The Ultimate Guide to Starting a Public Health Podcast
Today’s guest post is written by Omari Richins, MPH. He is a Health Program Officer at the Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust and is the Creator of The Public Health Millennial.
Are you thinking about starting a podcast?
Whether you are starting one for your business or just for fun, podcasts are the new best way to create great content. Before I get started, let’s dive into content creation platforms by numbers to get you excited about starting your own podcast.
There are approximately 600 million online blogs, 31 million YouTube channels and as of April 2020 there are 1 million podcasts. So, if you were thinking about starting a podcast – whether for your business or as a hobby – there is no better time to start than now.
As a consultant, some benefits of starting a podcast will be:
Help you establish greater expertise in your field of consulting
Allow you to become a connector among other consultants
Help to build your consulting brand and reach to potential clients
Before I break down everything I think you’ll need to know before starting your podcast, let me tell you a little about my experience podcasting thus far.
I started my podcast, The Public Health Millennial Career Stories Podcast, in May of 2020 and have released 20 episodes so far. Put simply, I’ve learnt putting good value into the world returns value to you. That being said, I have greatly expanded my network and have also been reached out to by students and professionals alike to say thank you for the content I’m creating.
How many times do we want to reach out to someone, but don’t truly have anything of value to offer them? As Leah Roman and I discussed on episode 13 of my podcast, networking should be intentional and should be an exchange of value. Having a podcast is great because it gives you an automatic value proposition when networking.
Having a podcast can also help you by:
Making you a connector of people or at least expanding your network
Generating value to not only your guest, but also to the audience
An organic way to grow your audience, clients or brand
(Note: Throughout this article, I am assuming that you will be interviewing guests on the podcast you want to create – which is not a requirement of starting a valuable podcast)
I started my podcast as a new avenue to get public health stories out there, as well as a way to develop my brand, The Public Health Millennial. I realized that there are so many paths in public health and I wanted to share these with students as well as professionals.
Honestly, when I started my podcast the only goal was to create content to help others in the public health field. However, since starting the authentic connections I have made with public health professionals, persons have told me the value I have given them is priceless.
Things to Consider When Planning Your Podcast
Before you start podcasting, I implore that you have a plan for your podcast. The only thing worse than not starting that podcast you wanted, is to start the podcast and then stop a couple episodes in because you did not plan.
In doing my research on public health podcast, I saw that there were many podcasts that had been discontinued – which is probably due to a lack of planning. So planning is paramount and will help keep you consistent.
Here I’ll walk you through some considerations you should think about prior to starting your podcast.
(1) Structure
For me, I listen/watch many podcasts so figuring this out was pretty intuitive.
Podcasts come in all sorts of structures. When you think about structure, think about how you want your show to be designed. Do you want an introduction – I highly recommend that you do have some sort of introduction as it will make your show more professional. It can be as short or long as you like.
When choosing music for your introduction it’s important to use royalty free music – this way you won’t be sued or risk your podcast being taken down from podcasting sites. I bought my introduction music from gettyimages for $50 – however they no longer offer music unless you have a premium account.
Some websites I suggest you check for free or paid royalty-free music are:
Creative Commons Music
Pixabay music
YouTube Audio Library
Typically, a podcast will be structured with introduction, interview/topic discussion, followed by an outro. Another thing you can think of is if you would like to break your show into sections.
For example, on my podcast I have a “Furious Five” section where I ask all guest the same 5 questions. Having sections on your shows allows you to easily structure what sorts of questions or topics you will cover at a given time in your episode.
Preparing how you will structure your podcast will allow you to more easily shape the flow of your show and what sort of information you’ll be covering. Additionally, it will create familiarity for listeners of your podcast.
The structure of my podcast goes: clip from the episode > me speaking to the audience > introduction > interview with guest > “Furious Five” section > Outro.
(2) Planning
When you are planning, the first thing to think about is whether you will be interviewing guest or just speaking on topics. If you are only speaking on topics rather than interviewing guest, you can still invite guest to chat with you on certain episodes.
Next you’ll want to figure out if you’ll be podcasting solo, with a co-host, with a group, or intermittently with guest. There is no right way to do this and there are pros and cons to each of these options.
The next big consideration will be: how long do you want your episodes to be? There is no right answer to this, but the longer the episodes means more time spent editing. And the length of episodes can always change from week to week, but I think staying relatively consistent will help your audience know what to expect every time you release a new episode.
