Lawrence Judd
Jeez, that title was clickbait. I’m so sorry – please forgive me.
However, the great part about clickbait is that the titles tend to tell you exactly what you’re going to get in the article.
Ultimately, this is an article describing the 7 relatively easy steps to have your own fitness podcast up and running in no time at all. Therefore, it makes sense to call it what I did. Okay? Cool.
Also, before we crack on – the SBS Academy is opening up for enrolment again on February 28th and we know that spaces go faster than Usain Bolt if you steal his chicken nuggets. If you’re interested, pop your email address (the one you use, not one that all your spam goes to) in the box below and we’ll send you some more info about it.
First Name
Email Address
That’s all I’m going to say about that – let’s crack on with podcasting.
Why Podcasts?
Currently, video is the medium taking social media by storm – whether it’s Instagram Stories, FaceBook LiveStreaming or Snapchat, video is the social media baby getting all the attention right now.
Fun fact – on any given day, Snapchat reaches 41% of all 18 to 34 year-olds in the United States and Snapchat users watch over 10 billion videos per day (Source: Snapchat Website).
I’ll say this – if you’re a Fitness Professional and not regularly producing some form of video content, you’re not taking advantage of a hugely powerful way of conveying your message to potential clients.
However, I believe there is still a very strong case for producing long-form audio content as a Fitness Professional – a.k.a. podcasting. We launched SBS Radio in September of 2015, and since then we have had our episodes downloaded a total of over 375,000 times at the time of writing (Feb 2017). We’re currently averaging a little over 1,000 downloads a day, and each episode being downloaded anywhere from 1,600 times to being downloaded by over 7,000 people in some instances. I’m aware that these stats pale into insignificance in comparison to some other fitness podcasts, however one of the purposes of content production for a business is ultimately to generate revenue – we know that over a third of our SBS Academy students listen to SBS Radio, compared to a quarter of non-students (the people on our email list who didn’t sign up as an Academy student).
In fact, our students follow us on 1 extra social media platform than non-students, on average – 2.73 platforms vs 1.85 respectively. This data is fairly preliminary, and we’re investigating whether the pattern will be repeated, but I’m confident that increasing the number of social media platforms on which your potential clients follow you gives them more chance to know, like, and trust you – and ultimately part with money for a product or service you offer. A fitness podcast might provide that key extra platform for your potential clients.
Fitness Podcast Pros:
It’s relatively straightforward, requiring a very limited amount of technical know-how.
It’s comparatively inexpensive relative to cameras and video recording and editing equipment.
Podcasting apps automatically drop your content into subscribers’ feeds, and can even notify them in the case of the iTunes podcast app.
Podcasting is effectively a radio show – similar to Television, you can put dedicated advertising slots in a podcast episode. This can either be a great way of right-hooking for an eBook or a Personal Training service you sell, or you can offer these to sponsors in exchange for some form of revenue – either selling the spots directly or promoting an affiliate link.
The iTunes podcast store section actively promotes New and Noteworthy podcasts – free publicity if your show is good!
According to a survey of Personal Training Clients that we conducted, people spend a LOT longer listening to podcasts than they do on other media, or they don’t listen to any at all – if they do, they’re in for the long haul. Whereas video watchers have been conditioned to shorter and shorter videos, podcast listeners aren’t. The survey data shows that the majority of respondents spent less than 10 minutes watching a video or reading a blog, but between 20 and 60 minutes listening to a fitness podcast. That’s a LOT more attention being paid directly to what you or your guests have to say.
You can embed podcasts directly on your website, and keep people on your website whilst they consume your content. Whilst Facebook and Instagram are phenomenal tools, it keeps people away from your website and away from your best place to sell (other than face-to-face).
Podcasting Cons:
Other social media is potentially a little easier to mass-distribute and promote to relevant audiences. You can’t (yet) pay to put your podcast in other people’s iTunes feeds, for example – if you want to chuck money at advertising for it, you have to advertise it to people on other social media platforms.
It requires you to be at least vaguely charismatic from a purely vocal perspective – you need to be able to convey a lot of emotion via your voice. You don’t have to be an incredible voice artist, but if you’re boring… it probably isn’t the thing for you.
