Last time, I covered how to come up with your topics/area of focus for your podcast. We also looked into how to discover your target audience, how to know exactly what topics they are interested in, so you can focus on such. If you have not read it, I would recommend reading it before going ahead with today’s article.

Here is the link to part 1 and part 2

We would be looking into items 3 and 4 today.

I will outline again the important items we need to get your podcast up and running.

1. Your Idea and goal (topics of focus)
2. An audience (who are interested in your topic of focus)
3. A radio broadcasting platform
4. Recording and audio editing tools
5. Promoting and monetizing your radio show

Podcasts/Radio Broadcasting Platform

There are tons of platforms for creating your radio channel. Some are free, some are paid. But the most popular one being used is FREE. They are
1. Apple Podcasts
2. Google Podcasts
3. Snitcher
4. Spotify

Creating your channel is as easy as

1. Creating your account
2. Setting up your account with the necessary logos and images and describing what your podcast is about.
3. Upload at least 1 show to your channel
4. Submitting your channel for approval (this takes 1-3 days)
5. And you are good to go.

One thing to note is that the platforms mentioned above are not podcast hosting platforms, in other words, you can create your channel but you can’t upload your audio files [recordings] there. You will need to point your channel to where your audio files are uploaded. After that, every time you upload a new episode, your feed is automatically updated – and iTunes updates your show listing with the new episode accordingly.
Makes sense?
Usually, most podcasters point their channels to their websites where their audio files have been uploaded and the podcast platforms display their shows.
I would be assuming many of my readers don’t own a website as of yet so would need a platform to host their audio files right? Well, at this point I will be introducing you to Anchor FM.

This is a FREE podcast platform that allows you not only to create your podcast channel, but you can upload your audio files here and repurpose to other podcast channels.

So with Anchor, you can have your podcast channel listed on all the popular podcast platforms like Apple, Google, Stitcher, Spotify e.t.c
Anchor FM is pretty straightforward and easy to use. You can set up your channel right on your phone.
Here is a very descriptive guide on how to create your channel with Anchor here
Next, we will move to the fourth item on our list, and this is the tool you will be needing to make your audio recording for your podcast.
For the purpose of making things as simple as possible, I won’t go into any complicated tool, so that you can make a recording like “right now.”

Since we would be using Anchor, you can record directly into the app, you can use the microphone that comes along with your earpiece. Here are some things you need to take note of to come out with a very good and clear output.
1. Plan out what you want to say on a piece of paper.
2. Record in a quiet place where you can eliminate noise.
3. If you can find a room that is rugged, and is soundproof that will be a plus as this will eliminate echoes in your recording. If you don’t have such a room, no worries. There are apps you can use to remove the echo. But its important you record in a quiet place.

In summary, the tools needed to make a recording are;
1. A mobile device or a laptop.
2. Internet connection
3. A microphone

We shall take a break now and continue with our series next week. Just to recap today’s post:
1. We have gone through the process on how to set up an Anchor FM account.
2. The tools that are needed to make our audio recordings.

This can take a bit of time to do since it will be your first time trying this, but it’s quite easy I promise.
Next week we will be looking at how we can promote our show and also how to start monetizing it.