Ep. 2: Podcast Basics: The Five Things You Need to Publish an Episode
In episode 2, Ian Levitt of Studio Americana and Jenna Redfield of The Twin Cities Collective get into the nuts and bolts of launching a podcast. They discuss the 5 things every podcaster must have to get published on platforms such as Spotify, Apple, and Google Podcasts.
Listen for tips on podcast art, the SEO value of titles and descriptions, timing your launch, where to store audio, and how to adjust both the audio and visual elements of your podcast.
Email questions to info@studioamericana.com
Ian Levitt 0:00
Hi, I'm Ian Levitt, and this is the studio podcast.
And welcome to Episode Two of the studio podcast. I'm Ian Levitt, owner of studio Americana in Minneapolis with me as well is our marketing director and founder of the Twin Cities Collective. Jenna Redfield. Jenna, thanks for being with me again for Episode Two here.
Jenna Redfield 0:29
Yeah, I'm excited to talk more about podcasting.
Ian Levitt 0:32
It was funny because you and I talked for a bit about after we listened to the first episode, and we have our opinions on podcasting. I think we try and be very clear that these are just opinions. These are perspectives. There's no one way to do everything right. But having a little fun is kind of something you do want to do. That was one of the comments as you listen back is like, boy, it sounded kind of formal and interviewee and one of the things I realized was that Jenna is after doing radio for 20 years, like I can't be in front of a microphone, and not have like this radio guy interviewee thing going on. So I'm gonna take this podcast to try and wean those things away a little bit.
Jenna Redfield 1:12
Yeah, I totally agree with that. I think, you know, it's all about figuring out our roles and the episodes. And this is exactly what happens with a lot of podcasters to their first episode can be kind of rough, because they're not used to it at the dynamic. I've known Ian now for a couple of years. But this is the first time we've ever done a podcast together. And so it's just a different dynamic for the both of us. So I'm excited to be able to just like learn from it, and also just learn how to be a co host, I host my own. So I'm used to interviewing as well. So we're both like two interviewers trying to like talk to each other. You know,
Ian Levitt 1:45
thank goodness, we've got Mike producing this as well, which is one of the advantages of having a producer when you're doing a podcast is then you know, you can make little goofs here and there. And you know, it gets cleaned up in the end. But, Mike, you want to say hey to everybody here to Hello, everybody. I'm Mike from Studio Americana. And I'm listening in the background, taking notes on how to fix those little goofs, that is a voice and a face that if you've been a customer here was studio Americana you probably already know and would meet if you decide to work with us at some point in the future. But again, we're not doing this to be an ad for the studio, we want to talk about what is important when you're getting ready for your podcast. And last week, I still think we did talk about like the one of the most important things is, what are your goals? Like? What do you need to start out with when you're before you put pen to paper? Or maybe at the first time you're putting pen to paper? Is there anything you wanted to follow up on that Jenna like things after you heard the podcast and said, You know, there's something else people definitely need to think about going into it?
Jenna Redfield 2:47
Yeah, I think I mean, everyone goes into podcasting with a different agenda. And I think I think one of the biggest things you have to think about is when you first start, you know, it can start small, even like this podcast, we're starting from scratch, I think expecting that your first episodes going to get 100,000 downloads is really unrealistic. So I think having that realistic expectation, as well as knowing that there's room for growth. I think also comparing yourself to other podcasts isn't a good thing. I do think it is important to do some research and listen to and figure out what podcasts Do you like to listen to? She's a lot of people start podcasts, and they've never listened to one before. And I'm like, is that you know, the best route, I feel like for me, I love to research. I mean, I joined tik tok in March, and I had never been on it before. So it took me a couple of weeks to kind of figure out the rhythms of it before I really felt like I was making good quality content. Sure, that I was I was, you know, proud of, I guess, in a way, so I think, you know, immersing yourself into podcasting. First by listening to a few episodes, seeing what you like, and don't like, whether it's the sound quality, or, you know, if someone says, um, or like too many times like I do, or they you know, just what, what are the issues that you don't want to have in your podcast? So I think that's something also we didn't really cover and just didn't even think about is what what are the aspects of a podcast that you like, for me when I started mine, originally, my goal was I just wanted to talk to people. Over time, I also then started doing episodes by myself. So at the beginning, I did not have any episodes by myself. But over time, I thought, you know what, there's times when maybe I don't have a guest, or I just really want to talk like facts, because when you're interviewing, you can't really take up a lot of time talking. So I think, you know, for me having those solo episodes is something I learned over time that I needed to just do every once in a while.
