Unlock the secrets to crystal-clear podcast audio that listeners can't resist – it's all in the technical finesse I, Kenneth Baucum, reveal in our latest episode. You'll discover the art of audio editing, where the simple snip and tuck can turn good content into audio gold. I dive into the essentials of cutting, trimming, layering, and rearranging recordings that will set your podcast apart, as well as my personal microphone techniques and environment setup tips to capture sound so immaculate, it's as if your listeners are right there with you.
Then, we chart the course to podcast stardom, outlining a blueprint for creating a show with the magnetic pull that keeps your audience hungry for more. By blending a consistent, familiar format with the spice of variety, such as engaging interviews and dynamic live call-ins, your show will be the talk of the town. We'll also navigate the realms of platform analytics for audience insights, monetization for an improved listening experience, and the craft of interviews that will have both your guests and listeners hanging on every word. Join us for this journey to podcast excellence, where your content creation game is set to level up.
Unlock the secrets to crystal-clear podcast audio that listeners can't resist – it's all in the technical finesse I, Kenneth Baucum, reveal in our latest episode. You'll discover the art of audio editing, where the simple snip and tuck can turn good content into audio gold. I dive into the essentials of cutting, trimming, layering, and rearranging recordings that will set your podcast apart, as well as my personal microphone techniques and environment setup tips to capture sound so immaculate, it's as if your listeners are right there with you.
Then, we chart the course to podcast stardom, outlining a blueprint for creating a show with the magnetic pull that keeps your audience hungry for more. By blending a consistent, familiar format with the spice of variety, such as engaging interviews and dynamic live call-ins, your show will be the talk of the town. We'll also navigate the realms of platform analytics for audience insights, monetization for an improved listening experience, and the craft of interviews that will have both your guests and listeners hanging on every word. Join us for this journey to podcast excellence, where your content creation game is set to level up.
you're listening to. The content is king with Kenneth Bauckham all right.
Speaker 2:
Hello friends and fellow content creators. My name is Kenneth Bauckham, here on the content is king, and thank you so much for joining us on this next episode. We've been talking a little bit through a class that I had previously taught, called the Podcast Primer. I did this at a local camera store, audio video store or, I'm sorry, photo and video store here in the Tulsa area, and what I want to do now is share some of the same things that I taught that class with you, and we're going to continue to dive in and grow on all of these topics as well. So, as I'm releasing these to you, just know we're going to keep on going deeper and deeper and deeper into each of these things and we're going to talk about all kinds of content. I'm going to bring in some special guests as well Photographers, videographers, commercial creators special guest as well photographers, videographers, commercial creators, social media managers and so so much more to help you learn and grow in all areas of content creation. Again, I know what I know and I know some of those things really really well, but I want to help you to understand how to build better content as well, and, of course, I'm going to grow right here along with you as we talk to our guests in a variety of different formats, whether it be interviews, some live Q&As, and things like that. What I want to do today, though, is go ahead and start to wrap up this podcast primer with the technical know-how session. We ended our previous episode talking a little bit about digital audio editing, and I want to kind of share that with you today as well and show you a few techniques that will help you out out. All right, so we're going to get into this episode and talk about some technical know-how, show you some tips and tricks and techniques to really help you with your editing process, and just how to do things a little bit better as you start your podcast or as you start your other content creation adventures. All right, here we go. We finished our last episode talking a little bit about audio editing. I can go into a lot more detail about that in a future episode, for right now, suffice to say that you can trim and cut and rearrange and layer all these different audio pieces together in order to create your podcast experience, and so I encourage you to play with different software. There's some free things available. There are some paid options available. So, whether you're using Audacity and trying to save your money for your microphones or something else, or whether you're using something like Adobe Audition and you have a little bit of extra budget to spend on the software and learn how to do some advanced techniques, feel free to take advantage of all of those things and grow your podcast to the biggest and best thing that it can be.
Speaker 2:
Now I want to start with something simple. I'm going to actually illustrate this for you live. For those of you watching you'll be able to see it. For those of you listening, I'm going to describe it All right. Here we go.
Speaker 2:
The very first thing that you'll notice as you are recording your podcast is that everything matters. We talked in a previous episode about the environment that you're in, what kind of acoustic treatment you may or may not need. We talked a little bit about the gear guide and we talked about microphones and what's important there. But now we're going to talk in this section. It's not just about having the right environment or the right gear, but it's how do you use that gear appropriately? All right, so I'm going to actually demonstrate to you real quick here. This is the Rode PodMic and it's connected to our Rodecaster Pro 2, both pieces of equipment that I absolutely love, and if you're looking to buy one or check it out more, I encourage you. Please check out the links on my website. They are affiliate links, so I do earn a little bit of commission from that purchase, but it doesn't make it any more expensive for you. It just helps me to be able to support the show and continue to bring this knowledge and expertise to you from myself and from all of our guests that are going to be on the show.
