he immediately went and downloaded my podcast and subscribed. and I mean, it was a dream, right? That's what you want. But I thought it really is interesting like some people, are just voracious podcast listeners and even some of my close friends say I would listen, I just don't listen to podcasts. It's not my thing. And so again, you got to find your people.
Cloin
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it's something that people have to build into their lives, I think, because again, because of that kind of time commitment, like you need to have an hour a day where you can listen to something, whether that's commuting to work or whether it's walking the dog or whether it's ironing your clothes or, you know, stuff like that. And it has to become a habit as well. You have to remember to get your headphones out.
Like my wife, for example, as much as I've been doing podcasting for 15 years, I've never managed to build a habit in her to listen to podcasts because she'll just never remember to have her headphones with her at the right time. She's always like, oh yeah, I would like to listen, but you know, I just didn't have my headphones with me.
Elizabeth
So how did you get into it? What was the draw
Colin
I actually listened to my first ever podcast from a CD on the front of a computer magazine back in about 2006 maybe, uh Uhhuh and it was, a really ironic way to get a podcast, obviously, because that's such a silly, like a, an offline way to get an online medium, but I found them and I was like, Oh, what's this thing?
Put them onto an mp3 player and listened and I just completely fell in love with the kind of whole idea of again it was that personality, it was the intimacy of getting to know this person, but how knowledgeable they were and teaching me something, and from there I ended up learning how to do it as part of my role as a, I was a lecturer at a university and so I started teaching other lecturers how to do it to help their students and that was kind of what took me to where we are now because I ended up teaching that for five or six years, writing about it and that blog, writing about how to podcast became what I run these days, which is the podcast host.
Elizabeth
Which has so much content. I really recommend it to anybody at any stage of podcasting, but you can really do some deep dives into getting a lot of information about what you want, so you used a lot of that work and put it into the podcast host?
Colin
Yeah, indeed. Yeah. So I was learning for years how to do it. Just writing little blog posts about the tricks I was learning, the equipment I was using, the techniques I was practicing, all that kind of stuff. That became the podcast host. And in the early days and this is a good way for podcasters to monetize as an example is I just put affiliate links into there. So I was talking about software that I used, talking honestly about it, here's the pros and the cons, if you do want to use it, here's a link that helps support the content I'm creating. And it was the affiliate program. And that kind of built up a bit of revenue for what I was doing.
Similarly with equipment, I would review microphones and tell kind of an honest opinion pros and cons. If somebody went and bought it off Amazon, I'd get a small percentage of that price. And really that was what was the first income of the podcast host as a website, and grew up to be enough to quit my job at the university and go into it full time. And so that's how the company started really, because that blog started generating enough revenue through that kind of just talking about podcasting, teaching podcasting to let me do that.
Elizabeth
See, you're exactly like all of my other guests. You followed a passion, and made it happen.
Colin
Yeah. Yeah. And there was plenty of zigzags along the way, but.
Elizabeth
Well, that's typical as well, right? We all have the zigzags. I think, the monetization is an interesting part too, because I think a lot of people think, oh, you make money through podcasts, through ads. Because I think as listeners, that's what you hear often is an ad in a podcast, but you mentioned the affiliate links. There's lots of different ways to eventually make money. Not right from the start in general, but eventually. Can you mention some of them?
Colin
Yeah, for sure. I mean, the affiliate marketing side of things, I think, can work for just about anybody from the very early stages. So if you record a podcast about, reviewing books, then you just actually give the links to those books on Amazon. And if people go and buy them, even if you only have 20 listeners, if you know a few of them go and buy that book, then you get a few pounds in your account. At the end of the day that you can spend to even just cover your hosting, for example.
But as that grows, you'll sell more and more of them. And I also think that in the early days it's quite valuable to kind of coach your listeners to know that you're giving away your content for free, but it is supported in some way. You know, there's a way for them to give back because sometimes people find that if they run a podcast for say 50 episodes, let's say their first year, and then suddenly they get enough listeners to get a sponsorship, maybe they've been lucky enough to get to, you know, 2000-3000 listeners, they get a sponsor on. Then bringing that sponsor onto the show and after having not done anything like that for a year can be really jarring and actually get some really negative feedback. But if you use that affiliate sponsorship as almost your sponsor for the first little while, like, you do a little ads based on affiliate products that you've got instead of an actual paid sponsor. But yeah, there's a few other ways as well let's say things like, less than our supported models like Patreon, you've selling products and services is really a nice way to go as well. Kickstarters like kind of crowdfunding type approaches.