It requires a little bit of ingenuity to track how much revenue it actually gives you – examples include surveying every client who signs up to see which social media platforms they follow you on, or having dedicated URLs for podcast adverts.
The 7 Steps
This is pretty much the exact process we used to set up SBS Radio in the beginning, and recording-wise there are only a few tweaks that I’ve made since the beginning.
Step 1 – Do Your Research
Spend some time listening to podcasts – they don’t just have to be fitness-related, either. Some of my favourite podcasts include Freakonomics Radio, the TED Radio Hour and BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs. You don’t necessarily need to recreate these (and will likely find it quite difficult, as each of these has an entire production team behind it) but you’ll start to gain an appreciation of how the best podcasts tell stories, weave in guest interviews and use the medium to its best effect.
You’ll also potentially come up with some ideas of how to be a little innovative with your podcast – a lot of the successful podcasts are based on tried-and-tested interview- or panel show-type formats, but can you be innovative in the way that you interview people or discuss topics? Desert Island Discs, for example, has run for over 70 years as a radio show based on interviewing people about which 8 musical tracks they’d take to a desert island with them.
Step 2 – Decide On A Target Audience
For a Personal Trainer, this is relatively straightforward and should be the same target audience that you tailor any other social media content to. A lot of people talk about having an “avatar” or a “dream client” that you use to shape your content and target ‘pain points’ in order to sell. We don’t tend to niche things down to the degree of having an ultra-specific avatar, and we don’t like selling Personal Training on the basis of targeting really deep pain points (you end up with a lot of very unhappy clients who tend to want a therapist over a PT), but having a relatively specific target audience for a fitness podcast can help you with:
Topics for discussion
Guests for interviews
The tone and language you use
Our suggestion? If you’re a fitness professional selling a service, and want to use a fitness podcast to help gain attention for that service, use your current clients or people buying that service as inspiration.
Step 3 – Give It A Name!
This is obviously going to be something personal to you, but make it obvious what it is. If your Personal Training business has a brand name, then calling it “The _____ Podcast” or “_____ Radio” might be a good idea. For example, our friend and occasional podcast guest Aadam runs a website called Physiqonomics – Physiqonomics Radio would be a great name for a fitness podcast.
Aadam appears in this episode, released in January 2017.
Things to steer clear of are in-jokes and things which don’t intrigue the potential listener; you want someone browsing through the podcast lists to stop and click on yours, after all.
Other things to bear in mind with a name, although these aren’t as important if you’re simply including a podcast as one of the social media outlets for your brand vs. building a brand around a podcast: – If you’re building a website specifically to host the podcast, is the URL available? – Are the social media domains available, if you’re going to have specific social media accounts for the podcast?
Lastly – you’ll want to get some artwork done for the podcast. You’ll need a minimum of a 1400x1400px picture for iTunes to accept it, as well as any other website or social media artwork you might need.
Step 4 – Decide On The Episode Format
You could do this somewhere in steps 1 and 2, but due to the way my brain works the specifics of an idea don’t tend to flesh themselves out until this stage… so that’s where I put it.
Options include, but aren’t limited to:
Solo commentary or group discussion
Interviews with guests (famous or otherwise)
Q&A sessions (our Fireside Chat series is hugely popular)
Quizzes or gameshows
Whatever format you choose… make it entertaining. People don’t listen to podcasts to be bored – they want to listen to be entertained!
Step 5 – Recording
Now we get to the first part of actually producing your first fitness podcast episode – recording!
Step 5A – Buying A Microphone
Before you ask – no, your in-built laptop mic is NOT good enough, unless you want your episodes to sound like you’re talking to the audience using a cup-and-string phone in a thunderstorm. Buy a microphone.
Without going into too much detail, there are two main types of microphone that you’ll want to investigate for podcasting – condenser microphones and dynamic microphones.
Condenser
Dynamic
Richer sound, and make vocals sound very nice but can distort easily with too much volume (this shouldn’t be an issue with a podcast)
Less rich sound, and often make vocals sound very bass-heavy but can handle greater changes in volume
Much more sensitive, and can pick up sound from all directions – great if you’re recording in a really quiet place
Less sensitive, and usually pick up sound in one general direction – better if you can’t eliminate all background noise where you’re recording.