Speaker 2:
All right, so here we go with the mic. You can probably already notice, as I move around just a little bit, the sound changes as well, right. So as I come over here off to the side, you hear me a whole lot less as I move right back in front of the microphone. Again, here we are back to normal. I can do the same thing in the other direction as well, right. This microphone is designed for me to talk right into the front of it, and what's important is that I maintain a constant distance from the microphone. The more I move, the more I wiggle around in my chair. Not only will you maybe start to hear the chair noise, but you may also notice that as I move away and the microphone is a little bit quieter as I go into post-production and have to do some editing, you can also start to hear the air conditioner just a little bit. And you don't want to have to deal with all that stuff later on. What you want to do is have your recording right the first time. So as I get right up on this microphone, I happen to know the air conditioner is still running in the room, but because I'm up here, I'm letting the microphone do its job really well and that way my editing process also works really really well and I can eliminate those background noises easily.
Speaker 2:
Okay, so this is not a knock on the studio at all. I know they're probably going to be looking at this at some point. We're not knocking the studio at all. Every single studio has got an air conditioner. If it doesn't, it's probably very uncomfortable to record in. So what you have to do is you have to figure out am I going to adjust the thermostat and be a little bit warm, or am I going to use my microphone and my editing process correctly to be able to just ignore that noise? And so that's what we're going to do. We're going to focus on option number two.
Speaker 2:
Think about it like this you can use your hand as a great example to be able to maintain your distance. Whether it's three or four fingers is kind of up to you, but that's about the distance that you want, just enough that you can put those three fingers right in between. And mathematically it actually works that every time you double that distance you're also having the amount of sound that comes through. So I've got my three fingers right here. If I come back like this, I'm half that volume. If I do it again, I should be about half that volume again. Right, and I'm not talking any different. I'm just trying to explain to you how that works and you probably heard it and I'm hoping that you see it as well on camera here. So learning some of these basic techniques as far as how to use your microphone is a huge help. And then also in your editing software, learn some of those basic techniques to help you remove pauses, adjust volume levels and, of course, learning how to add music or sound effects to enhance your episodes. All of these things super, super important to building a great show For the photographers and videographers out there.
Speaker 2:
You're very familiar, I'm sure, with layers and how you can develop these different layers to have different things in your images, especially as you create, maybe compositions where you might have to maybe Photoshop a face from one image onto a different one, especially as you create, maybe, compositions where you might have to maybe Photoshop. You know, a face from one image onto a different one Happens all the time when you take pictures of families. Some kid somewhere in that image is gonna not be smiling when you take the picture, but everybody else was. So you take the one picture, you find a different one where he was smiling. You can kind of face swap just a little bit. And you can do the same thing with audio as well. I can remove the coughs, I can remove the sneezes, things like that, and I can also build those layers out to add music underneath, like I just did right there, or to add some sound effects or some intros and outros, like you've heard at the beginning and end of each of my episodes so far.
Speaker 2:
So I encourage you to learn how to use that software. I can always do a detailed training with you as well and I plan on doing some trainings right here on this podcast. You may want to keep an eye out for the subscriber only section, with the extensive deep dives and the more in-depth tutorials on how to do all of these different tips, tricks and techniques. All right, so I'm going to bring my laptop up here because I want to go through some of this just a little bit deeper with you. One of the other technical things to kind of keep an eye out for as you're building your podcast you need to learn how to distribute that podcast.
Speaker 2:
I can't tell you how many people have gotten all excited and said, hey, I'm getting ready to build my podcast, kenneth, and I want to know what to do next. I've already got it set up on Apple and I'm getting ready to upload my first episode and I'm like wait, you're uploading everything straight to Apple. I got an idea for you how about just upload it one time and it shows up not just on Apple but 18 other platforms as well, for free, right? Does that sound interesting to you? Do you like to do something for free? That's 18 times better than your original idea, all right? Well, hit me up and let's talk about Buzzsprout just a little bit. There's going to be a link in the description below and I want to share with you some more details about how this platform works as well. So you're going to be able to see these graphics at the link and then also in the video if you're watching live. But think about how you can upload something once and it show up to all of these places all at the same time.
Speaker 2:
Provide yourself a hosting service. It's essentially a website dedicated to your podcast and it can do all kinds of things for you. Now, I love buzzsprout. There's lots of other platforms out there that do this as well. Um, so feel free to choose the one that fits you the best, whether it be with the pricing they offer, the storage limits, the analytics and reports they provide, and maybe even how they can monetize your content, how they can help you, whether it's through earning money from running other people's ads on your show, whether it's helping you out by building your show through yourself, running ads to bring in new listeners, or also you know, you know subscriptions and things like I offer here on this show all part of the podcasting platform and helping you to be able to grow your audience and your show to reach new limits.
