And on today’s episode we’re going to talk about the 6.5 steps to make podcasting easy. Lots of people complicate it but if you know the steps involved, then you can start to simplify your process!

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MYP fam what's going on.

My name is Hector Santiesteban and I'm your host.

And I get way too geeked up about creating amazing podcasts that can

fuel your lifestyle and your business.

And I've been producing podcasts for almost a half decade now.

And this show is to help you learn the things that do and do not

work when it comes to marketing and monetizing your podcast.

And on today's episode, we're gonna talk about the six and a half steps

to make podcasting easy, because lots of people like to complicate it.

But if you know the steps that are involved, then you can really

start to simplify the process.

So really quickly let's talk about the necessary steps.

And so the obvious one is that you've gotta record it.

And the one that a lot of people miss, which I think is a really important

one, is getting your recording into storage and we use Google drive.

A lot of people use Dropbox.

But I think that's such an important step in order to get to the next parts.

And the third step is what we call content editing.

And this is really important for interview shows and we'll get into what

this actually entails in a little bit.

Then we go through and actually process and edit the audio and do

all the processing and audio editing to make it sound really good.

Step five and a half is making sure that you have the things like your

graphics and your show notes and your episode title, ready to go.

And then step six, which is maybe the most important is actually

hitting the publish button.

Now I think that this is important because the chances are, you're either doing all

of these yourself, or you're gonna have to have someone do all of these and when

you're outsourcing or when you're having someone do it, it's a lot more cost

effective or it's a lot less expensive if you know, the small individual pieces

of the process that need to get done.

We charge a lot more if we have to do everything in the process, but if you're

able to know the specific steps and the specific tasks, and you're really able

to kind of be the air traffic controller, well, you can actually go out and find

people that are a lot less expensive,

so you knowing these steps can either help you to save a lot of money or it can

also help you to be a lot more efficient when you're getting your episodes out.

And so here's an example here.

We have a client that is in the political space and it's kind

of a rant and interview show.

And frankly, the client is really busy.

And he has his own consulting company

, he doesn't have the time to be doing

be able to have a successful podcast.

But this show gets around 5,000 downloads every month, which of course is not

going to knock down Spotify's doors.

But what's nice is that he's able to sustain it with his Patreon.

He makes a little money on his ads and the show obviously has a community

of people that are interested in it.

And so for him, the real value comes from him being able to get out his knowledge

from him being able to share some of the things that he's learning in his

research and throughout his consulting.

And so the show is a really great platform for him to be able to share

his expertise, to build his brand,

but also he's created a really cool community of listeners that

are really engaged in the type of content that he's creating.

He just doesn't have the time to be able to do all of the things every single time.

And so I kind of wanna walk you through the process of how we get

his audio out from the time that he finishes recording, to the time

that we end up hitting published.

And so the reason that I'm doing this is just last night, we got an episode

in from him . And so as soon as we get the episode in, our first thing that

we wanna do is we want to get that file into some sort of storage that we can use

because we have different people that are doing different parts of the process.

It's really important for us to have a central file storage system.

And so we really like Google drive just because it's easy,

everybody can access it.

And it's really easy to share with different people, but you can use whatever

it is that you want, but by getting that file into the storage system.

What we do is we'll have someone on our team grab that

file, put it into Google drive.

So that way, when we go in and content edit it, we can just go in, grab

the file, drop it into our content editor, and we're ready to go.

It saves our content editor a ton of time from having to go download

the link, put it into the storage system and then get that file and

then upload it into our content.

so that leads us to our next step, which is to actually do the content editing.

And this is something that you may or may not be doing.

But one thing that we really try and do is to make our shows easy to listen to.

There are plenty of podcast that I've listened to, where people are rambling,

the guest, or the host have a ton of ums or have a ton of stutters, or they are

constantly going in different directions.

And so we really try and make sure that our interviews and our shows are crisp,

that they are dialed in and that a listener is able to follow everything.

And so that includes removing all of the filler words, the ums, a lot of

times guests will use certain filler words over and over again, things like,

like, or right, or, you know, and.

We'll try and remove as many of those things as possible to keep

the conversation sounding natural.

And it also reduces a significant amount of time for the episode so

that your listener is able to get the same amount of value, get the

same amount of content in less time.

Now one other part of content editing might also include moving certain

parts of the interview around.

It might make sense for a certain question to be asked later or earlier

in the interview, or it might make sense to cut part of an interview or

with our hosts, we really allow them to be relaxed, to make mistakes.

And so if they make a mistake, they can just make a vocal note that

they're gonna start over or that they messed up or whatever it is.

And because our editors are going through in content editing, we're able to make

the conversation really sound seamless, but the hosts and the guests are able to

record it in a much more relaxed fashion.

so our favorite program to do this is script.

And in fact, I don't know that we could actually do this step

without a tool like script.

And it makes it really, really easy to do.

I've done other episodes and devoted entire videos to this tool, but

it's something that has really, really optimized our workflow

and really added another layer of value to the shows that we're putting out,

because they're not having to listen to the rambles or the ums or the U.

And so it really creates what we think is a unique listening experience.

And eventually all the shows are gonna be doing it.

But right now it's one way that we can really set ourselves apart.

Now the next part of our system is where we process and edit the audio

like a normal audio engineer might.

And this is where we're adding the compression or we're, using

an equalizer, we're reducing the gains, we're adjusting the volumes.

And so there are some things that we do and script makes it really easy to do

we've liked the Adobe suite of tools.

