How to Start Your Own Podcast

Welcome to Dawn of a New Era, a business and marketing podcast with a difference, ranking in the top 5% globally for people who want to start, scale, and grow their own business. Dawn McGruer shares tips to improve marketing, motivation, and mindset, as well as her own real-life challenges and experiences as an entrepreneur. Guests include some of the world's most inspiring leaders too. So if you are an aspiring, established, or serial entrepreneur, this is your go-to podcast to fast-track results and rise to meet today's challenges, and master the art of online influence and business success, and avoid common pitfalls along the way.

Never miss an episode and subscribe and listen at dawnmcgruer.com. Welcome to Dawn of a New Era with myself, Dawn McGruer, top 3% global ranking podcast show talking all things marketing, motivation, and mindset. And in this episode, we're going to talk about how to start your own podcast.

Now. I think when I first started out, I definitely felt like a podcast was something that was on my agenda, but it definitely wasn't at the forefront of my mind. I had so much to do, and I knew that a podcast would bring amazing value to my business and, in turn, probably drive some revenue. But it wasn't going to be like a quick win, and it's definitely been a huge asset for my business for sure.

But there was a right time, and I think everyone will have that right time. If a podcast is for you, don't rush into it because it is a commitment. Now, don't get me wrong, I love doing my podcast, and it takes me, what, like 10, 15 minutes a week just to go on and blitz the audio, and I really enjoy doing it, talking about all of my passions and providing value and tips and insights and trends and tools. It's amazing, and I love the feedback that we get from it.

But it's a slow burn. It's not something that started and changed my world literally the day it launched. Yes, the day it launched, it hit number 17 in the entrepreneurship charts, which was absolutely amazing, and huge gratitude for everyone who supported me on that. But Dawn of a New Era has taken time, and some of the biggest accomplishments I've had on the back of it is probably meeting people.

Now, I've invited some amazing guests onto the podcast. I've had some great conversations. It's brought me into other people's audiences. It's given me global ranking and reach.

So that in itself is phenomenal. But, you know, what is a podcast? How do you start it? And, like, do you really need one?

Now, not every single business will benefit, but in essence, for me, my podcast was a way of getting my voice and my content to, you know, a worldwide audience. It was something that Thing that I did back in 2020 during lockdown, and the timing was right because I wasn't traveling as much. I knew I could put some effort in at the beginning just to kind of get it launched, to get it in good positioning so that would help me in terms of subscribers, getting some ratings and reviews, which are all things that contribute to where you rank in the charts. So what did I feel?

Well, to be honest, I wish I had had a bit more kind of support in some aspects of my thought process around it because I guess, like anyone, I thought, right, well, it's a case of, you know, once it's there, do the audio, it's simple. But there was a lot more to consider, and this is something that our team really had to kind of delve into because when we took the podcast, obviously there's the audio version, it goes onto a platform where everyone can listen to it. But the bit that we needed to think about was the distribution, the ongoing marketing, like what was the plan once it was launched, and what was the game plan for even doing the entire podcast? So it probably took me about 12 weeks after I launched the podcast to really nail and hone the strategy of what we were going to use it for, how it was going to play part in growing and scaling our business, but most importantly, like where was it going to position us?

Like what was the outcome that was going to make it a successful project? So we had to spend some time thinking about, well, okay, number one, for me, I wanted reach. Yeah, great, got that. Number two, I wanted a mix of diverse audiences.

Yeah, we got that. But the other thing was, is that we were taking the podcast and transcribing it. And the reason we transcribed it is it formed a blog post each week on our website, which in turn grows, obviously, traffic and drives people to the site, which was great. Now, if I probably understood the whole dynamics about podcasting and where people had to listen in a bit more detail, I may have done things slightly differently.

But it was a bit of a learning curve because when we launched, yes, we got good placement, but by transcribing the podcast, it meant that people had a way of obviously reading along, listening to the podcast, and by taking the audiogram, which is like a little video that we use on social media and placing it on that blog, that was when things really started to shift because it gave us a boost in ranking, not just on our blog post, but on our entire website, because we were creating content each and every week, which Google says is an amazing thing because it means that you're giving people a reason to go back to your site. It's not a static website of just five, ten, fifteen pages with your products and services, but it's adding value. It's positioning your content. It's drawing people in, and we started to massively increase traffic, massively increase our positioning in rankings, and we started to drive a lot more leads because with the podcast, it's quick consumable content that can be listened to on the go, ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, that's the maximum.

