Podcast Journey – The Beginning
As you may have noticed, I started a podcast! YES I know – I am late to the party, and yes I also know a lot of people are v-blogging (video-blogging) now…
It is funny because it has been on my to do list for about 4 years, and I just never got to do it. Why now you ask?
Well, to be truthful, my wife wanted to start one, and I was a bit embarrassed of not knowing how the mechanics of it all worked. I have listened and read how others have done it, but there is no substitute for experience. In my book:
Experience is knowledge! Experience is KING!
So I got cranking at night, after work, reading, listening and learning to what others have done, and got into it. Over a period of two weeks, I setup everything I could think of, recorded 5 different episodes, got the intro and outros with music, got my artwork cover, setup my site to host it, subscribe to iTunes and GooglePlay and voila – I officially have a podcast!
Granted – It is not a big or complicated one.. My intent with it is to
- learn and have fun
- get better along the way and have a record of the process.
- develop a routine and hold myself accountable to it
My goal is to publish weekly.
The topics will vary widely, as they will reflect whatever it is on my mind on that week. Tech, travel, family, life, work, whatever. Two things I do know:
- I will not discuss politics
- They will be short episodes no more than 10 minutes in length (although i expect most of them to be about 5 minutes long).
Although I have found many excellent guides to start your podcast, I am also writing and documenting the process along the way, and plan to share it as well.
You can listen to my first published episode: Why I started this Podcast here
I know this is going to sound weird, but I am not really looking for listeners! I am looking to learn and improve. Although I feel I am pretty good in front of an small or large audience as I do this for a living , my “alone with the microphone” skills need to be significantly improved.
After I decide I want to record a session, my process so far has been to
- write down some notes on what I want to talk about
- record it, using my iPhone – all in one take.
- edit: I do not edit my core content, but I do remove the uhms , Ahhs, double words, and long pauses from the recording. I still sound far from natural on the record. Can’t wait to get there. Practice, practice, practice!
- Add the Intro and Outro
- Listen to it a couple of time to catch any “issues” and correct as needed.
- create the podcast record (page) on my site
- Decide on a title, description, show notes, tags, excerpt and feature photo
- Upload the recording into my site and schedule a publish date.
- Set all of this and then forget and move to the next one.
Many things had to be decided along the way. To give you an example of a what it may seem a simple one that comes to mind was the naming convention (both title and filename) for each episode. Others included the hosting platform, plugins to use, and much more. More on these on future postings…
After the last couple of weeks I feel pretty confident and understand the process of setting up, creating, recording, editing, and publishing a podcast. It is pretty straight forward, but now that I have experienced it I can help and mentor my wife go through the process. Much more to learn I am sure…
Having said this, I do know that content planning and marketing the podcast so it becomes popular is the next chapter. I do not plan to do this with the jorgep.com Podcast, but perhaps I can learn those skills with another one. (stay tune for that one)
