January 8, 2024 • 21 mins
In Episode 08 of How to Start a Podcast, you'll learn how to set up your podcast and upload your first episode using Buzzsprout.
Next Steps:
- Next Level Tools to Power Up Your Podcast [Buzzsprout Overview] (Video
- Make Your Podcast Sound Professional with Mixing and Mastering (Video)
- Buzzsprout's Help Section
Other Things We Mentioned:
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Gilon (00:04):
Welcome back to How To Start A Podcast, the podcast
Gilon. Here
Alban (00:09):
I'm Alban and today we are talking about how to set up
your podcast in Buzzsprout.
These directions are applicable,if you decide to go with
Buzzsprout. For your podcasthosting you, there are tons of
other options. So don't feellike you have to go with us. But
this is what we do. If you likethe sound of our voices, then
come on over to Buzzsprout andhang out with us.
Gilon (00:30):
I mean, we are the best.
But
Alban (00:32):
as long as we vote for us, we've asked for it.
Gilon (00:35):
And our opinion is completely valid, because we're
not biased.
Alban (00:37):
Yeah, there's no bias here. But we will give the
directions for Buzzsprout. Ifyou decide to go with a
different podcast solution, thenhead over to YouTube, and they
should have some onboardingvideos and help you get set up
there. A lot of shade over here,God,
Gilon (00:53):
throwing shade for free.
Alright, so step one for gettingset up in Buzzsprout is to sign
up for an account. And what'sreally great about Buzzsprout is
that a lot of different plans soyou can get in on podcasting for
free because we have a freeplan. And then we've got plans
for 1218 24 bucks. And those areall based on monthly upload
time. But you can start off andjust try it out with the free
(01:15):
plan which most people do
Alban (01:17):
free plans. There's people who've stayed on them for
years and years, and they'venever needed to upgrade and it's
worked out perfect. If you dodecide to upgrade, almost
everybody ends up on that $12plan. So gives you all the
features of Buzzsprout. And itallows you to upload up to three
hours of new content everymonth. So head over to
Buzzsprout comm check it out.
And if you want to, you canclick the sign up for free. And
(01:40):
click that button and you willsign up for your account.
Gilon (01:44):
Alright, so once you sign up for an account, we need some
podcast info. So what's thefirst thing we need from people?
Alban (01:50):
Sure, so you log into your account. And we've just
given it a name, if it was youjust be called Jalon podcast, we
use your name as the title. Andnow you're able to customize
that with all the stuff we'vebeen working on for the past
like seven episodes. So youwould go to the podcast info
section inside of Buzzsprout.
And this is just all theinformation about your podcast
(02:10):
drop in your podcast title thatwe picked in the very beginning
of this series, then you wouldgo down to your podcast
description.
Gilon (02:19):
So podcast description is basically where you describe
what your podcast is about. Thisis really important real estate.
So you should probably tellpeople exactly what they need to
know when they're coming to yourpodcast, such as who's it hosted
by? What's it about? What canthey expect to hear from you,
all this information needs to goin your podcast description. But
it's also a really good place tobe using keywords for SEO,
Alban (02:39):
Apple podcasts. And a lot of the podcast players are not
using this exact place for SEO,but what the value is here. And
if they did, you wouldn't wantto just stuff it with keywords.
But people are looking for thosekeywords. And so when they're
reading, if you are looking fora podcast about
entrepreneurship, well, thetitle probably should have
(02:59):
entrepreneurship. But then inthe description, they're gonna
want to see things like startinga business from scratch, a first
time entrepreneur, they want tosee phrases and keywords that
are relevant to them. So justthink of the journey that
somebody is going through, theysee artwork that they like they
see a title that indicates acontent they'd be interested in.
(03:20):
Now let's go to the description.
And make sure this is reallysomething is for me. So you're
kind of want all three of thesethings to work together to
provide unique, valuableinformation to tell you that
this show might be for you. Iguess I'll read the description
we have for this podcast, or formy podcast that I do with Travis
and Kevin called Buzzcast.
(03:42):
Buzzcast is a roundtablediscussion about podcasting for
the people at Buzzsprout. Wecover current events and news
podcast strategy tools we'reusing. And we dip into the
customer support mailbag to testour podcast knowledge. If you
want to stay up to date withwhat's working in podcasting.
Buzzsprout is the show for you.
We're going through, here's whatthe show is about here are the
topics we cover. And if you'rethis kind of person, then this
(04:03):
is something that you might beinterested in.
Gilon (04:06):
Yeah, it's very clear, and it helps people decide very
quickly, oh, this is somethingthat I'm interested in, or Oh, I
thought this is something else.
This is not what I was lookingfor.
Alban (04:14):
Exactly. The next step is your podcast artwork. So this is
where the artwork we made in thelast episode that you would
upload it or you could clickthat design with Canva button we
talked about to make somethingtotally new and totally unique
inside of Canva. Definitelywhat's next. Next up would be
your podcast category. So thisis a big decision. You can
(04:36):
always change it. This is whereyou get to pick which category
your podcasts will be inside ofApple podcasts. And
Gilon (04:43):
like Alban said, this is not necessarily permanent. And I
think a lot of people get reallyintense about podcast categories
because it's like, oh, whatcategory they fit in. Where's my
category? Oh, I don't quite fit.