Once you’ve got an idea of how long the episodes will be, you’ll want to know how often you want to publish episodes. This could be daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly or even quarterly. The more content you create means the higher likelihood of increased reach, but also means that you will be doing more work on the backend. As a consultant, I think you should be publishing in the weekly to monthly range.
The next thought should be around if you want to have just episodes or do you want to have seasons with episodes. There are pros and cons to both. Episodes are great if you are going to be interviewing guest. While seasons can be helpful if you want to do deep dives into a specific topic through numerous episodes.
Lastly, you’ll want to think about if you want your episodes to be audio only or if you’d want a visual aspect to it as well. For me, I watch a lot of my podcast on YouTube and thus wanted to create that as a medium my audience could use. (Note: you can record both audio and video using Zoom even if you are only planning to use audio).
(3) What to use to publish/distribute episodes
There are many websites/services you can use to host your podcast. Just in case you don’t know, podcast hosting is the means by which you upload your podcast episodes online and then are subsequently distributed to podcast platforms. Podcast platforms being Apple Podcast, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play Music/Podcast, Overcast, etc.
(Note: if you are planning to put your podcast onto YouTube, you will have to manually do so for each episode.)
When choosing a podcast host there are a few important considerations. The first one being cost. There are free options out there such as Anchor, Podbean or what I use, Buzzsprout.
I love Buzzsprout because of its easy user interface and it makes publishing shows to various directories so easy – while they also have amazing customer service and other useful information.
While the free versions allow you to upload episodes, there are limitations such as how long they will host your podcast, the amount of data you can upload, if there will have advertisements and access to certain features.
Most free podcast hosting services also offer upgrades to paid monthly subscriptions which include more data and better features. For example, the free version of Buzzsprout only allows you to upload up to 2 hours each month and the episodes are only hosted for 90 days. While the lowest paid tier of Buzzsprout allows you to upload 3 hours each month and the episodes are hosted indefinitely. I believe Anchor would be the best bet for free podcast hosting as they offer unlimited storage for free. I would just recommend you read through the terms and conditions.
Another consideration when choosing a podcast host is if they will create a website page that you can have your shownotes on if you don’t plan to have shownotes on your website.
If you do start podcasting using one podcast host and decide you want to switch, there are usually straightforward ways to import your podcast episodes into your new host at no cost to you.
I chose to use Buzzsprout over Anchor primarily for several reasons. Firstly, Anchor being free makes me wonder about ownership (although, they do say you own your content), the longevity (will this platform be around in 5 years?), and there are cautions around Anchor automatically distributing your podcast to Apple Podcast from their account (you may have to do it manually or you can’t access the Apple Podcast stats).
Secondly, Buzzsprout allows you to upload episodes based on length of episodes over file size – which is a lot more intuitive for people that aren’t tech nerds.
Thirdly, it allowed you to create animated audio clips that are easily shareable on social media platforms (Anchor now has a feature that allows this as well).
Lastly, Buzzsprout has an amazing customer service team that is easily reachable with any questions you may have and they produce great YouTube content to help you with improving your podcast.
Anchor also allows you to record your episodes through your iPhone, laptop, or tablet. Although, I highly recommend you stay away from recording on your iPhone and tablet with just regular headphones as the audio quality may be poor.
(4) Recording Episodes
This is probably one of the most important yet easiest steps to complete. Since I do record my episodes for YouTube as well as podcast platforms, I use Zoom. Zoom is a great free option even if you are planning to do audio only podcast.
If you do decide to use Zoom, go to the settings and ensure that it is recording separate audio files for both you and your guest. You should do this as it will help when editing. For example, if your guest’s voice is soft while yours is loud you can adjust their audio without making yours louder. It also helps if there are loud noises in the background of one person’s audio and you want to isolate and delete those noises when editing.
I encourage you to spend a couple minutes before the episode, chatting with your guest and getting them comfortable for the interview. Ask if they have any questions or concerns. Let them know if they make a mistake that’s fine, you can edit it out or if they need time to think about a question before answering it – that is also absolutely fine too.
Additionally, I try to batch record my episodes whenever possible. If you are able to get 4-5 episodes recorded in one week that’s awesome as that is a whole month of podcast episodes you will have in your arsenal.
