I am considering starting a podcast. Turning over in my mind the pros and cons.
I don’t want to start one that I would not be happy to put my name to, that I could not have some pride in and want to say, with some justified satisfaction, ‘I made this’.
The starting point in my thinking, which I have set my face against for some time, is the success of my YouTube channel and the steady growth in subscriber numbers, increasing amount of comments, engagement, good feedback, compliments, follow up legal queries to the office, and, ultimately, consultations/clients. I was thinking about how feasible it might be to extract the audio from many of my best, most popular videos and simply publish the audio as a podcast. This would be an easy way to start and a good ‘repurposing’ of existing content I created and own.
It would be easy, too, to create an ‘intro’ and ‘outro’ track and custom edit the audio for each episode of the podcast. And much of the editing could be done on my existing Camtasia 2018 software which is my video editing software and with which I have become more comfortable and proficient.
Some of my videos-those which rely on slides or images-would not be suitable but lately a huge number of my videos, which have been very well received, are simply ‘talking head’ type videos with me speaking directly to the camera on my Galaxy S9 mobile phone either at home or in the office.
The reason I have set my face against starting a podcast for so long is that I have done everything in terms of content creation and digital/social media marketing that one person could reasonably do and I have a concern about spreading myself too thin in trying to take on too much.
I am a one-man band after all and I think you would be genuinely surprised that I create all the content-blog posts, videos, slideshows, images, social media posts- and do all the digital marketing myself, completely solo.
Having said that I am now making videos with great ease in a short amount of time and a great deal of efficiency and my own ‘system’. By this I mean to say that most of the videos I make are done with one take and only take ten minutes or thereabouts. A few more minutes editing and uploading to YouTube and Facebook and I am easily knocking out a video in 30 minutes maximum.
There are some obvious benefits which might flow from a podcast, benefits such as new leads, new clients, and the benefit of acquiring and developing new skills in communicating. Anything that helps me to improve my ability to communicate is something that I would embrace vigorously for I am a huge believer in the power of communication and the acquisition and improvement of communication skills.
I have not decided one way or the other yet, and I will do a little more research about it, but I know and understand the basic skills in podcasting and I am an enthusiastic consumer of podcasts and audiobooks because they are so convenient to consume as I go about my ordinary life-for example driving to work, jogging every evening, mowing the lawn at the weekend.
All of these times I now spend listening to audiobooks or podcasts. If podcasts have slowly but surely become part of my everyday life I think it is a reasonable assumption that other people, whilst exercising or commuting or walking the dog or engaging in other ordinary everyday activities, are finding and enjoying podcasts too.