In this episode of Podjunction, hosts Matt Edmundson and Sadaf Beynon welcome Skip Wilson for the third part of their enlightening series. Skip shares valuable advice for those who are new to podcasting or contemplating starting their own podcast.

Key Takeaways

1. Be an Avid Listener in Your Niche: To create a successful podcast, immerse yourself in the content of your niche. Listening to various podcasts helps you understand best practices, identify what resonates with listeners, and discover your own preferences. This foundational step ensures you are well-informed and prepared to craft engaging and relevant content.
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3. Consistency is Crucial: Maintaining consistency in your podcast's format, length, and content is essential for retaining and growing your audience. Listeners develop expectations, and deviations from the norm can lead to disappointment. Whether you choose a highly produced or conversational format, stick to it and deliver regularly to build trust and reliability with your audience.
4. Utilize Tools to Simplify Production: Leveraging tools like Riverside and Descript can streamline your podcast production process, making it easier to maintain quality and consistency. These tools help reduce the workload, allowing you to focus more on content creation and audience engagement. Simplifying production logistics can make podcasting more sustainable and enjoyable.

This weeks episode is a must listen for anyone starting out in the podcast world, Skip provides a masterclass in how to start your own podcast offering valuable insights to all who listen. 

Skip Wilson - Master Podcasting With Insider Tips

So whether you're a podcasting newbie or a seasoned podcaster, this episode is for you.

Matt Edmundson: Wow. Very warm welcome to you. Welcome to Podjunction. My name is Matt Edmundson. And beside me is This is the beautiful, debonair, handsome, all round good egg, which is Sadaf Beynon. How you doing? I'm good. Yeah? Yeah. You sure?

Yeah. Okay, just checking. More prepared this time.

Matt Edmundson: I'm not convinced. I'm not going to lie.

Sadaf Beynon: So we've got Skip Wilson, part three, and he is talking about, or actually he's giving advice to people who might be starting out with podcasting. Or thinking about it.

Matt Edmundson: Okay. So advice for the newbies. Very good. So if you're starting out a podcast, you're thinking of starting a podcast and you want to know what it's all about, make sure you stay tuned.

Uh, if you're already established as a podcaster, is today's episode any good?

Sadaf Beynon: Uh, yeah, I think it is. Yes. I think there's still lots to take away. There'll be lots to take away.

Matt Edmundson: Okay, well, we'll take it. We'll find out. We will find out. We'll find out whether you're telling the truth or not. So, uh, make sure you stick around for that.

Sadaf Beynon: Nope. Okay.

Matt Edmundson: Are we going straight into the clip? We sure are. Okay. So here's a clip. We'll be back after this.

Sadaf Beynon: So if any of our listeners who are starting out or wanting to take the free route and do SEO, what are some pointers you would give them? So

Skip Wilson: I think it was Steven Spielberg that was asked, like, if he had advice for someone who wanted to be a director.

Okay.

Skip Wilson: And, um, you know, when they were younger and starting out and his main advice was watch movies, you know, just be an avid movie watcher. That's sort of step one. And I think the same thing is true with podcasts. If you're somebody who doesn't know what a podcast is, you know, like sometimes we'll get, um, I have a good friend of ours actually, um, just, just down the street from us, um, is, uh, that's what they do is they build like content strategies for folks.

They're not going to know anything about it. So the first thing I would recommend is Whatever your niche is, be an avid consumer of podcasts in that niche for at least a few, I mean, for at least say two months. Um, or if you're in a real big hurry, one month, spend a month just consuming as much of that content as possible.

If you're a marketer, then you should be listening to anything and everything that has Gary V on it or something like that. Like you should just be like absorbing all of that stuff because it'll do a couple of different things. One, it'll, it'll highlight best practices. You know, like there's a reason that whether it's a small podcast or a massive podcast, It always ends with, please leave a comment, like, subscribe, and those types of things.

And then also the other benefit is. That it'll help you figure out where there's a hole, you know, like for, you know, for, for the Advertising Singularity Podcast for the one we're about to launch, I realized there's really not a space for like objectively looking at new ad technology. The only ones that exist are ones that are made by ad technologies.

So those, those of course all had a vested interest. So it can also help you figure out where there's a hole in the market. Yeah. Yeah.

Sadaf Beynon: Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. No, that's great advice. I, I particularly like what you said about being an avid consumer of podcasts in order to learn it better. I think that's, that is just so true.

Skip Wilson: Exactly. Yeah. Cause there really is no wrong or right way. I mean, the edited podcast, you know, there's, if you look at the top 10 podcasts in any category, you'll see that there are 15 minute ones and there are three hour ones.