Elizabeth
Backing up a few steps, how would a podcaster decide which one would be a good way to start? You mentioned affiliate marketing is smart for maybe anybody, but then after that, how do you know which one sort of fits your podcast?
Colin
I think it does a bit depend a lot on the kind of niche, the topic, the size as well. So I find often the most successful podcasts that make, certainly if you define success by revenue,
Elizabeth
Yeah, um, how do we define success? Bigger question.
Colin
Yeah, yeah. Bigger, bigger question. But if you're going to say I want to make a business out of my podcast and make it earn me a living, a lot of the more successful ones actually end up going down the route of, personal products or services. So something like the host actually, creates a product that's relevant to their listenership. So you start with affiliate products as and you see what your listeners are interested in. You sell other people's products in that way. Then you maybe get sponsorships as well, where sponsors will come on and work with you.
Maybe you running show that gets a special edition trainer for your listeners, which is something like that can be really cool to test. But at the end of the day, you create your own product, and a lot of the people that we talk to, they create a digital product. Like Alitu our podcast maker app is a good example of that. So we've got an app that you can record, you can edit, you can publish in the app. And we built that to serve the listeners of our podcast, PodCraft, because they were asking, like, how do we make editing easier?
So that was building a product that served the audience of our podcast, and it didn't exist until our listeners asked for it, essentially, and so that's one way you can monetize podcast as well, whether it's a software product or whether it's a training product, courses, that kind of thing, and services work that way too. Services can be a really good early stage one, actually, like even if you've only got 100 listeners. If you can convert, 20, 30 of 100 listeners. If those listeners are getting enough value, they're loyal, they're, fanatical about your show. And imagine you sell like even a 500 a month consultancy or 1,000 a month and you sell that to 20, 30 people. That's a really good living for nearly anyone in the world. So, you know, services can work really well for very niche podcasts that have a very defined problem that people are willing to pay money to help fix and then you can be the one to help them fix that and you build the trust to actually be able to charge a decent amount for it through the value you give in the podcast. So that's a really good path for a lot of people I find.
Elizabeth
So it all goes back to what we were talking about at the top of the show, actually, which is, again, finding your niche and your message. I mean, that really is the important core of it all, because that feeds into, the marketing, into the monetization
Colin
Exactly. Yeah, totally. If you have a really solid problem that you're solving, if you can communicate that problem really well, and you can tell the people out there in the world that here I am, I fixed this problem for this specific type of person. Are you that specific type of person? They go, yeah, and I have that problem. So they come and listen to the show and then you can build. products, services, you can build sponsorship, affiliate income, anything like that. You might have a cause that you want to try and promote all of those kinds of things. You can create that action based on attracting people with that really specific problem, really specific listener kind of idea. And that's what drives all, right from the initial growth, right through to however you monetize or purposize your podcast.
Elizabeth
One thing that I read a lot about in the podcasting world is pod fade. People who just fade out because it becomes too much. Do you see that a lot? I mean, there's a lot of podcasts out there and they might only have 20 or 50 episodes and then they stop because it is turned out to be a lot more time intensive and a lot more work. And I think a lot of people expect me included that the growth curve would be steeper than it is. You know, it's a slow, steady climb, I think.
Colin
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's definitely see a lot still. Yeah, for sure. I mean, it's one of the biggest problems we tried to tackle in our content. The first one is always the launch stage, like, how do I learn how to launch my podcast? But the next stage is how do I learn how to make this consistent and efficient and you know, sustainable. And it's so much about workflow. It's so much about how do you figure out how to make your podcast easy to create. How do you create a little workflow, a system, a process for yourself so that every single week you turn up in front of your microphone, you can really easily create a plan or you've already got a plan in place. You know exactly what you're going to do to record. You know how you record so that it makes the editing simpler and easier later. You've got a processor and editing as well, so you know that these are the three things I do for editing. Here are the two or three tools that I use to automate parts of that so that I don't have to spend so much time on it. And here's how I publish.
