How to start a podcast: from the idea to the first episode

Plenty of people want to start a podcast and stall before the first episode. The questions pile up: what to talk about, which microphone to buy, how to record a guest who lives in another city, where the thing even gets uploaded. The good news is that most of those decisions can be made in a week, and the rest you learn as you go.

This guide goes through it in order, from the idea to the moment your first episode is live.

Step 1: why, and for whom

Before anything else, answer two questions for yourself. Why are you starting a podcast, and who is it for?

The "why" changes a lot. A podcast meant to bring clients to a business looks different from one meant to build your name in a field, and different again from one you make because you enjoy talking to interesting people. None of these is the right answer, but you should know yours, because it decides how much time you put in and what counts as success. If the show is part of a business, write down the business goal now, before episode one.

As for "for whom": "anyone interested in business" isn't an audience. "Small business owners starting to market on social media" is. The clearer the audience, the easier it is to pick topics, guests and a name.

Step 2: a topic that lasts twenty episodes

Write a list of twenty episode ideas. They don't have to be good yet. If you struggle to reach twenty, the topic is probably too narrow. If you easily reach a hundred and every episode is about something completely different, it's probably too broad, and listeners won't know why they should come back.

The list pays off later too. In the week you have no ideas, you already have a few waiting.

Step 3: format and length

The common formats:

• Solo: you talk on your own about a topic. Easiest to schedule, hardest to do well, and it needs the most preparation.
• Two regular hosts: a conversation between two people who know each other well. Your chemistry is part of the content.
• Interviews: one regular host and a different guest each episode. Guests bring new knowledge, and often their own audience.
• A mix: mostly interviews, with a solo episode or a host conversation every so often.

On length, the rule is simple: an episode should be as long as the content holds up. Twenty good minutes beat an hour with padding. If you go with interviews, read our guide on how to interview a podcast guest.

One more decision at this stage: audio only, or video as well. It's a big enough question for its own article, so we wrote one: video podcast or audio podcast.

Step 4: name and cover art

The name should say something about the topic and be easy to search for. A clever name that doesn't explain what the show is about makes you harder to find. A common fix is a short name with a descriptive subtitle: "Show Name: conversations about marketing for small businesses".

Your cover art appears very small in listening apps. Keep it simple, with the name large, so it still reads at the size of a postage stamp.

Step 5: equipment

As with webinars, sound matters most. Listeners forgive a lot, but not a faint voice, echo or background noise.

• Microphone: a simple USB microphone is a good start. If you record remote guests, ask them to use at least a headset with a mic.
• Room: a small room with a rug, curtains or an open wardrobe sounds much better than an empty room with bare walls.
• Headphones: so your guest's voice doesn't leak back into your microphone.
• Camera: only if you're recording video. A decent webcam and light from in front of you are enough to begin with.

Step 6: record

If everyone is in the same room, it's fairly simple. If your guest is somewhere else, which is the usual case now, there are two main approaches. You can record an ordinary video call, in which case quality depends on everyone's connection and every glitch ends up in the recording. Or you can use a tool that records each speaker on their own computer and uploads the file afterwards. That way you get a clean file for every speaker, which makes a real difference when editing. We go into this in how to record a remote podcast.

Habits worth building from episode one:

• A one-minute test recording before every episode. Listen back to it; don't just record it.
• Ask your guest to turn off notifications and sit somewhere quiet.
• Prepare questions, but don't read them off the page. A natural conversation sounds far better.
• If someone stumbles, pause for a second and repeat the sentence. It's easy to cut later.

Step 7: edit

With a first episode there's a tendency either to over-edit or not edit at all. Somewhere in the middle is usually right: cut the shaky start, long pauses, mistakes and side conversations that go nowhere. There's no need to remove every "um". That's just how people talk.

Having a separate file per speaker makes editing much easier. You can reduce noise on one voice without touching the other, and fix moments where two people talked at once.

Add a short intro, a few seconds of music or a fixed line that introduces the show, and a close that tells the listener what to do next: follow the show, share it, leave a review.

Step 8: publish

To get your podcast into listening apps, you upload the episodes to a podcast hosting service. It creates a feed for you, which you submit once to each app. From then on, every new episode you upload reaches all of them automatically.

One tip worth considering: don't launch with a single episode. Two or three on launch day give a new listener a reason to stay. Distribution, and how to find listeners, is a topic of its own, covered in how to distribute a podcast.

Step 9: keep going

What separates podcasts that last from those that disappear is consistency. Choose a pace you can actually keep, weekly or every two weeks, and stick to it. An episode every other week for a year beats a daily episode for a month. If you can, record a few episodes ahead so you have a buffer for busy weeks.

Record without committing

Kolcast has a podcast studio in the browser for you and up to three guests. Each speaker is recorded on their own computer in full quality, and at the end you get a file for every speaker plus one mixed file of the whole episode, in video or sound only. Guests join from a link, on a computer or a phone, with nothing to install. More on the podcasts page and in the FAQ.