It's okay. Figure out where youfit best, what most sounds like
what you're doing and pick thatcategory. At one point, you
could pick more than one, Appleonly wants one category, right?
And so you can pick asubcategory that fits a little
(05:05):
bit better instead of maybelike, oh, it's the History
podcast, maybe it's the historyof the world, right? Those are
options for you. So you don'thave to get stressed out about
not fitting perfectly into acategory, find a subcategory
that maybe speaks a little bitmore to what you're doing. And
then if something happens, whereyou feel like actually, we fit
more over here in education, youcan pick that later, you can
(05:25):
change it, it's not permanent.
And here's the other thing. Mostpeople find podcast by word of
mouth, not by category. Soyou're good there to you know,
that can be a lot of pressure tothink people are gonna find you
by category. And we just know,most pet podcasts are found and
searched and discovered by wordof mouth by someone sharing that
information or that podcast withsomeone else that they know,
Alban (05:46):
when you're looking for your category. We've got all the
list inside of Buzzsprout. Butyou're looking at things like
arts, business, leisure,science, religion, culture,
sports, TV, and film, there'stons of different areas. And
like John mentioned, if asubcategory is applicable to
you, you probably want to be inthe subcategory. There's a bunch
(06:07):
of different sections onreligion and spirituality.
There's the entire umbrella forreligion, spirituality. But then
there's a section for Buddhismand Christianity and Hinduism
and Islam and Judaism. So ifyour podcast was about Judaism,
it would be better to be in thatsubcategory, rather than being
in the larger category,especially since it's more
(06:29):
reflective of what the show isabout. And it would help you
more likely be at the top ofthat subcategory than the top of
the overall umbrella category.
But if your podcast wascomparative religions, or
talking about the variety ofreligious experiences, then
you'd want to be in the umbrellacategory, because that's what's
most applicable to you. LikeDylan said, everything here is
(06:51):
changeable. If you don't likeyour title, if you someday
decide to change the descriptionof your podcast, or just totally
rebrand, all that can be doneand updated. So don't get too
hung up on any of these becausenothing here is permanent.
Gilon (07:08):
So once you decide all of that information, what's next?
What other information do peopleneed,
Alban (07:13):
in this section, your artist, so that's just the name
of the organization, or theperson who's creating the
podcast. So we may put for thisone Buzzsprout, since that's the
name of the company that we workfor, or if it was us,
personally, we might put ournames down. And then you have a
contact email. So I've got acouple ideas about this contact
(07:35):
email, this email is somewhatexposed to the world. So it's
not going to be out there foreverybody to see. But it's
definitely not hidden frompeople who know how to find it
is going to be included in theRSS feed, which is like the code
of your podcast. And what endsup happening is, when a new app
(08:00):
comes online, and they wanteveryone in podcasting to use
their app, well, they'reprobably going to send out a
mass email. And it is spammy.
And they will probably grabbedyour email from this webpage. So
maybe don't make this like yourmust have never can get spam
here are anything annoying,because this could get out into
the world. But make sure you cancheck it so that if Apple
(08:23):
notifies you, Hey, your podcasthas been selected for Apple new
noteworthy, or your podcast wasrejected for a specific reason.
You want to be able to see thatcoming through. So a couple
ideas about what email addressto put in there.
Gilon (08:39):
Yeah, you definitely want it to be specific to your
podcast and be okay with itbeing out in the world. And
lastly, we recommend that ifyour podcast regularly includes
explicit content that you justcheck the little explicit
content button on that podcastinfo page. It's just doing
everybody a favor to let peopleknow what exactly they're
getting into. It's not like abig Jedi thing. It's just like,
hey, let the world know. We'llbe here talking about we talk
(09:01):
about. It's just, it's justnice. It's nice to be aware that
that's coming.
Alban (09:06):
This is like yeah, there's you didn't do anything
wrong. Yeah, you're not. Ifyou're using a lot of curse
words, if there's adult contentor sexual content, if there's
talking about drugs or somethinglike just check the box and move
on. This is so that parents whodon't want their kids listening
to explicit CDs back in the 90s,those same parents, now
(09:27):
grandparents can police, theirgrandchildren's podcast
listening habits, so just to leteveryone know what might be
appropriate for them to listento as small children in the car.
And if your contents not safefor them. We'll go ahead and
check that box so that everybodygets the stuff they need to see.
Gilon (09:44):
So next up, is it time to upload that first episode,
Alban (09:48):
it's time to upload our first episode. So you'd go back
and you would click the bigupload a new episode button,
Gilon (09:54):
and this is on your episodes page in Buzzsprout.
Alban (09:56):
So you then would grab that audio file Did we exported
earlier from GarageBand, orAudacity or wherever mp3 or WAV,
mp3 or WAV, and you upload thatto Buzzsprout. And then you're
gonna give your episode a fewpieces of critical information.
Every individual episode canalso have a lot of the same
(10:17):
characteristics. We just talkedabout the title, a description,
individual artwork, if you'dlike most people don't, they
just use the same, but you canhave individual artwork if you
are inclined. And then you candecide when to publish this
episode. This is really nice,because a lot of people like to
schedule out episodes weeks inadvance, so that they don't have
(10:38):
to worry about oh, it'sWednesday night. I don't want to
upload and get this out there tothe world now, you can just
schedule Hey, every Wednesdayinto the foreseeable future,
there will be a new episode. AndI'll just stay two or three
weeks ahead.
