My Recent Podcast Launch Process
Transcript:
Hello! I recently launched a true crime podcast called, “Outline of A Murder,” and I wanted to share with you the behind the scenes process just in case you’re wanting to launch your own podcast. But let me give you a disclaimer—it doesn’t have to be this involved. You can literally get a cheap microphone to plug into your smart phone, record it using Anchor FM, and upload. Bam! You’re done, which is perfect for busy business owners. But maybe your podcast idea is a little bit more involved with scripts, sponsors, website, and social media. If that describes you, let’s jump right in!
The first step
I first had to decide if I wanted to do a serial or episodic podcast. A serial podcast is like a television series. You have a set number of episodes along with a beginning and an ending date. You might release your series once a year at a set time or several times a year. With a serial podcast, you record them all at once and either release all at once or during that set time. This is great if you don’t want your life taken up with needing to podcast once a week, and you want to build up anticipation for the next season.
An episodic podcast is where you release a podcast once a week, every two weeks, or once a month all year. This podcast is an episodic podcast that I release weekly. It’s a great option if you know you’ll consistently create content. If you know you won’t, either decide on once a month or a serial podcast. I feel that some podcasts need to be episodic like business podcasts whereas story telling podcasts like true crime do very well as serials. But I don’t see any reason why a business couldn’t release a serial podcast on a particular topic or theme either. In fact, I might need to explore that.
The main thing you need to know is that your podcast is a marketing tool. It’s a way to position yourself as an expert, build rapport, and get people to your website or business.
I chose serial for my true crime podcast for several reasons: 1) I knew that it would be an intense experience diving into true crime both emotionally and time wise; 2) the amount of research would be a full-time job and take focus away from my business; 3) I wanted to build anticipation between seasons, and 4) I wanted to do “mini-series” in between seasons so that I could control my own workload and give our listeners a bonus.
The next step
Once I had that decided, I next needed to decide if I wanted to do outlines or scripts. I’m very comfortable public speaking because I do it all of the time, and I use both outlines, my memory, and scripts. I had an idea that I’d use a loose scripts since true crime and so many details to remember plus I was recording with my sister and mom. I decided not to have them go by a script but that I would use one and provide room for discussion. It worked perfectly and flowed very naturally. If we were covering topics or cases that I knew extremely well, I’d do an outline. But I’m sure you can imagine the amount of details that had to be kept straight for a true crime podcast. I really didn’t know for sure until I started my research and writing that I’d use a script. You’ll find when you sit down to prepare that you’ll naturally gravitate toward your own style.
ONLINE PRESENCE
I got started researching the cases I’d picked out and typing scripts. In between that very intense work, both emotionally and time wise, I researched how I wanted my website and social media to look. I researched other true crime websites and social media accounts to decide what I liked and didn’t like, how they set up their content and subscriptions programs, and the general feel each website had. At this point, I’d already chosen our main image for both the website and podcast image and the color theme of black, white, red, yellow with some teal thrown in. I also decided that I wanted some resources to help those in dangerous relationships and situations. I started building the website and as I built it saw areas I wanted to add like a contact to suggest cases and our bonus subscription content called, “After Show Convo.” That happens. As you write your scripts or build your site, you see areas you can improve or things you can add to enhance the user experience.
I then decided on my social media strategy. The color theme would, of course, be consistent across all platforms and based on the website so that when people saw a post, they’d immediately think, “Outline of A Murder.” But I needed categories. I decided on the episode post (of course), true crime quotes, favorite things like new podcasts, television shows, books, etc., funny clips called Outline Outtakes from our zoom sessions, resources, sound clips from killers, unusual facts or take a guess posts about crime and killers, and then some of our pictures sprinkled in from our photo shoot. I then took the graphics I created in Canva and arranged them in Planoly so I could make sure the overall feel and look was consistent with what I had in mind. You can see what that looks like on Instagram @outlineofamuder. All that I posted on Instagram gets posted on Facebook as well.
