Do you need professional podcasting services to start a podcast? That depends on if you want anyone to hear your podcast and take it seriously. It is absolutely possible to record your own podcast, using nothing more than a cheap microphone and uploading it to a bunch of podcasting channels. Podcast production can be as simple as that.
But what will this DIY podcast approach generally get you?
Crickets. And a low-quality podcast. And quite possibly, audio quality that sounds a bit like crickets.
Chances are, you’ll get no audience at all (apart from your mum), or not the kind of audience you’re wanting to attract (hi again mum). You’ll invest all this energy and passion into creating a podcast, and just be talking into the void.
Did you know that there are over 150 million podcast episodes in the world as of 2023, yet more than half are only downloaded less than 29 times in the first week after launch? And for many podcasts, that 29 downloads serves as the dizzying peak of success.
The truth is, if you want a professional podcast production that really gets traction, you probably need to pay the professionals to record, produce, and distribute it for you. But here’s the thing. You might not need all of the bells and whistles, depending on what you’re trying to achieve.
So, what kinds of podcast services do you really need? Which ones are essential, and which ones can you skip altogether, or do yourself? Below, we’re going to run you through a range of podcast production services, so you can see which ones are important to your podcasting goals.
At Clearshot Digital, a big—and growing— part of our business is podcast production. Yet our service offering is different for different clients, as they want a range of podcasting services. So here’s a little run-down of the different podcast services and why they’re important.
You can tell in a second if someone has a professionally recorded podcast. The sound quality will always give it away. Professional podcast production services will ensure that your audio is of the highest quality. This can include removing background noise, equalizing levels, and enhancing the overall sound quality.
Sure, if you have the right equipment, an acoustically sound recording space, and a good level of understanding about things like the pace, tone, and volume of human speech, then you can manage this yourself. But we pretty much guarantee that outsourcing it to the professionals will deliver a significantly better result — and particularly if you record in a podcast studio. That can be surprisingly affordable if you hire the right podcast production agency. Check out our low cost podcast studio Brisbane.
If you have guest speakers on your podcast, a third party to manage the recording is also a rock- solid idea, as they can jump in and let you know when the conversation is running off track, or if someone is talking too fast or too quietly.
Want a smooth, slick sounding podcast? Yes, you do. Poor audio quality will ruin your podcast and make listeners turn off, but so too will rough editing or letting too much waffle get in the way of your message.
Our professional podcast editing services will cut and mix your podcast seamlessly, editing out the bits where you stumble over words or repeat yourselves. Having someone to professionally edit your podcast means you can relax and get on with it, knowing that we can edit out the mistakes later. We can fix volume and background noise (you really should have hired our quiet podcast studio) and also add music intros and outros for that professional touch.
Honestly? We don’t suggest that you hire us to write an entire podcast script, OR that you do this yourself. The listener can always tell when a podcast is being read off a sheet of paper, and inauthentic, perfectly rehearsed podcasts will always fall flat. No-one wants to listen to that. The joy of podcasts is when experts on the topic know what they’re going to talk about, and have done the research and have talking points to jump off. The conversation sounds natural and knowledgeable. And more importantly, HUMAN!
And this is where our content podcast services come into play. If you want research and writing assistance, we can absolutely write you a complete podcast script if you like. But instead, we suggest that we do some research for you, and create a sheet of talking points and salient questions for you and any guests to work off. If anyone gets stuck, we just jump in with cues to get the ball rolling again, and edit out any mistakes.
In truth, the set-up for a professional podcast is quite a big job, and we suggest outsourcing it to a professional production service to be sure that you’ve got all the bases covered across all platforms
Even if you produce great content, it can be difficult to get and grow your podcast audience. (Mum’s bragging about your podcast to her yoga group/book club/Zumba class will only get you so far.)
It’s hard to overestimate the power of podcast marketing in getting your message into the world. We can also write all your podcast descriptions, social media posts, and create short video teasers.
A growing number of podcast productions also include video, so that people can watch your podcast, and you can also promote your pod with nifty little short videos on social media. Podcast video recording is an optional podcast production service to think about, that both helps your audience relate to you and makes the pod miles easier to market.
There are about 4 million podcasts out there. How does yours stand out? Let’s imagine someone stumbles on your pod during a scroll through Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Whether they click or not might just depend on your podcast cover art. Is it fresh, with an interesting design? Does it explain what your podcast is about in some way? Or at least can the viewer guess at the topic or theme? Does it look professional, or amateur? One of our add-on podcast production services is our graphic design service for podcast cover art.
These are optional extras we call Podcast Maximisers: the extra steps you can take to maximise your podcast’s potential and really blast it out into the world.
If you’re really taking this thing seriously, you’ll want a dedicated podcast website, or at least have your podcast embedded on your (professional-looking) website. It’s super-important that you get the look and feel of your podcast website right, so that people who come looking are as impressed with what they find as they were with your original pod. If you’re looking to build your brand- as a writer, as a service provider, as a business selling a physical product, your podcast website can be a real sales and status generator.
So, what do you want to start with? Which podcast services do you think are essential to YOUR professional podcast? Clearshot Digital offer all of these podcast production services, and we want to help get your voice heard in an ever-more crowded market.
Get in touch! Watch our little video! Look at our all-in-one podcast packages and make it easy. Can’t wait to chat with you about your podcast goals. Let’s get this out there.
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