And you'll see that there are conversational ones and there are ones that are very edited and very well produced. And there's, it's not like only one format works. Yeah. It's more. Which is, you should try to pick the one that's more appropriate to you, because if you don't have time to do a well edited and produced podcast, then you're only going to do it for probably five or six weeks before you start getting frustrated with it and just stop.

Sadaf Beynon: Abandon it.

Skip Wilson: If you're, and then, so in that case, do conversational. Um, but if you're somebody who. If your podcast is not very verbose or doesn't like talking very much, then maybe lean more towards edited and produced.

Skip Wilson: Um, the, the advertising podcast is very, because we are talking to marketing people.

And for the most part, marketing people are definitely more on the verbose side. Like they, that for them, you know, they all, um, you know, all pretty much everyone in the advertising world, um, is, you know, Somebody who can just gab on and on and on. And so for us, conversational worked out better in that space for any other podcasts.

I actually, I don't have time for it now, but I actually enjoy doing like production work and those types of things. I could see eventually doing a very well produced polished podcast because I just enjoy doing

it.

Skip Wilson: Um, but right now I'm struggling to get through my inbox each day. So right now is not the time for that, but eventually I can see doing that.

Sadaf Beynon: I guess holding those two things together is, um, it's quite the task.

Because I think we've all been listening to a show that we're expecting to be 30 minutes and suddenly it's 15 minutes and we feel cheated or, you know, where we won't even click on that one that's three hours because it's usually a 10 minute podcast, you know, or something like that. I would always, the consistency I think is more important than what you choose.

Sadaf Beynon: If that got you curious and you want to catch the full episode, be sure to subscribe to the show. We've got plenty more great conversations coming up.

And then there was just you looking at the camera gormlessly for like 30, just you, just like going, uh, uh, for like seconds and then you're like, yeah, I'm cutting that bit out. But neither of us know how it ended up in there.

I think I know. Okay. But I'm not going to bore you guys with it.

We

Sadaf Beynon: should have outtakes.

Matt Edmundson: To be fair, we haven't got any outtakes because we just normally leave everything in the show, warts and all. But, um, but yeah. So anyway, what'd you get out of that?

Sadaf Beynon: Um, consistency. That was a buzzword in that one, wasn't it? Um, yeah, so I liked what he said about being consistent with the format, the length.

The content in order to keep your audience engaged is towards the end. He said, you know, like if we're listening to a podcast and it's suddenly 15 minutes shorter than it normally is, and you feel cheated. And, um, yeah. So we have certain expectations of the shows we listen to and we need to keep that in mind when we're also producing, creating shows.

But fundamentally, if your show is rubbish, it doesn't matter how long or short it is, it's rubbish, right? Whereas if it's good, we all know people will listen to two, three hour podcasts, you know, like you take, um, Andrew Huberman, two, three hour shows, you know, um, And I was just actually while he was talking, I got up the, um, the podcast app on my phone and I was just sort of scrolling down, uh, the list of podcasts that have come on here and I'm like, well, that podcast is just one guy talking to a microphone, that podcast, the next podcast, there's three of them around the table, just chatting away.

It's just because it's an interesting radio show. Uh, we've got Podjunction, which is obviously you, me chatting about clips. Um, and then if I look at the different links, so. 50 minutes, an hour, hour, 20 an hour, 35 minutes, 32 minutes. Andrew Huberman, uh, two hours, 18 minutes. , um, modern wisdom. Two hours. Three minutes.

Uh, free omics, which is more if you wanna really highly polish show to listen to. There's two shows I would suggest you listen to. Something like Freakonomics is a really interesting way how they do their shows very edited. Mm-Hmm. Very well produced. Um, and Malcolm Gladwell's Revisionist History. Have you heard his

Sadaf Beynon: podcast?

Um, then I've just got thousands and thousands from the podcast show on my Uh, on my phone, just to keep going, the gift that keeps on giving, but yeah, just sort of scrolling down, really intriguing how, how the different, um, formats and the different ideas work. In other words, there's no right or wrong time.

There's no right or wrong format. If you're starting out, pick something that's going to work for you and for your audience, but something that, like you said, you can consistently deliver, right? If you can't consistently do a two or three hour podcast every week, then don't do a two or three hour podcast.

And if you can't consistently do a two or three hour podcast that's reasonably good every week, don't do that. That would be my advice. But if you've got good content for two or three hours, do a two or three hour podcast. People will listen to it. Um, so, you know, I think we get too hung up, don't we, on things like that?

Yeah.

Matt Edmundson: Push has always stayed at about an hour. So we didn't make it easier by reducing the time. We made it easier by creating a mechanism that enabled us to record the podcast in certain ways that.

Sadaf Beynon: So it was less editing. Less

Matt Edmundson: editing, less production required. Um, we've developed, um, our own piece of software, our own little SaaS platform, which chases up guests automatically and all of that sort of stuff.

