The wonderful Ronel Janse Van Vuuren aka Ronel the Mythmaker has a fabulous website and blog where she has all sorts of wonderful articles about all aspects of publishing and self-publishing as well as some fabulous books.
She very kindly invited me to guest post about podcasting, since I have been focusing a lot of effort on my podcast: Virginia Waytes Sexy StoriesCheck out all the details of the podcast at my alter-ego's website VirginiaWaytes.com.
And check out my guest post about why and how I started my podcast over at Ronel's website:
My podcast:
Virginia Waytes' Sexy Stories
is now up to episode 8 and chugging along nicely. For those not in the know,
my podcast is a serialised paranormal romance for adults only where
each week:
the podcast🎧 has a brief recap and all the naughty bits from the
week's episode
and there is also an eBook📕 with all the plot that would make the
podcast far too long.
There are lots of supernatural beings and magic and excitement, as well as
plenty of sensual sexy times.
So the whole podcasting thing can be a bit confusing, as I found out, because
there are many different ways to do things. For example where to host, how to
get the best sound, how distribution works etc. So welcome to my second post
about podcasting and here are some of the things I have picked up along the
way.
I shared the equipment I use over at this post:
The Joys of Podcasting: A Beginning so I won't go into that again. Suffice to say I am still using the same
stuff.
However, podcasting has other trip wires I had not appreciated, but once we
know they are there it is easy to skirt around them. Please be aware, I am no
expert, this is a post about how I went about things.
#1 Create a Podcast Trailer
Some podcasting sites, including Apple allow us to create a trailer for our
podcast. A trailer is just what is sounds like, a short introduction to our
podcast, usually about 2-3 mins in length. This is really useful for several
reasons:
We want out podcast approved on streaming platforms before episode 1
goes live For example Apple takes a while to approve new podcasts - it can be
anything from hours to a week - and there has to be at least one "episode"
live for them to approve it. This means if we want our podcast to launch
on Apple at the same time as it goes live everywhere else we need a valid
episode before we actually launch.
A trailer counts as a valid episode. Most other places take
less time to approve, but it is still best to have the podcast live on
other platforms before launch,
A trailer gives us a chance to introduce our style and hook listeners
before launch day.
We're trying to interest people in our product just like movies do, so a
trailer is a great idea to gather interest. If we are very lucky they
might even subscribe to our podcast.
I use Podbean as my
hosting site and it allows settings for an upload to let services know if an
episode is a trailer or a full episode. I can only assume other hosts do the
same, but you'd have to check.
#2 Where to Get a Podcast Seen
There are many streaming platforms where it is a good idea to make sure our
podcasts are seen. These are the ones I use and also the articles I used to
find out how to submit my feed to them:
Now these do not all update instantly when a new episode comes out. I tend to
set my eps to go live at 1AM because then, usually by breakfast/commute time
(which is when podcasts are often listened to when the world is normal) they
tend to have percolated through. The one that is always not there is Apple
Podcasts. Every week I log in to my console as soon a I get up and hit refresh
on the feed - it then refreshes usually in under half an hour.
N.B.we MUST make sure our podcast season and episode numbers are set. If
they aren't no matter how many times we hit refresh, the ep will not show up
on Apple. One week I forgot to set them and the moment I figured it out I
added them in and voila, everything worked.
This is not an exhaustive list of where to list our podcasts, but there are
just sooo many and these are some of the biggest.
BTW - I made these little graphics for linking to the various sites on my
VirginiaWaytes.com
blog and anyone is most welcome to use them if they find them useful. They
are all png and were created from various sizes of logo available online,
just right click and save them.
#3 Make Sure to Tell Everyone About the Podcast on Social Media
This is an obvious one to most of us who have been trying to get out work out
there in any way online, but I think it deserve reiterating. No matter how
many podcast services our podcast is on, the best way to get the message out
there is with our Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts, and our mailing
lists.
