159 | The Three Biggest Podcasting Mistakes and Misconceptions I Made and Proven Solutions to Fix Them

[00:00:00] When you first get started in podcasting, there is this misconception of what it's like. And these lead to mistakes. Because I made these mistakes. So today I'm going to tell you what they are and how you can avoid them.

[00:00:21] Be heard. Welcome to the podcast where you get exclusive behind-the-scenes tips to make your own show sound truly spectacular. This is Podtastic Audio Hey, what's happening? How are you doing today? Thank you so much for being here. I am Chris.

[00:00:42] And yeah, this is Podtastic Audio. The show which I've designed and created to help you, yes, you make an amazing show for your audience. And one amazing tool to help you make that even happen is Riverside.fm. Today's episode is brought to you by Riverside where remote

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[00:01:53] As you are listening to this episode right now, the week it comes out, I am currently in the islands of Hawaii. I love visiting Hawaii. It's my favorite place to go to on earth and I highly

[00:02:07] recommend if you have a chance to visit Hawaii then take a trip over here and enjoy all the culture, the warm weather, the amazing beaches, the tropical scenery. It's just an amazing

[00:02:20] place to be at. I know it's not cheap to get here and I know that living here is very, very expensive and vacationing here is also very expensive. But today's episode is not about the island talk. Today we're talking about podcasting and three common mistakes that almost every

[00:02:39] single podcaster including myself, I'm not innocent here. I've made all these mistakes myself. We make when we first get involved with podcasting. Now I know podcasting can be done many different ways. People will say like, it's a YouTube channel but it's a podcast but it's only

[00:02:57] on YouTube. Well technically it's kind of like a YouTube channel. But you listen, you can call your podcast whatever you want to call it and you can create your podcast however you want

[00:03:05] to do it and you can do your show about whatever you want. It's your show. Go ahead, if you're having fun, if you're enjoying your show just keep on keeping on. But I'm going to tell you

[00:03:15] the three biggest mistakes that almost every single podcaster makes and I'm going to tell you ways on how to improve those mistakes so you can make a better show, a more improved show.

[00:03:28] I wish I had these tips and tricks when I first got involved in podcasting. I wish I knew these mistakes before I did them and I think a lot of podcasters, even ones that

[00:03:37] have been doing it for a little while, still are making these mistakes and they're very simple mistakes. We all make mistakes. Everybody learns from mistakes. The smarter thing you can do really

[00:03:47] is to learn from your mistakes but the smarter thing to do is to learn from somebody else's mistakes. So let me tell you the mistakes that most people are making so you can improve

[00:03:58] your own show and learn from these mistakes to better your own process and better your own show. So the first mistake or misconception about podcasting when you first get involved with podcasting really is that we seem to underestimate the time and effort it's required

[00:04:18] to make your show. A lot of new podcasters make the mistake of thinking that podcasting is like super easy. All you do is crack on the mic, you just talk, you stop recording and then maybe

[00:04:31] a little bit of light editing, not a lot. Just just a little maybe add some music at the front end, maybe music at the back end, you kind of fade it in, fade it out. That's like the simple way to do it.

[00:04:40] And then you send it out to your podcast media host as an MP3 and you are done off to the next one. But the reality is that podcasting involves several stages including planning, recording,

[00:04:56] editing, and promoting. If you want to produce like high quality content consistently every single time, well that requires you to put time and effort into it. Tasks such as researching topics, preparing scripts or outlines if you do that, editing the audio. It's one thing that a lot

[00:05:16] of shows like either they suffer on or they overdo. And of course you want to market the podcast. That also can be very time consuming because not everybody has all day to reach out,

[00:05:28] promote and be on social media all day long, pre-mode in their podcast. All of these things take time. Now what do you do to fix this? Well what you can do is create a realistic schedule

[00:05:42] and plan for all stages of the podcast production. I'm talking from the actual process, the research of the episode. If you interview a guest researching them, then physically recording the guest that takes time too. And then if you decide to do like a

[00:06:00] front end and back end of the recording, got a plan to record that too. Then you also have to figure out all the editing. Is it audio or video or is it both? You need to schedule

[00:06:12] every single element of the creation process. Now I know that sounds like a big task, but what you can do is take that big chunk and break it down into tasks that are manageable steps

[00:06:26] and allocate specific times for each task. Like on Tuesdays we do the research. On Wednesdays I record interviews. On Thursdays I edit those interviews. On Fridays I promote and I edit. So on and so forth. You figure out what works best for you and your workflow.

