The podcast craze of the past several years shows no signs of slowing down, and while every armchair broadcaster with a voice recorder app is eager to get in the game, creating a professional sounding podcast isn’t as simple as it might seem. Here’s how to create, record, and publish your own basic podcast and get people to listen. In this article, we are going to show you how to start your exclusive podcast with WordPress Website – step by step. You will learn about how podcasts work, the best podcast equipment, the podcast WordPress plugin that you certainly need, and more.
No matter your age or technical skill set, you can quickly start your own podcast by heeding the step by step process described in this guide.
Here is a part of everything that we will embrace:
- What is podcasting & how podcasts operate?
- Planning Your Podcast
- Things you need to setup your podcast
- Choosing the best web hosting and domain name
- Setting up a media hosting service
- Choosing the proper podcasting equipment
- Recording your first podcast
- Publishing your podcast with WordPress
- Uploading your media files to Blubrry
- Setting up Smart Podcast Player WordPress Plugin
- Adding your first podcast in WordPress
- Previewing your podcast with iTunes
- Submitting your podcast to iTunes
- Podcasting resources to help you grow
Ready? Let’s get started how to Start Your Own Podcast
A podcast is a streamable, downloadable audio file in an episodic format to which listener can subscribe. However, there’s quite a lot of variety in contemporary podcasting. Probably the most familiar podcast recently was the insanely popular Serial podcast, which helped to win a convicted murderer a new trial. But for every Serial level success story, there are hundreds or even thousands of other podcasts, perhaps not as well known but with devoted audiences of their own.
In order for your podcast to act, you need to have an audio file and an RSS Feed that users can subscribe to stay updated and download new when they appear.
Because WordPress comes with a built-in RSS feed system for blogs, many podcasters choose to use WordPress as their podcast website platform.
You can connect your podcast site with podcasting apps like iTunes to make it easier for millions of users to listen and subscribe. We will cover this later in the section.
Now that you know what is a podcast and how it operates, let’s take a look at how to set up a podcast.
There are two big questions you need to know it answers yourself.
So firstly, for what reason would you like to make a podcast? Are you a freelancer? A business? Or a marketing manager? If so, you might have identified podcasting as a great way to build authority, and provide your target audience with valuable and entertaining content.
Or are you looking at podcasting from a hobbyist perspective? This might mean you’ll be creating a show in your spare time. And the subject will be something that you’re passionate about.
In either case, you can identify your “why” here. That’s important to keep in mind, so that you can stay motivated, even when you’re finding it difficult to get a show out.
Next, what about your “who”?
If you’re coming at it from a business perspective, and you’re (for example) a personal trainer who wants to make a health and fitness podcast, then your target audience might be people who are interested in healthy eating, weight loss, exercise, or bodybuilding.
If you’re creating a hobby show – let’s say it’s based around your love of zombies and post-apocalyptic fiction – then your target audience would simply be folks with the same passion. They might be fans of TV shows like The Walking Dead, video games like Resident Evil, books like World War Z, and films like Night of the Living Dead.
A lot of smart people talk about creating listener personas. It’s a good idea, sketching out exactly why it is that you’d like to listen to your content.
That persona and those questions help you to keep your show focussed and on track, both of which make for more engaging content.
So we know who you want to reach, how do you reach them? You need to give people a reason to listen. This means creating content that they will get something out of when they listen.
For a professional podcasting setup there are few things that you will need to get started.
The first thing is a website or blog where people can find more about you and your podcast.
The second thing is the equipments to record your podcast.
Lastly, you need to have the right tools to publish your podcast on the internet, so you can get maximum subscribers and reach.
We will walk you through the complete process step-by-step.
The most important step in building a website is to choose the right platform.
In other words, you need a domain name and best web hosting.
A domain name is your website’s address on the internet. This is what people type to get to your website. For example: facebook.com or aroham.com.
Web hosting is your website’s house on the internet. This is where all your files and images are stored. Every website needs web hosting.
In real numbers, this mean you can start your podcasting website for $2.95 per month.
The next thing you will need is a good media hosting service. Your podcasts are large audio files.
Serving these large files from your web host will consume a lot of server resources. This will make your website slow and often unresponsive.
For best user experience, we recommend that you use a podcast specific media hosting platform like Blubrry.
Most smart podcasters use a separate podcast hosting service to serve their podcast files. It is the most efficient way to run a podcast.
