Ep 90: Top 10 Free Podcasting Tools for Podcasters
Tech Thursdays - Podcast Tools & TechEpisode 90 •
4th June 2024 • The Lazy Girl's Guide to Podcasting: Podcasting Tips for How to Start and Run a Podcast • Verity Sangan
Back in episode 80, I talked about my podcasting costs. It stacked up and some of you guys were outraged! So, I wanted to make it clear that podcasting does not have to be expensive. In fact, I record and edit this episode on free software. And with this in mind, during this episode, I will give you 10 FREE podcasting tools that you should consider using for your podcast production process. Plus, I will give you a key podcasting tip that you DON'T want to miss!!
[00:00:15] Verity: And I go through peaks and troughs, I know, and I will film for YouTube, and I'll do that for a few episodes, and then I'll be like, nope. Not doing a video again. I wanna stick with just audio. But either way, I am filming a few episodes for YouTube. I say filming them for YouTube.
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[00:00:38] Verity: So that may or may not be a good thing or a bad thing. I don't know. Either way, in today's episode, I wanted to almost do a bit of a follow-up episode for episode 80, which so many of you got in contact with me about to say, oh my gosh, Verity. This is just ridiculous. Because in episode 80, we talked about how much I spend every month every year to run my podcast.
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[00:01:18] Verity: How on earth do you or why on earth do you spend so much on your podcast? Others of you got in touch to say, do you know what? You've just made my podcasting budget look really small so thank you very much. Others of you were like, do you know what? It's your podcast.
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[00:01:54] Verity: That's right. Ten tools that I've used either myself or I have friends who use them or I've trialed them whatever. Ten completely free podcasting tools. So let's start off with the first one. So the first one is Enhanced Speech by Adobe.
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[00:02:34] Verity: You can only use it, though, if your files are up to 30 minutes long. So if your episodes rather are up to 30 minutes long. But in all fairness, you could always split it into multiples and then stitch them together again. Might do so. You know, the the technical people amongst us all will probably say, actually, that's not the best thing to do because the more you process audio anyway.
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[00:03:09] Verity: I don't think it's that bad. I think that it does a pretty good job. I think that for the vast majority of podcasters, if you've recorded something, the audio just isn't a 100% there. If you don't understand the ins and outs or have the time to go through all of these different audio, editing processes, then actually, this is a really, really good tool. Now don't get me wrong.
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[00:03:52] Verity: I want to say I pay about £90 a year for it but kind of regardless, Canva is absolutely fantastic. It's got a free version And what I love Canva for is doing all of my episode artwork, my promotional content that I put out on social media. It's just it's brilliant. Brilliant. You can also edit your episodes within Canva.
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[00:04:57] Verity: I think it's brilliant. I think it gets a bad rap from time to time because it's a free tool, but, actually, I think it's an amazing tool. I edited and recorded goodness knows how many episodes on there. Even when I was doing recordings over Zencastr or Zoom, like, really back in the day, right at the beginning, I was still editing the audio at least in GarageBand because I just I love it. I think it's great.
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[00:06:58] Verity: And I would say the biggest limitation of the free plan over the paid for plans is that when you download video, you can only download in a maximum of 7 20 video quality. But if you're not too fussed about the quality of the video, you know, too fussed about it being in 4 k, or if you're not recording video, if you're recording video but you're not putting the video out there and you're just using the audio, actually, it doesn't really make any difference to you, then I think that the free version of Riverside is a really really good option for you. The 7th free podcasting tool that I'm going to recommend is Descript. So Descript and Riverside, very, very similar. You're not gonna need both of them at all, one or the other, because they are both recording and editing software.
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[00:08:04] Verity: But I have been using Descript in the last couple of weeks, and as ever, I love it. I love it just as much as Riverside, I'll admit. So Descript have got their own free plan. Their paid for plans start from $12 per month. But as I said, they do have a $0 free forever plan.
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[00:09:55] Verity: I managed to get a lifetime deal for Content Studio, something amazing like $97 for lifetime use. So that's why I'm with Content Studio now. But before I was using Content Studio, I was using Buffer, and I also used Hootsuite. And Hootsuite is my 10th free podcasting tool to mention as well. Now buffer and Hootsuite are very, very similar in the sense that they schedule your social media posts.
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[00:11:19] Verity: I have done episodes previously how I use tools such as summarize to get a week's worth of content for a load of different social media platforms, and I will make sure that that is linked down in either the show notes or the episode description. Or if you're on YouTube, there'll be, like, a little thing that pops up here. Do click on that to find out about summarise. But those are my 10 free podcasting tools. As I said, when you guys listened to episode 80, and if you haven't, by the way, go back and make sure that you listen to that.
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[00:12:20] Verity: I hope that you found a cool tool in here that you haven't tried out before. If you do go and try out one of the tools, let me know in the comments what you think about that tool. If you're listening to the podcast, you can get in touch with me on twitter at veritiesongon. I'd love to know what you think about the different tools that I've recommended. What would be totally awesome is for you to share this episode with any podcasters that you know because you never know.