Ian Levitt 4:35
I think it's a great start to find a podcast that you do, like styles that you do, like, and then pick up some of those tricks. You know, what's fun to listen to? What kind of things you know, can make this interesting and different. I think even one of the things we started doing in the last year or so was promoting highlight clips, so you find a good spot from the show. You put it at the front of the episode now, ironically, we're not yet doing that with this episode. But if you're interviewing someone, and they've got a really interesting line or a couple of lines in there, throwing that at the front of the episode, I mean, that's a, you know, I didn't think of that all my own, I heard people do it and said, hey, that's a good way to do it. So that's a really good point, like finding out what, what other people are doing, what's working, and what's not working? Do you
Jenna Redfield 5:18
do that with all of your clients?
Ian Levitt 5:20
everybody that wants it, you know, the format's are all different from one to another. And I think that, that's another thing you and I chatted about before we got on was people have totally different ideas of how they want to do a show. And even though there are similarities, I would say even in our business, there are no two shows that do their show the same way. And, you know, there may be some formatic, things that are similar. I think it really depends on kind of the tenor of your own show. And you may not know what that is, I, we probably don't know what that is for this podcast yet, because we're just kind of going through it. So I do want to jump into a few of the things about, you know, what are things you need today's ideas, kind of the nuts and bolts of getting started. So, you know, assuming you've got your metrics down already, you know, what it is that you want as a goal in general, you get a feel for how long episodes you want, if you're gonna have a co host, those sort of things. Now you start talking about your first episode, that is one of the required things for having to starting the podcast is you do actually need to have some sort of a first episode. Now, that is on a technical side, so that you can submit it to Apple and to Spotify and to Google, because all of those different third parties want to confirm that you're a real person. This isn't some sort of spam. And so you've you've got to be providing some kind of audio, you could do it as a promo, you could say, hey, this show is coming out. That's what we did for this podcast. Or you could do it as you know, just one episode, if you want to launch the first episode, and one of the things that we recommend a lot is start with a few shows. You know, I think when people talk about what's, what's the best way to get started with this, I like the idea of starting with a few so that people can get a feel for what your show is. And that takes a little bit of extra work because that means recording, editing, producing a few of them before you put them out to air. But I think if if someone's gonna listen to a new podcast, and they click over to your show, you know, give them a little bit of content so they can get a feel for it. What are your thoughts on that? Jenna?
Jenna Redfield 7:21
Yeah, I think one of the biggest things is for sure having a few recorded when you launch so either whether or not you publish them right away, or you have them in like the drafts. I guess that's what I did. So I actually just launched with one. And I had my preview audio, which on Apple, I have to say they have a section that's called like trailer or preview or something. Yeah, I think same with Spotify, you can set it as not a full episode. But the and honestly, a lot of people listen to that one. I just want to say a lot of people listen to that intro as well as the first episode. I have people to this day that still listen to my first episode, and I go, oh, gosh, it sounded way worse. In 2017, that does now so I'm like, Oh, I hope that they don't always do that. But some people do. They Some people like to start from the beginning. So having a really good first episode is actually really, really important. And you can always re record it. I know that sounds a little weird to if you
Ian Levitt 8:13
know, I was gonna say that. Yeah, I mean, that's a great option with podcasting is, even if you've published an episode, you can do anything from change the sponsors in that episode and re upload it, you can, you know, if you say, Oh, wait, there's a part I want to take out. Sometimes it's dated content that you just want to lift out of it.
