Podcasting has become an increasingly popular medium for people and companies to share their thoughts, ideas, and stories with a global audience. With the rise of platforms like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Google Podcasts, it has become easier than ever to create and distribute your own podcast. However, producing a podcast that is engaging, informative, and professionally crafted requires more than just recording your voice and hitting the upload button.
In this brand new episode, we are joined by our Growth Content Marketer, Karissa Barcelo, to discuss in length and depth, the process of podcast production. Throughout the episode, Karissa shares invaluable lessons on how to identify a suitable guest, prepare for the podcast interview, and the process of publishing the episode.
Whether you’re a seasoned podcaster or just starting out, this guide will provide you with the tools and tips you need to produce high-quality podcasts that keep your audience coming back for more.
Topics
- Achieving Results on Spotify
- Production Experience in Podcasting
- Unique Podcasting Styles of the Three Omniscient Digital Co-founders
- Conducting a Podcast Interview Research
- Pre-podcast-interview Preparation
- The Most Difficult Part of Podcast Production
- New and Creative Podcast Production Ideas
- Embracing different formats of podcasts
- Building Skills through Podcasting
- Tips for Starting a Podcast
Show Links
- Connect with Karissa Barcelo on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook
- Connect with David Khim on LinkedIn and Twitter
- Connect with Alex Birkett on LinkedIn and Twitter
- Connect with Allie Decker on LinkedIn and Twitter
- Connect with Omniscient Digital on LinkedIn or Twitter
What is Kitchen Side?
One big benefit of running an agency or working at one is you get to see the “kitchen side” of many different businesses; their revenue, their operations, their automations, and their culture.
You understand how things look from the inside and how that differs from the outside.
You understand how the sausage is made.
As an agency ourselves, we’re working both on growing our clients’ businesses as well as our own. This podcast is one project, but we also blog, make videos, do sales, and have quite a robust portfolio of automations and hacks to run our business.
We want to take you behind the curtain, to the kitchen side of our business, to witness our brainstorms, discussions, and internal dialogues behind the public works that we ship.
Listen to the podcast:
Key Takeaways:
[08:56] Achieving Results on Spotify
Consistent production of content ultimately yields results
“I was like, wow, out of all the podcasts? I mean, that’s pretty impressive. You know, I think a lot of it has to do with our consistency. I think a lot of people fall off, they don’t continue to publish on a regular basis. So maybe that has something to do with it… I think just continuing on is a huge factor in success with podcasting. It is with other things, too. But you don’t ever think about it because nobody ever quits a blog, or maybe they do. But most people don’t quit a blog after writing five blog posts. Whereas a lot of people quit a podcast after doing five or 10 episodes.”
[11:15] Production Experience in Podcasting
Experience in production is invaluable when marketing services through podcasts
“I since I was a kid, I always had a passion to put on a show or okay, we’re going live guys, even if it’s from our garage, right? So there’s that, you know, I kind of took that in with my career, I went into television and did some film. And then, you know, wanted to slow down a little bit and have a more steady career. And I wasn’t traveling all the time. So that’s how I got into marketing. Because there is a huge need for content and producing that one of them happens to be a podcast. And this was just a great way for mass communication, I guess. In the marketing world, you know, we’re, we still have an audience we’re building. And it just has a similar similar feeling to producing a show, you know?”
[13:09] Unique Podcasting Styles of the Three Omniscient Digital Co-founders
Different Interviewing styles improve the quality of the podcast content
“Yeah, so Alex is just very you love to get into people’s mindsets and psychology and understanding them on that level. David, I feel like is very very inquisitive, to understand how things operate and work like you have a very analytical mind. But Ali is just so it’s so chill listening to you, because you’re just have a great comfortable vibe like people are just comfortable talking to you. And you’re, you’re genuinely interested in what they have to say. And that really comes across. So yeah, it’s just cool to see the different styles you each have and what you bring to the show.”
[14:44] Conducting a Podcast Interview Research
Conducting a thorough research on the podcast interviewee ensures that the content will be deep, unique and of high quality
“I want to correct that I do a ton of research, I just don’t do a lot of prep, if that makes sense. For like, with guests, I listened to every interview that they’ve done that that I can find. And if they’ve written a book, Mark Schaefer wrote, like six books, I didn’t read all of his books, but I read one of them. So I do a lot of research because I one of my goals is to make sure that I don’t get them to speak on script or give them canned answers. And that requires that I don’t give them canned questions. So I really want to make sure that I don’t ask them the same things. Or if they’ve said something interesting that a podcast interview didn’t pick up on or follow up on in a previous interview, I make sure to ask those questions and dive deeper. Right. So I do a lot of like background research, I just, I usually come with like, with like a one pay, I just put it in my email, because I’m not very organized. Like I’ll just have a draft for myself. And it’ll cover like topic areas, and maybe a couple like prompt questions that are like specifics. You know, if they’ve tweeted about something, I’ll be like, Hey, you tweeted about this? Because obviously, I need to reference that. But once the conversation is going, then I just follow it down.”
