Level Up Your Career With Podcasting

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Published 3 years ago
Updated 3 years ago

Learn in public and creating content is a big part of developer life nowadays and one way to quickly get confidence on sharing what you know and talking in public is by recording a podcast.

A podcast gives you full control of what you are saying and how that will be received by the audience, and also can help you pursue that personal brand growth. So, what do you need to start? and, more important how?

[0:00] Matías Hernández: Hey, what if, is there a way to share your thoughts, the thing you have in mind, that's words you want to put out in the world, that is easy as to speak? What if it's through a media that is easy to consume, to share, and natural to use?

[0:19] I'm Matías. I'm a podcaster. I have two podcasts, "Café con Tech" and "Control Remoto." I'm a father. I build things. I teach things. I write things.

[0:30] Welcome to "Level up Your Career with Podcasting." We will talk about podcasting, what it is, and why that can be good for you. First, let's start by what the hell is podcast. It is, what I think the more intimate way of sharing your voice. It's just a collection of audio recordings available on demand that you record at your house, at your home, and your studio, whatever, and you can then consume through any possible device.

[1:01] In tech world, there is a lot of fun around podcasting. There is really good shows with really well-known hosts, like "React Podcast" with Michael Chan, "Syntax" with Wes Bos and Scott Tolinski, "Undefined" podcast with Ken Wheeler, "Compressed.fm" with Amy Dutton and James Q Quick, "CodeNewbie" podcast, "Ladybug" podcast, and in Spanish, too [laughs] [non-English speech] .

[1:33] What can podcasts do for me or, in this case, for you? There is a lot of things. At this point of time, the tech world has been hit by a storm of content. Content has become a really good way to do networking, to be known, and to share what you know, even to share what you are learning. Podcasts can help you with that.

[2:01] The audience out there is big, and it's a really intimate audience. Hearing the voice of someone in your ears most of time is a really intimate experience. It's the natural way that humans communicate, by just hearing.

[2:20] This big audience out there can create a really nice personal brand. Why you want a personal brand? You can do network. It's create authority. It can become as a badass portfolio or even as a side hustle.

[2:36] There is a lot of podcasts out there. Some of them has earned a lot of money like Joe Rogan. Apple is creating a lot of things for podcast applications, same as a Spotify. Even Facebook is coming to the podcasting world.

[2:53] There is a lot of podcasts out there. Why do you want to create another one? That is the same question as why there are so many brands of water. Go out there recall, put your thoughts, your learning, your mind into the world.

[3:11] Why do you want to build a personal brand anyways? This is a real personal decision. This is the thing that most of the people is trying to get now because it's helping you become trustable. It helps you to show the people that you know something. Then, creates a lot of network.

[3:35] Even you can create that network of friends or professional things. A personal brand is the way you share what you know and what you are with the world. A personal brand can also create a big impact in your career, will help you to show what you know, and what you do.

[3:55] By sharing that, by speaking, it can create this feeling of knowing better. It's really different to share things in text mode, like write an article, than speaking about that. Speaking is more natural. It's more intimate. It's more human. It can help you increase your reach and helps you become knowable.

[4:23] Why podcast is perfect for this personal brand building? Because as I already mentioned, there is a few things that are more personal than the sound of the human voice.

[4:35] Podcast for personal brand. That is one thing. The goal for the personal brand can be anything you want. Why? Because create intimacy, it's easy to consume.

[4:48] Most of the people really listens on some podcast. You put your headphones on and you can do anything else like driving or going to work out in the gym, and in your house, cooking, I don't know, whatever. You can be consuming the content that the podcast is sharing with you.

[5:08] You can create a network with a lot of people. You can even build a community around your podcast and share knowledge. Everyone has something to share. Everyone knows something and that is the particular thing. You know something in your own way and sharing that through voice can be a really, really good experience.

[5:32] I convince you to start a podcast and but there is a lot of questions, still, right? What type of podcast is right for you? You need to find a type of show that fits your personality. There is a variety of shows. The most common kind of categories or collection are interview like where you have one or two guests and do questions.

[5:54] The conversational one, where you have a co-host, and you just talk about some topic about some experience. There are others like educational topics where you share like Master Class through audio. There are ones like solo podcast where your talk alone and share thoughts and storytelling like a more theater aspect of life.

[6:20] What type of show is right for you? That depends on your goal. That depends on what you want to share and how you feel comfortable. There is no rule at all about you have to choose a type of show. It's just because it's easier to categorize things and maybe build something around that category that you should choose one. You can do anything you want.

