I’ve launched a new podcast, the Software Channel Partner Podcast. (You can download it on Apple, Google, Spotify, and other podcast apps.)
It’s in support of work that I do with software vendors to enable their channel partners (resellers, implementers, etc.). Some companies, like the subject of my first episode, get 100% of their revenue from “the channel”, and are doing no direct sales.
And, as a former video producer, it’s really easy to produce a podcast. Even if you’re not a former video producer, it’s easy:
- Get a good microphone. Marketing Book Podcast host Douglas Burdett recommends the Logitech H390 USB headset which only costs about $20-25.
- Get Calendly. It makes all the scheduling MUCH easier.
- Invite guests.
- Craft your own questions or, if they approached you to be a guest, ask them what they’d like to be asked about.
- Record it using a web conferencing platform like Zoom, Uberconference (what I’m using, for free), GoToMeeting, Skype (not ideal; creates a video file that you need to convert to an audio file).
- Produce an intro with music. You can do this on Upwork or a similar platform for around $100.
- Edit out the retakes, long pauses, unnecessary Ums, etc. of each episode using free audio editing software. I use Audacity.
- Host your podcast on Buzzsprout, Podbean (what I use), or another service for around $100/year. Through them, it will be distributed to Apple and Google podcasts, and that will get it on many more apps. You’ll need to make a slight bit more effort to link it to Spotify.
- Amplify it by mentioning it in your email/newsletter, posting to social media, possibly running paid, highly-targeted LinkedIn ads for a few weeks, etc.
And regularly post new episodes.
You’ll also want a section of your website for the podcast, including a page for each new episode. There you can post the podcast player from your hosting service, as well as show notes for sites, books, etc., that your subject mentions during the interview. And I’m also posting a complete transcript of each interview which is good for accessibility and great for SEO. There are very inexpensive services ($.10/minute) that can produce a transcript from an audio file, but they aren’t perfect and you may need to spend more time checking over that than everything else that I’ve mentioned combined. That’s a good job for an assistant or an intern. Or on Upwork you can hire a person to do it very accurately for $1/minute.
I am using a regularly plain vanilla name for my podcast, the Software Channel Partner Podcast, for search results reasons, too.
And that’s about it. All of that combined is maybe 2-3 hours/episode, including the background reading you need to do to prepare for the interview.