I started out doing production and after about, I don't know, 10, 20 episodes, I'm like, I'm not doing that anymore. We've got Tim Johnson involved and he used to do all the episodes on, on Adobe Audition and Tim was great. And he'd, you know, he'd spend hours editing the podcast. Um, and then, uh, who came involved after Tim?

Sadaf Beynon: What's that Josh,

Matt Edmundson: Josh got involved in podcast, um, Tanya, you, we've had various and in each phase, we're kind of like, how do we make this easier and easier and easier. And in fact, actually, do you want to give a plug to Riverside?

Sadaf Beynon: Yeah. So Riverside is actually, we've mentioned Riverside before, but we, we use them and are actually looking to use them even more so in our, in our, um, editing and production process.

Yeah.

Matt Edmundson: And what we're doing with clients. It works quite well. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So again, before we, um, we have used Riverside for many years, um, and we met with the River guy at Riverside guys at the podcast show. And just some of the stuff that's coming out, some of the stuff that's doing, I know you've had quite a few calls with them recently.

I know you're particularly excited about some of the stuff that's going on at Riverside. So they seem to be up in their game and that, you know, whether you use Riverside or whether you don't, it's, it's entirely up to you. The reason I'm mentioning it. It's because it's all about making our production process easier so that we can consistently create content and Riverside is doing stuff which helps us.

Um, and it is pretty robust. It's, well, I mean, it does have errors, which is slightly annoying every now and again, when it just throws random words into the transcription for no apparent reason. Um, but that aside, it seems like a fairly straightforward platform. But what we're seeing now with Riverside is actually, we don't need both.

Um, and so the more we can get onto a single platform, the better and easier it is for everybody, um, when it comes to the whole production, filming, et cetera side of things. So, yeah. And

Sadaf Beynon: Riverside seems to have this whole other element to it that is kind of created for production with production in mind for podcasts.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah. And that's an interesting point, isn't it? Because the script is very specific. Was a video editor. Mm-Hmm. . And has realized is trying to help content creators a little bit more. Yeah. Whereas Riverside was very much podcasting. Mm-Hmm. . And now we're creating these sort of things to go, yeah.

So it's cool. Watch this space. Mm-Hmm. I mean, dude Riverside fm uh, Riverside fm I think is the u RL fm. Yeah. Riverside fm. You can check those out. It's not an affiliate link, by the way. But just tell them, you know, we said, how's it? But yeah, if you're starting out a platform like Riverside will help you do things a lot easier.

You can do it other ways. Because I mean, Riverside just cost money, you can use Zoom. You can use, um, what's the free editing program that everyone uses, Audacity. Um, you can use that just to edit your audio. So you don't need these paid tools, but they do make things easier, especially if you're incorporating video, which I would strongly recommend you do.

Sadaf Beynon: also if you're doing more than one podcast. If you're producing quite a few podcasts, then having something like Riverside is helpful.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah. So, you know, check it out, check out Descript, um, and just try the different platforms and see what works for you.

But coming back to the point, it's not about the time, uh, it's, it's not even really about the platform, whether you use Riverside or Descript or whatever. It's about what you can be consistently good at. Um, and I think. Yeah, find out what works for you. Yeah, would make sense, right? Um, good. What else did he say?

Sadaf Beynon: Um, something else that I liked, um, was being an avid consumer of podcasts. That's genius. But yeah, that is, it's really good advice actually. And I think. Um, you know, you talked about, you can see, you can see how other people do things and how they format it, what kind of questions they ask, so on and so forth.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah. Especially what's working in that niche.

Yeah. And I love the fact he quotes Spielberg about, you know, watch movies. Actually, I was listening to Lee Child's talk, who is the author of the Jack Reacher novels, which if you've not read them. They're amazing. Um, and so he's, you know, he's the sort of guy that was, is the brains behind Jack Reacher and I was on one of his courses on a writing course.

I really wanted to go on, I wanted to understand his whole process in terms of writing and content creation. And he said at the, right at the start, he said, listen, if you want to be a good author, you have got to read a lot of books, same thing. Um, and when you're reading, when you're Your books, you're going to find out what you like, what you don't like.

Anyway. All of this. I'm, this is helping hone, not that I'm a novelist, but if I was, it would hone my craft as a novelist. And I think exactly the same as a podcaster, isn't it? Yeah. Um, which is why I've literally, you know, I, you can see on the screen I have, uh, if you're watching the video, I have loads of podcasts and listen podcasts on my, Phone and I, I probably spend 10 minutes a week just archiving stuff out.

