Hey, I’m Josh from C47 Digital Studios and I’m really grateful that you’re here.
I’m glad you’re on the, I guess, tire kicking journey of figuring out podcasts.

So, I’m gonna talk to you a little bit about the technology of podcasting right now
because I think it’s a very important topic that I’ll be honest, technology holds
people back from doing a great thing. You might not be a technologist. So I’m gonna
give you some self permission to go kind of light on the technology and also talk
real tech about other things that you might be able to get into that are a little
bit more geeky.

So for starters, I’m literally on the same webpage that you’re seeing this video on, I’m on right now. And I wanna address step one, two, and three on the page. So step one is choosing the right recording equipment.

Now there’s microphones, cameras, lighting, and all of that. If you’ve seen our studio or
anything behind the scenes, we’ve got a lot of tech here. I’m in a three camera
studio. I’m looking at a teleprompter right now. I haven’t happened to be reading it
right now, but it’s a teleprompter nonetheless. I’ve got extra webcams for when we’re
connecting over to different online recording media. We’ve got multi -camera switchers
over here. I believe we have four microphones in the studio. We’re running only
three lights right now.

Out in Studio A, we’ve got duplicates, if not triplicates of all the stuff that’s in here, out in Studio A. “Boy, do we have stuff, right?” And I give you that list because sure, I’ve chosen to live in a world where we have a whole bunch of high quality technology to allow us to do some pretty remarkable things. But not everybody can start there or ought to start there, even if they could. So for instance, with microphones, cameras, and lighting, there is an argument to be made for you to start with your webcam on your laptop and sitting close to your laptop so that you have pretty clean audio. That will record at a high quality. Sorry, Zoom, but your recording stinks. And it’s because it’s low resolution for documentation sake. It’s not for publication. It’s a different application.

So you wanna use something that’s going to be for publication and riverside.fm allows us to do that. It’s cheap. I mean, I think if you’re in for like 20 or 30 bucks a month, you’ll be able to have all you need to maybe get yourself started. They have some AI in the background and you could possibly be podcasting as early as this afternoon.

So consider that as an option where if you’ve got the people, you’ve got the
resources to maybe organize yourself to get all of the right assets in place, you
may need cheap tech. And if you’re gonna do that, you can get a USB microphone to
connect to your laptop and get you going.

What USB microphone should you choose?
Well, there’s a variety of them out there. But I think the easiest one and kind of
the tried and true that I’ve run into is the Audio Technica AT 2020. Now, that one
has something called an XLR version. XLR is a pro audio mic connector that requires
a different type of setup. If you are an amateur, and I want you to day and
amateur world with pro quality. Audio Technica, I’d say almost half of my microphones
here are Audio Technica. And you should try that and the USB version.
So Audio Technica AT2020 USB is a great option.

So get that one, go try it, it’s pretty affordable. Last I checked it was under
$200 for something that’s got A shock mountain and so you can just buy a cheap
stand and all of that’s gonna be on Amazon easy purchase Great reliable sources B &H
photo They’re up in New York City, but they have a phenomenal online portal for
purchasing and so that’s a good one You can consider looking at B &H as well. Hi
to the guys at B &H. You guys are always treating me well by the way, I have no
affiliate markups or anything here and And it’s okay. We want you to thrive and
survive. These aren’t about relationships where I’m upselling it. It’s really about
making sure you have the resources you need.

So cameras in here, we’re running multiple DSLRs that have USB outputs to the
Blackmagic ATEM. It is the ISO brand. And these are all buzzwords.
Notice that D S L R I S O A T E. There’s a lot going on there, right? So if
you’re a techie and you’re like, I recognize all of that stuff, I know what you
got. Cool. You could go maybe buy that and set it up.

For most people, the right decision is actually to just get a quality clean webcam.
The Logitech Brio has been pretty good when it comes to being plug -and -play. There
are some other cameras out there that I think without recommending things that are
not supported necessarily by a big brand like Logitech, I would say go do your
homework on whether you can find one you’re comfortable with that has a clean look
and is also plug -and -play. And the reason why I keep pushing plug -and -play is you
wanna just plug this in and know that it’s gonna work with the technology you’re
using. And Logitech has, you know, they’re just a big company with a good backing.
You wanna be able to work with something that has customer support.

So I’ve offered Audio Technica’s USB microphone, the AT2020, the Logitech Brio series. I’d rather see you spend more than less on your camera so that you have all of the features. I would definitely try to get it in 4K resolution if you can at this point. It’s
just gonna give you more options. You’ll probably still record in 1080, but you
might not. And I think it’s important that you just have something that’s gonna
stand for a while when it comes to your visual technology.