Jenna Redfield 8:31
I do think that the sponsor that I have is not in business anymore. So that's the thing is like, you know, over time, I've considered going back and changing the ads, that's the one thing that I struggle with is sometimes ads can get outdated. So I think if it's like a really popular episode, and it just is out of date, or something's changed, you can always go in and you don't actually have to republish the episode, it's more like you change the audio, and then just like update it, right. So you're not like adding a new episode. It's just changing internally what the audio is. And it won't change anything about the number of downloads, it won't change the description or anything, you just have to go in and internally and you can't do that on other apps, like YouTube, you can't go in and switch out the file, you have to actually upload a new video. So that's the nice thing about podcasting versus social media, you can't just change out the file. You know,
Ian Levitt 9:20
when we're talking about the things that are crucial for that first, publishing. Definitely having that audio whether you say it's a trailer, or it's a regular episode is, you know, it's just mandatory, there isn't really a way to get around it. You can't publish a podcast without having one in there. Another one you can't publish without is a name and a description. Now, sometimes with people that are really struggling with the description of their show, or the name of their show, I say do an episode or two, whether you're doing it at home, whether you're doing it with us, whatever you're doing, do an episode or two and maybe the name emerges out of a couple of episodes, and certainly the description is going to be a lot easier at that point. But those are also two things that You absolutely need to start as it as a name and a description for your show. No podcast sites gonna publish it without both of those things. When considering the name of your show, just like the audio, you could always go back and change it. You know, we originally called it the studio Americana podcast, it was the studio podcast before we started going, or by the time we got the first episode up. And I think that, if possible, you want some words that are going to appeal to the audience that you're going for as well, certainly in the description, because the description, and you can speak on this a little bit to Jenna's, like, the SEO is very important with that description, the title and description, all the words that are a part of that are going to go into Google when people search those terms. So especially if you have an episode with a guest, or a specific topic, or even specific words within that topic. It's it's good to somehow include that in the title and or the description, just for searchability.
Jenna Redfield 10:56
So I started my podcast It was originally called, it was called conversations with creatives. That was the name of the podcast. And people just kept referring to it as the Twin Cities Collective podcast because that was my brand. And then after about a year, I decided to switch it. So when season two launched, which we can talk about seasons as well. When Season Two launched, I changed not only the name, but also the artwork, which we can also talk about, so the podcasts aren't. And obviously, when you launch this is the one thing that I have to tell everyone is I kept getting rejected by Apple, when I was first setting up my podcast because my artwork was too small. Mm hmm. So that is one thing is you have to have a certain size artwork that is square, and it has to be there, you have to have artwork, a lot of people run into that one, you can get everything else set up correctly. And then you go to validate it. And it says Nope, you got to have, I believe 1800 by 1800. Minimum, yes. Because when I was setting mine up, I think it was 800 by 800. Or I misread it or something, but I ended up doing the rest of them myself, because I changed my artwork four times. So every season, I update my artwork, which is kind of a lot, but I get rid of it. And it's something new and I got my new logo. So that's why the new artwork is like the new logo. So I think I see a lot of other podcasters change artwork too. So it's something that I'm weird and No, I mean, every episode, but like, you know,
Ian Levitt 12:20
we'll look at any anything with the brand, any lasting product with a brand. They're always updating the brand logo to be, you know, more modern and and, or to reflect better what it is that they're they're trying to do. So no, I think that's really important. And you mentioned YouTube earlier, a lot of people like to put their podcasts on YouTube helps with the searchability as well. And YouTube likes a widescreen logo. So if you can get both, that's ideal, but definitely you want a square logo, minimum 1800 by 1800. Now, Jenna, if somebody says, Okay, I had a logo, or somebody provided me with a logo, it doesn't match, what do I do now?