More costly
Cheaper
Less rugged and more sensitive to changes in temperature and humidity – not a microphone for abusing.
A little more hardy – good if you’re travelling to do podcasting on the road
If you’re interested in the nerdy differences in electrophysics between the two microphone types, then you can read more here.
Whichever microphone type you choose, you’ll need to ensure that you have:
A pop shield – harsh plosives (b and p sounds, generally) create a large body of air moving towards the microphone which can easily create a lot of distortion. A pop shield either absorbs or deflects that air, meaning your listeners won’t feel like fireworks keep going off in their ears.
Some form of microphone stand, so you’re not having to hold the microphone the entire time.
Good quality headphones – you want to be able to monitor how you sound, hear any person that you’re interviewing, and your microphone will pick up any audio that doesn’t come through headphones. Cheap headphones will do the job, for sure – however, if you’re after good quality audio from your recording set up (I’ll cover more on that in a bit) then you need good headphones.
USB connectivity – this will save you a lot of money as you won’t have to buy special cables and separate audio recorders, and makes the microphone pretty much “plug and play”.
I personally use the Røde NT-USB – it comes with everything you need (although I have upgraded the stand recently) and is a USB condenser microphone that offers exceptional sound quality for the price – I paid about £130 for it.
If you’re looking for a dynamic microphone, then in a similar price range you can get the aptly-named Røde Podcaster.
No, I’m not sponsored by Røde – there are plenty of very good microphone manufacturers out there. I was simply checking out the specs of the NT-USB on their website and the Podcaster handily came up as “something you might also want to look at”, and it saved me hunting any further.
Step 5B – Recording and Editing Software
There’s little point in spending a tonne of money on the latest and greatest audio recording and editing software for a podcast – if you’re on Windows, Audacity is fantastic. If you’re on a Mac, then GarageBand is perfect, and is what I use. I’m not going to teach you how to use the software here, as there are a huge number of great tutorials on YouTube. It’s important to have editing capability with whichever software you choose.
Note – if you’re intending on recording with guests via Skype, you’ll need to install Soundflower and set up an audio midi device to route both the Skype audio and your microphone into your recording software. You can find Soundflower and all the instructions here.
Step 5C – Recording Logistics
You think that because you’ve got a fancy microphone you can just sit in your kitchen and record a fitness podcast? Think again.
Whilst you don’t have to necessarily rush out and retrofit your spare bedroom as a soundproof vocal booth, there are some steps that you should take to ensure that your podcast sounds professional:
A quiet room is a must. Try to find a room where there is minimal background noise – traffic outside the window, air conditioning units or noisy appliances can all show up on the recording, especially if you’re using a condenser microphone. It also helps to turn down the input level of your microphone to your computer in your computer audio settings to ensure that any background noise disrupts your vocals minimally.
An echoey room is a terrible room for recording vocals. Day-to-day, we don’t necessarily notice how echoey a room is in our own ears. If you want a demonstration of how echoes can affect recordings, try recording vocals in your bathroom and then under a blanket and see how different they sound. If you can’t do that just yet, don’t worry – just hit play below and you’ll be able to hear the difference.
In the first section, I’m in a bathroom with an extractor fan running. In the second section, I have enveloped myself, my laptop and the microphone in a blanket fort.
Tiles, glossy surfaces, mirrors, glass panels, wooden floors… all of these can add to the echo of the room. The echo is the sound waves from your mouth being reflected back into your ears – exactly the same thing will happen with the microphone, except that a lot of microphones are far more sensitive than your ears.
Ideally, you want to eliminate a good chunk of the echo. Some is okay – if you eliminate it all, it can sound a little ‘dead’ to the listener. If in doubt, do some test recordings and get it sounding good in your (hopefully good quality) headphones.
What I would suggest for making your recordings sound better:
Try to position something dense and absorbent directly in front of you. When you speak, the majority of the sound is projected forwards – if you can absorb a lot of this before it has a chance to be reflected, great.