And then even you can continue that into the promotion afterwards as well. You could argue that the promotion stage is just as much part of the podcasting. So, you know, you post it in these three places. You create three clips from the show that you post in this way. You post it into this community, that kind of stuff. So that's what it is for me. It's all about the process. And process sounds boring, but that's really what makes it tick. If you have that tick list, you know, from step one to step 18, every single week, you have that down. Suddenly your mind is free not to worry about like, Oh, what's the next thing to do?
It's more about like thinking about the content. You know, how do I make good content? How do I talk to my listeners and really ask them what they want me to cover? So that I can make the stuff that really moves them.
Elizabeth
Yeah, I agree. I think that makes such a difference rather than just feeling like you're swimming in this sea of what to do now. And how am I going to get through all of these elements that need to happen to get that episode out? If you have the steps and know that on Tuesday, I do this and on Thursday, I post that, it makes such a difference. But I feel like for me, there is always this. Overhang of other things that could be done. Maybe it's just the life of an entrepreneur, but I am doing all of these things and getting the episodes out. But I could be trying this. I could be reaching out to these people and I also have a family and life is still busy as well. And so it's how you kind of manage life/podcast balance also, and not feel overwhelmed by all the potential things you could be doing.
Colin
Everyone that I've seen almost without fail that has managed to keep a podcast up for a year or more, like a longterm show, has a slot in their week, which is unfailingly protected for their podcast. So, whether that's like, part of your work, so it's a Tuesday morning, maybe you get in at 9 o'clock on Tuesday morning and you've got till 12 o'clock to make your podcast and that's it. So, you've got a three hour slot that's just the same every single week and that's protected. Like I said, it's high priority, can't be moved. Or whether it's a hobby thing and it's like a Sunday evening for you or a Tuesday evening or something like that, whatever it is, if you make it that regular part of your routine.
I think that's when it really matters. It's when you prioritize it that way, so that it just always happens. And then, it's actually also, about once you get into that slot, is cutting out the non essentials. Like, the biggest killer of so many podcasts is perfectionism. It's thinking too much about those things that you could do and trying to do them.
Elizabeth
I think I need to hear this message.
Colin
So editing is a big part of this. So editing is the one kind of probably the biggest killer of podcasting because people spend so much time getting into their audio files and saying, Oh, there's a few ums and ahs and like a few tiny little clicks and you know, all these little things that actually don't make much difference at all. But people will spend hours, like people I've worked with that spend like 8, 9, 10 hours editing a 30 minute show and it's bonkers. It's just unsustainable. You should be spending less time editing than it took you to record. So if it's an hour long show, definitely no more than an hour to edit it.
If it's a half hour show, less than an hour, half an hour. And the only way to do that though is with a few different tricks. So there's things you can do in recording, for example, to make it easier to edit. There's things that you can do while you're editing that make it like much quicker too. So not doing the audio engineering things. Even just the mindset overall around how you record. And then how that draws into the editing too.
Elizabeth
I was that person for, gosh, probably almost the first year of my podcast. I was editing it myself and I was spending hours, hours, because of my background in documentary film. And I love editing. And it's fun for me. But I was drowning in the editing. And I thought, how is this podcast taking me so long to get out every week? And, you know, I could rearrange things and the ums and the ahs and the sound levels and then I finally thought. This has got to stop but I'm still definitely spending more than my episodes are typically 35, 45 minutes.
I'm spending more than that on editing every week. So I'd love any of the tips that you have.
Colin
Yeah, Yeah, I mean I think one of the big things is to try and get out of the habit of having to listen to every minute of every episode. So a lot of people will do that. They'll listen through the whole thing. But the key is that actually we try and get a take on a, I call it a going live mind mindset.
So when you do your podcast, a lot of people are so perfectionist that when they trip over their words a little bit, they'll restart that section, every single time. And then they'll end up having to listen through the whole thing and edit these all out. And they'll also worry about little kind of, Hiccups or, you know, stumbles or, anything at all, like an um and an ah.
Like, do not try and edit out ums and ahs. It's just the biggest killer of podcasts. I keep saying that. There are loads of biggest killers of podcasts, but it's one, terrible killer of podcasts is that, that whole thing. Instead, if you're thinking on a going live mindset, you're thinking, right, I'm going to put this out with minimal editing, perhaps even none.