[00:06:46] You know maybe, I know some people like to batch record episodes. Consider doing that. If you batch record multiple recording sessions at one time, that way say Tuesday is a recording day. You record as many episodes as you can on Tuesday. You get them all done.

[00:07:02] That's one less thing off your plate. So you can dedicate other days for other tasks. It's important to figure out your schedule and it's important to figure out how your schedule will align with your content creation process. So the second major mistake and misconception

[00:07:21] that most new podcasters make in my self included, actually this is a big one because this show was spawned out of this mistake and that is when a new podcaster focuses on equipment

[00:07:37] rather than the actual content. And yes, I am guilty of this one because when I started the Chris and Christine show, content was something I kind of let Christine figure out a little bit,

[00:07:50] but then I started doing some of that content research. But at the beginning in the early days I was trying to figure out how to physically make this thing even happen.

[00:07:59] So when it came to physically recording the show, how do I get my voice to go into a microphone, get that microphone to plug into the computer? How do I get it to record? And then

[00:08:10] how do I take that recording and make it sound great? But what I was doing was trying to figure out a way to make a decent sounding show without having to spend thousands and thousands of dollars

[00:08:22] on equipment and gear because at the time I had no idea if we were even going to continue podcasting. I thought it was going to be a fun little hobby, a little moment in time of,

[00:08:33] hey, remember the time we tried to podcast? That was kind of fun. That kind of a thing. And we jumped into podcasting before the big surge in the big rush of podcasting hit the market.

[00:08:45] Our first show was recorded and debuted in August of 2019. That is like what six, seven months, maybe eight months before everybody was in lockdown due to COVID and everybody decided to do a podcast. So we had a nice little head start leading into the whole surge of podcasting.

[00:09:06] But sometimes new podcasters that come into the space, they believe that having the best equipment is the most important aspect of the podcasting process. You'll see this thing a lot. You'll say like which podcast microphone is the best or which camera rig is the best or which

[00:09:26] all kinds of things like the roadcaster pro or the mackey mixer or the zoom stuff or whatever, so on and so forth. You could spend thousands if thousands of dollars on equipment. But the bottom

[00:09:37] line is that spending all the money on gear has no impact on your content. Now I realize that having good equipment can improve audio quality and this show is based on having amazing

[00:09:50] audio quality. But the truth is content is still king in podcasting. Your listeners are drawn to engaging, valuable and well-structured content more than pristine audio quality. And if you don't believe me, there are shows that are recorded on a $50 microphone with a basic setup

[00:10:15] that are getting hundreds if not millions of downloads. And there are shows with the best gear in the world, thousands of dollars of equipment, roadcaster pros and sure as some 7B microphones

[00:10:27] that are getting a small fraction of the downloads the other show is getting. So the problem is that if you focus too much on equipment and gear and making sure everything sounds pristine every single time, that can lead to neglecting content planning and audience engagement.

[00:10:46] So what do we do? How do we fix that? Well one thing you got to worry about is maybe instead of focusing on your equipment or focusing on the latest tech trends, focus on creating compelling

[00:10:59] and valuable content that resonates with your target audience. If you do not know who your target audience is, well let's step back and figure that part out. And once you do know who your

[00:11:11] podcast is for, then you can work on delivering content that they need to listen to. Maybe you should invest time in researching topics, preparing engaging scripts or outlines if that's your thing. Maybe practice on your podcast delivery without needing a script. How about that? Try

[00:11:31] that one. Practice does make perfect and the more times you practice delivering that content into a microphone, the better you're going to get. And when it comes to upgrading your gear, maybe start off with a decent but affordable microphone. I always recommend the Samsung Q2U