[6:44] There are shows that are really, really awesome shows that have different types of episodes. For example, Syntax.fm from Wes Bos and Scott Tolinksi have shows that are longer like an hour and then they have another type that is just 15 minutes. It depends on what you want to share and how you want to record.

[7:04] OK, so, how can I start? To start something you just do it? There is no perfect moment to start. There is no perfect set, there is no perfect time. If you're waiting for the perfect time to start, you will never do it. You have the motivation, you want to do it, go for it. Maybe you are thinking about the equipment, right? Mics and editors, audio editors and all of that, but don't think any equipment yet.

[7:36] First, think about the type of show, what the issues and then now you know do you want to do a conversational show. What content, what you want to talk about? What are the things that motivate you to share? After that, what is your role? Where you want to do this? There are different goals to do this. You need to define what is the reason to start recording.

[8:02] If you don't have a particular goal and you just wanted to do it for fun, that's a goal, indeed. You need to have something to keep you going. Why you want to do this and how long you need to do this in terms of time of episodes, and in terms of longevity of the show, and there is no absolute truth. There is no rule of thumb. This is a open space for creativity.

[8:32] There are shows that are really short like five minutes per episode and around every day for years. Other just long for a few months, others, have one episode a month, one episode a week. Whatever suits you better and whatever suits better your audience. You need to know a little your audience or your target audience to whom you will be speaking and then you can decide what is better. Maybe one a week.

[9:04] The most common scenarios are weekly episode for a season that is around four or six months, then some rest and then go back again. Each episode is around 30 to 60 minutes. That is kind of the common ground.

[9:23] Now we can start talking about equipment. You can spend a lot of money here and you can learn a lot about mics, about audio interface, about editing software but you can start with what you have. You can start with just your earphones and a simple mic, like, for mic, you can even record with your phones using some services.

[9:47] If you want to go for the route of buying some equipment, there are a good but cheap make. The Samsung Q2u that is just a USB mic that have really good sound but also can grow with you because you have an XLR cable. That is a good option. Then, you need a laptop or a computer. Any laptop can do it. It doesn't matter. Editing audio is not power-hungry as video so you're good.

[10:21] Editing software. You need some software to edit yourself because you maybe will do something wrong and you want to cut out. The more simple and accessible software out there is Audacity. If you have a Mac, there is a software that comes with MAC, GarageBand. That works awesome.

[10:40] There is no rule here for editing software. I have another software to edit my podcast. It's Descript. That basically allows you to edit your audio by typing words or removing words from a text document. It's awesome. I completely recommend that. There is free software out there like Audacity.

[11:02] Now, it's time to start recording and plan some episode. It's a good thing to have a bunch of episodes and publish all of them like three in a row or something like that. Again, there is no rule of thumb. There are people that record every week and publish every week after that so it's kind of in the wheel.

[11:24] There are other ones that record an entire season. Then, publish this entire season at once. You can record a few ones. Then, start publishing and recording afterwards. There is no rule of thumb. There is no requirement here, but it's good to have some episodes planned so the content hamster doesn't catch you.

[11:47] Now, just start recording. If you were to go out, let's create some hype. Yes, talk with the people. Think of your future audience. This will help you to find out what your audience can be interested, but also will create commitment. Like you just said in public, "I will publish a podcast," so people will be expecting your outcome. It's a good thing. Create commitment out there.

[12:13] Now, it's time to ship. It's time to play for real. What you need to ship, there is another requirement, how you can get the audio just recorded in your computer into the phones of the people. To do that, you need to use some services. You need to host your audio files somewhere.

[12:33] You can do it by yourself, but it's easier if you just hire some service to do that. Choose a podcast hosting. They will store your audio, store your show notes, and anything else that is required like the podcast artwork, the transcript, or something like that. They usually create the RSS feed.

[12:58] Now, it's time to go to the aggregators. Spotify, Apple, and other works are aggregators. They don't store your audio files. They just read your audio files and put into the devices. That process is done through your hosting that offers RSS feed.

[13:19] Most of the hosting out there will give you easy way to ship to the aggregators. It's important to be at at least two of the bigger ones, Spotify and Apple. Now, you're ready. Just upload your audio files. Click publish. Go out there.

[13:35] The most important piece here, be yourself. Even if you have only 10, 20, or 100 listeners, what matters is that they are 100 human beings willing to hear what you have to say. Be yourself. Be open. Be honest. Be kind. Share whatever you're learning, whatever you already know. People is excited to hear you. Go out there. Be yourself.

[14:03] Find me on Twitter as @matiasfha. My website is here. There are my two podcast, cafecon.tech and controlremoto.io. Subscribe to my newsletter in Spanish, microbytes.dev. Thank you.

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