Podcast: How to start your company podcast (with Doug and Alex)

If you're planning on starting a company podcast but you're not sure how to begin, take a listen to this episode - in it, I asked pod hosts Doug and Alex about their main learnings from running The Onlinification Pod, and what Zooma can do to get your podcast off the ground.

In this episode, Doug and Alex shared a few tips and bits of advice, including:

• Experience and learnings from almost two years of running The Onlinification Pod
• Ideas for how you can get started with your first few episodes
• What Zooma can do to get your company's podcast up and running

Learn more about Zooma's podcasting packages

Are you looking to start a podcast at your company, or do you already have one and want to save valuable time? In that case, these packages might be interesting for you.

As usual, you can listen to this episode on the podcast platform of your choice or read the transcription if you're in a rush. And don't forget to subscribe using the links below. Enjoy!

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Transcription

Niyat: [00:00:00] Hi, and welcome to the Onlinification Pod, a podcast produced by Zooma. My name is Niyat, and today on the show we have a very special episode. Other than usual, I got the opportunity to have the co-hosts of this podcast, Alex and Doug, as guests to talk about podcasting. Experience and learning of the Onlinification Pod, tips on how to get started and how Zooma can help you to get started with your own podcast. I hope you enjoy it.

Niyat: [00:00:39] Hi.

Alex: [00:00:40] Hello.

Doug: [00:00:40] Hello.

Niyat: [00:00:41] Maybe we can start by introducing ourselves. Doug, do you want to start?

Doug: [00:00:46] Yes. I'm Doug. Familiar to regular listeners to the Onlinification Pod. I'm a content creator at Zooma. And, yeah, work with this podcast a lot.

Alex: [00:00:56] I'm Alex. I also work with this podcast as a co-host, and also content creator at Zooma and create all types of content, audio and text and video.

Doug: [00:01:15] I feel bad because I said, I'm the host and you said you're a co-host. Yeah, I should say I'm a co-host. Really, I don't want people to think there's like a hierarchy or anything like that.

Alex: [00:01:26] No, but most people know probably about our fight about this.

Doug: [00:01:32] Yeah, yeah. We've taken this on the pod before.

Alex: [00:01:34] Which was triggered by Anders. When I was on parental leave.

Doug: [00:01:40] But we're friends again now.

Alex: [00:01:42] Yeah.

Niyat: [00:01:45] And my name is Niyat. I'm also part of the content team, and I also work a bit with the podcast, mostly behind the scenes, helping to edit. And today I have the pleasure to have the hosts here on the podcast and interviewing them about podcasting.

So yeah, my first question to you, Alex, is we're doing this while, so how did it all start and why have we decided to do the Onlinification Pod?

Alex: [00:02:16] Yeah, so it started I think in 2020, end of January, we came up with the idea that we were actually curious about what it would take to produce a podcast, the recording, editing and distributing a podcast. So as we often do when we are curious about something, we start to experiment within Zooma. And the end goal is really to become experts at it so that we can help our customers do what we test. So we started planning everything at the end of January, and then that pandemic spread out and we started to work from home. So just, before we recorded the first episode. We start to work from home. So so from that first day, we have recorded remotely like we do today. So lately, when we have come back to our office now we are learning how to do it good in the studio that we have created at Zooma. And the purpose of the podcast is to talk about onlinification and all related to modernising and building an online presence for a company.

Niyat: [00:03:50] Yes. Great. And Doug you have any experience or learnings that you want to share with our listeners?