[00:11:50] or the Audio Technica ATR 2100X or 2100 whatever it is. Those microphones are very similar, they're awesome. You can plug them directly into a roadcaster console of any kind via XLR or if you

[00:12:04] don't have that gear, you can plug it directly into any computer via USB. In fact, if you're going to get a USB microphone, the one I recommend is the USB PodMic. I have one. I'm not using it right now,

[00:12:17] but it works like a regular PodMic where it can plug into any XLR console, but it's a roadcaster or any interface of any kind. Or if you don't have that, it can say you can plug it directly into

[00:12:30] your computer via USB. And the cool thing about the road PodMic USB is that it has on-board controls which allows you to fine tune this microphone to sound amazing as if you're running it through

[00:12:44] a roadcaster Pro 2 all for $200, which is what I recommend if you're doing a podcast from the ground up and you have no gear, no experience or anything like that and you want

[00:12:56] to make sure it sounds great without spending a ton of money, get the road PodMic USB. And I wish I knew this earlier when I first got started in the podcasting because once you start going

[00:13:06] into that rabbit hole of figuring out what kind of gear you want to get or what kind of consoles or mixers, you can spend a lot of time and a lot of money just fine tuning your audio,

[00:13:17] making sure it sounds the absolute best, but at the end of the day, content is what matters and that's what your listeners come to your show for. And the third and final mistake or misconception that almost every single podcaster who first gets involved with podcasting makes?

[00:13:35] Now this one has got to be the main culprit for every single show that podfakes. And I'm talking about the shows that expect immediate results. You see, if you're believing that podcasting, that your podcast will quickly gain a large audience and make you some of that

[00:13:55] sweet, sweet podcasting cash. Yeah, if you've been podcasting for a little while, you know this one too. It's funny to think way back then when we first got started, as you press publish

[00:14:08] on your very first episode, you immediately think like, Oh my gosh, this is out for everybody to listen to. Everybody's going to hear this right now. Well, not everybody's going to listen to

[00:14:19] your first episode the day comes out. In fact, there's a good chance that maybe only a small fraction of your audience actually listens to that very first episode. And usually our very first episodes aren't really good anyways. So it's good to kind of get those done and recorded

[00:14:35] and pushed out because what happens you start to build more experience within the podcasting space. The reality is that building a podcast audience does take time, consistency and persistent effort. You know most podcasts do not achieve overnight success. It requires ongoing promotion

[00:14:58] and engagement. And it takes not a few weeks, not a few episodes, but years. That's years I'm talking about here. And that's years of consistently doing the same thing week after week after week, building, promoting, recording, editing. You have an entire engine in place that creates your shows

[00:15:20] seamlessly and you are constantly going over all your marketing. You're making sure your show sounds great. You're delivering amazing content week after week and you keep on doing that. If you

[00:15:31] take a long break, say a year or six months or whatever it is, or maybe your content is like mismatching, it's one week we're talking about this. One week we're talking about something completely different. It's a totally different topic. Or maybe you've got different guests and

[00:15:43] it's all mismatch which makes it hard to keep listeners around. And when it comes to making money with your podcast, you see a lot of other shows that either have ads or perhaps maybe

[00:15:55] they are saying they make all kinds of money through podcasting or some sorts or another. You see all that stuff and you're thinking like, gosh, I'm going to jump into this podcasting space.

[00:16:04] I'm going to do the exact same thing. So they think I'm going to do a show just like Joe Rogan. We're going to keep it real. I'm going to do his exact same format. I'm going to do

[00:16:12] the exact same things he talks about. In fact, I'm going to have similar people on that he has on talking about the same things. So pay up, Mr. Podcast listeners. I am ready for my

[00:16:23] paycheck. Well, I'm hate to break it to you, but monetizing a podcast typically comes after you establish a loyal and substantial listener base. Your five friends doesn't usually cut it, maybe even 100 friends. The truth is that to get a podcast listener to actually pay for