Okay, so I'm going to record this episode and it's going to be a little bit rough perhaps, initially, but I'm going to record it and I'm going to keep that in mind and then when you start stumbling, you know, you just say, Oh, I'm sorry, that's not what I meant to say and you just keep going.
Okay, if you find yourself doing ums and ahs, you become a little bit more conscious of it because you know, I can't edit this out. So suddenly you're not using editing as a crutch. And you start to notice those crutch words, those ums and ahs, those pauses, those clicks, all that kind of stuff. And if you know that you're going to be publishing it, that helps you improve fast.
Because it kind of highlights to you the sort of mistakes you're making, the things you're doing. And then it means that you improve over like four or five episodes, you'll get so much better, so much smoother because you'll be so conscious of these things. As soon as you take away that crutch of editing, you improve your speaking so much more and that's obviously so much better because it means that you don't have to then edit anything afterwards. And it helps you everywhere else too because like you're speaking out just with friends or at a work event or something like that. It helps you too. So it's, it's a really worthwhile thing to practice anyway. Now, that's an ideal world, but you will still make mistakes that you want ten to ten.
So every now and again you will. So say in a 30 minute episode, I'll sometimes make a mistake. I'll stumble. I'm like, okay, that was probably too big to just breeze on past. Although I will breeze on past many a stumble or a mistake or something, but some that I won't, I'll say, I'll pause and I'll, just give a bit of silence on the mic and then I'll click my tongue three times. Pause again. And then I'll start speaking and I'll try and start again from the start of the sentence before. Oh, this does is it creates a visual signal in the waveform so that when you bring that waveform into your editor, you can just skim through and you see these things see where it waveform. It's so obvious where it is because it's a really visual signal. You see these little gaps and these three spikes and that means that you don't have to listen to the whole thing. So, whenever you make a mistake, whenever you say something that, ah, this does need edited out, you stop, you do that, and then that means you can just not have to listen to the whole thing. And so I'll edit maybe a 30 or 60 minute episode in, you know, 5, 10 minutes max because of that.
Elizabeth
Wow. This is revolutionary for me. And you know, I'm really thinking about the whole perfectionist thing because I find that I'm that way with my podcast, but I've been interviewed on other people's podcasts and I don't seem to care. I mean, if they want to edit it, if they don't want to edit it, if they keep my ums and ahs. Whatever. And you'd think maybe I would be more, proprietary about that because I'm probably revealing a lot on those, but I feel like, oh, that's their podcast. They can do whatever they want. In fact, one time I was interviewed, this woman, I had no idea, we got on the podcast and she immediately said, um, get your phone out and I said, okay, and she said, we're going to do this on Instagram live. And the whole interview was just live for 45 minutes, an hour. And then she recorded it and also posted it as a podcast. And I was dumbfounded. This is about six months ago and I was still editing a lot more. And I thought, this is completely opposite of what I'm doing. She's not going to do a single second of editing. The whole thing is just live and she's just going and my, you know, camera was in a wonky place, but I thought, well, that's efficient.
Colin
Yeah, totally. That's what I'm getting at. Like, that's the mindset. You can just go live. Absolutely. You can do that approach so you can really go live and that can bring some extra benefits too. But if you're too nervous to do that, just pretend you're live and act as if you are, as in you're not going to edit anything. So yeah, it helps a lot. if you can get into that habit. It can really get you out of that perfectionist mindset, really help you with the kind of mistakes editing at the end. And then you tie in a few other things, like use some certain tools to, you know, automate the audio cleanup.
So I don't think anyone in this day and age as a podcaster should be doing their own audio cleanup. Like they shouldn't be running noise reduction, EQ, compression, all that kind of stuff in Audacity or Audition. Even though those tools can sort of help with some of it, it still takes time to go through it all. Whereas there's tools out there, like Alitu, our tool does this for you. It does all the cleanup. But there's alternatives too. There's others out there that do the same thing. So, just get those kind of audio engineering things done by the software. Get it automated as much as you can. Even like the music, so, few tools out there that do this. Alitu does it as well. Adds in the theme music and the transitions. So all you have to do is have your recording and have that production side of things done for you. So you don't have to bring in your theme music, that kind of stuff. So, so many of those audio engineering elements can be done for you now with software.
That, you can just concentrate on planning the content, figuring out what you need to say, saying it in the best way you can, improving presentation skills every single time and then just publishing it to the world.