When my podcast goes live it gets a handful of views before I get to social
media. Then as I pimp it around the numbers start to jump up. All these sites
have algorithms that boost podcasts, but they have a nasty habit of only
boosting the ones that already have an audience, so we have to do all the hard
graft on our own. C'est la vie in the world of the independent
producer 💖.
#4 Fantastic Advice from the Experts
There are many people out there who know more about this than me and many of
them are very, very helpful.
Getting the Prefect Sound
There is a channel on Youtube with the most fantastic advice for all things
audio run by a chap called
Mike Russell. He has some wonderful videos which can help us take the sound of our
podcast from good to great. This is my favourite vid of his:
I cannot express how good the advice in these vids is.
So Much Good Advice
Live365
has so many articles about so many different aspects of podcasting. It is so
useful.
#5 Make a List
[Edit] I forgot to add this, but, if you like me forget things, make a list of what there is to do every time an episode goes live. Since I have made my list I have found it so much easier. Of course I have all the book things to do as well, but it never hurts to have a checklist 😃.
~*~
And that's all I can think of at the moment. Podcasting is an ever expanding
world, but I hope this might help a few people sift through the information
overload that is out there. Best of luck if you are launching a podcast, drop
me your links in the comments if you are. Let me know any useful bits of
advice you have picked up along the way too. Thank you 💖
So I have been setting up and practising for recording the podcast as Virginia (my erotic fiction alter ego 😘)- which has been fun and a total headache at the same time! 😂
I am using Audition since I have the Adobe suite of applications and I have never used it before, so that's a learning curve. Nothing Adobe ever makes is intuitive, so I've been checking out all the tutorials etc, but their products are very powerful.
I recommend Audacity to those who do not have Audition - it is fabulous and free and I have used it in the past a lot. The only reason I am using Audition over it is that the Adobe suite had full support if I run into anything I or Rob can't solve.
We put up a bunch of anechoic foam above my desk, because my office is in the converted loft which has a sloping roof, so bounce back was a bit of a problem. It's surprisingly warmer in my little spot now too 😁.
Rob also kindly bought me a foam protector for the mic to prevent reflection from behind, and it keeps out ambient noise quite well too. This is what it looks like at the moment. and yes, the pop guard is held on with bluetac - we couldn't clip it anywhere safely.
Yes, that is also a cat tunnel you can see through underneath it 😂.
So far I have tried three mics:
My old ProSound Podcasting USB microphone
A Blue Mic Snowball ICE USB microphone that I am borrowing off my sister
A posh mic with pre-amp, that was not USB
The best sound by far I can get on my PC is with the Blue Snowball mic. It had a lot more gain than the ProSound and can be set up so it doesn't have a horrible background hiss like the posh mic.
Tip: When connecting a USB mic, plug it straight into the motherboard, not a USB hub or anything similar - it will pick up background noise as a hiss.
All the mics had a horrible hiss on them to begin with, but Rob used a spectrum analyser on the output and figured out it was power supply noise and plugging directly into the motherboard got rid of it. The posh mic, because it wasn't being converted to digital straight away picked up so much background interference from the rest of the equipment. No doubt it is wonderful with a proper sound desk. 😂
Tip: Don't use really posh, sound enhancing headphones when editing - they will mask problems.
As you can see in the piccie above, I started off using my Bose headphones (originally purchased for flying to help with my air-sickness - I can't take all the low level vibrations), but I discovered a problem. Bose headphones make everything sound amazing! When looking for issues in a recording, this makes them difficult/impossible to spot 😂. I have now borrowed a pair of Rob's phone style headphones until I can get a pair of my own.
The really fun part has been practising Virginia's voice. She does not speak like I do. She has a lower, sexier voice, whereas my voice just gets higher and higher the more excited I get 😂. It's been quite a giggle trying to get her right. So far I have recorded an intro, but I can't start the main part of the podcast yet, until I am sure the set-up is perfectly right. This is the initial music and welcome - LMK what you think!
Anyone else been podcasting? How have you found it? Or do you have a favourite podcast to share?
