How to Start A Podcast: The Quick and Easy Way

A quick background story: I co-host a podcast show with my sister-from-another-mister Michelle, called “Need to Know” a podcast about life after high school. Our aim with this podcast is to bridge the gap that the modern-day high school system fails to prep students for the real world and college. After one season of podcasting I can safely say, you can definitely start a podcast with some simple supplies and this blog post will walk you through how to start.

A quick note, this post shares how you can easily start a podcast with some simple items you can find easily. However, the post assumes that you already have a list of topics that you want to talk about. I’d say having content is the most important part of it all.

You’ll need the following items to get started:

1. Voice Recording App 
2. Microphone
3. Audio Editing
4. Platform to publish app

First, you need a Voice Recording Application. If you have an iPhone or an iPad, you already have a “Voice Memo” App that you can use to record your podcast if it is just you talking. If you are looking to have Guests on your show, you’ll need to sign up for an account with Zencastr. Zencastr allow you to record the interview as separate tracks which you can then download and import into your audio editing application.

Next, you’ll need a microphone of some kind. I highly recommend getting a microphone of some kind to improve the audio quality of your call tracks. As this will make sure your listener’s ears are glued to your show. You don’t need anything too expensive a lavalier microphone that you can clip to your shirt that connects to your device is all you need.

Additionally, I recommend getting a pair of headphones that have a solid sound quality for audio-editing.

As your content improves and you have a workflow down, you’ll want to upgrade your gear, but we’ll leave that to another post. (I built a traveling podcast recording set up, and am refining it even more, to adapt to my digital nomad lifestyle.)

Then, once you have the tracks recorded, you can download all the files onto your computer and import them into your audio editing application. I personally use Adobe Audition as a part of their Creative Cloud Subscription. If you’d like to use something else because you don’t have Adobe Creative Cloud, check out Audacity.

Once you have your podcast episode editing complete. You’ll need a platform to publish it on.

We currently use Anchor.fm for this. It’s a platform that hosts your podcast shows and pushes it out to all the major platforms for you. The platform works really well. The only thing that bothers me about this platform is the level of engagement you get with your audience, which brings me to my next point…

Once you get your podcast up and running, you’ll want to create a brand for it and a website.

You’ll definitely need to create a site on WordPress or the like, to host your content.

Our Podcast Website is under development but you can view a working sample of it here: www.needtoknow.tinyoakstudio.com

The website serves a few different purposes: it’s a place to house all of our “show notes” from all of the episodes. It also enables us to create a platform where our listeners can learn more about our story, our mission, our purpose, and contact us with questions for future topics.

Since I own an online design studio, I designed our podcast brand elements and our website, then developed it. If you’re interested in having your own website designed for your podcast, feel free to connect with us/send us an email. From experience, I’d say it is better to just start your podcast without worrying about all the other stuff.

Obviously, there are so many ways to start a podcast but this is just a quick and simple way to get started without overcomplicating it.