Episode 201: My Podcast Journey After 200 Episodes

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Show Summary

Rob Cairns talks about his podcast journey after doing over 200 episodes.

Show Highlights:

1. Lessons learned.
2. How Rob produces his podcast.
3. A big thank you to all those involved.

Show Notes

Rob Here again.

In this podcast, I thought I’d share a little bit about my podcast journey and where we’ve gone.

So about.

I guess 3 1/2 years ago I had this brainstorm idea that I was tired of blogging. I’d written probably over 2000 blog posts over a 10 year period for business and writing for clients.

And I always liked the podcast space.

I mean, I listen to podcasts all day long on my phone and on my computer when I’m working, and I thought, you know, I had friends like Bob Dunn, Bob WP.

Who did that part so 200 with me who podcast? I thought Jesus should drop into the podcast realm.

So I did.

I dropped in and I started podcasting.

I made a mistake early on.

Actually two big ones.

First of all, I decided on a free podcast service anchored FM.

And second of all, I decided not to start one but two podcasts.

The interview show and a podcast called with our CEO.

Uh, with our CEO is no longer in production. I think I did about 36 episodes. They’re available on my website for historical reasons, but that’s about it. And the SDM show.

Yeah, sorry, the interview show is now morphed into the SDM show.

And I kind of merged the two podcasts, so that was.

Good news there.

The free service anchored FM.

About a seven or eight months ago I switched to Castos and to be fair, I haven’t been happier.

Castos is amazing.

The support is amazing.

Frankly for me it’s the right choice.

Being a creative for podcasting.

So I did well there.

The reality is you don’t want to self host your podcasts on your own website, you’ll kill.

All the bandwidth.

Zero at time of this record. This is episode 201. I’ve done 200 episodes. I’ve had some amazing guests, couple notable ones lately. Episode 100 was done with my good friend Corey Miller.

Of post status Episode 200 was done with Bob WP Bob Dunn, who’s been an inspiration in this space to me.

So that was good.

And then.

You say, what do I prefer?

Do I prefer solo shows or do I prefer interviews?

I actually like them both to be fair, umso will shows I’ll throw out tips or I’ll take a topic like this one and talk for five or 10 minutes interviews.

They’re amazing if done right.

And one of the things I like about the interviews is not only do I get my listeners, you, the listener information.

I get I also learn along with you sometimes the guest I.

Don’t know well.

Sometimes they do and I still always learn something and that’s really important.

Let’s now jump into how I record the podcast.

In past I’ve recorded podcasts on Google Meet.

I’ve actually recorded podcasts on.

I even did one podcast ’cause the connection issues were I recorded with my friend Bob Rodkin on Skype.

And did that.

And typically, the way I like to do podcasts now.

Is I’ve settled on Lancaster as a recording platform.

And in all.

My podcasting I’ve only had problems with one recording and it actually happened recently a couple weeks ago I was recording our podcast.

And I lost power of all dreaded things in the middle of the podcast.

It was a flicker.

And we went and recorded the second part and I figured, ah, I would record.

Just merge the two and do some editing Well  Zencaster dropped the first part 40 minutes in, so the good news is we’re going to rerecord that podcast this week so things happen.

And my guests were more than gracious.

And I wanna shout out to Warren and Bridget and thanks guys much appreciated and I look forward to recording with you later in the week so.

That’s kind of happened.

And then.

How I do editing?

I use audacity.

I love audacity.

In my podcast journey, I’ve been on Windows 10.

I switched to Linux for a while and I’m back on Windows 10.

And I could.

Go into Adobe editing software there editing software, but frankly audacity is the way to go.

Do I do live podcasts?

That’s interesting too.

I did a couple around Christmas.

We did a WordPress roundtable I did with Ryan Waterbury, Todd Jones and David nursing.

Ken and we talked about, uh.

You know, some stuff like, uh?

WordPress year in review and I recorded that on Melon and it went really well, except in that one who had Internet problems.

Me, the host.

Isn’t that always the way and we just kind of.

Went with it and things happened.

And that’s just the way it went.

So when we were done, I took the melon video recording script out to video, put out an audio in the podcast.

The vendor and I also did a WP weekly award show that we did the same way where I streamed it and then we did that.

And I’m thinking.

As I move forward this year, I might do a little bit more of that.

But I’m not so sure we’ll see.

So that kind of covers that my podcast right now isn’t available on all major podcast platforms.

And I made a decision about.

The beginning of the month at the time this podcast was released will also be available YouTube as an audio only.

So I’ve been working on that and getting the podcasts up on YouTube. Just another way for people to listen to the podcasts and creating some playlists and that should be done.

So that’s.

Really, really good.

Uh, mentioned I use audacity for editing for doing show notes and show notes and the dreaded show notes.

When I started.

I put in a quick description that was it.

Then for a while I did show notes with Otter dot AI, then I stopped.

And then I made a decision.

I needed to do more show notes with audio.

And I carried this on for several months.

And then frankly, I discovered Office 365.

Gives you 300 minutes of transcription and I have two Office 365 accounts, so 600 minutes of transcription was enough to do my show notes for this podcast for a whole month and not all I do is show notes.

I also do a show highlights.

I always list three or four points on the Kastos description, and I carry those over to my website.

So that’s how I do it.

Promoting the podcast wow.

Here’s where I have a problem.

Facebook does not allow me to post the stunning digitalmarketing.com domain on it.

So to share my podcast on Facebook, I actually.

Post the Castos page for each podcast to promote it.

And I’m not a big Facebook user anymore, so it doesn’t really matter.

And then on top of a Facebook, UM?

I share the podcast link on both LinkedIn.

And I share it on a Twitter.

I also share it on my Google My Business page on my profile and I’m looking at some other ways to promote it.

One of the reasons why I started uploading to YouTube was to promote it.

One of the things I’ve tried to do in my podcast is keep it more than just a word press show.

Yes, it’s very heavy word press feeling, but I also talk about business and moving forward.

I’m actually going to  release a podcast on influencer marketing.

I’m working at doing a podcast on down the road on quizzes and how that can help your marketing.

And things like that.

My friend Ryan Waterbury and I have started a series.

We’re now three in about marketing for agencies and things agencies should do to help themselves.

So we’re working on those sinks, and they’re kind of cool.

I’m looking at doing some more partnerships.

Up until now I haven’t done any ads in my podcast, but if somebody came knocking.

I would probably take.

So that’s kind of.

Where the podcast journey is gone and I have to say I’m pretty lucky.

I’ve managed to come interview.

Many guests, develop friendships, relationships.

And I love the medium of podcasting.

So here’s to just being past episode 200 and I really hope.

That we’ll be talking about episode 1000 someday.

So that’s my journey.

Have a great day everybody and bye for now.

 

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