Gilon (10:50):
Yeah. And just to be aware, just because you upload
something doesn't mean that it'spublished, right, there's a
difference. And so you canschedule an episode out, but you
can also just upload an episode,put all the information in and
not publish it. So if you don'tpublish it, it's not out out
there in the world. But it'llsay next episode, this episode
is not live. So just be mindfulof that little nuance. Sometimes
(11:10):
people are like, I've uploadedan episode what's going on? It's
like, oh, it's not published,though. You want to make sure
that that gets published
Alban (11:17):
right now, one of the areas that people use a lot in
podcasting is that episodedescription. So this is the same
thing that we'd refer to a shownotes. And this is where you can
include all the helpful linksfor your podcast. It's the text
that accompanies the episode. Inpodcast apps, it would also show
up next to your podcasts episodeinside of your podcast website,
(11:40):
you've got it in lots of areas.
And this is where you can putlinks, promo codes, any sort of
ancillary materials that youtalked about on the show.
Gilon (11:49):
Yeah, this is really good real estate for relevant
information. So hopefully, thisis where you're describing what
the episode is about. You canalso put contact information for
you or your guests, if you guystalked about any resources, you
can put that there as well, itjust happens to be a really nice
place to give your audience kindof like additional information,
Alban (12:06):
there's a lot of options to format this area. So the
official RSS spec allows you toedit it. And Buzzsprout allows
you to edit it so you can pickbold and you can italicize
things. And you can puthyperlink, you can put some
hyperlinks Seliger in the 90shyperlink, you can put your
links in there. The downside isthere's some apps that still
(12:30):
don't support it. So forwhatever reason, they've
decided, they make it a littlebit painful that you can't
actually see all the editingthat you did. So just be aware,
the major apps are very goodwith this. But if you ever go
into something, you're like,hey, I thought the I edited
this, there's still some appsthat don't play nice with format
editing. So don't make sure yourformat is not super critical to
(12:53):
what you wrote. Or else you maybe disappointed in writing into
support. If you have any issueshere, Jalon would be the one to
answer you. And I'm sure shewould do a great job walking you
through solving that problem.
Gilon (13:05):
Absolutely. It's my pleasure to help. Alright, so
let's talk about some features.
Right? What sets Buzzsproutapart from all other hosting
sites, I think, Oh, I think ourservice is amazing. And our
education is awesome. But alsowe have awesome features. Yeah,
so
Alban (13:21):
you're talking about a few things. Now that you've got
like the basics done, you've gotthis episode up, these are a few
other things that you may wantto check out with your podcast.
So the first is your podcastwebsite. Every podcast should
have a website, a home on theinternet, you want to have one
link where you can send people.
And then there's links to Applepodcasts and Spotify and Google
(13:42):
and Amazon music and Facebook.
And literally like the 40 otherapps that are always new ones
jumping up, you don't want tohave just one link, you want to
have a place where your podcastcan live. This is also a website
that has your podcasttranscripts, and has information
about your podcast and thepodcast hosts. So inside of
(14:04):
Buzzsprout, you have the abilityto go set up a website, and you
can put that on your own domain.
So if you wanted to put it onJalon and alban.com, you could
go and register that domain. Idoubt that anybody has grabbed
that yet, totally free, you canput your podcast on there.
Gilon (14:19):
Yeah, and just something to be mindful of the website is
a podcast listening website. Soyou're not gonna be able to put
like, contact me at or email mehere. Like that's not what it's
for. It's for your listeners tobe able to go and access your
content directly. So it's reallygreat for that. And then
transcripts are also availablethere which is really nice
because not all directorysupport transcripts. So you can
put all this work into yourtranscript, you put this money
(14:42):
into it, you put it on yourepisode description, you connect
it there, and then you don't seeit in like an app and you're
like what the heck whathappened? Why is not showing
when we talk about things notplaying well. Some directories
do not play well with directwith transcripts.
Alban (14:58):
Yeah, so let's talk a little bit about Transcripts, I
guess transcripts are reallyimportant. They're really
important, especially foraccessibility. There's lots of
people who are hard of hearingor deaf, that rely on podcast
transcripts to actually accessand read this information. But
then there's also people whojust prefer to read, they read
faster than they would listen toa podcast, there's times that
(15:20):
you listen to a podcast and youwant to go quote something or
find what they're talking about.
Well, the podcast transcriptneeds to be out there in the
world for them to find it inGoogle. So there's lots of good
reasons to put up a podcasttranscript. And with Buzzsprout,
you can either transcribe yourepisode using something like
otter.ai, or you can transcribeit yourself. So you upload your
transcript. And then we willdistribute that to every podcast
(15:43):
directory that supportstranscripts. So we are always
encouraging more directories tosupport it. But until then, we
will always have it on yourwebsite, and in every app that
utilizes transcripts.
Gilon (15:58):
So another of our favorite in house features is
magic mastering.
