Upping Your Podcast Game, And Listener Questions

The team at Castos is excited to announce that our premium course teaching everything we know about how to create a great podcast is now entirely free. Check out our Podcast Like A Pro course today to get 25+ lessons on everything from:

Listener Personas and the Theming of your podcastGear, Microphones, and SetupAudio recording and editing software recommendationsPreparing your episodes to publishWriting great looking show notes for your siteSetting up your hosting platform and websiteSubmitting your podcast to the popular directoriesLaunching your show with style Growing your audience and approaches to monetization

This course is now entirely free of charge, and all you need to do is drop in your email address to get full, instant access to the entire 25+ lesson library of videos and resources there.

Questions From Our Facebook Group

In this episode, we discuss a handful of questions from our Podcast Hackers group on Facebook. This is a place where there are a lot of lively discussions around what is working well in people's shows, what they're struggling with, and is a great way to help each other out.

Question: What can I do to help get my show into the New and Noteworthy section in Apple Podcast?

Great question here, and one that is asked a lot. For good reason too. Getting into the New and Noteworthy section of Apple Podcasts can do a lot to increase the reach of your show, especially as you're just launching.

There are really two parts to the New and Noteworthy section: The New and The Noteworthy. Let's examine each of these individually.

The "New" aspect refers to a podcast that was approved by Apple within the last 8 weeks. So the "clock is ticking" once your show has been approved to really make a splash in those first few weeks.

In this time there are two Calls To Action (CTA) that you want to encourage.

For your broader audience members the goal is to encourage them to Subscribe to the podcast so that they receive each episode as soon as it's published. This will help ensure that your download numbers stay steady and there aren't as many one-off listens to your show.

For your more "core" group (we like to refer to this as your Tribe) you want to take things a step further and ask that they leave a Rating and a Review in Apple Podcasts. These ratings and reviews go a long way towards increasing the social proof for your show, which in turn will bring in more listeners and subscribers.

The Noteworthy aspect of New and Noteworthy is more subjective and is driven by a team at Apple directly. These are shows that might be following a recent trend (like Covid-19 right now), a show about a political campaign, or maybe a show about a TV series that's just restarted. There's not much that any of us can do to influence this decision, other than creating great content and empowering our listeners to spread the word about our show as much as possible.

Question: I want to create great sound, but don't know where to start (on a budget preferably).

Again, this is a hugely popular question and maybe is the single biggest hurdle that folks have around getting started with their podcasts.

There are a few pieces to this equation so let's examine each separately:

Podcast Microphones

This is really where great sound starts. You ca

The team at Castos is excited to announce that our premium course teaching everything we know about how to create a great podcast is now entirely free. Check out our Podcast Like A Pro course today to get 25+ lessons on everything from:

Listener Personas and the Theming of your podcastGear, Microphones, and SetupAudio recording and editing software recommendationsPreparing your episodes to publishWriting great looking show notes for your siteSetting up your hosting platform and websiteSubmitting your podcast to the popular directoriesLaunching your show with style Growing your audience and approaches to monetization

This course is now entirely free of charge, and all you need to do is drop in your email address to get full, instant access to the entire 25+ lesson library of videos and resources there.

Questions From Our Facebook Group

In this episode, we discuss a handful of questions from our Podcast Hackers group on Facebook. This is a place where there are a lot of lively discussions around what is working well in people's shows, what they're struggling with, and is a great way to help each other out.

Question: What can I do to help get my show into the New and Noteworthy section in Apple Podcast?

Great question here, and one that is asked a lot. For good reason too. Getting into the New and Noteworthy section of Apple Podcasts can do a lot to increase the reach of your show, especially as you're just launching.

There are really two parts to the New and Noteworthy section: The New and The Noteworthy. Let's examine each of these individually.

The "New" aspect refers to a podcast that was approved by Apple within the last 8 weeks. So the "clock is ticking" once your show has been approved to really make a splash in those first few weeks.

In this time there are two Calls To Action (CTA) that you want to encourage.

For your broader audience members the goal is to encourage them to Subscribe to the podcast so that they receive each episode as soon as it's published. This will help ensure that your download numbers stay steady and there aren't as many one-off listens to your show.

For your more "core" group (we like to refer to this as your Tribe) you want to take things a step further and ask that they leave a Rating and a Review in Apple Podcasts. These ratings and reviews go a long way towards increasing the social proof for your show, which in turn will bring in more listeners and subscribers.

