Celebrating two years of podcasting

This week I have been celebrating two years of podcasting with my podcast Superstar Communicator. I have evolved from being a genuine ‘rooky’ in broadcasting terms, to someone who looks forward to recording my next episode.

An anniversary is a great opportunity to reflect on what I have achieved, and how I should move forward to the next stage of the podcast’s development. In the latest podcast episode I share my thoughts on what I have learnt from the experience.

I knew I should create a podcast for some time; it was a perfect vehicle for a voice and public speaking expert, but my fear and procrastination was stopping me from starting the process. There were a number of complicated technical processes I needed to master: to ensure the podcast could be accepted by iTunes – the main podcast directory at the time. In the last two years, a number of excellent training material has been made available, with videos and simple explanations, but these weren’t available then. It was really quite scary – and easy to ‘put off’ doing!

Finally I realised I couldn’t avoid this any longer and set myself a deadline: the end of February 2014, to complete all of the techie setting up and get an episode of the podcast on iTunes! I was fortunate enough to have a friend who kindly recorded the intro and outro, as well as designing a podcast cover – yes, this all had to be done!

I decided to do my first podcast introducing myself and then I had to work out how to mix the podcast: adding the pre-recorded introduction etc. I wrote out the podcast as a script and I WAS SO NERVOUS! To be honest, I am always nervous before I speak but I know this is part of the process and I know that when I have pushed through this feeling, I can settle down: I need the nerves for energy. BUT I had never podcasted before, so didn’t know if this would happen. But although I am still nervous before any episode, I have been able to push through this.

The main anxiety was working out how to mix the sound file, upload to a storage directory, AND to have the podcast accepted by the iTunes podcast directory. Phew: well you know now that I was successful but not after some anxious moments, and I am happy to say that I learnt SO much by pushing myself.

It is only when you reflect that you can recognise how far you have progressed: listen to the podcast here. However painful it is at the time, by pushing yourself outside your normal comfort zone, and in my case, working out complicated technical processes myself rather than relying on others was a great opportunity to increase my knowledge and confidence.

So two years later, what are my plans for the next year: well I would love to have a patron, to support the development of the podcast and some of the costs. Secondly, I want to increase the reach of the podcast by creating a marketing strategy – and a patron would be able to support that. My current monthly downloads are approximately 1000: my aim is double that.

So it is great to be celebrating two years of podcasting, and here’s to the next two years!