But the sweet spot was is that these short, sharp bursts of content was really positioning all of my insights, my thought leadership. It was taking my voice to multiple markets, audiences, niches that, you know, I had never thought about. Out before. But in turn, it also brought a lot more opportunities because by having a podcast, it meant I could invite some pretty epic people onto my podcast.

And as soon as it started ranking in like the top 3%, or even the top 5%, it gave me leverage to be able to contact people and say, Hey, you know, do you want to appear on my podcast? I've got a decent-sized audience. I've got a good ranking position, and I would love you to come and share your insights. So it gave me this inroad to literally contact anyone I wanted online.

And I used to go onto Amazon, have a look at who was releasing books and who was obviously in that promotional zone, and look for new guests. And literally reached out, and within one message, I was getting, like, you know, huge, huge influencers that were going to be super valuable in terms of giving their insights to my audience, but also giving me additional reach because they in turn would share the content and the artwork and so on. So I was pulling through an audience that I'd never had before. So for me, the success factors of doing the podcast were meeting new people, the connections, the collaborations, and giving me the opportunity to speak in a different way.

Because having my own podcast under my brand meant that I could talk about things other than just marketing. I could delve into the mindset and motivation side. So the gear side of things, in terms of actually setting up the podcast, wasn't too bad. I got a Rode mic, which I already had for doing things like, you know, lives and webinars and workshops, and I just basically got, like, a soundproof cover for it.

Now these are all, like, instantly available on Amazon, and it's super cheap to start. You know, once you've got this microphone, you've got a sound muffler on the back of it. So even if you are in, like, an area that's not great for acoustics, you know, or maybe doesn't have a lot of soft furnishings to quell that, then the sound was good. Once I'd installed Audacity, A-U-D-A-C-I-T-Y, I literally had this opportunity to bring my voice to my podcast.

And the one bit I knew that I was not going to be able to do, and my team were not skilled in, was to edit it and to actually get it out. So I empowered a team of people, a production company, who are super affordable to do this. And for me, it was about the consistency and frequency. Like, I have to have someone to push me to record it.

You know, they reach out and say, Dawn, you know, when are your podcasts coming out? You know, when can you upload them, ready for us to edit, work our magic, and then release to the public? So having that push meant that I was always going to have the consistency and frequency. Frequency, knowing that someone else was going to do the editing, make sure it was super clean and super crisp, ready for listeners.

Again, that's really important. They were going to make sure that my intro, my outro, and my music was all set, and it was going to obviously be available across all of the platforms. So they literally take it, upload it, and then as soon as it goes live, then it's ready for obviously, you know, sending notifications through Apple and letting people know through the various platforms how they listen that there's a new episode ready. So not everyone starts.

Podcast from, you know, number one, they come in at different points. So another thing I noticed is that I drive people back using email and social media to other, you know, episodes, like using top 10. So having the kit, having Audacity, transcribing it, and having a team of production, that kind of, like, completed the circle, or so I thought. But there's a bit more to it because obviously we'd gone and worked our podcast artwork and, you know, it kind of had the look and feel of the brand.

It still evolves, and we have different artwork for different episodes. Again, I felt like that was a mistake we made in the beginning by not having that, because you have to have diversity, otherwise, you know, when people are seeing this each and every week on their social media and it looks the same, they're going to tune out. You know, you have to switch things up. So having different imagery, different titles, having audiograms that kind of give this, like, little snippet of voice that drive back to the website.

It also meant that when people were on the website, that people were spending more time looking at other podcasts that were recommended, looking at the top 10, looking at other products and services we did. So from a brand awareness, reach, and global diversity point of view, it's been absolutely out of this world. But where we really needed to kind of look at it was the marketing, because as much as you understand the technical or, you know, you're using a tool, probably the most popular things like Libsyn or Spreaker, there's lots of platforms out there that you can host it through. They make it really accessible for non-technical people.

So do you know what? Even if you didn't have a production company, you could probably use some of their self-edit tools and get a really solid podcast out there. It's just that for me, I needed someone who was going to take control and also be the driving force of me recording it too. And because I've got two podcasts, yeah, two, I've got Dawn of a New Era.

And Digital Marketing Made Easy, both for different brands. I felt like it was important to have that control, to make sure that someone was there to kind of manage it and focus it. But when you upload to Libsyn, or you upload to your particular platform that you're hosting your podcast on, one of the things you've got to remember is that that's your platform that distributes it everywhere. And, you know, one of the things I thought was going to be super difficult was like, how do I get on Apple Podcasts?