Doug: [00:03:58] Yeah, there's some stuff we've covered on the pod before that maybe people could figure out for themselves, but stuff like, you know, before we started, we recorded like 10 or 15 episodes, edited them all, had them already. Um, that's good to do. Rather than trying to cram in recordings every week, um, and not have any buffer, you know, if you're planning on releasing it regularly, of course, things like that. But um, one thing that I think we learned and that we didn't think would be as difficult at the beginning is promoting the podcast because we're kind of used to promoting content like our articles and guides and the site and stuff. But I think it's not quite as easy with podcasts because, you know, people only have. I don't know about you guys, but maybe like five or six podcasts you listen to regularly. So if you have a podcast, you know, you're trying to break into that little group of podcasts that they already listen to. And that's quite tricky compared to like an article that you write that you want to get found through Google. You know, people are just going to search for a term and hopefully, your article will appear there. So it's different with podcasts, both because there's a lot of competition and. And also, I don't really think many people. Find new podcasts to listen to through search is either through like word of mouth or, you know, social media or. Maybe in like their podcast app when you see related podcasts about specific topics. So yeah, that's been quite tricky. And the learning which you asked me about and before I went off on a tangent that we uh, found works well is to kind of bring in guests to the podcast who have kind of a network of their own. Um, so we had an episode with Linda Gårdlöv, who's the CEO of a translation agency we work with, and it was a really good episode because she had like, uh, you know, perspective on translation and stuff that we don't have internally at Zooma, but also because, you know, she shared the podcast, she, you know, let people know that she was on it and stuff. And by doing that, we kind of got into. You know, I guess in that case, the LinkedIn feeds of a lot of people who didn't know Zooma since before and found the podcast that way and then ended up listening to the podcast. So. So yeah, that would be my main thing that I've realised that I didn't know before we started that it's, it's really hard to actually get people to listen and you have to kind of do it in a slightly different way to what you're used to.

Niyat: [00:06:48] Yes. And Alex, do you have some tips for companies that want to maybe start a podcast?

Alex: [00:06:57] Yeah. The tip is really to... I mean if you are curious about starting a podcast, read a lot of there are a lot of tips and guides out there on how to start a podcast. And that's what we did when we started. We're being curious about what it would take, so we knew kind of a lot when we started because we have researched and we knew that it takes a lot of time with editing and recording and find the right material and equipment, find a good platform to record on and so on. So. Yeah. If you really want to start a podcast, put reserve time for that. One main learning that I didn't think of before was that it's so easy to repurpose content. So. I think more and more companies should try to have a podcast as their core content-generating machine. If that's the inner circle, then based on those discussions you can create articles based on the discussions you can create short video clips. You can as we do promote it on YouTube, for example. So it's not only the audio and when you create content, it's often even if you create like an article, written article, it's always starts with a discussion with an expert or, or with colleagues about the topic. So record those topics and make a podcast out of it.

Niyat: [00:08:46] Doug is gone.

Niyat: [00:08:48] Hello.

Doug: [00:08:50] Hi. Sorry. I don't know what happened in the window. Just crushed. 

Alex: [00:08:54] And that's a tip for our listeners as well. Like now Doug disappears and he has a bad connection. When we recorded over Zoom in the beginning, that was hard to edit, but now we use Zencastr, which records these files on our local devices. So when we gather all the files, we will get no disturbance.

Doug: [00:09:19] Yeah, that made life a lot easier because we used to use Zoom and sometimes someone would say something really good, but their internet would be a bit rubbish in the middle. So we just had to cut that entire sentence because we lost the bit in the middle, which is really, really painful. So then Zencastr is definitely worth the, I don't know, $20 a month or something that we pay for it. Um, yeah. And I think kind of quality, in general, is another learning. I don't know what you think, Alex, but I think. Like you should be able to listen to the podcast and it should be enjoyable to listen to. But I think people get hung up a lot on having like really quality, you know? And I think the audio quality should be good, but maybe you don't need to. That doesn't need to be something that stops you from doing a podcast, right? If you think, Oh, well, we don't have expensive microphones in a permanent studio in the office, so we can't do it, you know?

Alex: [00:10:17] No, exactly.

Doug: [00:10:20] We have a lot of guests who just use the webcam mic. And, you know, it's you wouldn't record like a radio show through them or something, but you can hear what they say and it works out all right in the end usually.