Alban (16:02):
Okay, so magic mastering is one of the hardest things in
podcasting is get mean youraudio fine tuned, you know,
you've done the editing. Butmaybe my voice is a little loud,
and John's voice is a little bitquieter. Or maybe we've got some
really loud peaks in the audio.
Or maybe there was somebackground noise that we didn't
(16:23):
get eliminated, and we weren'table to go and actually pull it
out. All those different thingsare totally possible. And what
magic mastering is going to dois pull all of that out, it's
going to level different voices,it's going to remove background
noise, it's going to make allthe voices sound a little bit
more full. And so once you turnit on inside of Buzzsprout, $6
(16:43):
upcharge, it will actually makesure that all that stuff is
taken care of automatically. Soif you want to offload a little
bit of that audio improvement,the mastering component, just
turn on Buzzsprout magicmastering.
Gilon (17:01):
So I have a question. If there's a baby crying in the
background, well, magicmastering eliminate.
Alban (17:05):
Now this is turning into a commercial. No, it would not
eliminate the baby crying. Butif like you had a hum from your
air conditioner, it would pullthat out. If one of the speakers
who's really quiet, it's goingto level that out. So it sounds
better. And if maybe I sound abit nasal Lee, it's going to
improve this sound of my voiceenough so that it's has a little
(17:27):
bit more of a rich, full sound.
It's going to make everythingsound a little bit better. I
think we call it like theInstagram filter for your audio.
That's what it's trying to do.
It's trying to make everythinglook a little bit better on
Instagram, you don't become afull photo editor. Look Better
here you can sound betterwithout becoming a full a
(17:48):
different person. Magic masterfull mastering expert.
Gilon (17:52):
Right it is enhancement.
Not witchcraft. Alright, sovisual soundbites. What is a
visual soundbite.
Alban (18:01):
So the last feature that we would want to talk about is
for when you're doing yourpodcast promotions, when you're
sharing your podcast on socialmedia, we know that on average,
seven times as many clicks andengagements, if there is a
visual component to your podcastthat's being shared. So if
you're just sharing a link, orsharing a static image, that
(18:21):
doesn't get a lot ofinteraction, but what visual
sound bites are is a littlevideo that we'll create. So you
pick a little snippet of youraudio. And maybe you upload an
image of yourself. And then weactually animate that image with
a waveform to let people knowthere's something there and they
click and they listen to alittle trailer for your podcast
(18:42):
episode. It's a really easy wayto start promoting your podcast
on social media and startspreading the word about your
podcast.
Gilon (18:50):
Yeah, because most of the platforms now are video based,
right? And so podcasting is anaudio medium. So how do we kind
of like rig the system, wecreate this visual element to
what is mostly audio, and thatgets clicks. That's how people
are able to promote theirpodcast on platforms that are
built more for video. So we haveset up an account in Buzzsprout.
(19:10):
We have put in the necessaryinformation check check. First
episode shownotes. We've talkedabout bonus features. What else
can they get into Travis? Whatother resources do you have for
them? Yeah, so
Travis (19:20):
I've got a couple resources that I think are
really gonna be helpful afterlistening to this episode. The
first one is a video overview ofBuzzsprout. So you'll see how to
upload an episode you'll see allthe different features that you
have access to if you chooseBuzzsprout to host your podcast.
And so we walk through how toset up your podcast how to
upload a podcast episode, wecover the podcast website that
(19:42):
Alban mentioned. And then wealso talk about some of these
more advanced features liketranscripts in magic mastering
dynamic content, which issomething we haven't touched on
here, but is a really cool thingthat you can do with your
episodes. And so if you want tosee all the kinds of things you
can get into, once you sign upfor Buzzsprout check out that
video. Next. And if magicmastering sounded really
(20:02):
intriguing to you, like, oh, Idon't have to learn all this
audio editing sorcery, I canjust upload it to Buzzsprout and
Buzzsprout takes care of it,there's a video that we have
that walks through the processof mixing and mastering your own
podcast episodes and thedifferent steps you'll go
through and the differentfilters that are applied to your
audio to make it sound polished,and professional. And those are
(20:24):
the same things that magicmastering does. So if you want
to get a better idea of if magicmastering is can be worth it to
you, if you feel like it's gonnabe a good investment. And that
video will break down all thebenefits so you can get a sense
of if that's something you wantto do right now. And the last
resource I want to point you tois our Help section. So we have
all kinds of help guides andtutorials and different
(20:45):
processes laidout@buzzsprout.com forward slash
help. And so if you're in theprocess of setting up your
account, putting your firstepisode, adding information into
the podcast info section, andyou run into any hiccups, go
there first because there's areally good chance that we have
a help article dedicated toanswering that question, so you
(21:07):
never have to get stuck settinganything up. And then if you do
find that, you know what, Ireally just need to reach out to
somebody and get some additionalhelp with this. Reach out to our
incredible support team of whichJelani is a wonderful member of
you're going to send an email tosupport@buzzsprout.com and
they'd be happy to
Alban (21:23):
help. All right, awesome.
So go ahead and check all ofthat out. Make sure you feel
comfortable with your newBuzzsprout account. And in the
next episode, we are going toget listed we're going to get
listed in Apple podcasts. Andwe'll get listed in Spotify
Google podcasts, we will getyour podcast out to the world.