[00:16:45] anything or subscribe to anything extra that you offer for them, usually that percentage is around 3%. So if you have 100 dedicated listeners on average, about three of them are going to buy anything or do any extra steps towards paying you. And if any company out

[00:17:06] there comes to you and promises you a large audience for a set dollar amount guaranteed, there is no guarantees in podcasting. You may be doing podcasting for five, 10, 20 years and never ever reach the audience level of somebody else. There's no guarantees in any of

[00:17:24] this stuff. So what do you do? You actually want to set realistic expectations and be patient with your growth process, focus on providing consistent value to your audience and steadily build your community around your podcast. Maybe implement gradual marketing

[00:17:47] strategies and engage with your audience through social media. Maybe if you have an email newsletter, that'll help and do collaborations with other podcasters. Maybe be on their show, they'd be on your show, make friends within the community. Now there's no guarantee that doing those

[00:18:08] things alone will help you gain the popularity of some other show you might know about. But building a podcast audience does actually take some time. It does not happen overnight and sometimes your listeners will come and sometimes they'll leave. And that is the truth

[00:18:26] about podcasting. And I really wish that I knew some of these things when I first got started in the podcasting. I jumped into podcasting completely blindfolded. I knew nothing about nothing. And when it came to creating amazing content, I was focused more on the technical

[00:18:44] jargon of it all, not the what how much can I buy and what kind of gear can I upgrade to and how does this look and things like that. It was the simple things like can this thing be

[00:18:55] recorded? Can a guest come in here? Can we record me, her and the guest? Can we record all three of us at the same time? Is that even possible? How do we make it happen? Let's do that. I

[00:19:06] figured that the content will just come to us as we did it. And the hard truth is that podcasting is not easy. Well, let me make a correction. Good podcasting is not easy because

[00:19:20] anybody can literally fart into a microphone and put it on Apple Podcasts and there it is today. Yes, you can physically do that. But if you want to make a good podcast, you have to have some

[00:19:32] planning and figure out what you're going to talk about, what the content is going to be about, and then actually stage out the time you have available to actually go over those things step by step from the recording, the editing, the research, to maybe doing a guest interview,

[00:19:52] things like that, space out time effectively in your own schedule and never ever ever bite off more time than you have available. Don't be thinking that, oh, I'm off on Saturday, so I have

[00:20:04] all day Saturday to do all these things. The reality is you actually don't. So think about how long it takes you to do each of these steps and then also get good at actually recording

[00:20:17] that content and not talking about spending thousands of dollars on gear. I'm talking about actually sitting down with a microphone, any microphone you have, and getting good at physically creating the episode, the way you talk, the way you speak into the microphone,

[00:20:33] good mic technique, things like that. Practice makes perfect. Work on that rather than focusing on which microphone is going to give me the absolute cleanest, clearest sound and the absolute best this and the best that. Your audience actually doesn't care. They don't know what

[00:20:51] microphone you have and they don't care what microphone you have. As long as the content sounds listenable, it sounds clear and it sounds like you know what you're talking about and it sounds like the content that they press play to listen to is something they want to hear.

[00:21:08] And the ultimate thing you have to realize is that podcasting is a long, long, long game. It takes years to build an audience and not even like a major audience, just a simple

[00:21:21] audience. It takes a long time to make that happen. Depending on your niche, depending on a lot of factors, depending on your content, depending on a lot of things, depending on you, it depends

[00:21:30] on a lot of different factors. So be patient with yourself and your content and your podcast. Hey by understanding and addressing these common problems and mistakes that all of us new podcasters make, you can set yourself up for long-term success and create the podcast

[00:21:49] that's amazing, that your audience deserves to hear and you want them to hear. Hey thanks again for listening. I do truly appreciate you spending your time with me today. This has been so much fun.

[00:22:00] I got to get back to Hawaii. I am here and I think I see a Mai Tai and a drink waiting for me right over there. I'm going to get back to it but you keep on having your amazing podcast

[00:22:11] with your amazing content and hopefully you deliver that amazing value directly to your audience and until next time, happy podcasting.