Alex: [00:10:31] Yeah, just get started testing and then you can improve the quality over time and so on.

Doug: [00:10:37] And then you can buy all the stuff.

Alex: [00:10:39] Yeah.

Niyat: [00:10:42] Yes. And besides our podcasts, we are also offering a podcast service. So, Doug and Alex, do you want to maybe explain a bit more about what this offering is about?

Doug: [00:10:58] Sure. Two different approaches that we decided on are currently up on the site and one of them is kind of aimed to get people started, basically. So, you know, before you start, you get like a kind of list of, you know, stuff that you should get for recording, whether that's microphones or like Zencastr, for example, depending on what you need. We help out with the planning of the topics, the guests and stuff, kind of in the same way we help customers with content on their site. You know, we do all that planning and booking and stuff. Do a bit of training around hosting and things. And then when it comes to the actual recording, we help. We do the recording and the editing and all the setup for the distribution of the first ten episodes, distribution on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and stuff. And then with that, the promotion and place for the podcast have a presence on your site as well. So that's kind of basically. The idea is to you get over the first hurdle of actually starting with a podcast and maybe not knowing exactly what you're doing. You know, we kind of help out in that beginning stage with the final goal being that. After those ten episodes are released, you'll know enough to carry on by yourself, basically. So that's one option. Alex, I don't know if you want to take the other option.

Alex: [00:12:28] Yeah. So the other option is called 'hand it over to Zooma', and that's targeted companies who either have a podcast today but don't feel like they have the time to constantly create the content. So what we do then is we help the companies to do monthly planning of the topics and what guests to invite. And we can also assist in this offering like that we are the host helping ghost hosts, I would say, and we do the recording, editing, and distribution. And also create promotion teasers, the video on social media and publish transcriptions and write the article per episode. So as I mentioned before, it's it takes a lot of time around podcast production. And this offering is really to help companies focus more on the quality of the content rather than everything around it. So to say.

And the package that Doug explained gets started when. That cost from SEK 85,000 and you get ten published episode. And as I mentioned before, based on each podcast episode, you can do so many other things. So it's really a good start to get a library of content, which you then can create videos from or new articles. And it's a very efficient way of creating content, I would say.

Doug: [00:14:32] Yeah, or maybe even if you're not planning on continuing after those ten episodes, you know, if you just want like there's a lot of podcasts now that do like seasons, kind of like a TV show, you know, and they just release ten episodes at once and you know, that's it. Maybe do another one the next year or something like that. That could be an option, you know, if you just feel that you want to have a podcast, but you're not necessarily wanting to have a new one every single week for the rest of time, you know, it could be a good option.

Alex: [00:15:00] And since we are starting work from the office again, we have installed a studio - a podcast studio at Fredsgatan 1, at our Zooma office and that's where the customers use this package, can access the studio and record everything from there. There we have all the equipment needed and so on. You can get good quality from the start.

Niyat: [00:15:28] So, what are the differences between recording in a studio vs. recording remotely?

Alex: [00:15:46] There are some differences. I like both formats actually. If you watch this, you can actually be part in our conversation. We speak directly to our screens and when I follow these kinds of conversations on YouTube, for example, it sometimes feels like I'm in the call. In the studio, of course, it's designed for optimise the audio quality and so on. So that is of course good quality insurance to record from there. And it's also easy when everything is installed. You can just go in there, have an idea and then press record and create your content.

Niyat: [00:16:36] Yes.

Alex: [00:16:37] Say that if there are any listeners who thinking about creating a podcast and so on, you can email us or contact Zooma whether you would like to test recording one episode from the office and we can find a way to help you there.

Niyat: [00:16:55] That sounds great. Good! Thank you both for today.

Alex: [00:17:01] Thank you.

Doug: [00:17:02] No worries. Thank you.

Niyat: [00:17:03] Bye bye.

Alex: [00:17:04] Bye. Bye.

Doug: [00:17:04] Bye bye. See you later.