New Podcast Launch – The Final Week
Posted on 22nd July 2020 at 18:50
It’s always useful to read about other people’s experiences as a new podcast launch date approaches. Here’s ours...
“Business Revival – In Gloucestershire” launches at the end of July 2020 into the profoundly strange world for commerce created by the Coronavirus pandemic.
The purpose of the podcast is to provide a business resource for companies and organisations in the UK county of Gloucestershire (and hopefully further afield) to learn about how fellow businesses are surviving and planning to emerge fighting fit.
Each episode features an interview with a local company, plus a commentary on their survival strategy from business guru, The Business Kitchen’s Gill Smith.
The podcast launches in a week. Are we ready?
About the Author – Serena Gay – founder and managing director of Made4U Podcasts
Serena founded Made4U Podcasts in 2018 after a career spent in radio and TV in the UK with the BBC, and in Germany with DW TV.
She has many years' of experience writing and voicing well-researched and engaging material, and developed her social media marketing skills managing companies in the UK and Germany.
Are we ready to launch? Almost.
Interviewees have been interviewed
Interview release forms have been signed and submitted to Made4U Podcasts
Business guru Gill Smith has recorded her first three commentaries
The first three interviews have been edited and transcripts have been made and corrected
We persuaded an up-and-coming local actor to voice the intro and outro to the podcast with a warm and authentic Gloucestershire accent
The generic welcome, goodbye and mid-episode links have been recorded
The podcast has been registered with podcast host Buzzsprout (which will automatically update and distribute each new episode they receive to all the podcast directories such as Apple Podcasts, Google, Stitcher, Spotify, etc.)
The trailer has been recorded and it has gone live
At least 20 influential local businesspeople have agreed to review and post their comments about the podcast on the day it goes live, July 29th
Posts galore have gone up about it on social media
Checklists are in place with the various tasks that each new episode requires for promotion purposes
Press Releases have been written and sent out
A link in the Made4U Podcast email signature has been created
But of course, nothing ever goes smoothly…!
First mistake
We rather zealously announced that launch date for “Business Revival – In Gloucestershire” would be on July 29th, 2020. And it will be.
But of course, it’s a bit unwise to do that too far in advance in case everything goes pear shaped. Such as your laptop refusing to upload anything new until you create some new storage space. A small problem. But suddenly, your back-up drive fails. Then you’re stuck.
Or a juicy piece of new business appears and you realise you are going to be working 24/7 to get everything done in time!
What if the dreaded virus itself had struck and laid us low?
The lesson here is keep your wished-for launch date under your hat until a week or 10 days away, just in case. Then it should be full-steam ahead with promotions.
Second mistake
Ordering some new recording gear to try out on the new podcast, only to find that the (normally perfectly reliable) supplier was kidding you that the mic you wanted to order was in stock.
It was only after a suspicious delay and some sleuthing on our part that we realised not only was this mic not in stock, but that supply lines from America had been disrupted and that it was unlikely to be delivered at all.
The mistake was to take the supplier at their word that it was ready for delivery, when every other supplier in the UK had ceased to stock the much-desired mic.
Third mistake
We decided a clever way to bypass the usual technical problems that arise with remotely recording guests would be to provide them with a headset – a bit like the one they wear in call centres but with a good inbuilt mic. The idea was to send it out or hand deliver to each new guest.
However, it let us down on the very first try. For some unknown reason, the headset “quarrelled” with the guest’s existing laptop settings. We had to resort to a Zoom recording, which pains us since the audio quality is nowhere near as good as our normal high standards.
With other guests, we were able to persuade them to find and wear a set of apple ear buds and so far, this has worked fine.
We could have saved ourselves the expense of the headset.
Fourth mistake
Being a bit too blasé about interview guests’ promises to take part in the podcast.
Three potential guests appeared very keen when first asked – right after a public webinar at which they all spoke.
For complicated reasons, we didn’t get back to them until a day or two later, by which time they had moved on to bigger projects.
We should have pinned them down immediately. Lesson learned!
Fifth mistake
Taking a huge bite out of a very thick piece of stale shortbread and snapping off a front crown! No pain involved – just ugliness for our podcast presenter and writer of this article, Serena.
Why should all this be a problem? Because it makes her whistle and lisp and because her dentist was unable to sort it out for weeks and weeks, for reasons we all know about.
You try editing out all the noises a missing tooth produces down the mic. Time consuming!
There’s still plenty more to do...
… but so far so good. It’s now mainly editing and mixing left to do to produce eight finished episodes and audio teasers in the run up to launch.
The promotion schedule checklist is drawn up, so once the podcast is launched, it will be a matter of sticking to that and promoting the hell out of it.
What matters to your podcast rankings is to continuously have as many new subscribers as possible, so promotion is absolutely vital.
One more thing. We’ve been using a new service called Descript which produces a transcript a few minutes after you’ve uploaded a recording.
Using ingenious technology, it allows you to do a lot but of main interest to us was that Descript enables you to follow the transcript and audio simultaneously and easily cut out words or sentences that you don’t want.
It’s not a perfect editing solution – you have to export the audio back to your DAW and polish it up there – but it makes reducing an interview to an acceptable length really easy.
Planning to launch your own podcast?
If you’re itching to start a new podcast for your business or organisation but would really appreciate a spot of help, then email Serena at Made4U Podcasts on serena@made4U-podcasts.co.uk.
She’d love to meet for a virtual coffee and chat about the services we have on offer! Find out HERE what we can do for you.
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