Elizabeth
How important do you think it is, to put out video clips versus just kind of still images with quotes and all of that? Is video really the way to hook people in?
Colin
I think it can help if done well, but I think a lot of people do it not very well. And a whole lot of people that do good podcasts don't do it at all. So it's absolutely not essential, I think. And in fact, there's a whole sort of extra level of prep and gear and editing required to do it with good video. To do it well, create a good quality video podcast, you need like two, three cameras for great angles. You need all the lighting, the background, people then start worrying about their hair and their, you know, clothes and all that kind of stuff.
So I think that it's just a big barrier for the vast majority of people and I think it can work as a kind of upgrade for podcasts that do well, that already have a good bit of audience, that have the money and the time to invest in it but I think that it's dangerous. The kind of message out there just now that a lot of maybe video first podcasting services or companies or just people who are trying to write educational materials to catch attention saying that video is essential, video is the way podcasting is going because I think it stops a lot of people that could podcast, really well, make a difference, get the message out there in the world. I think it could, it stops a lot of those people doing it because they feel like they have to do video and it's a much higher barrier than just audio.
Elizabeth
And as you mentioned earlier, it's a different medium. I mean, audio is different than watching something on video. And I think some people like it. I guess people like to watch podcasts, say on YouTube and that kind of thing, but podcasting at its core is that intimate audio experience.
Colin
Yeah totally. So it's different purposes, different types of conversion, different, type of people even. So it's a funny one. I do think it can work reasonably well for promotion. If you use little clips, if you spend a bit of time finding good little highlights of your show, that kind of thing, even if it is just that version that you said, which was, a still image with maybe a, they call it an audiogram perhaps, an audio wave over an image that can, can capture a bit of attention if you have a good 30 secomd-one minute clip. But even then you have to do that quite well. Have a good social media following, know where your ideal audience is hanging out. So it's a fair bit of work. But certainly not, not to count that out.
Elizabeth
Yeah. The social media following. I mean, that's an important thing. I, I was never even on social media before I started a podcast, it was just nothing that was a part of my life. So that's one of the bits of conventional wisdom that people would say like, Oh, market your podcast through social media. And I thought, what to my zero followers. I have to even build that up, that's a big hill to create before I can start climbing it.
Colin
Yeah, I mean, it's one way to build a community. think I think the biggest sort of way you can really grow a podcast long term is to develop that community around the podcast. we talked earlier about getting involved in other communities, but if you can actually create your own community space for your podcast, whether that is around a social media account. That can be a community, the people that follow your Twitter account. Or it could be an actual group within somewhere, like a Facebook group or something like that. So I think that can work really well. But I think... Social media certainly is not essential. We've
Elizabeth
Is there a bit of advice that you would give to podcasters who are a little ways in, but not, several years in. Encouragement to keep going, I don't want to have pod fade. I love doing it, but what do you say to people who aren't just starting out, but are kind of midway through?
Colin
I think often people reach a point, maybe a year in, or somewhere around that region, where there is a little bit of, almost kind of, jadedness. You're like, I've been doing this for a while. I'm still enjoying it, but you know, I don't quite have the enthusiasm or even if you're not like that, if you do still have the enthusiasm, I think at that point it's often worth almost a, you wouldn't call it a relaunch exactly, but it's a replan, thinking about that audience again, about that topic again, about that angle again.
Like, are you still, In the same position as you were a year ago when you started that show, or is it worth a little pivot? Is it worth thinking? Like, who are my audience? How can I get information from these people? Like, can I send a survey out? Can I just like try and talk to people, get some feedback, like really figure out What do people like about my show? Why do people listen to my show? And maybe that'll give you some guidance around perhaps even repositioning I'm changing the name a little bit, changing the artwork a little bit, changing the description. I don't think it's ever a bad time to kind of think about that again and re plan your show, like revisit your strategy and make sure you're on the right path.
And it can really kind of bring a new lease of life to a show as well. And one way to do that in a, maybe an even subtler way is I've seen people run to, you know, a hundred episodes or 200 episodes and then suddenly change format altogether into more of a season style format. I love season style formats for podcasts anyway, because I think they add so much more organization to the show, they kind of benefit the listener a lot because they kind of link the episodes together. By this I mean, you know, picking a particular topic within your niche. So maybe for you it would be something like, what's it like to be in the sports industry?
