I Created a Podcast With Ten of My Best Friends
Here’s how I did it
***The following article describes a personal experience and it is not sponsored by any brand whatsoever.
Two weeks ago, I reunited with my friends in a Zoom call. These are friends I have been close to my entire life. And, once we got into the call, we stayed online all night. We had not kept in touch for a long time and we missed talking to each other. So we figured out a way to talk every week. And that meant, for us, to begin a podcast together.
Life has taken us different paths and we are all studying different majors in different colleges. As such, we decided to make our podcast about the issues and topics that interested us the most within our careers and the disciplines we master. Our majors are all over the place. From the Law to Economics; from Animation to Engineering: we all pretend to combine our interests and knowledge within a single platform that makes all of us learn something new every week. Therefore, we started Área Cinco. As of now, we are recording every Friday night and uploading a new episode every Sunday to Spotify. From there, I want to share today what I’ve learned about making a podcast and some advice (based on personal experience) to make a podcast successful.
As such, here are 10 things I’ve learned from making a weekly podcast.
1. You don’t need a professional mic to get started.
Before I had the Zoom call with my friends, I had the impulse to start a podcast. Nevertheless, I stopped myself for two simple reasons. First, I didn’t want anyone to judge me for throwing myself out there with an hour-long record of my voice. And secondly, I didn’t have a mic. I had searched how to make a podcast on YouTube and most of them suggested investing in a good-quality mic to make it work. However, I figured out I didn’t need a mic once I got started with my friends. Sure, it is a good investment to improve the sound quality in a podcast. Still, we record with nothing more than the mic in our Apple’s wire earphones. Some others, like me, even record with our phone’s microphone, as if we are going to record a voice note on iMessage. The sound quality is still good and we saved a lot of money while still pursuing the goal of making a podcast. And, regarding the fear of being judged, that instantly went away when I found somebody else to make the podcast with me. I felt more confident while doing so.
2. Creating a podcast and uploading weekly episodes can be completely free.
There’s a simple secret to upload podcast episodes for free: Anchor. It is a website that allows its users to record and edit audios with special sound effects to create a podcast episode. Now, I think Anchor is a complete gem because it allows its users to distribute their podcasts on any platform you wish to do so. Note, I found an exception with Apple Music because I discovered I had to distribute the podcast manually. However, when we made our first episode, Anchor helped us distribute it to Spotify, Google Play, Anchor’s own streaming service, and 3 other platforms automatically, within a 2-day period and without any charge or additional criteria. I believe Anchor is the best service for anyone who looks to start a podcast without the need to save money or to be a wide-known celebrity.
3. You can begin to make money without an audience.
But wait, I’m not done with rambling about Anchor. The second gem Anchor possesses is that it allows a podcast to find sponsors without the need of having a well-built audience. When editing an episode, there’s an option that lets a podcast find sponsors instantly. Anchor allows its podcasts to put it out in the market in search of brand deals. It is only a matter of waiting for a sponsor to reach out to a podcast. Who knows? If a sponsor reaches to a podcast, there might be a good ad deal to monetize the project successfully.
4. You need to regulate interventions, but not that much.
This tip applies to people who are looking to co-host a podcast with other people. In my particular case, I record the weekly episodes with my best friends. Sure, we have good and deep talks. However, there is a situation that is really common when we record. Usually, we get heated up with the topics we talk about and we often cross our interventions as a result. Since we record the podcast through Zoom calls, Zoom’s sound distortions itself when two people speak at the same time. Of course, a podcast episode can’t be regulated like a college class online, where people raise their hands (or virtual emojis) to intervene every now and then. A podcast needs to feel like a casual (or, at least, semiformal) conversation. However, there needs to be a certain order over interventions when there is more than one person in a podcast. That way, the audio won’t be distorted and a podcast episode will require less editing.
5. It is easy to upload episodes; it is extremely hard to promote them.
There is a downside to making a podcast. While sites like Anchor make it easy to create a podcast, it is hard to build an audience that regularly listens to it. There is no Spotify algorithm that works like YouTube or TikTok. A podcast does not appear in a Spotify recommendation list unless it is very popular within the platform. Therefore, if someone wants to start a podcast, they will need to self-promote it on social media — whether it is through an Instagram/Twitter official page or through their personal social media profiles.
6. It is not hard to talk through the length of an episode (while co-hosting).
Yes, some regulation needs to be present regarding who gets to speak at what time during the podcast recording. But once that is settled, it is pretty easy for the episode to flow. It adds a variety of opinions and it improves the quality of the episode’s content. So, at least every once in a while, I recommend throwing co-host episodes in a podcast.
7. It is a great resource to learn about topics that interest you.
Making a podcast about a topic is different than reading about it. I found the exercise similar to writing an essay. For example, we made our second episode about the music we listen to. The topic sounds simple, but I learned a lot of things about music when I recorded the episode. I found out that Friedrich Nietzsche described music as a place where humans released their passions (from an Apollonian perspective) and I got to debate with my friends about the stigmas Latin reggaeton faces as a genre. Every week, I am blessed enough to learn about different topics from my friends. This week, a friend told us about her Animation major and the struggles the students face when finding a job in the industry in countries outside of the US. She told us many interesting facts that I would have never gotten to know otherwise. Making a podcast is a great way to expand the knowledge of its hosts and I recommend it deeply to discover new things on a weekly, unconventional basis.
8. The introduction needs to be appealing.
The first two episodes we recorded as co-hosts had half of their listeners leave within the first two minutes. Ouch. But I got it. We rambled way too much in the introduction and we kidded around a lot before getting to the topic. I believe that, while the episode does not need to be scripted, the introduction does. It gives formality and structure to the podcast and it invites the listener to go through the remainder of the episode’s content. From my experience, I recommend the introduction summarizes what the episode is going to talk about and, more importantly, what the listener is going to gain from listening to its content. Otherwise, I doubt the episode gets listeners that go through it completely.
9. It is possible to co-host a podcast successfully with more than 5 people.
I have already established that, with regulated interventions, co-host podcasts can be very entertaining. But the truly wonderful thing about a podcast is that there is no limit over how many co-hosts there can be. Look at my example: ten of my best friends and I are co-hosting a podcast. Successfully. We are having more fun than ever in quarantine and we are becoming closer than we were before. So my advice is: don’t be afraid to bring as many co-hosts as you want! If the communication is organized, I believe the podcast’s content will be richer with various points of view.
10. Everybody has something to teach us.
There is one final thing my friends have taught me. Everybody, with no exception, can teach us something. Though every human being lives on planet Earth (and surroundings), we all go through life in a different way. We all know different things and we all have different abilities. As such, there is something we can learn from every human we have ever met and will ever meet. Every voice has its story to tell. Therefore, making a podcast has made me more eager to look for more things to learn from the people I run into in my life.
Making a podcast has quickly emerged into the mainstream spectrum. It seems as if there are more people making podcasts than listening to them. Then, why do I suggest to make a podcast with my Medium audience? Because I believe it is a great exercise to build a voice in a world where everyone is speaking. It is a great platform to learn about interesting topics and it pushes its hosts to pursue knowledge constantly. I have had a great time doing it and I definitely recommend creating a podcast to the ones that have had the impulse to do it before. It’s quarantine time — after all, there’s nothing to lose in trying.