We are almost done. We are twoepisodes away from launching
your show. So thank you forsticking with us. And until next
(21:45):
time, keep podcasting
Gilon (21:48):
you next time
Welcome back to How To Start A Podcast, the podcast
Gilon. Here
Alban (00:09):
I'm Alban and today we are talking about how to set up
your podcast in Buzzsprout.
These directions are applicable,if you decide to go with
Buzzsprout. For your podcasthosting you, there are tons of
other options. So don't feellike you have to go with us. But
this is what we do. If you likethe sound of our voices, then
come on over to Buzzsprout andhang out with us.
Gilon (00:30):
I mean, we are the best.
But
Alban (00:32):
as long as we vote for us, we've asked for it.
Gilon (00:35):
And our opinion is completely valid, because we're
not biased.
Alban (00:37):
Yeah, there's no bias here. But we will give the
directions for Buzzsprout. Ifyou decide to go with a
different podcast solution, thenhead over to YouTube, and they
should have some onboardingvideos and help you get set up
there. A lot of shade over here,God,
Gilon (00:53):
throwing shade for free.
Alright, so step one for gettingset up in Buzzsprout is to sign
up for an account. And what'sreally great about Buzzsprout is
that a lot of different plans soyou can get in on podcasting for
free because we have a freeplan. And then we've got plans
for 1218 24 bucks. And those areall based on monthly upload
time. But you can start off andjust try it out with the free
(01:15):
plan which most people do
Alban (01:17):
free plans. There's people who've stayed on them for
years and years, and they'venever needed to upgrade and it's
worked out perfect. If you dodecide to upgrade, almost
everybody ends up on that $12plan. So gives you all the
features of Buzzsprout. And itallows you to upload up to three
hours of new content everymonth. So head over to
Buzzsprout comm check it out.
And if you want to, you canclick the sign up for free. And
(01:40):
click that button and you willsign up for your account.
Gilon (01:44):
Alright, so once you sign up for an account, we need some
podcast info. So what's thefirst thing we need from people?
Alban (01:50):
Sure, so you log into your account. And we've just
given it a name, if it was youjust be called Jalon podcast, we
use your name as the title. Andnow you're able to customize
that with all the stuff we'vebeen working on for the past
like seven episodes. So youwould go to the podcast info
section inside of Buzzsprout.
And this is just all theinformation about your podcast
(02:10):
drop in your podcast title thatwe picked in the very beginning
of this series, then you wouldgo down to your podcast
description.
Gilon (02:19):
So podcast description is basically where you describe
what your podcast is about. Thisis really important real estate.
So you should probably tellpeople exactly what they need to
know when they're coming to yourpodcast, such as who's it hosted
by? What's it about? What canthey expect to hear from you,
all this information needs to goin your podcast description. But
it's also a really good place tobe using keywords for SEO,
Alban (02:39):
Apple podcasts. And a lot of the podcast players are not
using this exact place for SEO,but what the value is here. And
if they did, you wouldn't wantto just stuff it with keywords.
But people are looking for thosekeywords. And so when they're
reading, if you are looking fora podcast about
entrepreneurship, well, thetitle probably should have
(02:59):
entrepreneurship. But then inthe description, they're gonna
want to see things like startinga business from scratch, a first
time entrepreneur, they want tosee phrases and keywords that
are relevant to them. So justthink of the journey that
somebody is going through, theysee artwork that they like they
see a title that indicates acontent they'd be interested in.
(03:20):
Now let's go to the description.
And make sure this is reallysomething is for me. So you're
kind of want all three of thesethings to work together to
provide unique, valuableinformation to tell you that
this show might be for you. Iguess I'll read the description
we have for this podcast, or formy podcast that I do with Travis
and Kevin called Buzzcast.
(03:42):
Buzzcast is a roundtablediscussion about podcasting for
the people at Buzzsprout. Wecover current events and news
podcast strategy tools we'reusing. And we dip into the
customer support mailbag to testour podcast knowledge. If you
want to stay up to date withwhat's working in podcasting.
Buzzsprout is the show for you.
We're going through, here's whatthe show is about here are the
topics we cover. And if you'rethis kind of person, then this
(04:03):
is something that you might beinterested in.
Gilon (04:06):
Yeah, it's very clear, and it helps people decide very
quickly, oh, this is somethingthat I'm interested in, or Oh, I
thought this is something else.
This is not what I was lookingfor.
Alban (04:14):
Exactly. The next step is your podcast artwork. So this is
where the artwork we made in thelast episode that you would
upload it or you could clickthat design with Canva button we
talked about to make somethingtotally new and totally unique
inside of Canva. Definitelywhat's next. Next up would be
your podcast category. So thisis a big decision. You can
(04:36):
always change it. This is whereyou get to pick which category
your podcasts will be inside ofApple podcasts. And
Gilon (04:43):
like Alban said, this is not necessarily permanent. And I
think a lot of people get reallyintense about podcast categories
because it's like, oh, whatcategory they fit in. Where's my
category? Oh, I don't quite fit.
It's okay. Figure out where youfit best, what most sounds like
what you're doing and pick thatcategory. At one point, you
could pick more than one, Appleonly wants one category, right?
