How to Start an Educational Podcast in 2020: Ten Tips

by Dominic Beaulieu

Podcasts are a progressive and very convenient way to gain new knowledge while spending a minimum of time on it. You can listen to audio broadcasts in the car, while walking around the city, in the gym - wherever your heart desires. So what could be better than creating educational podcasts that will always be in demand? Indeed, many people have a desire to develop themselves, but there is not enough time for this. Make a podcast and thus educate yourself and others. Development and education will always be in trend, so this is a good area for your creativity. If you are ready to start creating something interesting, then here are 10 tips for starting a podcast.

1.   To Get Started, Select a Podcast Theme

Try to identify the subject that you are going to talk about as accurately as possible. Be specific. For example, you shouldn’t talk about the psychology of humanity in general but may talk about the “Psychology of Hyperactive Children” or “Secrets of a Successful Relationship between a Man and a Woman”. Explore your competitors, listen to podcasts from the top Apple Podcasts, or CastBox: this way you will understand which podcasts on a similar topic already exist and how you can differ from them.

2.   Create an Original Name of Your Podcast

Surely, you already have several options for the name. Which one to choose? First of all, google and check if there is a podcast with the same name. When you are naming your podcast, remember that it should be original enough. So that your project can be easily found by searching, and not too pretentious for the audience to remember. For example, if there is a podcast for Spanish-learners, the cool name would be "Spicy tongue" or “Paella for your brain”.

3.   Always Prepare for Recording in Advance

When you are doing a podcast, do not read the full text. Why? Everything is simple. When you read, not tell, it is always audible and there is less naturalness in it. If you want the listener to feel after a couple of minutes that you are his best friend, then you should tell him exactly - from yourself. Have the full text before your eyes but do everything possible to sound natural and engaging.

4.   Buy a Quality Microphone

This is a banal sign of respect for the listener's audio channel. There are several types of microphones, but if you decide to do podcasts, you only need to know two of them. Microphones are divided into dynamic and condenser.

●      The condenser microphone is worth choosing if you want a more even and detailed sound of the voice. Also, such a microphone is suitable if you have a room with good sound insulation without overtones and reflections.

●      The dynamic microphone is the workhorse for all conditions. You get a less detailed sound of the voice, but you can record even in an unprepared room. For podcasts, such a microphone is more than enough.

5.   Always Leverage Your Skills and Knowledge

How to make your own podcast if you don`t know enough about your topic? Every day, monitor something new and original related to your topic. What is more, deep educational topics should be as accurate and relevant as possible. You must gain the trust of your listeners. They must be confident in the accuracy of the information that you bring to them. Therefore, teach others, but do not forget to constantly educate yourself first.

6.   Prepare a Release Plan

For podcasts, you need your content plan - the themes of the releases, format, length, number, text, the title for the audio file, music for the screen saver, background music. You can make a general plan, for example, for a week and a separate mini-plan for each issue. It is advisable to have a plan for at least 3 months in advance and make several entries at once before the official launch.

If you don’t always have time for quality content creation, you may Pick The Writer from the custom writing services reviews platform, ask him to research the topic, write the text, and then, your only task will be to transform the text into a podcast.

7.   Listen to Your Audience

The content of your podcast should be interesting and useful for your audience. No other options. It is so obvious that many entrepreneurs forget about it. And they begin to write, shoot, record what is interesting to them, or what they think will be useful to the audience. Your audience will willingly tell you what is interesting and what is not. Just listen carefully to them.

8.   Promote, Don't Expect a Miracle

It is not enough to create a podcast. It is necessary to promote and market it. Surely, the first places you may share your podcast are your blog and your social media profiles. What is more, there are special apps that may help you to post and publish your podcast, reach your audience, get votes, and other promotion tools. For example, Overcast, Stitcher, and Podcast Addict.

9.   Come up With Your Podcast Unique Feature

In addition to the subject and genre, it’s nice to think about some unusual podcast feed that could be a chip that makes people want to listen to this podcast. An interesting topic or niche is part of the chip, but there is still such a moment as an unusual approach to this topic. For example, the podcast “Art for Boys” explains about art in very simple words, not just understandable to anyone, but also interesting to people outside of art.

10.                Make Your Podcast Even More Visible and Accessible

So, here are some final ideas on how to improve the visibility and accessibility of your podcast. For example, you may transform your audio file into a video one to publish it on YouTube. Don’t be surprised - the video format is so popular that many users will be more willing to use YouTube and listen to something usefull, even if there is no video plot.

What is more, you may always transcribe your video file, fill it with the necessary keywords, and make it more visible for search engines in the “Video” section.

Conclusion

So if you have been thinking about podcasting for a long time, it's time to start. These podcasting tips should be a great start for you. What is more, it is not so difficult as it may seem - especially if you are well-versed in your topic. By the way, podcasting is not the only way to show your professional background  - deep-researched and SEO-optimized articles, as well as live interactions with your audience in social media, are also great ideas to stay in touch with it.

Dominic Beaulieu is an expert writer who specializes in creating various training and professional upgrade courses, materials and manuals. He mainly writes on development, digital marketing, design, business strategies, etc. This breadth of specialization allows him to write expert columns on the most pressing topics in today's society and to specialize in creating reviews in Writing Judge.

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It’s dangerous to be a sorceress in a place where magic is a crime. Good hook! 15-year-old Tatiana (Tana) Definitely pick one name and go with it has never seen the world beyond her village on the island of Kisiwa. Her past is a giant question mark, her parents are lost to her memory, and her only link to them is a strange amulet she’s had since birth. Though Tana longs to run away to the distant mainland, far from her drunken uncle and their decrepit farm, she can't risk losing her only home. But when an assassin murders her uncle, Tana flees the island and finds herself at the center of a crazed sorcerer’s insidious plan. With a bounty on her head, she scrambles to uncover the ugly truth about her amulet and save the only people she trusts.

While this is well-written, you're suffering from the same issue that an earlier Slash had - you're being too vague. You've got a name and an island, but there is nothing else here to differentiate this story from any other number of fantasies that deal with a lost past, a found hero, and a villain. Why is her uncle murdered? What is the ugly truth about the amulet? Why is magic a crime here? A query needs to not be a tease. You're not trying to get an agent to wonder what will happen next - that's for a reader. For an agent, you want to show them why they want to represent this book. In other words, what make this different and unique from every other fantasy query they had in their inbox this week that deal with these same tropes - a lost, special child, a murky past, and a destiny that can't be avoided.

The Lost Heir is book one of a YA fantasy series, complete at 70,000 words. This novel would interest readers who loved J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and John Flanagan’s The Ranger’s Apprentice.For comp titles, it's better not to use really big names. Everyone wants to think that they will be the next Harry Potter, so it's overused. I’m 16, and I live in Santa Barbara, CA where I am a student at Laguna Blanca Highschool. For the last five years, I’ve written various versions of this novel, though I’ve never submitted it for publication. I also review YA books for the Santa Barbara Independent; for example, this is my most recent review (https://www.independent.com/2020/07/20/review-hafsah-faizals-we-hunt-the-flame/). Also, I participated in a Stanford Pre-Collegiate creative writing course in the summer of 2019.

It's great that you are serious enough to pursue a pre-collegiate program, but I don't know that I would share your specific age, or student status. I would instead let the work stand for itself, and see if it garners interest. Of course, if they should request to see pages, or a full manuscript, you should be up front about your age. I don't think it can necessarily hurt or help you either way, but I don't know that it merits mention in a query.