Speaker 2:
Right, we've already done the hard work. We've talked about the podcast fundamentals. We've worked through those things and we've worked through our gear. We've worked through. Well, I guess we're doing some of the technical know-how right now. What was the other part? Let me look it up. This is my presentation. You'd think I'd have it memorized. There are five major sections. We were talking about the podcast fundamentals, the gear guide. Technical know-how is where we're at right now, so I didn't actually miss anything. I'm just tripping over my words a little bit, because that's fun sometimes. So, under technical know-how again, check out the reports that are available from that podcasting platform and learn how to use those to know and understand your audience just a little bit better.
Speaker 2:
All right, now here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to kind of do a two-in-one with this episode. We're going to move right on into one of our last points here about building a great show, and again, this is what this entire podcast is going to be about. So you're going to hear more about this in every episode. So this is kind of just the quick rundown. Right, you want to develop a consistent format and that can mean kind of different things to different people, but this format, the structure, is going to help provide some continuity and familiarity for your audience. So in my case, I'm going to have an intro and an outro with every episode and I'm going to be talking right here in the middle to help you learn and grow. But it's not going to be just me, so there's going to be some variation. I will have some guests, sometimes some interviews, sometimes some live call-ins.
Speaker 2:
Some of these features may be exclusive to our subscription audience. Some of them may be available to you later as our regular free viewing audience. And again, I don't think any less of the free people that are listening than I do the paid ones. It's just a matter of I've got bills to pay as a content creator myself, so just trying to help make things work there and I want to help bring you the best content as well. So sometimes we have to pay to bring people in. Sometimes people pay because they want to be able to be in a great place and help other people learn, right. So it kind of works both ways. But that's monetization. That's a whole other show, right there.
Speaker 2:
Right, we want you to develop a consistent format. This is going to be a thing that really helps you to grow your audience and grow your show when people know what to expect. They know well, they know what to expect. That's kind of self-explanatory, isn't it? You're building a consistent process and procedure, just like you're doing for your business. Maybe, if you're an entrepreneur or a small business owner, you've got to have those processes so that you know how to run your business, so you can show other people here's how the business runs, so you can train new people, because one day don't you want to retire and be able to live off of this legacy that you've built? It's the same thing with a podcast, except for most people are not going to retire off their podcast, unless you're like, I don't know, joe Rogan or something like that. But you want to build that consistent format. People will know what to expect so they can keep coming back and learning and growing from the same things over and over. Expect so they can keep coming back and learning and growing from the same things over and over. All right, I'm going to grab my laptop again. Sorry for kind of going back and forth on that. That probably looks weird to everybody on YouTube.
Speaker 2:
Here's the next thing as you do work on your podcast and your format, maybe you do want to do some interviews, or maybe you want to think of a better way to speak yourself. You might work on those interview skills that you have. Prepare for each of your episodes, do some thorough research and create thoughtful questions for those guests that are going to be on your show. It's super important to be able to have great questions that can help lead them into great answers, and we're going to practice that throughout this show. I'm going to do it myself because I feel like I should be doing what I'm helping you do, right. So we've got great tips. I'm going to start using those right here in front of you. We're going to learn how to do that.
Speaker 2:
Practice active listening as well. I'm kind of pretending to do that a little bit with you as well, kind of over-exaggerating, but as you're listening to people, don't just stare them down, okay. Don't just stare them down. That's rude. What you do is smile. If it's appropriate to smile, you can nod your head. Uh-huh, yep, yep. You know, don't be weird with it, don't be patronizing, but do some active listening, engage with your guests and create compelling conversations. Um, there's times and places where it's okay to interrupt them Like hang on, let's go back, let's dig into that item a little bit more. So do that, enjoy that time with your guests and dig into the content and help them have a great time as well.
Speaker 2:
And then, really the last one on this and I'm hoping that you're enjoying this so far in this episode series as well is create those engaging intros and outros. You have a very short time period, when people first find your podcast, or find your episode to your podcast, to really hook the listeners and help them engage with your episode, continue listening and then leave with a lasting impression. So what you want to do is create a great intro, a great outro. This one for this show may change over time as we see what works and what doesn't work, with different aspects. We're going to try things. It's going to be different for me than it is for some of my customers and some of the people that I help, right, so what works for you may not work for me.
Speaker 2:
What works for me may not work for you, and that's part of the joy of being a content creator and learning how to grow your business with the content king, and I hope that these episodes will continue to be helpful to you. I know that some of these first few have been just a little bit shorter. We're going to start targeting kind of that 20 to 40 minute mark is really a great length for a podcast. It helps people get it in during the workout but also not necessarily have to stop in the middle of a podcast if they're running in between meetings and things like that. But we want to make great content here for you as well as teach you how to build great content as well. So tune back into the Content is King with myself, your host, kenneth Bauckham, and I look forward to our next interaction. Go out and make your content your crown.
Speaker 1:
Thank you for listening to the Content is King with Kenneth Bauckham. For subscriber-only premium content and bonus episodes, be sure to click the link in the description to join Now. Go, create and always be learning Bye.