Here are few reasons why we recommend Blubrry:
- Blubrry is optimized for podcasting using WordPress. They offer a powerful wordpress plugin called Blubrry PowerPress which makes it easy to manage your podcast.
- Blubrry comes with great tools like ID3 tagging, automatic media artwork management, iTunes optimization, etc.
- It comes with the a large user community consisting many successful podcasters behind it. If you need help, then join the forums to learn.
- They have a top-tier content delivery network which makes your content delivery faster and more reliable.
The bare minimum you need to record a podcast is a computer with a built in microphone and access to the internet. As a general rule, though, the more limited and lower cost your setup and equipment, the more limited the sound quality of your show will be.
That said, simple USB microphone setups can give great results if you choose the right mic. Plus, you are much better to get started and see whether you enjoy it before forking out big sums of money on audio equipment.
There are 3 popular mic choices among podcasters.
- Samson C01U (USB) – Entry level Microphone
- Rode Podcaster (USB) – Best USB mic that we found.
- Heil PR-40 (XLR connection, not USB) – This is what the Pro’s use. You will need to buy an audio mixer as well.
Other equipment that you probably want to purchase: shock mount, mic arm, and a pop filter.You would also need a decent headphone.
Once you have the right podcasting equipment, you will be ready for the next step: recording your audio files.
To record your audio files, you will need an audio recording software. This software will help you record and edit your audio files.
The best podcast recording software which is used by most podcasters is Audacity. It is a free, cross-platform, and open source software capable of recording studio-quality professional podcasts.
After installing Audacity, you need to open it up and create a new project from the File menu.
To record your voice, simply click on the record button.
Now feel free to record your podcast. Don’t worry about awkward pauses, breaks, coughing, or any glitches you might make while narrating.
You can edit the recording as many times as you want.
You can also import music files from File > Import and set them as background music.
Audacity is a very powerful tool, and it is not possible for us to even cover its basic features in this article. However, TeamAudacity has an extensive Wiki with detailed tutorials specifically written for new podcasters.
We will recommend you to go through these tutorials. It will take you some time to become familiar with the software, but it’s totally worth your time and effort.
Once you have recorded your podcast, you need to export it.
Most podcasters export their audio files in MP3 format because it creates smaller file sizes with good quality.
You also need to be smart about naming your files. Remember podcasts are episodic series, so it would be best to use a naming practise that uses serial number in the file name.
Save the final version of your podcast file to a separate folder on your computer.
After you have created a few episodes, and you are satisfied with their quality and goal, it’s time to learn how to publish your podcast with WordPress Website.
You will need to login to the admin area of your WordPress site.
First thing you need to do is install and activate the Blubrry PowerPress Podcasting wordpress plugin.
Upon activation, you will see a PowerPress menu item in WordPress dashboard menu. Clicking on it will take you to plugin’s settings page.
If you are using Blubrry to host your podcasting files, then you need to click on the button to configure Blubrry statistics and hosting services.
Clicking on the button will bring up a popup where you need to enter your Blubrry hosting account email and password.
Next, you will need to fill out rest of the information on the settings page. Provide a title for your podcast and fill out iTunes fields.
These iTunes fields for description, category, subtitle, artwork, etc will be used in your podcast’s RSS feed, and iTunes will use them to place your podcast in their directory.
Don’t forget to click on the ‘Save Changes’ button to store your settings.
Your WordPress site is now ready to publish your podcast.
Before you publish your podcast with WordPress Website, you first need to upload the podcast file to your media hosting service.
You need to login to your Blubrry hosting account and then click on Podcaster dashboard.
Next, you need to click on ‘Upload New Media Files’ link under podcast hosting section.
This will bring you to another page where you need to click on the Upload New Media button and start uploading your podcast audio files.
After you have uploaded your podcast media files, you will be able to use them on your WordPress site.
Most podcasters use WordPress plugins to display a podcast player on their website. This player allows users to listen to a podcast directly from your website.
Smart Podcast Player adds a beautifully built podcast player which allows listener to play, share, and download podcast episodes from the player itself.
It is mobile-ready out of the box which means your podcast player looks and works great on all devices.
First, you will need to install and activate the Smart Podcast Player plugin.
It is a paid WordPress plugin and pricing starts from $8 every month.
Upon activation, you need to visit Settings > Smart Podcast Player page and enter your license key.
