Podcast Marketing - Create Micro Content From Your Podcast

Welcome to Podcast Suck. A podcast about starting a podcast where we dive head first into the wild, wacky and sometimes frustrating world of podcasting. If you've ever sat down with a microphone, hit record and thought what on earth am I doing? Or if you're just curious about the magic behind your favorite shows, then you're in the right place. Get ready for laughs, insights and a whole lot of what not to do advice as we embark on this podcasting journey together. Let's dive in what's happening. Podcasters. Welcome back to the show. Welcome to the show Either way. Glad you're here.

This episode I want to dive into podcast hosting. What is podcast hosting all about? Where do I host my podcast? Like to preface this episode by saying we have recently moved over to buzzsproutcom. We were previously using simple cast. Buzzsprout seemed to have a few other bells and whistles. I'm going to explain what that all means in this episode, but they all function the same way.

Podcast hosting exists to have a place to host your podcast episodes and also communicate with Apple and Spotify for distribution on distribution and listening platforms. So those are the two main functionalities of podcast hosting. You can utilize Spotify for podcasters, previously anchorfm. It is absolutely free, which I last time I checked is a great, great price. However, you're not going to have all of the bells and whistles like other podcast hosting accounts. So, for example, the reason I didn't use anchor from the get and we utilized gosh. We've used a few over the past 10 years.

It's been mainly simple cast or a podcast agency. We help people start a podcast. People are constantly asking who should I utilize for a podcast hosting account. When we refer them to simple cast, they did away with their affiliate program, which is absolutely absurd and ridiculous. So, for the same, I think actually buzzsprout's couple bucks cheaper on a monthly basis. They have an affiliate program and as a podcast agency, it's kind of responsible to be able to be able to say hey, listen, if someone asks us for a recommendation and we give it to them, they should not only give the person asking us something for choosing that platform, but give us something for sending that person there, and that's exactly what buzzsprout does. It's nothing to write home about and over the moon, every time you sign up with our buzzsprout affiliate link, you get 20 bucks and we get 20 bucks. So, hey, better than the poke poke an eye with a hot stick, right? So that was one of the main reasons. The second reason is that buzzsprout's user interface, their back end dashboard, is a little bit easier to work with, moving our shows. I moved both of my shows beyond the story and this show I started on buzzsprout. It was a seamless process, outside of one error that I made, which I'll bring that up towards the end of this episode so you don't make that same mistake, but it was a very smooth process.

So, if you're listening right now, you already have a podcast hosting account. Maybe you're working with anchor or, excuse me, spotify for podcasters, taking me a minute to get used to the new name, and you want to upgrade and move to a different podcast hosting account. I don't know. Maybe you like the podcast websites that they provide, maybe you like the interface, the user experience. It's very important. Maybe you're just looking to get to a podcast hosting account outside of Spotify for podcasters. Totally cool, all right, podcast hosting 101.

Why do you need a podcast host? Well, first of all, when you record a podcast episode and you edit that episode, that episode has to live somewhere, so you've got to upload that episode to the internet, the only way that that can be done well, not the only way, but the main way that that can be done is through a podcast hosting account. So, like I mentioned, we use Buzzsprout. There's a link in this podcast description. Just click on it. You get your free 20 bucks. Allow you to sign up. They have a free trial. I think they give you like a one hour or something like that to be able to get in there and sign up for the account. Start your podcast. Now, if you're moving your podcast to Buzzsprout, that's a slightly different ball game because you'll be importing your show from your existing podcast hosting account.

So I made the mistake of importing beyond the story to Buzzsprout. When I signed up for the Buzzsprout account to move the show over, what I didn't do is upgrade the account from the free account to the basic account, which is like 12 bucks a month, and that allowed me to import all 200 plus episodes from beyond the story into Buzzsprout. I didn't do that the first time around and when I went to Apple to look for my show, there were only two episodes because there was only an hour available of upload time. That's how Buzzsprout works. Some I have a flat fee. Most of them will charge you based on the amount of time they're utilizing. So Buzzsprout's like 12 bucks a month for four hours. I think it goes to 18 for six hours. I like that because you can upgrade as needed. This podcast episode is never more than like 10 minutes long, so I don't need a lot of time. Four hours is more than enough time. Now we're trying to do way more than one episode a week. So we may get to that threshold eventually, but right now we've still got like a spare hour and a half a month on the $12 plan.

So if you're moving your podcast over to Buzzsprout very easy to do. You sign up for a Buzzsprout account. They ask if you want to import an existing show. You can search for the show or you can just copy and paste your existing RSS feed and it'll pull and import all of the episodes from your old podcast hosting account into the new one. Now it'll prompt you and say if you want to complete the entire import process, you need to upgrade the account. So don't make that mistake and not do that. Just upgrade. It's 12 bucks a month. Complete the import and then you'll need to take your new RSS feed from Buzzsprout and add it to your old podcast hosting account. So if you're using Anchor or Spotify for podcasters, then you would go log into your dashboard. There there's a space for a redirect RSS feed URL. That's where you're gonna copy and paste the new RSS feed into your old hosting account and after that's done you save your settings and I usually wait a day or two just in case make sure everything got imported, make sure everything it's new episodes are getting uploaded correctly and also distributed to Apple and Spotify and everywhere else, and then you can go ahead and delete the old account.