And so you can pick asubcategory that fits a little
(05:05):
bit better instead of maybelike, oh, it's the History
podcast, maybe it's the historyof the world, right? Those are
options for you. So you don'thave to get stressed out about
not fitting perfectly into acategory, find a subcategory
that maybe speaks a little bitmore to what you're doing. And
then if something happens, whereyou feel like actually, we fit
more over here in education, youcan pick that later, you can
(05:25):
change it, it's not permanent.
And here's the other thing. Mostpeople find podcast by word of
mouth, not by category. Soyou're good there to you know,
that can be a lot of pressure tothink people are gonna find you
by category. And we just know,most pet podcasts are found and
searched and discovered by wordof mouth by someone sharing that
information or that podcast withsomeone else that they know,
Alban (05:46):
when you're looking for your category. We've got all the
list inside of Buzzsprout. Butyou're looking at things like
arts, business, leisure,science, religion, culture,
sports, TV, and film, there'stons of different areas. And
like John mentioned, if asubcategory is applicable to
you, you probably want to be inthe subcategory. There's a bunch
(06:07):
of different sections onreligion and spirituality.
There's the entire umbrella forreligion, spirituality. But then
there's a section for Buddhismand Christianity and Hinduism
and Islam and Judaism. So ifyour podcast was about Judaism,
it would be better to be in thatsubcategory, rather than being
in the larger category,especially since it's more
(06:29):
reflective of what the show isabout. And it would help you
more likely be at the top ofthat subcategory than the top of
the overall umbrella category.
But if your podcast wascomparative religions, or
talking about the variety ofreligious experiences, then
you'd want to be in the umbrellacategory, because that's what's
most applicable to you. LikeDylan said, everything here is
(06:51):
changeable. If you don't likeyour title, if you someday
decide to change the descriptionof your podcast, or just totally
rebrand, all that can be doneand updated. So don't get too
hung up on any of these becausenothing here is permanent.
Gilon (07:08):
So once you decide all of that information, what's next?
What other information do peopleneed,
Alban (07:13):
in this section, your artist, so that's just the name
of the organization, or theperson who's creating the
podcast. So we may put for thisone Buzzsprout, since that's the
name of the company that we workfor, or if it was us,
personally, we might put ournames down. And then you have a
contact email. So I've got acouple ideas about this contact
(07:35):
email, this email is somewhatexposed to the world. So it's
not going to be out there foreverybody to see. But it's
definitely not hidden frompeople who know how to find it
is going to be included in theRSS feed, which is like the code
of your podcast. And what endsup happening is, when a new app
(08:00):
comes online, and they wanteveryone in podcasting to use
their app, well, they'reprobably going to send out a
mass email. And it is spammy.
And they will probably grabbedyour email from this webpage. So
maybe don't make this like yourmust have never can get spam
here are anything annoying,because this could get out into
the world. But make sure you cancheck it so that if Apple
(08:23):
notifies you, Hey, your podcasthas been selected for Apple new
noteworthy, or your podcast wasrejected for a specific reason.
You want to be able to see thatcoming through. So a couple
ideas about what email addressto put in there.
Gilon (08:39):
Yeah, you definitely want it to be specific to your
podcast and be okay with itbeing out in the world. And
lastly, we recommend that ifyour podcast regularly includes
explicit content that you justcheck the little explicit
content button on that podcastinfo page. It's just doing
everybody a favor to let peopleknow what exactly they're
getting into. It's not like abig Jedi thing. It's just like,
hey, let the world know. We'llbe here talking about we talk
(09:01):
about. It's just, it's justnice. It's nice to be aware that
that's coming.
Alban (09:06):
This is like yeah, there's you didn't do anything
wrong. Yeah, you're not. Ifyou're using a lot of curse
words, if there's adult contentor sexual content, if there's
talking about drugs or somethinglike just check the box and move
on. This is so that parents whodon't want their kids listening
to explicit CDs back in the 90s,those same parents, now
(09:27):
grandparents can police, theirgrandchildren's podcast
listening habits, so just to leteveryone know what might be
appropriate for them to listento as small children in the car.
And if your contents not safefor them. We'll go ahead and
check that box so that everybodygets the stuff they need to see.
Gilon (09:44):
So next up, is it time to upload that first episode,
Alban (09:48):
it's time to upload our first episode. So you'd go back
and you would click the bigupload a new episode button,
Gilon (09:54):
and this is on your episodes page in Buzzsprout.
Alban (09:56):
So you then would grab that audio file Did we exported
earlier from GarageBand, orAudacity or wherever mp3 or WAV,
mp3 or WAV, and you upload thatto Buzzsprout. And then you're
gonna give your episode a fewpieces of critical information.
Every individual episode canalso have a lot of the same
(10:17):
characteristics. We just talkedabout the title, a description,
individual artwork, if you'dlike most people don't, they
just use the same, but you canhave individual artwork if you
are inclined. And then you candecide when to publish this
episode. This is really nice,because a lot of people like to
schedule out episodes weeks inadvance, so that they don't have
(10:38):
to worry about oh, it'sWednesday night. I don't want to
upload and get this out there tothe world now, you can just
schedule Hey, every Wednesdayinto the foreseeable future,
there will be a new episode. AndI'll just stay two or three
weeks ahead.
