Pod Paste Process – Pod Paste

March 28, 2020April 13, 2021

Planning & Strategy (Pre-Production) | The Pod Paste Process Part 1

Read Time - 3 minutes

The planning and strategy phase is Step 1 of The Pod Paste Production Process. Please go back to the introductory overview here to familiarise yourself with the full process. Alternatively, you can dive right into this part and figure it out as you go. We don’t mind either way as long as you get something out of this!

Pre Production – The critical work before you hit record

Ancient Asian cultures knew that the podcast pre-production stage was key, even before audio recordings existed. The Chinese philosopher, Confucius once said, “A man who does not plan long ahead, will find trouble at his door.”

What if a builder/carpenter built a house without drawings/blueprints from an architect? I am pretty sure there would be mayhem, wasted time, burned money, and a lot of stress.

What if a beat reporter for the local paper randomly wrote about whatever they wanted without any outline, topics, or interesting angles? I am pretty sure there would be a lot of re-writes, burned time, wasted energy, and much anxiety.

There is a parallel with this, podcasting and any media format. Becoming a successful podcaster and podcast host has a lot to do with the ability to plan ahead. Usually, the higher the quality of time spent on the planning and strategy phase, the better the interview, the episode, the season, and the whole podcast.

Below I’ll tell you a few tips and tricks that we’ve learned that help us immensely in the pre-production process.

March 27, 2020April 13, 2021

Episode Ideation & Pitching (Pre-Production) | The Pod Paste Process Part 2

Read Time - 2 minutes

The episode ideation & pitching phase is Step 2 of The Pod Paste Production Process. Please go back to the introductory overview here to familiarise yourself with the full process. Alternatively, you can dive right into this part and figure it out as you go. We don’t mind either way as long as you get something out of this!

Picture this: You just finished recording seven episodes of the first season of your first podcast series. Things were going great until the guests from episodes 8-10 cancel (yes, somehow all three of them cancelled!).

Now the flow of the whole season is thrown up in the air. But, you don’t want to lose momentum by booking random people last minute. What’s a podcaster to do?

This happens to the best of weekly podcasts and there are many simple solutions;

March 26, 2020April 13, 2021

Recording | The Pod Paste Process Part 3

Read Time - 6 minutes

The recording phase is step 3 of the Pod Paste Production Process. Please go back to the introductory overview here to familiarise yourself with the full process. Alternatively, you can dive right into this part of the series and figure it out as you go.

You spend a month prepping for your interviews, scheduling guests, and choosing your theme song. You’ve started a few mockups for your podcast artwork. To top it off, you came up with a couple of quick and witty tagline elevator pitches for those networking moments at the latest Podcast Movement Event.

It’s time to record which should be the fun and easy part. The interview hasn’t started and you realise your famous Instagram influencer guest isn’t speaking much during the warm-up chat. You chalk it up to nerves.

The record button is hit but your guest is a tad confused as to how to answer your questions with the correct energy. They begin to get slightly annoyed and give you one-word answers. The interview ends and you have that feeling that it was average at best and boring at most.

You are dejected and scared to listen back and make edits due to the negative events during the recording. But you soldier on because you are a bleeding heart optimist and say, “It can’t be that bad!”

You listen, and it is that bad. On the first listen back, you start hearing and noticing things that you didn’t during the recording, like;

March 25, 2020April 13, 2021

Content Editing (Post-Production) | The Pod Paste Process Part 4

Read Time - 3 minutes

The content editing phase is Step 4 of The Pod Paste Production Process. Please go back to the introductory overview here to familiarise yourself with the full process.

Alternatively, you can dive right into this part and figure it out as you go. We don’t mind either way as long as you get something out of this!

Imagine wearing your favourite shirt that is half a size too small or too big? You would still wear it, right?

Or taking a beautiful photo of you and your friends with lighting that’s not so great. You wouldn’t delete it, right?

This is similar in the post-production process after recording a podcast. Just because there are a few audible blips and slip-ups doesn’t mean you need to throw the baby away with the bathwater. There is a fix for that.