If it's a free account, like Spotify for podcasters, you may not have to delete the account. But if you're paying for an account, obviously you don't wanna pay for two accounts. So that's just for existing podcasters. If you're a brand new podcaster, you just head over to Buzzsprout. There's a link in our description to this podcast episode. Click on that, get your free 20 bucks for signing up with our link and then it's gonna say create new show and you're gonna go through that whole process of adding a name and a description and uploading your cover art in your first episode or a trailer or whatever the case may be. You'll go through that process, set up the account, but remember if you're gonna be doing more than four episodes a month. Buzzsprout was probably probably prompt you. Anyway, you wanna make sure that you upgrade the account. How do we don't get paid any more than 20 bucks for whatever account you decided to sign up for? I just wanna make sure that you don't make the same mistakes that a lot of people have made, including myself that when you're signing up for the air quotes free account, you've only got an hour of time. So as soon as you use up that hour of time, no more episodes can be uploaded and you'll see that and you'll wanna go ahead and upgrade from there.

But podcast hosting accounts are very simple to set up. It's not a hard process by any stretch of the imagination. Just follow the step-by-step process that your podcast host of choice brings you to. Again, there's like four major ones out there Buzzsprout, lipson which is just a nightmare. Their user interface is just way too much going on. Some would argue they're the best out there, but I mean defined best. They all function the same way. You upload your files to the internet. They live there. Your podcast hosting account talks to Apple and Spotify and the other distribution and listening platforms, and that's how your podcast gets distributed out into the internets. So, no matter what you do, you can sign up for.

I'm gonna include a link down in the description of this podcast episode. For Spotify for podcasters, that's a free account. If you're just getting started, just starting to conceptualize, do I even wanna do this? Are my ideas valid? Do I actually wanna commit to the work? Am I actually a podcaster? Do people even care? Great way to do all that through Spotify for podcasters.

It is a free podcasting platform for podcasters which includes a podcast hosting account and, by the way, the other functionality of your podcast hosting account. There's three. Number one, it's where your files live. Number two, it's how your podcast gets distributed to Apple and Spotify. You don't upload to those platforms, you upload to your podcast hosting account and it gets distributed there. And then third is your podcast website. So every podcast hosting account or at least it should even Spotify for podcasters Buzzsprout definitely does comes with a dynamic podcast website, which means the episodes, the name, the description, all that stuff's already loaded in to your website because they're pre-built. You're just going in there, maybe changing a color scheme or the font type or whatever the case may be, but that's the main function. Do I need a podcast website? No, because when you sign up for a pod yeah, you do, but you're getting one with your podcast hosting account, so you don't need to go build a separate website for your podcast, or at least you shouldn't have to Then from there, you just register a domain name and you point it directly to your podcast hosting account website, and there's instructions on how to do that. You'll contact your domain registrar, whether it's GoDaddy or whoever that may be, and say, hey, I need to point this domain that I just registered to my podcast website and they're gonna ask you for the DNS settings, et cetera, and all that's available in your backend dashboard with your podcast hosting account in the website area around using a custom domain. So that's it as far as podcast hosting is concerned.

There's a lot to absorb in this episode because I wanted to make sure that I targeted and I'm over 10 minutes. Look at this. Wow, I said sometimes it may be 10 or 12 minutes, so let's not get crazy, but I wanted to make sure I'm speaking to existing podcasters looking to move their podcast to a new podcast hosting account and then brand new podcasters. You got a free option. You got our recommendation, which is Buzzsprout, whether you're moving your show over or starting fresh. Those are your options.

Questions, thoughts, ideas, concerns about this episode, any episodes on the show? Please send me a direct message over on Instagram. My handle is podcastsuck. That's two S's podcastplural at podcastsuck on Instagram, sebastian Rusk on Facebook and on LinkedIn. So I hang out. Feel free to shoot me a message questions, thoughts, ideas, concerns about the world of podcasting this show. Whatever the case may be, please hit me up. I do respond to each and every one of you. Lovely people.

Hope you're leaving this episode knowing at least one or two things that you did not know about podcast hosting before you pressed play. Make sure that you're subscribed to this show so you get new updates as episodes come out and share this show with your friends. People you know wanna start a podcast. That's why I'm doing this to get my knowledge. That's my responsibility to share what I know with the world so you can know what you don't know, that you don't know about the world of podcasting. I'll talk to you, incredible people, next time. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode. We sure do appreciate it. If you haven't done so already, make sure you're subscribed to the show wherever you consume podcasts. This way you get updates as new episodes become available. If you feel so inclined, please leave us a review and share the show with someone you know should start a podcast or may already have one. And remember podcasts suck if you don't have one. Until next time, friends.