(NOTE: If you want to record an episode with two guests at once and the recording is longer than 45 minutes, you should opt to pay for the Zoom subscription for the month and cancel afterwards).
(5) Recruiting Guest for Your Podcast
As a consultant, you will be starting this podcast as a professional endeavor rather than a hobby. Thus, you should treat it just like any other part of your business.
You should create templates that can be easily used to (1) invite guest, (2) thank guest, and (3) share the episode with guest once published. I have three document templates saved for this purpose that is easily modifiable for each new guest I have.
Inviting guest can be hard especially if you are trying to plan scheduling through email – and even more so when a guest is in another time zone. I think taking this time-consuming process and making it easy and electronic for the guest is essential.
That being said, I use Calendly for guest to schedule themselves. I love this software because it allows me to set when I am available, and guest can easily click a link and schedule themselves all for free. Calendly also automatically changes time zones to the users which truly helps if you are scheduling guest from other time zones or countries.
For me recruiting people was done mostly through LinkedIn or using my Instagram platform. Amazingly, after around six episodes, I had people reaching out to me to be on my podcast and share their story. Going back to earlier – starting a podcast is a great value proposition!
There are two ways to inform guest about the direction of the episode you want (i.e. the questions you will ask about): (1) you create a form and send it to the guest to fill out to get at the topics you want to chat about on your podcast; (2) you create a document with questions that you want to cover on the show and sending it to the guest prior to recording.
I prefer option 2 as it allows you to do your research on the guest which usually leads to more fruitful questions and conversations. Although option 1 will definitely be a better time-saving approach. I also prefer option 2 because it takes the burden off of the guest and truly makes them feel welcomed to be on your podcast. As opposed to another form that they have to fill out.
Your podcast should not feel like extra work to guest, but rather an experience they want to take part in. That being said, ensure you do all you can to make it as easy for the guest as possible.
(6) Post-Production
After you have recorded your episodes, you will most likely need to do some editing. This is especially true if you want to add in your introduction, outro and any other sound effects or audio. I personally use Garageband to do all my editing as it is free and there are thousands of YouTube tutorials on it.
If you don’t have a Mac, then you can use tools like Audacity to edit your podcast.
Anchor, which is a podcast hosting platform, also offers editing through their app. However, I have heard that it isn’t the best place to do editing.
(7) Marketing
Though this section is lower down here, it is essential that you have an idea of your target audience before you start recording. What good is a podcast if it’s not directed towards someone?
In the planning phase, you should also think about who your ideal audience is. When you figure this out it makes it clearer where you should be sharing your episodes.
When starting out, its best to share your episodes to as many places as possible. Share it on Instagram, on your website, on LinkedIn, on Facebook groups and with any persons you think would find it valuable.
If you are having guest on your show, it’ll be important to get pictures of them that you can use to create marketing material around your show. Additionally, as I said earlier both Buzzsprout and Anchor allow you to create shareable audio files that can be used for marketing and exposure.
Must haves before starting
(1) A plan
(2) Equipment
(3) Record your first three episodes
I already highlighted the importance of having a plan before getting started so go back up to read what you should use to plan.
When you are just starting out, it is best to keep things simple. Things you’ll need are: Zoom, a dynamic USB microphone, headphones (both you and the guest if possible) and software to edit your episodes. I suggest you use a dynamic microphone over a condenser microphone because condenser microphones catch a lot more background noise while dynamic microphones better isolate your voice. I recommend you use a Samson Q2U USB/XLR Dynamic Microphone. You should use headphones when possible as this reduces the amount of white noise heard when recording.
Why record the first three episodes before starting your podcast? Two main reasons. Firstly, I’d imagine that you would dislike it if you watched a show and loved it, but they only had one episode. Don’t let that be you, ensure if people find your podcast there is at least three episodes for them to binge. Secondly, this will give you the needed practice throughout the podcast process which will allow you to work out any kinks especially of the editing process.
Time commitment
Leah wanted me to ensure that I spoke about the time commitment you can expect from starting a podcast. Up until now, I have walked you through the essential steps to think about before starting a podcast.
I will say when I initially started podcasting it took me longer for all the following steps. I would give yourself 6-10 episodes to really get a hang on optimizing your process for getting everything done as quickly as possible.