Jenna Redfield 13:00
Well, so like one thing you could do is go into Canva, make an 1800 by 1800 Square and like stretch it out. That's like the one way I know you can do it. But usually you want to have it designed to be even hot, usually it should be 3000 by 3000. That's, in my opinion, sure what it should be. So I think, you know, at that point, I would just get a new new one, because you want a really high quality artwork, because you're going to use it not just for the podcast, but also on your social media. And just making sure that you have a really crystal clear image. Just maybe, for example, you're speaking at an event, and they have to put it on a projector behind you. And it's your podcast logo and you send them an a really small version, it's gonna look really weird stretched out to you, anytime you get any. This is a whole other topic of design, but like making sure that you have also the rights to your logo. Because that's one thing that a lot of people also think about is like, if you make your logo in Canva, they technically have the rights to it. It's kind of weird. There's all these like, menial things. But you know, making sure that you have the rights to the fonts and all that stuff. So if you ever, you know, go really big, eventually you may end up wanting to either change that or make sure that you have all the rights to use all the elements in your design.
Ian Levitt 14:15
Very good tip. And the same reason why we say you know, purchase royalty free music so that when all is said and done, these are all your assets, and you don't have to worry about anything and you're not going to have have legal issues around it. And frankly, that that's a great segue into the next thing that's absolutely mandatory to start a podcast, which is to have an account to host all of your audio. So these you may or may not have heard of there's one such as libsyn or SoundCloud or pod bean.
Jenna Redfield 14:46
When I started my podcast, I hosted it on Squarespace because I already was already paying for that I still technically kind of hosted on Squarespace, but I've added libsyn as more analytics. So I use a combo of libsyn and Squarespace. My goal is Eventually just switch completely over to Lipson which for some reason I have to talk to in my I tried to like reach Ange, the RSS feed and it like won't let me so I don't know if I have the right RSS link. But basically, that's like the next step basically after you figure out which one you're going to be on and we as Sudamericana mostly use libsyn. Yeah, yeah. And I would love to ask you, why have you chosen Lipson?
Ian Levitt 15:25
Well, I've chosen libsyn. For a number of reasons, I think. It certainly isn't that they have the most fun interface. You know, I think you were talking about anchor and pod bean. As far if I were to start out as an as a new person who didn't know a whole lot about podcasting, and just wanted to an easy way to get in there. I think, pod bean for sure. And maybe even SoundCloud have a free option. Now, it's pretty limited, you can only upload a handful of episodes before you have to pay for it. But you know, that's a way of dipping the toe in the water without having to invest too much on the front end. We use Lipson, I think because A, it's very easy for us to connect to any additional platform. So we talked about Spotify and Google and Apple. But you know, there's 10 dozen more options that you can upload to now, the Law of Diminishing Returns starts to come into play as some of these are very esoteric sites. But I like Lipson, because it gives you really the flexibility of putting your podcasts wherever you need. I like their analytics, you know, a great thing with podcasting as being able to know how many downloads you're getting, not just in general, but per episode by zip code, those sort of statistics can really give you a glimpse into how well your podcast is doing or maybe the different direction you want to go with it. I like the way that that Lipson deals with that. That's not to say it's the best option, it's the best option for us, and how our workflow works. But there may be a different one that you want to go to, you know, just depending on how you work best. And that's what we we have a number of clients that use different platforms. And we can certainly navigate those as well. But I just think libsyn kind of allows for the most variety of options.