Gilon (10:50):
Yeah. And just to be aware, just because you upload
something doesn't mean that it'spublished, right, there's a
difference. And so you canschedule an episode out, but you
can also just upload an episode,put all the information in and
not publish it. So if you don'tpublish it, it's not out out
there in the world. But it'llsay next episode, this episode
is not live. So just be mindfulof that little nuance. Sometimes
(11:10):
people are like, I've uploadedan episode what's going on? It's
like, oh, it's not published,though. You want to make sure
that that gets published
Alban (11:17):
right now, one of the areas that people use a lot in
podcasting is that episodedescription. So this is the same
thing that we'd refer to a shownotes. And this is where you can
include all the helpful linksfor your podcast. It's the text
that accompanies the episode. Inpodcast apps, it would also show
up next to your podcasts episodeinside of your podcast website,
(11:40):
you've got it in lots of areas.
And this is where you can putlinks, promo codes, any sort of
ancillary materials that youtalked about on the show.
Gilon (11:49):
Yeah, this is really good real estate for relevant
information. So hopefully, thisis where you're describing what
the episode is about. You canalso put contact information for
you or your guests, if you guystalked about any resources, you
can put that there as well, itjust happens to be a really nice
place to give your audience kindof like additional information,
Alban (12:06):
there's a lot of options to format this area. So the
official RSS spec allows you toedit it. And Buzzsprout allows
you to edit it so you can pickbold and you can italicize
things. And you can puthyperlink, you can put some
hyperlinks Seliger in the 90shyperlink, you can put your
links in there. The downside isthere's some apps that still
(12:30):
don't support it. So forwhatever reason, they've
decided, they make it a littlebit painful that you can't
actually see all the editingthat you did. So just be aware,
the major apps are very goodwith this. But if you ever go
into something, you're like,hey, I thought the I edited
this, there's still some appsthat don't play nice with format
editing. So don't make sure yourformat is not super critical to
(12:53):
what you wrote. Or else you maybe disappointed in writing into
support. If you have any issueshere, Jalon would be the one to
answer you. And I'm sure shewould do a great job walking you
through solving that problem.
Gilon (13:05):
Absolutely. It's my pleasure to help. Alright, so
let's talk about some features.
Right? What sets Buzzsproutapart from all other hosting
sites, I think, Oh, I think ourservice is amazing. And our
education is awesome. But alsowe have awesome features. Yeah,
so
Alban (13:21):
you're talking about a few things. Now that you've got
like the basics done, you've gotthis episode up, these are a few
other things that you may wantto check out with your podcast.
So the first is your podcastwebsite. Every podcast should
have a website, a home on theinternet, you want to have one
link where you can send people.
And then there's links to Applepodcasts and Spotify and Google
(13:42):
and Amazon music and Facebook.
And literally like the 40 otherapps that are always new ones
jumping up, you don't want tohave just one link, you want to
have a place where your podcastcan live. This is also a website
that has your podcasttranscripts, and has information
about your podcast and thepodcast hosts. So inside of
(14:04):
Buzzsprout, you have the abilityto go set up a website, and you
can put that on your own domain.
So if you wanted to put it onJalon and alban.com, you could
go and register that domain. Idoubt that anybody has grabbed
that yet, totally free, you canput your podcast on there.
Gilon (14:19):
Yeah, and just something to be mindful of the website is
a podcast listening website. Soyou're not gonna be able to put
like, contact me at or email mehere. Like that's not what it's
for. It's for your listeners tobe able to go and access your
content directly. So it's reallygreat for that. And then
transcripts are also availablethere which is really nice
because not all directorysupport transcripts. So you can
put all this work into yourtranscript, you put this money
(14:42):
into it, you put it on yourepisode description, you connect
it there, and then you don't seeit in like an app and you're
like what the heck whathappened? Why is not showing
when we talk about things notplaying well. Some directories
do not play well with directwith transcripts.
Alban (14:58):
Yeah, so let's talk a little bit about Transcripts, I
guess transcripts are reallyimportant. They're really
important, especially foraccessibility. There's lots of
people who are hard of hearingor deaf, that rely on podcast
transcripts to actually accessand read this information. But
then there's also people whojust prefer to read, they read
faster than they would listen toa podcast, there's times that
(15:20):
you listen to a podcast and youwant to go quote something or
find what they're talking about.
Well, the podcast transcriptneeds to be out there in the
world for them to find it inGoogle. So there's lots of good
reasons to put up a podcasttranscript. And with Buzzsprout,
you can either transcribe yourepisode using something like
otter.ai, or you can transcribeit yourself. So you upload your
transcript. And then we willdistribute that to every podcast
(15:43):
directory that supportstranscripts. So we are always
encouraging more directories tosupport it. But until then, we
will always have it on yourwebsite, and in every app that
utilizes transcripts.
Gilon (15:58):
So another of our favorite in house features is
magic mastering.
Alban (16:02):
Okay, so magic mastering is one of the hardest things in
podcasting is get mean youraudio fine tuned, you know,
you've done the editing. Butmaybe my voice is a little loud,
and John's voice is a little bitquieter. Or maybe we've got some
really loud peaks in the audio.
