Starting a Podcast and Building a Following From Scratch by Emelie Jansson
Photo by Karim Golestaneh
My name is Emelie Jansson and I started my company Amelework Consulting AB about a year ago. After many years as an employee I wanted to try running my own company and I am very happy that I dared to take the leap. I am a digital marketing consultant and a podcast creator. My great passion project is the podcast Singelpodden that I co-founded with my friend Sanna Nilsson about 7 years ago. It started off as a hobby but has evolved into a big project that we run as a part time job beyond our everyday work life. Every week we release an episode where we talk about single life and sometimes we invite experts and interesting people with experience on different single related topics. Parallel to our weekly podcast we have a big following on social media and sometimes we host single mingle meetups in the Stockholm area.
The podcast Singelpodden started because both me and Sanna were single at the time and we were talking about single life and dating in Stockholm a lot. We could not find any podcast around this subject that resonated with us and thought: how hard can it be to create our own podcast?
After some quick research we decided to go for it and in April 2015 we released our first episode. During the years there have been many ups and downs. In the beginning we struggled with editing and finding a good environment to record the podcast. We went through several different microphones and at times we sat under a blanket in my apartment to try and get a better sound. Sometimes we have lost whole recordings because we forgot to save them or did not push the record button when we started talking. However, all the struggles in the beginning have all been worth it. We learned to edit, we finally found a microphone that worked and we learned to (almost) never forget to start the recordings and save them. Today I am going to give you my top 5 tips to create a podcast and build a following.
My first and most important tip is to just get started and not to worry about everything needing to be perfect. You can read and research for an eternity but if you never start you will never learn. We had no experience of editing anything before we started this project but we learned to become better for each episode that we published. It requires patience and a willingness to be OK with good enough and not perfect.
Secondly my tip is to make use of Google. There are endless resources regarding what the best editing tool is, where you should host your podcast and how you can publish. We have tested several different hosting alternatives and tools to publish and edit our podcast throughout the years. Right now we are hosting our podcast on Soundcloud and we are using the free tool Audacity for editing but we are constantly evaluating and discussing if we need to change or update what tools we use.
My third tip is that you need to be consistent. For a podcast to be established and build a following you need to publish episodes regularly. If you are inconsistent people will forget about you or be annoyed when they do not know when you release a new episode. Even if it might feel hopeless in the beginning because no one is listening you need to keep at it. Our first episodes had very few listeners where the majority were our friends but after some time we started reaching a bigger audience and now we have listeners from all over Sweden and even some listeners from Norway, Denmark and Finland.
My fourth tip is to make use of social media. We started off claiming the handle @singelpodden on the social media platforms that we thought would be valuable to us even if we did not post on all platforms all the time. We tested which platforms worked best and began posting regularly and parallel to our growing podcast we also grew our social media. Our approach has been to have a humoristic outlook on single life in our social media channels. Now our main platform is Instagram where we have over 30 000 followers and a closed Facebook group Singelpoddens Singelvänner with over 1 200 members. In the Facebook group singles from all over Sweden can share their experiences surrounding single life, dating and other single related subjects.
My fifth and final tip is to listen for advice and ask for help. I have personally always struggled with asking people for help but the times when we have accelerated our growth or learned something new has more often than not been because we got feedback or help from listeners, friends and followers. We upgraded our microphone based on a tip from a fellow podcaster, we changed the approach of our Instagram based on feedback from a friend that is skilled on using social media and we integrated new elements to the podcast or social media because listeners gave us feedback.
Even though the journey with Singelpodden has taken a lot of time and has been frustrating at times I am very happy that we decided to start. I have learned so much about growing a brand, producing/editing a podcast, psychology, communication and above all I have met so many interesting and inspiring people that I would never have met otherwise.
If you are thinking about starting a podcast my advice is: Try it!
If you need help bouncing off ideas or someone to help you editing your podcast contact me on:
Mail: emelie@aworkconsulting.se
Instagram: @aworkconsulting
Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/emelieb-jansson/
Thank you for reading this article and good luck on your journey!
