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Podcasts for businesses

by AsCampbell

Hey folks, I recently created a podcast and found it a huge pain in the ass. As a result, I'm working on a side project that helps businesses create podcasts.

I'm interested in hearing from companies that have podcasts now. What did you find painful? If you could wave a magic wand, what would that process look like?

@csallen you all at Indiehackers have an awesome one at Indie Hackers. Could you help kick off the conversation?

Thanks all!

AsCampbell's avatarAsCampbell
on April 29, 2019
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  1. 2

    Every part of a podcast is painful ;-) As someone who runs an interview-based podcast, here's what's tough:

    • Finding guests who would be a good fit and/or evaluating guests to see if they're a good fit. This is not easy to outsource, as it's entirely subjective and based on the nature of my show, and there are few people who I could trust to do this for me.
    • Guest outreach. This has actually gotten much easier for me over time. Almost everyone says yes. But I still feel lazy about outreach.
    • Planning and scheduling. Calendly makes this easier. But I still have to supplement it with a bunch of email templates.
    • Preparing. Researching guests and coming up with a list of good questions to ask them is a lot of work. Finding other podcasts and shows they've been on, blog posts they've written, AMAs they've done, etc, is tedious.
    • Recording. I use Zencastr, which is great, but unreliable, so I need a backup recording.
    • Editing. Takes about 3 hours for an hour long episode. Supremely boring. I have an editor who does sound quality stuff, but I do more content editing, i.e. what speaking turns should stay in and what should get cut, etc. Not easy to hire someone else to do that for me.
    • Transcription. Automated solutions are overwhelmingly terrible. I've tried them all. They're not blog post quality. Paying someone to do it all by hand is the only choice, but it's expensive.
    • Coming up with a title, description, and show notes. Tedious. Time-consuming. Hard to trust others to do a good job, because most people are not expert marketers or copywriters, and definitely not for my specific brand.

    It's a bunch of work you need to either do in-house or train others to do.

    csallen's avatar csallen
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    7 years ago
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      Have you considered just streaming live like so many other successful interviewers?

      alchemist's avatar alchemist
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      7 years ago
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        I haven't, I'm too picky about quality. That said, I have been doing more in-person recordings, which are similar, as they don't allow much room for editing (because the mics tend to pick up each other's sounds, which makes re-recording bits difficult or impossible). So maybe I've already started down the slippery slope to live recordings.

        csallen's avatar csallen
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        7 years ago
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    2. 1

      @csallen thanks for the detailed response. We'd love to help you out. With Peak we can take a lot of this off your hands. We will schedule, send you a transcription that you can line edit (strike through, move stuff around in a google doc), edit based off of that transcription and post it live at the date and time you specify. Send me an email alex@peakpodcasting.com, we'll do an episode for free to see if you like it.

      Followup question: How to you get backup recordings outside of Zencastr?

      Alex

      AsCampbell's avatar AsCampbell
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      7 years ago
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        This doesn't sound particularly appealing to me for several reasons:

        1. I need to hear what I'm editing to decide what to edit. That means I need to listen to the whole episode. So editing from a transcript isn't going to save me that time I have to spend anyway.
        2. Leaving markers for my editor in the Audition session saying things like "delete here" or "clean this up" is just as easy as marking up a transcript, but even better.
        3. I like working with contractors over companies for creative stuff like editing, designing, or copywriting work, because I can maintain the relationship and they get better over time. If I'm taking a Lyft I don't much care who my driver is, but for things like this I prefer a consistent and transparent one-on-one relationship. For example, my current editor already knows what I like left in and taken out for the most part. I don't have to provide the same instructions to him over and over.

        How to you get backup recordings outside of Zencastr?

        I have Adobe Audition running at the same time as I record via Zencastr. One track is set to record input from my mic, and another track is set to record the output from Chrome (Zencastr) as input. I use a program called Loopback to handle that audio re-routing.

        csallen's avatar csallen
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        7 years ago
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  2. 1

    I would be interested in this

    Bsme's avatar Bsme
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    7 years ago
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