Now, lighting and backdrops. Obviously, I’m in a studio, I like my studio, I’m gonna keep it. There’s an argument to be made for maybe doing something on green screen.
If you were going to use zoom, you would help your zoom by doing green screen. I’m
not really a fan. And the reason why I’m not a fan is rarely does somebody get
the lighting right to really support a clean chroma key. Chroma key is the
terminology for green screen. So what I’d rather see you do is find a nice
background. And in order to find a nice background, I think a lot of it’s
subjective. If you are able to, you know, have a nice bookshelf behind you and
stage it, if you’re able to just clean up your office space, I think it’s really
permissible. If you are a technologist and you can find your your way to filming in
a manufacturing space that’s not working during that time frame so that you have
clean audio, having a relevant background like your workspace could be really
interesting. You know, if your podcast is about woodworking and you’re gonna do a
video podcast, doing something in the shop without saws running would be really cool
looking.

I think space can matter if you can leverage it, but it doesn’t have to.
One of the things that I know about video podcasting is it’s more about the audio
and the ideas than it is about the visuals. ‘Cause if it was about the visuals, it
would be a different type of content. So your face with a microphone telling really
good stories, having really good conversation is the point. Your background supports
the point if it can, but it doesn’t really have to as long as it’s clean and not
distracting. So, you know, adjudicate for yourself what’s clean and not distracting.

Now, when it comes to lighting, what I want to encourage you to do is something
that seems very simplistic. I want you to have more light on your face than on the
back of your head. And I want you to have more light on your face than is behind
you. The reason why some people will film in front of a window ’cause the goal is
to be able to see outside. Well, unfortunately, your lighting can’t fight the biggest
light in the world, the sun. So you wanna have less light behind you than you do
in front of you so that you’re lit. And that’s really the simplest. You know,
I’ve got in this space one, two, three lights. I’ve got my key light. I’ve got my
fill light. And then I don’t actually have a backlight. What I have is I have an
ambient light. I’m hitting a white ceiling and spreading light through the room to
bring up the overall levels. That’s what we have in this space. And I think it’s, though three point lighting is really cool and you can look up three point lighting. I think it would for so many people be a bridge too far. More light on your face than not is a good step.

Now, in step two, it says pick a reliable podcast recording setup. Now you can come to a studio like ours and get something very reliable. I’ve already told you that Riverside.fm is a really quality tool. I recommend that if you’re doing it yourself or you got a small team and you guys are gonna run it yourself, I’ve tried other online platforms, they’re okay. And they have some other bells and whistles that actually Riverside didn’t have when I was auditioning different things years ago when we started, but Riverside’s been tried and true. They have nice customer support and very nice people there. I like when I can get to my customer support people ’cause there have been glitches and they fixed them, right? So that’s pretty cool. You need to make sure that whatever technology you’re on, laptop, desktop, maybe an iPad or whatever it is,
can handle Riverside. So, and I have no clue when you’re watching this.
So you need to check their system requirements and make sure you meet and exceed
those system requirements.

Now for editing, first things first, AI is here. Here in our shop, we use about seven or eight different AI platforms every day to get work done. And you will want to use AI,
and I recommend you consider it. So if you’re going to be editing on your own,
Riverside’s got AI in the background that will prep your show. You may be able to
pull off all the show prep right in that system, cool, do it. You may also be
able to pull off getting your digital shorts from their magic cut. Cool, do it, I
think you should try it and kudos to you for considering it.
We go a step further and we use AI in a software called Adobe Premiere.
And I’ll keep which AI’s we’re using a little bit proprietary in there because we’re
applying some extra stuff. But it cuts our multi -camera shoots. It cuts the multi
-cam off of Riverside if we have it into quite an episode. And so there are ways to up level it, but I think for you, the idea is that your podcast editing service, first of all,
you shouldn’t be editing your own shows. If you have a team member who can do it
cool, have them do it, but it is a little time consuming to not only even just
run the AI, but verify that it did a good job. So you’ve got to be out there
selling and doing your business development strategies and you should not become an
editor if you can avoid it. So outsource it, starting with an AI platform, and
perhaps leveraging either a team member or again, have us run all of that.
We’re perfectly happy. That’s actually what we do. We’ve got quite an ecosystem in
here that is more than just running Riverside in the background. There’s a whole
heck of a lot of service that we provide. But again, for you to edit is probably
a bridge too far unless you get your AI to serve you well. So, and again,
go to Riverside. So, step three, use the right software for editing and distribution. So, I’m bridging kind of the two.