In this article, I’ll be touching broadly about content editing. We’ll cover points around what we at Pod Paste like to do, why we do them, and how they are applied. This is where some or even all of the following creative services are used to help enhance the episode flow and listenability;

March 24, 2020April 13, 2021

Audio Editing (Post-Production) | The Pod Paste Process Part 5

ocean surf barrel waves by jeremy bishop

Read Time - 3 minutes

Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

The audio sweetening phase is Step 5 of The Pod Paste Production Process. Please go back to Step 4 – content editing to familiarise yourself with the critical process that comes before this step. Or go back to the overview and start from the beginning.

Alternatively, you can dive right into this part and figure it out as you go. We don’t mind either way as long as you get something out of this!

Some people love having a clean house, and some people don’t. You can choose to live in filth, mess, and disorganisation. Alternatively, you can have things neat, tidy, and sanitary so that when you want to do something, you can clearly see the path ahead.

You can pay someone to do this, or you can do it yourself. Some people find this therapeutic while others look at it as a masochistic activity that they want to get over and done with and reap the rewards of the final product – a clean house.

Bonus points, if someone visits, they will feel more comfortable at your house as they hang out in your living room or use your bathroom.

The same could be said with editing audio. You can choose to do it or not. You may want to do it yourself or have someone else do it. And finally, you can choose to have your fans /customers suffer through a messy audio listening experience, or clean it up for them. This allows them to, metaphorically, sit comfortably in your living room (the podcast).

In this article, I’ll be touching broadly about the audio sweetening post-production process (or the editing process as some people say). We’ll cover points around what we at Pod Paste like to do, why we do them, and how they are applied.

This is where some or even all of the following technical services are used;

March 23, 2020April 13, 2021

Publishing & Promotion | The Pod Paste Process Part 6

Read Time - 6 minutes

Photo by Greyson Joralemon

The publishing and promotion phase is Step 5 of The Pod Paste Production Process. Please go back to the introductory overview here to familiarise yourself with the full process.

Alternatively, you can dive right into this part and figure it out as you go. We don’t mind either way as long as you get something out of this!

Mistakes can often be avoided if you double-check your perceptions

“Carpenters and builders have learned to avoid making mistakes the hard way, thereby ruining valuable and costly material. Cut the wood improperly, and the piece is unusable. The saying measure twice cut once plays in their heads every time they are about to rip into a new sheet of plywood or to position their saw on a 2×4.

It is a constant reminder that they have one shot at getting it right, or it will cost time, money, and even reputation. Measuring twice means making sure that one has thought of all the things that could go wrong before acting or making a decision. That maxim applies to human resource professionals as well.”
— Taken from Dale James Dwyer PhD

You’ve done all the planning and pre-production. You booked those hard to reach guests for interviews. You recorded in an excellent sounding studio space that was well treated and soundproofed. You even had a professional engineer come in to mix, master, and audio sweeten your episode. Now it’s time to send it to the world.

Did you do your due diligence and double or even triple-check that everything is in its right place? When the world hears your podcast, will your audio waves make the biggest splash they can?

Below I’ll share a few tips and tricks that should help you with the last step of the Pod Paste Production process – Publishing and Promotion. The areas we will cover are;

February 15, 2020April 13, 2021

The Pod Paste Process Overview

Read Time - 3 minutes

If you are thinking about creating a podcast, congratulations! Why congratulations? Well, besides the fact that podcasting is pretty damn cool, you have taken the first step into being a creator. Creators are cool because they are okay with failure. Failure is the only way to success. It’s like a scientist seeking data points to prove or disprove their hypothesis.

Outside of the creator/failure/success philosophical loop that we love to talk about here at Pod Paste, there is another element to creating. That element is the process. Most things that we like to do have a process whether you know it or not.

Within that process, there is usually consistency, habits, systems, templates, and routines. This process can be different for different people but we like to follow a tried and true process when we help people create their podcasts.

The Process

A super quick overview of each part is below and if you are interested we go into depth on each part in separate posts located at the end of this. Obviously, like most things in the world that we offer, you can go sequentially or bounce around a la carte style to whatever interests you.