Learn to Start Your Own Podcast with "Podcasting 101"

By Anthony T. RSS Fri, November 8, 2024

Podcasting has exploded in popularity since 2006, when just 11% of Americans over 12 were familiar with the medium. Now, that number is over 67%, with 45 million people that enjoy podcasts at least once a month.

New podcasts are always emerging because of their wide accessibility and DIY potential, but there’s more to podcasting than setting up a microphone and pressing "record." That is why the Free Library is teaming up with the hosts of Well There’s Your Problem to present Podcasting 101, a fun and informative workshop on starting your own podcast! This program will take place on Thursday, November 14 at 6:00 p.m. in Parkway Central Library's Literature Department.

Along with fielding your questions, veteran podcasters Justin Roczniak, November Kelly, and Liam McAnderson will discuss podcasting basics including finding a niche, identifying interesting guests, the recording process, and more.

 

If you are interested in doing more research before or after the program, consider checking out some of the following materials on podcasting from the Free Library’s catalog:

 

How To Start and Grow a Successful Podcast: Tips, Techniques, and True Stories From Podcasting Pioneers (2021) by Gilly Smith

From This American Life's Ira Glass and George the Poet to the teams behind My Dad Wrote a Porno and Table Manners with Jessie Ware, this practical book is packed full of exclusive, behind-the-scenes advice and informative, inspiring stories that will teach you how to tell the greatest stories in the world. This is a comprehensive yet accessible and warmly written book for creatives who are striving to understand how their content could be successfully turned into a podcast, from conception through to execution, distribution, marketing, and monetizing.

Podcasting in a Platform Age: From an Amateur to a Professional Medium (2024) by John L. Sullivan

Podcasting in a Platform Age explores the transition underway in podcasting by considering how the influx of legacy and new media interest in the medium is injecting professional and corporate logic into what had been largely an amateur media form. Many of the most high-profile podcasts today, however, are produced by highly skilled media professionals, some of whom are employees of media corporations. Legacy radio and new media platform giants like Google, Apple, Amazon, and Spotify are also making big (and expensive) moves in the medium by acquiring content producers and hosting platforms. This book focuses on three major aspects of this transformation: formalization, professionalization, and monetization. Through a close read of online and press discourse, analysis of podcasts themselves, participant observations at podcast trade shows and conventions, and interviews with industry professionals and individual podcasters, John Sullivan outlines how the efforts of industry players to transform podcasting into a profitable medium are beginning to challenge the very definition of podcasting itself.

Stories Told Through Sound: The Craft of Writing Audio Dramas for Podcasts, Streaming, and Radio (2023) by Barry M. Putt

Dust off that story idea you've been wanting to develop and learn how to craft an engaging audio drama that can become a fully realized production.

Start Your Own Podcast Business: Your Step-By-Step Guide to Success (2021) by Jason Rich

Start Your Own Podcast Business is an easy-to-understand, comprehensive blueprint that takes readers through setting up, recording, branding, marketing, and managing a podcast business.

NPR's Podcast Start-Up Guide: Create, Launch, and Grow a Podcast on Any Budget (2021) by Glen Weldon

From NPR comes the definitive guide to podcasting, featuring step-by-step advice on how to find a unique topic, tell the best stories, and engage the most listeners, as well as the secrets that will take a podcast to the next level.

How To Get On Podcasts: Cultivate Your Following, Strengthen Your Message, and Grow as a Thought Leader Through Podcast Guesting (2024) by Michelle L. Glogovac

The explosion of social media, AI-enabled online advertising, and the overall cacophony of the internet has made it harder than ever to connect a message with an audience. One of the most powerful emerging tools for cutting through that noise is being a guest on podcasts, or "podcast guesting." Michelle Glogovac (aka "The Podcast Matchmaker") knows the impact podcast guesting has on business and brand growth. She helps entrepreneurs, nonprofit leaders, activists, experts, and authors promote themselves, their businesses, organizations, stories, and expertise via podcast interviews. In How to Get on Podcasts, she teaches you how to: create unique speaking topics without being generic, define your ideal audience, design branded media kits, establish your expertise and knowledge, share yourself freely without resorting to sales tactics, tell compelling stories, repurpose your interviews into evergreen marketing content, turn every interview into a valuable business opportunity. There are more than two million podcasts, out of which 500,000 host expert guests — a huge opportunity for leveraging a free and robust marketing tool — if you have the know-how. With How to Get on Podcasts, you have everything you need to increase business.

Podcasting For Dummies (2024) by Tee Morris

Step up to the mic and unleash your inner host with Podcasting For Dummies. Ever wonder what it takes to get your very own podcast up and running? How to get the gear you need, pick a great topic, secure fascinating guests, and assemble it all into a refined and irresistible product? Well, wonder no more! Because Podcasting For Dummies has the essential guidance you need to get your brand-new podcast up and running. From selecting the right recording equipment to identifying an audience and pro-level production tips, you'll find all the killer info to help you get started on your next big idea. You'll also get software and hardware tips to create and produce a crystal-clear podcast; interview advice, whether you'll be seeing your guests in-person or over Zoom; strategies for choosing the perfect platform, finding sponsors, and advertising and marketing your new creation; and pointers for setting up a streaming account and doing live podcasting like an expert. With everyone from A-list brands to world-famous celebrities getting in on the podcast craze, it's time you took your turn on the mic. Grab Podcasting For Dummies today and turn up the volume on the practice that's transformed countless amateurs into household names!

So You Want To Start a Podcast: Finding Your Voice, Telling Your Story, and Building a Community That Will Listen (2019) by Kristen Meinzer

An inspiring, comprehensive, step-by-step guide to creating a hit show, So You Want to Start a Podcast covers everything from hosting and guest booking to editing and marketing — while offering plenty of encouragement and insider stories along the way. Though they are the fastest-growing form of media, podcasts can actually be tricky to create — and even harder to sustain. Few know the secrets of successfully creating a knockout podcast better than Kristen Meinzer. An award-winning commentator, producer, and former director of nonfiction programming for Slate's sister company, Panoply, Meinzer has also hosted three successful podcasts, reaching more than ten million listeners. Now, she shares her expertise and asks the tough questions she believes are essential to creating a hit show. With this motivational how-to guide — the only one on the subject available — you'll find the smart, bottom-line advice and inspiration you need to produce an entertaining and informative podcast and promote it to an audience that will love it. So You Want to Start a Podcast gives you the tools you need to start a podcast — and the insight to keep it thriving.

Make Noise: A Creator's Guide To Podcasting and Great Audio Storytelling (2019) by Eric Nuzum

Veteran podcast creator and strategist Eric Nuzum distills a career's worth of wisdom, advice, practical information, and big-picture thinking to help podcasters "make noise" to stand out in this fastest-of-fast-growing media universe. Nuzum identifies core principles, including what he considers the key to successful audio storytelling: learning to think the way your audience listens. He delivers essential how-tos, from conducting an effective interview to marketing your podcast, developing your audience, and managing a creative team. He also taps into his deep network to offer advice from audio stars like Ira Glass, Terry Gross, and Anna Sale. The book's insights and guidance will help readers successfully express themselves as effective audio storytellers, whether for business or pleasure or a mixture of both.


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