I know studio one is another one that our team really enjoys.

And so processing the audio is the next step to just make sure that the sound

sounds as good and as crisp as it can.

The content of the audio and of the interview is obviously important, but

so are the actual acoustics of it.

And so paying attention to how it sounds and how it's coming through in headphones,

how it's coming through on speakers, how it's coming through in different types of

environments is really, really important.

Now one often missed note here is.

Once your episode is ready.

There are some things outside of the audio that you're gonna need to get ready.

And this is a challenge for some people and for others, it's not, but there are

two things that we've found have become real sticky points in our processes.

And if we can make sure that these are ready to go, our workflow.

Really go smoothly.

And if we don't have these nailed down, if we don't have these dialed in,

then it really holds up our processes.

And that is the episode artwork and the show notes.

And that's just because for me, editing audio is easy.

Putting out an episode, doing music, all the stuff that we've talked

about so far, all that stuff is easy.

But all of a sudden, when you start talking about making pictures you start

talking about writing stuff, well, now all of a sudden it just takes me so

much longer to have to do those things.

And so for us having either different people.

To do it has been really, really helpful where I'm not the actual one, making

the graphics or writing the show notes.

That's a really helpful part of our process, but I'll tell you that if

you are the one that has to do it, if you're not hiring people, you're

the one that's doing everything.

Just knowing that you're gonna have to create the graphics and write

the show notes and having it built into your process is so important.

Cuz there were times where I'd get to the end and I'd be so excited about

the episode and I'd be like, oh.

Crap.

I forgot about the graphic and the show notes.

And that almost took just as much time as I'd put into the entire editing,

because the show notes I had to go back and, rego through and figure out what

were the timestamps I had to go and research , the person, in the guest.

I, all the things that come along with putting together the good show notes,

graphics, it's a little bit easier if you have the template set up, but

the point is, is that because I wasn't expecting it kind of blindsided me,

but when I know that I'm gonna have to do it and I make time and I'm ready

and it's on my list of to things to do.

Well, things run so much more smoothly.

And so just knowing that it's going to be a part of your process.

And once again, your show notes do not have to be elaborate.

Right?

You can have a couple of sentences, some.

And you're good to go.

Do you need a new episode artwork for each show?

No, you don't need one.

We've actually done really well with one of our shows without ever creating

individual artwork for the episodes.

But I don't know that I would recommend it.

So if you can do it, I would suggest it, right.

It is the best practice because it can be something that can be helpful

if you do it, so would definitely.

Encourage you to build that into your process.

And the last part is just hitting publish, right?

And it's, it's an important part of the step because you can

have all of those things done.

And if you don't go through all of the steps that you need to actually get it

out the door and publishing might mean some different things for different

people, for some shows, all it means is dragging your audio on the thing.

Putting your show, title and copying and pasting a couple of things

and hitting the publish button.

But for other shows, you might have to add some ads or you might

have to add some timestamps or you might need specific links involved,

or maybe the title is something that you pay particular attention.

I, there are certain aspects to the publishing, right?

A title, a show notes, episode numbers, artwork timestamps for your ads.

All of those things are things that you might.

Have to think about if your show utilizes those things.

And so just thinking through that, building it into your process so that

either you as the host, if you're the one, doing everything that boom,

it's really easy, it's clear cut.

You've got your checklist of things to do, and you can just walk through

'em boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

Or if you wanna start handing it off and you wanna.

Delegating things you wanna start freeing up some of your time, the more granular

that you can get with these tasks, the less expensive it's going to be for you.

When you just tell somebody, I need you to make my podcast.

Well, all of a sudden there's a lot more things that are involved

in there, and that person needs to be a lot more skilled because they

need to know all of those steps.

If you're just asking someone to do one step, you're just saying, Hey, I just need

you to upload these and put them here.

Right.

There are even softwares and automations that can do it for you.

We'll talk about some of those things in ways that you can automate

it, coming up on future episodes.

But if you're just asking someone to go through and content, edit your show,

that's gonna be a lot less expensive than asking them to content, edit it

and then process the audio and edit the audio and then go through and create

your episode artwork, and then write your show notes and then publish it.

Right.

So there's gonna be a lot less expensive than if you're just paying

them to do one of those tasks.

And so that's another reason why breaking it down can not only make

podcasting easy, but it can also make it less expensive as well.

And then obviously another problem is that if you don't have

those things well articulated, then things can get forgotten.

They can get delayed, they cannot happen.

I mean, we've had times where shows are ready to get published, but then we

don't have the show notes written and it's like, we have to hit published

because we're on our, deadline.

We wanna stay on schedule and we end up publishing and updating

and editing the notes afterwards.

Is it perfect?

No.

Is it ideal?

No.

It's one thing.

That's and it's why I find that these conversations in an episode

like this is so important.

So we'd love to know what you guys thought about these things.

Obviously there's some parts that you guys are doing because you wouldn't be

able to get a show out if you didn't, but I'd love to know what is standing out?

what surprised you about these things?

What made the most sense?

What made the least amount of sense?

I'd really love to know what you took away or what got you

thinking from today's episode.

So find me on Twitter at Hector underscore podcast.

You can send me an email hector amplify media.com and would

love to know what you thought.

The last thing I'd ask is if you know, someone who has a podcast or

is starting a podcast of their own, please share this with them and

let's build the Y P fan together.

I can't wait to hear your success story and maybe interview you on

a future episode of the YP show.

Thanks again for sticking around.