Blubrry Podcasting is dedicated to helping you as you launch your podcast, including a free podcast hosting trial. Starting a podcast is exciting and challenging, we know! Blubrry podcasters have the longest-lived shows in the podcasting space. Creating your podcast requires planning, content, distribution, measurement and promotion.
Planning
When planning your podcast, consider what your content will be about, what the goals are for your podcast, and how your podcast’s content, logos, and branding will reinforce your objectives. Over time you can align your show’s branding to your free website provided to hosting customers by Blubrry, offering the ability to modify the design and colors easily.
Goals:
- Decide on your content, format, and goals.
- Come up with logos, branding, and website theme.
Content Production
At the heart of every podcast is the media content. Whether you’re creating audio, video, electronic books (PDF/ePub), content production will be your most time-consuming and important task.
Goals:
- Decide on a media format (audio, video, electronic book). Most podcasters focus on audio and may expand into video or eBooks later.
- Pick the tools and software necessary to create the media format selected. In the beginning, we want you to keep it simple using inexpensive gear and recording applications.
- Record a first episode or introductory episode.
Distribution
Podcast distribution is the heart of what has made podcasting the exciting medium it is. It allows your media to be syndicated to your audience. The requirements include a website (Blubrry provides a free WordPress site as part of our podcast media hosting), podcast media hosting (separate from your website), and syndication via Podcast RSS feed.
WordPress is recommended for podcasting for several reasons. First, podcasting is an extension of blogging. A blog post with media associated with it is a podcast episode. With WordPress being the most dominant and free blogging platform today, it makes perfect sense to use WordPress for your podcast website to gain the benefits of search engines, and have a site to send your audience for additional offers, content and services.
Goals:
- Set up a website for your podcast (free and easy with Blubrry Podcast Hosting).
- Set up a hosting service for your podcast media (included with Blubrry Podcast Hosting).
- Set up syndication for your podcast made simple with the PowerPress plugin for WordPress.
- Publish your first episode.
If you are using WordPress with PowerPress, simply create a new blog post. Upload your media through the WordPress dashboard to Blubrry Podcast Hosting, which will auto-populate the PowerPress episode entry box in the edit post screen. If you’re using Blubrry media hosting services, this is as simple as clicking the Upload Media button, uploading the file, and clicking Publish.
Measurement
Measuring the success of your podcast is critical. There are three ways you can measure this success: via media download statistics, web statistics, and audience surveys.
Goals:
- Set up media download statistics (Blubrry Free Statistics are free and easy to add to the WordPress website using the PowerPress podcasting plugin) Blubrry Podcast Stats are IAB V2.0 Certifed Compliant which is the gold standard in Podcast measurement.
- Set up web statistics (Google Analytics is free and easy to add to a WordPress website).
- Set up an audience survey (Blubrry.com offers a free audience survey).
Promotion
Promoting your podcast is the only way to get your podcast into the hands of the masses.
Goals:
- Submit your podcast to as many podcast directories as possible (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, Amazon Music, Blubrry Podcast Directory, etc.). We’ve provided links in the Destinations settings area of PowerPress for all the sites to make this easier.
- Come up with a social media strategy (for example, use Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram).
- Attend conferences and trade shows that complement your content and genre.
- Set up a mailing list/newsletter and regularly send news and information to your subscribers.
- Blubrry’s Media Kit is free with all hosting plans, easy to populate with the information you want to highlight and updated daily.
Additional Services
Blubrry offers additional features and services to support and simplify the podcast process. Explore these benefits and add-on offerings to further grow and polish your podcast.
Thrive Bundle ($10/mo)
- Our complete AI package, Blubrry Podcast AI Assistant (PAI), featuring podcast planning, podcast production, social clips and highlights creation.
- The Thrive Bundle gives you Dynamic Ad Insertion pre-roll to promote previous episodes or events in addition to ads.
- Episode comparison – compare five episodes with the trending episodes feature, and you can see which ones had a faster uptake from listeners.
- Listener and subscribers tracking, see if your show is growing and adjust — a one-of-a-kind stats feature.
- The Average Daily Plays Statistic is a unique metric that gives you insights to show your podcast’s growth and long tail consumptions.
- Quicklinks additional features with external hyperlink support, V4V, donation, & analytics to engage with your audience.
- Apple Podcast reviews within the Blubrry stats dashboard allow you to promote your accolades on social media.