You can get this license key from your account on Smart Podcast Player website.
Next, you need to click on the ‘Player Defaults’ tab to setup plugin settings.
You will need to provide your podcast feed URL. Since you are using PowerPress, your podcast feed URL will be like this:
https://demo.com/feed/podcast/
Don’t forget to replace demo.com with your own domain name.
Next, you need to provide your iTunes subscription link. Since you haven’t submitted your podcast to iTunes yet, you will need to come back here and fill this when your podcast is available on iTunes.
After that you need to enter your show name and artist name.
Smart Podcast Player comes with beautiful design options and allows you to match your podcast player with your WordPress theme. Under player design settings, you can choose theme and color for your podcast player.
Don’t forget to click on the save changes button to store your settings.
Now that Smart Podcast Player is ready, you need to disable the podcast player that comes with PowerPress.
Since you are using Smart Podcast Player, you don’t need PowerPress to add a media player into your posts.
You can do this by visiting PowerPress > Settings page and scroll down to the ‘Blog posts and pages’ section. Click on ‘Disable’ under ‘Display Media & Links’ option.
Don’t forget to click on the ‘save changes’ button to store your settings.
Everything is now in order, and you are ready to add your first podcast in WordPress.
To publish your first podcast, you need to go to Posts > Add New page.
It is highly recommended that you create a separate category for your podcast episodes. This will allow you to keep your podcast episodes separate from rest of your content. You will also be able to easily publicize your podcast feed later on.
After that you need scroll down to the bottom of the page, and there you will see ‘Podcast Episode’ box.
Blubrry hosting users need to click on the folder icon and select the file they uploaded to Blubrry media.
Other users need to paste their media file URL in here. Click the verify button to make sure that your have pasted the correct URL.
Now you need to scroll back up to the post editor section. Give your blog post a suitable title and add description of this podcast episode in the visual editor.
You will see two buttons in the visual editor labeled SPP and STP. These buttons are added by Smart Podcast Player plugin.
The SPP button allows you to add the full Smart Podcast Player which contains all your podcast episodes. Users can play them one by one.
However, since you are creating a blog post for a specific podcast episode, you need to click on the Smart Track Player(STP) button.
Select ‘Play a specific episode of your podcast’ and then provide the URL of the Media file you want to be played.
You can get the URL of the media file from ‘Podcast Episode’ meta box where you just added the audio files(Episode).
After adding the media file URL, click on the build shortcode button.
You will see a shortcode appear in the post editor area.
That’s all, you can now publish and preview your blog post and you will see your podcast episode live with a beautiful player.
Congratulations, your WordPress podcasting site is ready to go live.
Now that you have set up your podcast site with WordPress, it is time to submit it to iTunes and getting more subscribers.
Before submitting it to iTunes, you might want to check how your podcast will look in iTunes. To do this, launch iTunes and go to File > Subscribe to Podcast and enter your feed URL. Your feed url will look like:
https://demo.com/feed/podcast
Don’t forget to replace demo.com with your own domain name.
Once you enter the URL in iTunes, it will fetch the feed and display it. As you can see in the screenshot below, it fetched the artwork, description, subtitle, etc.
If everything looks good, this means you are ready to submit your podcast to iTunes.
To submit your podcast to iTunes, you need to download and install the latest version of iTunes on your computer. Next, Launch the iTunes and click on the iTunes Store button on the top right corner of the screen.
iTunes will now access iTunes Store. Click on the Podcasts menu, and then scroll a little to find the Podcasts Quick Links section. There you will see a link to Submit a podcast.
This will open the Podcast submit process. You will need an Apple ID to submit your podcast to iTunes directory. If you are not already signed in, iTunes will prompt you to login.
The first thing you will need is your podcast feed URL. Your podcast feed URL will be like this:
https://demo.com/feed/podcast
Don’t forget to replace demo.com with your own domain name.
Since you are using PowerPress, your feed will already include tags required by iTunes Store for podcasts.
Upon submission, your podcast feed will be submitted to iTunes review queue. After approval by iTunes review staff, it will be added to iTunes directory, and you will be notified via email.
Congratulations on starting your podcast with WordPress. Your podcast’s website is built with WordPress.
We hope this article helped you start a podcast with WordPress. You may also want to take a look at How to Disable Trackbacks and Pings on Existing WordPress Posts, or How to Remove NoFollow From WordPress Comments.
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