Now, podcast SEO and YouTube optimization, this is really, really, really important. When you release, you need to have high quality thumbnails. You’ve got to catch the visual to get somebody to want to click and do this well. So you need to really
have graphics that pop, and if you can’t create them, outsource them. Day one, get
somebody to create something that pops. And we do that here as part of all of our
packages, is we’ve gotta have visuals that really pop. And that is part of SEO is
honestly, people think of SEO as keyword optimization usually. And while that’s True,
if your visuals aren’t optimized for both audio and video distribution, you’re in
trouble. So make sure you land that well. But spend some time thinking about the
consumer behavior of the ideal listener and what they might search to find your
show. Not that they’re searching to find your show, but they’re trying to find
conversation around what you can deliver. They’re trying to find answers or
inspiration, education around your topic. What search would they do to stumble onto
you? So that’s the question you have to answer for yourself, and that really is the
crux of the SEO that you’re gonna apply to all of this on the podcast platforms
and on YouTube is getting that optimized.

So spend some time thinking about the metadata, the keywords, the thumbnails, and that type of thinking is what gets you into a reach opportunity, right? So in marketing, we talk about reach and frequency. Your frequency is hopefully releasing one podcast a week or more. One podcast a week is what we prescribed to almost all of our clients, and then digital shorts that get stripped off of that podcast and re -released out into the ether. But then what you wanna do is optimize in a way to get to as many people as possible to start building your audience, because you do eventually want an audience. And if you’ve followed any of my content, you know, I am pushing hard to get you to realize that your guest is more important immediately than your audience will be. And so your ROI is always in the relationships you build with your guests and the people who are helping you with your podcast. But then over time, as you build an audience, you
can find new ROI and doing your best to SEO this is just wisdom.
So go through the thought exercise and apply that.

Now, hosting and distribution, you wanna release to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, get up on YouTube, that can be a lot of work. So for starters, I would say YouTube is non -negotiable. Set one up and make sure you’re releasing to it. But then also maybe Pick a
platform and just release to one platform for starters. That’s one way to handle
getting your audio out there. We have our ways here internally to maximize our
efforts and get things going up in bulk. It’s just how we do what we do. And so
you could maybe find an aggregator that you like and consider leveraging that as
well. But in all cases, you need to be creating great titles, great descriptions,
good metadata so that your searchability when you do those releases has has a shot
frankly. So when you’re releasing make sure that you have an SEO mindset. So this
is a good basic thought process on how you might start everything. So a little
tech, you know you got a microphone, you got a camera to research, you’ve got the
Riverside platform to consider. You’ve got release strategies, the simplest for
YouTube, and getting on to at least one podcast outlet.

You’ve got to think in SEO. It’s not enough to think in keywords. You also have to think in visuals to capture people’s attention. Once the keywords work and the search happened, how do you get them to click? And by the way, clickbait. People used to use the word clickbait as if there’s some grand evil you know how dare you clickbait me no get comfortable with clickbait you have to shock people’s system to get them to want to click so what you have to do to be an honest clickbaiter I know it sounds like an oxymoron jumbo shrimp but an honest clickbaiter is somebody who connects the promise of the clickbait to a good payoff a good payoff So if I’m saying, hey,
I’m gonna teach, you know, my content today is about dog care and dog grooming,
but when you get over there, I’m offering you Bitcoin services, that is bad bait
and click, that is not okay. But if I teach you genuinely about, you know,
the health of your dog, dog grooming, I give you a couple of tips, a good
conversation, and a good story around dogs, then I’ve delivered on the clickbait. So
just, So just an honest clickbait is actually gold, so you should pursue that.
And that’s part of your SEO strategy, part of your visual strategy with your
thumbnails.

So with that, I hope you got a little bit out of this. Our company,
we live for this. C47 Digital Studios is here to help businesses thrive through
getting an opportunity of doing great business development relationship building that
results in a phenomenal d -tension right now. And if you’re on this podcast journey and you want to have a conversation with us, send us a message. We will book time with you and hear you out.

We want to know what you want from this journey, and we want to help you get it.

So again, I’m Josh Pies. I am the chief attention getter and hippie capitalist
here at C47 Digital Studios. I am absolutely pulling for you on your entrepreneurial
journey. I want your business to thrive. We can help you. And so reach out, we’ll talk to you soon.