And then you would talk to a, you know, a trainer, a nutritionist, a runner or something like that. And so you'd have five or six episodes that are all themed and tied together, and actually there's a kind of bigger theme across them. And doing something like that kind of helps people, navigate your content, but it's a really nice thing to do to kind of mix things up because it means that you can give your audience a bit more control. As in you can say like, what do you want covered on the next season? and they can actually give you some input on it, and then that can guide you a little bit.
You can take breaks between the season, which can be a really nice thing as well, which helps to avoid that pod fade. Because it means you can take a month off between, you know, Season 3 and Season 4. And you can tell people, don't worry, we're finishing up Season 4, we'll be back on, you know, June 1st or something like that. Be quite specific about it. and you can even give them a goal during that time. You say, over the next three weeks while we're off, give us that feedback. What do you want us to cover on that next season? Or give us some feedback and say like, what do you like? What do you not like?
What do you like, want us to do more of? What do you want us to do less of? And that all ties into that whole kind of replanning, pivoting as you go. And iterating on that podcast and changing it up as you go to really refine what you're doing and make it the best thing it can be. I've seen people do that and change their show quite drastically over the years, and it can have a really good effect and they you can take your listeners along with you as long as you kind of take their input, hear what they're saying and kind of put that into the changes you're making, and kind of take it forward.
Elizabeth
I think that's great advice is to just be open flexible, you know, and nimble you're learning along the way too, And that kind of keeps it exciting too. You don't have just this set blueprint from day one and have to stick to it. You're pivoting with what is actually resonating with the listeners.
Colin
It's the best thing you can do if, there's anything that you can do with that saved time. If you save some time on that editing, with the advice from earlier, one of the best ways you can spend it is to spend half an hour or an hour a week just trying to talk to listeners, trying to get some feedback from your listeners that you already have. If you're really early stage, again, going out and trying to meet more people, who are your ideal listeners? And really listening to those problems that they have and what they want you to help them solve.
Elizabeth
You've had so many bits of great advice. Thank you, Colin.
Colin
You're welcome. Glad to help.
Elizabeth
This has just been a wealth of information. So, yeah, the podcasthost.com has a lot more.
Colin
I, I hope it's helped many people over the years.
Elizabeth
Yeah, clearly it has. Thank you so much. I'm going to really go dig in and do a lot of thinking and, this one I do need to listen to again. You said sometimes you don't need to listen to the interview, but I'm taking a lot of this and going to apply it to my podcast.
Colin
Perfect. Thank you.
Elizabeth
As you heard, Colin offered up a lot of great tips for podcasting, but his advice is actually pretty universal. Here are some of my takeaways from our conversation.
1) There can be benefits to not knowing everything when you venture into something new. A little naivete can be useful if it helps you take risks and jump in.
2) Listen to the people around you and take feedback from others. It can inform your path forward in useful ways.
3) Whatever it is you're working on, create a system or process for yourself. It'll make the workflow efficient, consistent, and sustainable.
4) If you really want to do something, you have to make it a priority. Put it in your calendar and make it happen.
5) This one is a work in progress for me. Don't be a perfectionist. Among many other things, it's just exhausting and takes up way too much time.
6) Just because you've been doing something a certain way for a while, doesn't mean it needs to, or even should, keep going in the same way. It can be really worthwhile to reevaluate and maybe even revamp things.
I'm so grateful to Colin Gray for all of his advice. I'm going to follow his suggestion to take some time to reevaluate what I've been doing and figure out how to best move forward. I'm always eager to hear your feedback, so please feel free to contact me via social media, email, or through my website.
I really want this podcast to be something that you find interesting and useful. I'm going to be taking a few weeks off and will be back with a new season in the fall. In the meantime, if you'd like to learn more about Colin Gray and his company, ThePodcastHost, please check out the show notes for this episode.
And if you like listening to interviews with people who are experts in their fields, you might want to listen to Episode 15 with Academy Award winner Dan Sturman, who talked about his career as a documentary filmmaker, and Episodes 4 and 5 when Glenn Slater went into detail about writing lyrics for Disney films, Broadway musicals, and so much more.
If you haven't yet subscribed to this podcast, please do, and please tell a few friends about it too. I'm Elizabeth Pearson Garr. Thanks for being curious about ‘what it's like’.