The Noteworthy aspect of New and Noteworthy is more subjective and is driven by a team at Apple directly. These are shows that might be following a recent trend (like Covid-19 right now), a show about a political campaign, or maybe a show about a TV series that's just restarted. There's not much that any of us can do to influence this decision, other than creating great content and empowering our listeners to spread the word about our show as much as possible.

Question: I want to create great sound, but don't know where to start (on a budget preferably).

Again, this is a hugely popular question and maybe is the single biggest hurdle that folks have around getting started with their podcasts.

There are a few pieces to this equation so let's examine each separately:

Podcast Microphones

This is really where great sound starts. You can do a lot to save yourself trouble, time, and headaches down the road with a good choice around the microphone you choose, and how you use it.

I've been using the Audio Technica ATR2100 mic for 5 years now and (I think) it still sounds great. This is a USB microphone that plugs directly into your computer without the need for any type of preamp or other equipment.

Also worth considering these days is the Rode NT Mini USB mic. Rode is a fantastic audio gear company and this is their newest mic offering. This is also a USB mic (but with the added benefit of a pop filter built in).

Other Gear You'll Need

Once you've settled on a mic there are a few other pieces of audio gear you'll want to consider.

Firstly you'll want a Pop Filter, unless one is built into your mic like in the case of the Rode NT Mini USB. These dampen the harsh P and T sounds that we make when we say words like "Thanks" and "Pop". These sounds are very difficult to remove in post processing, so eliminating them from the recording altogether is a smart way to improve the sound of the audio you're bringing into your system.

Additionally it's well worth considering getting a boom arm to attach your microphone to. This articulating arm gets the mic up to the vertical level of your mouth, which both makes it more comfortable to sit and podcast for a longer period of time, but also ensures that your mic has the proper vocal qualities that you'll want. When the microphone is too high or too low you often sound either high or low pitched compared with your normal voice.

Audio Editing And Recording Software

For audio recording software, if you're recording locally on your computer then a tool like Audacity is great. This a free, open source tool that works on both Mac and PCs.

When it comes to remote recordings for calls in another city/state/country we recommend using Squadcast. This is an in-browser tool that records very high quality sound without any of the effects of your (or your guest's) internet speed, latency, or dropout.

Question: Where do you get royalty free music and sound effects for your podcast?

The key here is the "royalty free" part. Unless you want to pay royalties to the big name celebrities you can't use "mainstream" music in your podcasts. Some music is allowed under the Creative Commons license, but those tracks have to be attributed to the artist each time they are used. For us as podcasters that means in each episode.

Getting music that is Royalty Free is a great way to pay one for a track, and then you can use it over and over again, without worrying about the attribution.

There are a few great places to get royalty free music online. Some are with monthly subscriptions, and others allow for one-off purchases.

Generally if you're going to pick music once (or infrequently) for your show then going with a one-off purchase is probably the best way to go. But if you're going to be getting new music for your podcast with each episode then a subscription service may be a better fit for you.

Here are a few resources we like for both of these options:

AudioblocksAudiojunglePond5

Question: How do you go about creating show notes for your episodes?

Show notes are a written summary of each episode. They are meant to serve two purposes really: to be a written account of an episode for searchability on the web, and to be a resource for your listeners to refer back to.

The process of creating show notes is a relatively simple one. Within Castos Productions, once our audio engineers are finished with an episode they pass the finished audio file to our team of writers. The writer then plays the finished audio file and writes the show notes as they're listening.

Show notes typically have a few sections to them:

A paragrph style summary of what the episode is aboutA bulleted list (with or without timestamps) of topics discussedLinks to resources mentioned within the episode

In a previous Audience episode with Kevan Lee from Buffer they described how they sometimes actually repurpose existing blog posts into podcast episodes. So their show notes are already done but are extremely thorough (like the ones for this episode we hope ;)).

Good show notes will serve those two purposes very well: be a written form of your podcast episodes for search engines like Google as well as for visitors to your site who haven't listened to your show yet. But also as a resource for your listeners who want to refer back to something you mentioned, or get a link to something (like one of the podcasting mics from this episode) earlier in an episode.

Have more questions for a future episode?

Send them our way. Drop us a message in our Podcast Hackers group on Facebook and we'll include your question and our thoughts on it in a future episode.