Jenna Redfield 17:10
Yeah, I think so too. I mean, I looked at a few of them, and that was one you use. So I trusted that. And I think they have some pretty good pricing plans for depending on what you want to do. I did want to mention this, I don't think we talked about it. But like there's some other parts of the description when you upload a podcast like your ratings, if it's cleaner, explicit categories that you're in, that kind of stuff also needs to be filled out. So if I if I
Ian Levitt 17:34
kind of dial back to this is the The fourth thing we're talking about that is absolutely mandatory to get into podcasting. And that is to have an account to host all of your audio. So this is where you're going to upload the mp3. This is where you're going to upload your logo, your description, and like Jenna's talking about this is also where you're going to say, okay, is my show going to be explicit? Is it going to be a clean show, I've had clients say I liked the explicit logo, because it makes my show feel like an edgier show. It gives it lets people know, you know, we're going to be loose about whatever. So it's, it's totally your decision as to how you want to do it. But all of those things, your audio, your description, your logo, everything is going to go into this one account. And then the fifth and final thing that you're gonna need to establish this connection with all the other platforms, so your Apple, your Spotify, your Stitcher, your Google podcasts, all that. But the nice thing is, once you have this first audio account in libsyn, or SoundCloud, or pod bean, or whatever you're using, when you say what you talked about earlier, you upload a new episode, or you upload new audio to the same episode, you just have to do that in this one program. And then it automatically refreshes out to those other platforms. But then you do have to manually connect with Apple, and with Spotify and with Google podcasts, and like Jenna saying with any other platforms that you want to be on, the great thing is once that connection is done and exists, the only things you have to deal with are in that original account. And they will refresh anywhere from 10 minutes to 48 hours, depending on the platform from when you do that. And I think that's one of the things that we still run into occasionally is you know, Stitcher will take a day to refresh a new episode and people like it's not on Stitcher. Unfortunately, because Apple and Google and Stitcher and all these other companies are their own third party companies. You as the user don't have the ability to say, Okay, I wanted on at this exact time. So what we usually do is we say publish at midnight, or we'll publish for you at midnight. So you've got a nice six hour period before the morning commute. If that's still a thing, you know, for it to refresh on all those platforms. Also, you know, let's make sure to publish a couple of days your first episode before you launch as an incredibly important point, because on that first episode that you publish when you're just getting submitted, yeah, it can take a week or More for these platforms to say, okay, yep, you're approved on our platform. So
Jenna Redfield 20:05
yeah, and I think a lot of people, they publish it in secret. So they publish it, but don't tell anyone. Yeah, it's live. But you, you know, unless someone somehow stumbles upon it, which, you know, if it doesn't have that many downloads usually doesn't happen.
Ian Levitt 20:19
That's very much what we recommend is you have, you know, we kind of call it a quiet launch, which is you do all of these things, you set up this account, you have the piece of audio, the logo, the description, the title, everything, you start setting them up with Apple, and Google and Spotify and you submit them, and you don't tell people to listen yet, because you want to wait until you can see on your device. Yes, it's up, it's going, it's the way I like it. And the great thing is like, once you've done that, once that connection has been made, you can still make tweaks and changes, like we've talked about throughout the episode, it's usually only a matter of hours, once you make that change, and it's updated on the other platforms. So the app, but that very initial publishing, can take a week or two even. So that's what we recommend is you get it all started, if you have a publishing date in mind and say, we want to be up by this time, then you want to have everything that's necessary to be done two weeks before that, so that you have a solid buffer for it. Well, I think we've kind of taken up all the time for this one. Again, the five things we talked about is have some audio to publish, have a name and description for your show, have the podcast start the show logo, however, you want to describe that, having an account where all of your audio and all those details are going to go, and then have it set up with Apple, Spotify, Google, and whatever other platforms you want. I think that kind of covers the nuts and bolts for today.
Jenna Redfield 21:44
Yeah, I mean, eventually down the road, you can then do the marketing, which we can talk about in a later episode you're gonna want when will date and social media. So this is kind of just to get the podcast up and going, obviously, that that's not the end of the road, we have, you know, there's tons more to do when it comes to promoting. But yeah, when it comes to publishing, that is all you need. When you get started.
Ian Levitt 22:04
Yeah, you're not gonna get started without those those elements of it. So, and all through October, we're going to be continuing this podcast with our friends over at the reserve. Next week, we're going to be talking about the flow of the show. We're not going to tell you what your content should be. But we are going to give you some tips on interviewing on how to kind of structure the beginning through the end, and make sure that whether it's your first or your hundredth podcast, you've got everything you need to make it sound good. Then our final one in October is going to be marketing. Jenna's chomping at the bit for this one, and I'm excited for it too. So thanks for doing this again today, Jenna.
Jenna Redfield 22:38
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Ian Levitt 22:46
Thanks for joining us on the studio podcast. If you'd like to learn more about how our team helps with podcasting, just go to Studio americana.com. And if you like this content, please take a few moments to review us wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks again and we'll talk to you next time.