And then when we did our Digital Marketing Made Easy one in, I think it was 2018, we literally went on to Podcast Connect. And submitted the RSS feed, which your podcast platform gives you. It was super easy. It was like literally 30 seconds of my life, and it was done.

So I find that the tech bit is not the hard bit. I think the hard bit is the consistency and the marketing and making sure that you've got that constant reach, that you've got that distribution. So once you've got your microphone set up, you've got Audacity installed, you've got an amazing little sound muffler on the back of your, you know, Rode mic or whatever you choose to use, it's not that bad. But, you know, these pop filters are really, really good for just making sure that when you're talking and you've got obviously your microphone settings all done, it might take you a couple of goes just to kind of get that super crisp feeling.

It's literally something anyone can do. So the good news is, is if you want to start a podcast, do not delay. Just do it because it's enjoyable. It opens opportunities that I literally never thought, you know, or could imagine or could build into a strategy that would even occur.

Now, on the distribution and marketing side of things, I would say one of the advantages of having it on the website is that people start to visit the site. It gives a reason. Google loves you. And for me, I've always advocated having good position in Google search because it's one of the key places that people search for.

Now, we can take all of these little videos and we can pop them onto YouTube. You know, sometimes I will stream an interview and I'll stream it across all platforms straight into YouTube. But you can cut your interviews up into like little social media snippets that literally you could be using for like the next 90 days, if not longer. So think about why you want to set it up.

Make sure that you have a good understanding of like what's a good mic. Rode mics are pretty solid, R-O-D. Once you go onto Amazon and you start scooting around, it comes up with suggestions, and it's not going to be a costly exercise because the hard bit, as I say, is making sure that each and every week it's distributed. Of course, it'll get easier as you get more subscribers and more people hear about it.

But when we do the transcription for the blog, the podcast itself comes out one on a Tuesday and one on a Thursday, and we rotate it each and every week. So we have Digital Marketing Made Easy comes out on the Tuesday, and then on the following Thursday we have Dawn of a New Era. And what we do is we send out an email for those podcasts, and you have to drive, obviously, people to the podcast as well as relying on these platforms. Yes, if you get good rankings in the charts, you'll get a good listenership, but you do have to dedicate some time to maybe getting some emails out.

Now, we noticed that one of the best times to send it was on a Sunday at 11. So it seems that for us, the sweet spot is people love listening to a podcast on a Sunday. You can try these different things out yourself, but please, please, please make sure that if you're thinking about how to start a podcast, it's something you can totally do yourself. Do not get bogged down with the tech.

Just do a little bit of research and have a look at Libsyn. And these platforms are geared, as I say, for non-techies, so it's something that you can do and you can get live. And, you know, you may not like listening back to yourself. This is something I found quite difficult when I'd hear my podcast back, but you don't have to listen to your own podcast.

You can sound check it, make sure it sounds okay, and then, you know, get your website ranking because think about the goal, think about the multiple success factors it might have, and just think about if you're going to have guests on there, the opportunities that can open and the fabulous people you can meet is definitely a huge reason that has been, you know, an asset for why I started mine. So hope this was useful, and any— Any questions you may have about, you know, starting your podcast or thinking about it, if it's right for you, just get in touch. I'd love to hear from you. You can find me on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, you name it, all the channels.

And yeah, if you've got a podcast, I would love to hear from you too. Come and drop me a message on LinkedIn. Just direct message me what your podcast is. Let me have a listen, and vice versa.

So hope you've enjoyed it, and this is obviously one of my favorite episodes because we're only, only into our, I don't know, 75th episode now. I mean, that's crazy. 75 episodes, okay? So, you know, we've been doing this podcast now just from lockdown, and, you know, to know that in 25 episodes' time, we will hit 100 episodes.

That in itself is a massive milestone. And just think, you know, you start today, and if you did a podcast, like every single week, you could have nearly 100 episodes under your belt super, super quick. And the opportunities, as I say, are endless. So have an amazing day, and yeah, look forward to hearing from you and your trials, tribulations, and triumphs about podcasting.

And I'll see you on the next episode. Thank you for listening to Dawn of a New Era podcast, and for your free checklist to find out how to boost your business for growth, profit, and success, and join our community, go to dawnmcgruer.com.