There is going to be some time you have to spend upfront to plan, structure, and get all the introductions and other audio completed. After that initial planning phase, you don’t have to worry about this much at all.
Recruiting guest can take one to two hours a week (if you batch like me, this is about two hours a week every three or four weeks). This includes selecting your guest, reaching out to them, doing research and writing interview questions as well as setting up the time for the interview.
Recording the episode will take you as long as your episodes are, give or take ten minutes for some chit chat before and after the recording.
Editing is going to be one of the things that takes you the longest. At first, you’ll probably spend more time editing out “bad parts” of the podcast episode. For the first five episodes, it may take you the same amount of time as the episode doing editing. A tip for editing is to write down at what questions or timestamps there were errors during the interview so you can just jump to those parts to do editing. As you do more episodes, there tend to be less errors in the interview and thus a shorter editing period.
Shownotes (optional but recommended) is going to be something that is easier if you have the questions and what you want to highlight for the podcast episodes. I have seen many podcasts with just a couple of sentences for shownotes while others have several paragraphs. I would lean on the side of ensuring that you give more information and include links to important things from the episode. It’s always great to have a thorough shownotes page so people can refer to this extra resource. For each episode I estimate that you’ll spend 10-25 minutes on shownotes depending on how detailed and if you include external links to more resources.
Marketing your episode includes creating feature images (if you are having a shownotes page on your website), creating shareables for social media, and creating the captions for those social media post. I’d give around 15 minutes per episode. This is granted that you have which parts of your podcast you would like to share (which marking off during the editing phase makes easier).
Other Tips and Resources
If you are still keen on learning more about podcasting, then I recommend you check out the following resources.
Firstly, Pat Flynn has this amazing blog post on podcasting in 2020. Pat Flynn also has a three part YouTube series that walks you through the process in detail. This series may be a little out of date, but thankfully Pat has put together a detailed video from 2020 that would be extremely helpful. Pat also has a course for podcasting; however I don’t think this would be necessary especially when starting out.
Secondly, Buzzsprout, the podcasting hosting service I use, has short videos on all things you might have questions about for podcasting on their YouTube. As I’ve mentioned, I love Buzzsprout for their great customer service and this YouTube channel adds so much value.
Lastly, if you have any other questions I would be more than willing to help you figure out podcasting. So email me at thePHmillennial@gmail.com or reach out to me on Instagram at @thePHmillennial if you have any other questions.
Conclusion
I hope this article helps you start your podcast and provides ideas on how to do so successfully.
There is no better time to start a podcast than right now. It will help you as a consultant or just to build your brand. Podcasts are a very ideal way to expand your reach and create more content that you can share with your audience or clients.
Whether you have an established consulting business or you are getting off the ground, a podcast is a great way to bring amazing value to your audience through evergreen content.
About Omari:
Omari Richins is a Health Improvement Program Officer at the Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Prior to this Omari was Community Health Fellow at the Mat-Su Health Foundation in Wasilla, Alaska. He grew up from Trinidad and Tobago, before completing his last two years of high school in the Sultanate of Oman before starting undergraduate at the University of Tampa. He graduated with a major in Biology and minor in chemistry in December of 2016. After this, Omari then pursued his Master of Public Health in the concentration of Health Management and Policy at the University of Florida. Throughout his time at UF, he was president of the Public Health Student Association as well as holding jobs as a Community Initiatives Assistant Planner for WellFlorida Council and a Rural Health Policy & Advocacy Intern for Suwannee River AHEC. Before graduating from University of Florida in May 2019, Omari was able to secure a 14-month Community Health Fellowship position at the Mat-Su Health Foundation in Wasilla, Alaska. He subsequently got hired as a Health Improvement Program Officer at the Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust. Omari joins the Trust and will be working alongside the program team focused on its mission of improving health outcomes for North Carolina residents. Specifically, Omari will work deeply in community, build relationships across sectors, and participate in grantmaking that focuses on improving the health and well-being of residents with low incomes, communities of color, and areas that have been marginalized. In July of 2019, Omari started the website: The Public Health Millennial and Instagram page to better help other graduate students - especially public health students - and professionals for career and self-development. Recently, he has launched a podcast: “The Public Health Millennial Career Stories Podcast” to share public health stories with those in or wanting to pursue public health careers. You can also connect with Omari via his LinkedIn group The Public Health Millennials.