During this time of researching and writing scripts, building my website and creating my social media content, I also wrote all the blog post copy and my social media copy. That was very time intensive, but I knew that I’d have my hands full once the podcast was recorded with editing.
Equipment
For this podcast, I use my good ole Yeti microphone and record directly into my MacBook using Quicktime until I learned about Zencastr. I love, love it! It’s a website that allows you to record one or more into different tracks. This is especially important if you are interviewing guests or doing a podcast like mine with three people because you can edit each track and try to get the sound quality as close to the same as possible.
But when we recorded ours, I didn’t know about Zencastr. I had researched different pieces of equipment for good sound quality, but found that my old Olympus hand recorder sounded better than anything else I purchased, so I returned those and used that. During recording I literally propped it up using a chip bag clip. High tech for sure!
My favorite audio editor is Audacity. I usually normalize all tracks to -3 dB and then insert my intro, outro, any affiliate clips, and special offers. We chose our theme song from Audio Jungle, which I added to the intro and outro. I also recorded my cat’s meow for the outro because our production “company” is called Mr. Joseph Productions. Yep, I love my black cat.
the recording
We had decided as a family (hubby, my son and his wife) to make this a family event. My sister had scouted locations for our photo shoot before hand, and my daughter-in-love said that she would take the photos (she’s talented like that). I had a specific look in mind. Black, jeans, and red lipstick with attitude.
We picked three days to record nine hours of podcasts. In between we had a facial, watched true crime, and had a huge taco family meal where we had all bought taco shirts and surprised everyone with them that day. It was so fun! I highly recommend if you do a serial podcast with friends or family to make it fun and memorable. We have plans to keep this a yearly event.
For our bonus content called, “After Show Convo,” we decided to do that through Zoom, which was great because I was able to capture some great content that I call, “Outline Outtakes,” of my mom and sister being…well…my mom and sister. Lol! They have great chemistry and are hilarious. I’d say all in all we spent 20 hours recording content.
The launch
By the time we recorded our episodes, I had the website ready to go (just waiting for the audio files) and all my social media accounts and posts ready. I knew the editing and all of the final details would be intense and time consuming. I wasn’t wrong. In fact, it was a bit more intense and time consuming than I expected. I had to listen to each episode and add sound effects throughout. I then inserted voice clips of the killers whenever possible before along with the intro, outro, and resource “offer.” I enjoyed it immensely, but it was a lot of work on top of running my business. I also had to figure out Patreon, Anchor FM, and tweak the website a bit. I had a goal to launch the podcast by October 1st. I launched two days early. I then ran a Facebook ad for two weeks at five dollars a day. I plan on running regular ads later, but for now my marketing budget is for my business.
future plans
That’s the gist of the process. Of course, there are many more details that I’ll probably share and even how-to’s later. But I wanted to give you an overall picture of launching a podcast. There are a couple of pitfalls I didn’t expect.
One was true crime withdrawals. So we decided to do themed mini-series between our main series’ release each fall on topics that maybe don’t fit within our main series. All of our episodes must fit within our focus of breaking down crime to help others recognize danger signs and avoid being a victim. And, yet, we are true crime addicts and have several crimes we’d like to discuss that don’t fit into that idea like serial killers, family annihilators, very, very old cases, local cases, and more. For 2021 we decided to kick off our mini-series with family annihilators. I’ll start working on the scripts this year, and then we’ll record them early next year using Zoom.
The other pitfall was what to post on social media with no new content from new episodes. Doing a mini-series will help. But having my social media strategy decided from the start has helped with that.
Overall it was the most rewarding and tiring podcast process so far. I’ve had two podcasts for three years—my business and my ministry, but this one was my dream come true. I’d love to grow it into a cult following that makes money as well as helps others escape or avoid being victimized. But our passion for true crime will keep us going for years to come.
