My friend, Sandi Hazelwood, and I are doing a little series about podcasting together. Today and Monday you’ll get four posts – two from each of us on our own blogs – focusing on aspects of podcasting both technical and conceptual. We’re looking at questions like why are podcasts important as a listener and as a producer? What’s the future of podcasting for crafters and makers? How do you create a podcast, edit it, and post it to iTunes? Today Sandi is explaining how to subscribe to a podcast in both iTunes and Stitcher. Check out her post here.
Sandi has been producing The Crafty Planner for a few months and I’ve been making the While She Naps podcast for nearly two years. In “Behind the Podcast” we take you behind the scenes and describe what it’s really like to secure guests, record, edit and market a show. (If you’re interested in podcasting, you might like some posts I’ve already written about it including How to Get Started Podcasting and Reflections on a Year of Podcasting).
Our series will culminate on Monday when Sandi will air a discussion we had together on her show, The Crafty Planner. We solicited questions on Instagram (or Sandi did!) about the ins and outs of podcasting and used those to help guide our conversation.
Ready?
I wanted to kick things off by attempting to answer why I think listening to podcast can enrich your career and your life.
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Inspirational speaker Jim Rohn is famous for saying, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” If you take his words to heart, podcasts are an ideal way to spend time with the people who will best help you to achieve your goals.
Are you hoping to become a successful knitwear designer? Listen to The Yarn Thing podcast to spend time with Franklin Habit and Amy Herzog. Or maybe you’re interested in founding a tech company? Listen to From Scratch to spend time with Leah Busque, founder of Task Rabbit, and Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter and Square. Perhaps you’d like to become a freelance writer? Tune in to the Longform podcast and listen to Molly Crabapple and Rachel Syme tell you how they find and develop stories.
The people doing the things that I most want to do don’t live near me. They aren’t here in my community and I don’t get to travel as much as I’d like to. Podcasts bring these people right to me in a way that’s almost as good. Podcasts give me the ability to listen in on conversations with the most ideal people I can think of.
While I’m running in the mornings, chopping vegetables for dinner in the late afternoons, and folding laundry in the evenings, these incredible people talk into my ears and help me to realize what’s possible. Listening to Denyse Schmidt and Natalie Chanin describe their journeys on ThreadCult helps me see what persistence and staying true to your ideals looks like for women in the sewing industry. Then going back to 2006 and hearing Denyse again, this time on CraftSanity, helps me see what a successful career is like when it’s still small and new.
Why are podcasts revolutionary?
In the same way that a blog is one person’s indie magazine, a podcast is indie radio, distributed by the creator directly to the audience without intermediation by a publishing company or broadcast network. Having a small audience and a niche listenership is not a limitation. In fact, it’s an advantage. Podcasts are made by enthusiasts for enthusiasts and that connection is deep and wonderful.
As a podcast maker my goal is not to simply bring on a designer to talk about their hot new book or their popular fabric line. It’s to assuage my curiosity about how they made those things happen. How did the book come to be? Why is creating fabric important? How are you piecing together a business with these things? It’s completely okay that 200,000 people don’t want to tune in to this sort of conversation because for the 8,000 that do there’s nothing more satisfying. That’s the beauty of podcasts.
All of us have idle time when we could listen to something while we’re busy doing something else. Use that time to surround yourself with the people you admire most. By using iTunes like Google you can search for and find interviews with the people whose stories will meet your needs exactly.
If we are the average of the five people we hear most, we might as well the choose absolute best five people.
Abby, your blog is the best. I keep coming back to re-read them. I especially love the thought that we are the average of the 5 people we spend the most time with. Also your encouragement for women in business. Kudos!
Thank you so much!
I have like you, listened to podcasts for such a long time they feel like something I have never been without, but it’s not that long if you think about it. And how awesome that you yourself get to chose the topics you want to listen to, how, when and for how long!
I so appreciate all the hard work it takes to make an episode, so thanks Abby!
I listened to the latest while she naps-episode when doing the dishes today! 🙂
Yay! Thank you for being such a faithful supporter of my work, Hanna.
I won’t be the only one to say or think this, but YOU are one of the five best people! Thanks for helping to raise my own average. xx
Heather, that is the nicest thing to say. You’re the best.
I subscribe to a multitude of podcasts on various subjects. Fresh Air, Mystery Show, This American Life, and StoryCorps are among my favorites, although I also listen regularly to podcasts on sewing, crafting, web design, writing, and indie publishing. I have to admit that I quit listening to some because the information they provided didn’t outweigh the poor quality of the audio. If you’re going to use your podcast as a marketing tool, make sure it sounds good as well as being entertaining and/or informative.
Sound quality is so hard! Without a real studio and expensive equipment it can be a real challenge, especially if you’re recording a Skype conversation with someone. I do the best I can, but I know it’s not ideal. Still, I hope my show is a worthwhile listen. I definitely continue to listen to shows with less than perfect sound quality because the quality of the conversation is high.