[18:21] Pre-podcast-interview Preparation
Conduct a thorough research on the interviewee prior to conduction the session
“I typically I find I take their feedback from the pre interview like questionnaire, especially the things they want to talk about that aren’t related to work. And then off see kind of what their other PR is other interviews, other mentions things that they’ve written. It’s always nice when they have like their own blog, or they’re active on social because you can hear like their see their voice and how they talk about things. And I’ll usually start with a couple threads. And then I’ll just lose track of where I am. And I’ll just dig into things half the time, especially with folks I know like Kayla or Krista, I’ll be like, shit, we’re recording, like, totally forget. And like, I should probably make this a little bit more helpful for our listeners, I’ll circle back to like, things that pertain to their business or their work, things that they definitely wanted to mention. Some folks want shout outs for like a book or something, which is fine. But my favorite part is the rapid fire then which I’ve always pulled from your list, Alex. Some of it’s relevant, but some of it ends up not being and it’s beautiful. Like, what’s something you’ve changed your mind about recently is my favorite question, or what something you believe that most people would disagree with you on? And I usually ask that they answer that question not about work, because everyone has contrarian opinions about work, you know, AI or whatever. It’s just like, unrelated to like content or marketing”
[19:57] The Most Difficult Part of Podcast Production
Product production has several stages and therefore requires a well-defined system for the production to run smoothly
“Most difficult? I’d say it’s not necessarily difficult, but just something I have to put more mental load into is just making sure the calendar is updated. And, you know, we’re repurposing on time, we’re getting it to the editor on time, just so that there’s no, you know, we’re not falling backwards at all. We’re just keeping on track with that consistency. That’s super important. So that’s been that’s always like the top of my mind at the beginning of the week. All right, we got this episode going out, like, let’s make sure we have everything we need, you know… it was a little harder, just because things felt like they were going faster. And, you know, one is a it’s a production, you know, we do have contractors, we have an editor that helps us edit the episode, we have fiverr, freelancers to design, the header image, that sort of thing. And then we repurpose it. So that goes on our website, which is great, because it has like the key takeaways, which in my opinion, is better than reading a transcript. So there’s, there’s some production that’s involved. So when you double that, it just, you know, there’s more to think about at the beginning of the week, and making sure everything’s on track. But it’s cool to see and I can’t wait to see what comes of going twice a week versus one time.”
[22:53] New and Creative Podcast Production Ideas
Exploring new ideas bring a fresh look to the show
“I think I probably would want to take on some interviews myself, if I had that bandwidth, maybe even it would be it would just be so cool to to meet up with you guys like in person and maybe do some live recordings. I just sometimes I miss that live production, you know, in IRL in real life. So like, you know, if Alex were to go to a conference, for instance, and there were some people who you were interested in talking to you, I’d love to I’ll produce those, even if I’m not in it, but I’m behind the scenes helping him. So I think just trying to take it to the next level, like, how can we make this even bigger, you know, and maybe doing some live ones like we do webinars, but the live podcasts would be cool to experiment with getting people to join in live and ask questions would be cool to see what that’s like.”
[27:02] Embracing different formats of podcasts
Decentralized content is usual short and has high potential of attracting more people
“Yeah, yeah, I think there’s, there’s my answer would be like just experimenting with different formats. Like I’ve noticed that something that a lot of the big podcasters that I follow do I know Tim Ferriss has done like all kinds of different format experiments like reading somebody’s book that like just launched the book or something like that, like just a section or somebody’s interviewing Tim, instead of him interviewing the other person. And I feel like my first million does a lot of these to you, oddly enough now that I’m saying it out loud. Like I actually don’t I sometimes don’t click on the new formats when podcasts broadcaster because I’m like, I kind of like just like the regular stuff. But yeah, because I’ve thought about doing different styles. And maybe we will do this eventually. But like, monologues Yeah, like we write a lot of thought leadership, like what if we just transform that into a script that we read that was like 10 to 20 minutes long, a shorter episode on a specific subject, like we talked about decentralized content, are the barbell strategies, a framework or something like that? That’d be very cool. I would see it and be like, Oh, it’s 10 minutes on this topic. That’s great. I have time for that and click on it.”
[31:24] Building Skills through Podcasting
Conducting Podcast interviews with strangers builds confidence and strong social skills
“Yeah, I thought you were natural. I think that for me, it is the broad applications of the skill set outside of podcasting and the confidence that it gives you in so like even as an extrovert, like I’ve always been pretty comfortable in social situations. But like I still in the back of my mind, if I’m talking to somebody new, there’s this fear. It’s like, what if I don’t know what to say next? Like, how is this conversation gonna go? Like, I don’t know if it’s gonna go well, and doing so many podcasts with both friends and total strangers. I know in the depths of my heart, that the conversation is gonna go just fine. And now no matter who I talk to anywhere in the world, I know that I can carry a great conversation. That’s it’s this cool confidence that you have, and it opens up so many cool opportunities. Like, you’re just like, I’m just gonna talk to this person. Like I do it on the airplane all the time now, like I’ve made, like decent friends on the airplane. That’s cool.”
[36:36] Tips to Starting a Podcast
Start with what you have, you will learn more along the way
“Yeah, that’s good. First of all, I’ve thought about doing a course on this. I was like, maybe I’ll just do a course and offer it like at a low charge, and then maybe offer consulting or something? I don’t know. But I think I’d say, Don’t overthink it. Just go talk to people start with the relationships you have. And there are so many tools at your disposal that will help you I mean, we use simple cast, it streams to Apple, Spotify, Google, I mean, it does all that for us. Right? It doesn’t take a lot. There’s not a huge investment. You know, just get a good mic. I think audio is important, good audio, and just go and you’ll just get better as you go along. And you’ll learn as you go along. So I think that would be my advice. Yeah, maybe have some kind of what is your goal? Think about what your goal is for the podcast? Is it? You know, for a brand awareness or is it to build relationships? Because that’s partly our goal to you know, so getting clear on that is important. Yeah, that’s just doing it. Yeah.”
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