I know I'm never going to listen to, to try and keep the list as, as low as possible. But, but I'm always subscribing to shows, always seeing what's going on because I just want to be an avid listener of podcasts to get better at podcasting.

Because we've talked about this before, haven't we, like you kind of have to start doing it and also learn. Yeah. So you have to learn the craft by doing it. It's not just by understanding how it's done. So there's, you have to leave room for that.

Matt Edmundson: It's easier to turn a car when it's moving is the, is the analogy that we use all the time.

Um, sometimes you just got to get going and figure stuff out, but listen to the, the advice of listening to the other podcasts in your niche. Now I, can I share our trade secrets? Let's not really trade secrets, is it? You know, when we do work with clients and we're like, you know, what's going to work for you and helping them on the road, we actually will go and listen to the podcasts in that niche as part of our research, right?

And you can do that just as well. And I think in the eCommerce space, I'm subscribed to all the eCommerce shows. I don't listen to them all the time, um, but they are on my feed and I archive or I listen to them and I'll be like, that's really good. And there's one lady called Chloe. She's been on the show, uh, on this show, Chloe Thomas.

She's another eCommerce podcaster. Um, We saw her the other day also at the podcast show, didn't we, and said, how's it to Chloe? Uh, and I said to Chloe, listen, we're going to do this. I, I'm totally stealing this from you in some respects, but I just want you to know that this is what we're doing. Um, and so just, you know, interview more founders on the eCommerce podcast is something that Chloe does.

And it's something that I wanted to do on our podcast. And I just wanted to talk to her about it a little bit. But Chloe is awesome because she'd tell you, she'd like, Oh, just tell me who you want on your show. And I'll refer this person, this person, this person. And that's what it's actually like. It's really quite cool in this industry.

But like you say, you can get analysis, pluralisis. But I think within a couple of weeks of listening to a few podcasts in your niche, you'll know how to do a podcast that fits to your personality that you think will be better equipped, uh, which will give you maybe something different for people to listen to you in a way that you can consistently do it more than any book probably could, would be, would be a fair, true and fair reflection.

So. If you haven't done so already, make sure you subscribe to all your competitor podcasts or podcasts, should we say competitors. They're not really competitors, I suppose, but the same podcasting, your niche, maybe they are competitors, um, but definitely go check 'em out, watch their YouTube channels, understand what's going on, what can you do differently, um, but in a way that still resonates with the audience that makes sense for you.

Um, what's the most influential podcast you've listened to, do you think, that's had in terms of how you do podcasting, not in terms of how you do life, um, but in terms of how you do podcasting?

Sadaf Beynon: I don't think there's one, if I'm honest. Okay. Um, Ours are quite conversational, aren't they? So, um, I don't think there is one.

Matt Edmundson: There's not one standout one.

Sadaf Beynon: No.

Matt Edmundson: What's your favorite podcast at the moment, besides Podjunction, Push To Be More, eCommerce Podcast? What's the story? I mean, apart from those, obviously,

Sadaf Beynon: obviously, um, there's one that I'm binging at the moment, um, by Sean McDowell.

Matt Edmundson: Okay.

Sadaf Beynon: Um, yeah.

The Binge Bank.

Sadaf Beynon: The Binge Bank. It's in my binge bank.

Matt Edmundson: It's in your binge bank. I like that. You're going to see actually, Snipped are a podcast player. They make a really interesting podcast player. Do check it out. I think it's really cool what they're doing. Um, With the ability to take clips from audio.

But, um, if you're listening, Snipped, uh, you should have something on here called the binge bank, where you kind of,

yeah,

Matt Edmundson: I'm subscribed to this show for us, these are just ones that I want for now, I just want these episodes in here, but I don't want to actually subscribe to the show, give me that binge bank, I can throw that content in there and I know I could listen to it.

Uh, that would be amazing. Uh, or some ability to, I don't know if actually I can do it. I can archive, um, But I don't know if there's some way of me sort of going this I really want to listen to this one. Yeah, like, you know, beach listening or something like that. So yeah, thanks Snipped for your podcast player, by the way.

And I think, um, they are some glorious top tips if you're starting out in podcasting. Anything else from you? Nope. Is that it? Okay. Well, listen, hope you got some stuff out of this. Make sure you like and subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts from, because obviously we've got more, I say obviously, I don't know why I say obviously, we've got more great conversations coming up.

Sadaf Beynon: Obviously you like that word.

Matt Edmundson: Obviously.

But that's it from me, that's it from the talented Beynon next to me, we'll see you next time. Bye for now.

Sadaf Beynon: And that brings us to the end of today's episode at PodJunction. If you've enjoyed the insights from this episode and want to hear the full conversation with today's special guest, don't forget to visit podjunction. com where you'll find more information about how you can join PodJunction Cohort.