Or maybe there was somebackground noise that we didn't
(16:23):
get eliminated, and we weren'table to go and actually pull it
out. All those different thingsare totally possible. And what
magic mastering is going to dois pull all of that out, it's
going to level different voices,it's going to remove background
noise, it's going to make allthe voices sound a little bit
more full. And so once you turnit on inside of Buzzsprout, $6
(16:43):
upcharge, it will actually makesure that all that stuff is
taken care of automatically. Soif you want to offload a little
bit of that audio improvement,the mastering component, just
turn on Buzzsprout magicmastering.
Gilon (17:01):
So I have a question. If there's a baby crying in the
background, well, magicmastering eliminate.
Alban (17:05):
Now this is turning into a commercial. No, it would not
eliminate the baby crying. Butif like you had a hum from your
air conditioner, it would pullthat out. If one of the speakers
who's really quiet, it's goingto level that out. So it sounds
better. And if maybe I sound abit nasal Lee, it's going to
improve this sound of my voiceenough so that it's has a little
(17:27):
bit more of a rich, full sound.
It's going to make everythingsound a little bit better. I
think we call it like theInstagram filter for your audio.
That's what it's trying to do.
It's trying to make everythinglook a little bit better on
Instagram, you don't become afull photo editor. Look Better
here you can sound betterwithout becoming a full a
(17:48):
different person. Magic masterfull mastering expert.
Gilon (17:52):
Right it is enhancement.
Not witchcraft. Alright, sovisual soundbites. What is a
visual soundbite.
Alban (18:01):
So the last feature that we would want to talk about is
for when you're doing yourpodcast promotions, when you're
sharing your podcast on socialmedia, we know that on average,
seven times as many clicks andengagements, if there is a
visual component to your podcastthat's being shared. So if
you're just sharing a link, orsharing a static image, that
(18:21):
doesn't get a lot ofinteraction, but what visual
sound bites are is a littlevideo that we'll create. So you
pick a little snippet of youraudio. And maybe you upload an
image of yourself. And then weactually animate that image with
a waveform to let people knowthere's something there and they
click and they listen to alittle trailer for your podcast
(18:42):
episode. It's a really easy wayto start promoting your podcast
on social media and startspreading the word about your
podcast.
Gilon (18:50):
Yeah, because most of the platforms now are video based,
right? And so podcasting is anaudio medium. So how do we kind
of like rig the system, wecreate this visual element to
what is mostly audio, and thatgets clicks. That's how people
are able to promote theirpodcast on platforms that are
built more for video. So we haveset up an account in Buzzsprout.
(19:10):
We have put in the necessaryinformation check check. First
episode shownotes. We've talkedabout bonus features. What else
can they get into Travis? Whatother resources do you have for
them? Yeah, so
Travis (19:20):
I've got a couple resources that I think are
really gonna be helpful afterlistening to this episode. The
first one is a video overview ofBuzzsprout. So you'll see how to
upload an episode you'll see allthe different features that you
have access to if you chooseBuzzsprout to host your podcast.
And so we walk through how toset up your podcast how to
upload a podcast episode, wecover the podcast website that
(19:42):
Alban mentioned. And then wealso talk about some of these
more advanced features liketranscripts in magic mastering
dynamic content, which issomething we haven't touched on
here, but is a really cool thingthat you can do with your
episodes. And so if you want tosee all the kinds of things you
can get into, once you sign upfor Buzzsprout check out that
video. Next. And if magicmastering sounded really
(20:02):
intriguing to you, like, oh, Idon't have to learn all this
audio editing sorcery, I canjust upload it to Buzzsprout and
Buzzsprout takes care of it,there's a video that we have
that walks through the processof mixing and mastering your own
podcast episodes and thedifferent steps you'll go
through and the differentfilters that are applied to your
audio to make it sound polished,and professional. And those are
(20:24):
the same things that magicmastering does. So if you want
to get a better idea of if magicmastering is can be worth it to
you, if you feel like it's gonnabe a good investment. And that
video will break down all thebenefits so you can get a sense
of if that's something you wantto do right now. And the last
resource I want to point you tois our Help section. So we have
all kinds of help guides andtutorials and different
(20:45):
processes laidout@buzzsprout.com forward slash
help. And so if you're in theprocess of setting up your
account, putting your firstepisode, adding information into
the podcast info section, andyou run into any hiccups, go
there first because there's areally good chance that we have
a help article dedicated toanswering that question, so you
(21:07):
never have to get stuck settinganything up. And then if you do
find that, you know what, Ireally just need to reach out to
somebody and get some additionalhelp with this. Reach out to our
incredible support team of whichJelani is a wonderful member of
you're going to send an email tosupport@buzzsprout.com and
they'd be happy to
Alban (21:23):
help. All right, awesome.
So go ahead and check all ofthat out. Make sure you feel
comfortable with your newBuzzsprout account. And in the
next episode, we are going toget listed we're going to get
listed in Apple podcasts. Andwe'll get listed in Spotify
Google podcasts, we will getyour podcast out to the world.
We are almost done. We are twoepisodes away from launching
your show. So thank you forsticking with us. And until next
(21:45):
time, keep podcasting
Gilon (21:48):
you next time
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