Next, try the same thing behind you. Microphones are usually most sensitive in the direction that they’re pointing, so eliminating any echoes coming from behind your head is a good tactic.
Microphones are next most sensitive to the sides of the microphone, so if you can absorb some echoes coming from there then that’s the next thing to do, but I wouldn’t worry too much about this.
As for what to use for sound absorption – get creative. You can buy some basic soundproofing foam on Amazon, or if the budget is really tight you can go DIY and use pillows, mattresses, clothes dryers, towels… get creative. If you’re stuck for inspiration, YouTube is another great place to check out DIY vocal booths.
The next question which is probably bouncing around your head right now is something along the lines of “Does my guest have to do all of this too?! Fortunately not. If they’re with you in person, you’ll simply need to both gather around the same microphone and make your ‘booth’ a little bigger. If you’re recording via Skype, the person’s internet connection and background noise levels will make the biggest impact. A good microphone for your guest is a bonus, but at a pinch a pair of iPhone headphones will actually work remarkably well.
Get up close and personal with the microphone. For this, a microphone stand is a very good idea as it will hold the microphone a consistent distance from your mouth. Getting close to the microphone will mean you don’t have to speak as loudly, the microphone will pick up more of your vocal nuances, and also reduces the echo from the room – win win!
Make sure that your microphone levels are set correctly. If your input levels are too loud, you can run the risk of distorting your audio. If you’re worried, to a quick test recording and see if there’s any distortion and adjust accordingly.
Step 6 – Editing
It’s very rare that podcast audio requires no editing. Awkward pauses, things you maybe would rather weren’t broadcast to the world, your guest misunderstanding a question – all these can be edited out of the final show.
It’s important that the recording still sounds natural. If you do make a mistake whilst recording that you know you’re going to edit out, leave a 5-10 second gap and then start the segment again. Don’t just start from the previous word and think you can edit it in; this can make it sound disjointed and unnatural.
Next, you can add any intro and outdo that you want. If you’re using music, make sure it’s royalty-free music or you could be on the end of some serious copyright charges. If you’re putting adverts into your podcast, this is the time to do that too.
Finally – ID3 tags.
(huh? What are those?)
ID3 tags are the “labels” that you give to an audio file – track title, artist, album, genre, etc – in order for it to show up like this on an audio player:
If you didn’t have these, it looks incredibly amateurish. Luckily, there is software that makes this very easy – this article gives you the low-down on some of the best ones.
Step 7 – Hosting and Distribution
Now you’ve recorded your episodes, you probably want people to hear them… right?
Hosting
Hosting simply means uploading your finished audio files to some form of cloud, which can then use RSS feeds to distribute your podcast to various places such as iTunes.
We use a company called LibSyn, who are very good value for money. For $15-20 a month, you get enough storage for 5-10 episodes per month and a whole bunch of useful statistics about your podcast. A must-have, in our opinion.
Distribution – iTunes
iTunes set up couldn’t be easier. Simply copy your podcast’s RSS feed address (this can be found on LibSyn as your podcast.libsyn.com/rss – for example, ours is sbsradio.libsyn.com/rss) and then head on over to Apple’s podcast set up page:
Paste your RSS feed URL into the box, and then click “validate”.
It should be valid, and if it is you can hit “submit”… and that’s it. You’ll then be notified that it’s all good to go.
Distribution – WordPress
Again, this is really very easy.
Create a yourwebsite.com/podcast page, or go to whatever page you’re going to host the episodes on if you’ve built a website specifically to host your fitness podcast.
Install and set up plugin called the Smart Podcast Player. Yes, you have to pay for it – but it’s worth every penny.
Now, when you edit the page or post in WordPress, the Smart Podcast Player buttons should appear above the text editor. You can then build your player – either for your entire library, or a single track if you’re doing a blog post per episode.
“Aaaaaand that’s a wrap!”
We covered this on our most recent Take Action Day in London, and all of the attendees came away saying that they hadn’t realised just how easy it is to set up a fitness podcast. Now you do too – and if you decide that the next step for your social media content is a fitness podcast, you have a step-by-step process to set it up.
Happy podcasting!
The post Setting Up A Fitness Podcast In 7 Simple Steps appeared first on Shredded By Science.