Well, hello, everyone. My name is Michael Coz and I'm the podcast guy here. First of all, I want to thank APC at UG for inviting us. What is a podcast, you're saying?
Well, this should pretty much tell you. It's a digital audio file. By the way, there's a lot of opinions on what a podcast is. This is the one I go by.
A digital audio file made available on the interwebs for downloading to a computer or a mobile device, typically available in a series of new installments which can be received by subscribers automatically. That's essentially it, but we're finding in today's world that that isn't always the case because there's a lot of podcasts out there that are just single episode podcasts where people will create a podcast to teach you something. I just heard one on stock investing that was fascinating. It was an hour and a half long.
He taught everything he intended to teach on one podcast and there it was. So I have a friend up in Pennsylvania who has a podcast helping parents or helping people help their parents as they get older, having to deal with nursing homes or care at home and all of this and he has 32 episodes. He has said everything he's going to say in the 32 episodes and people go to his website and they look and see what episode gives them the information that they need. Here's the big question that comes out about podcasting and it's nothing that we're going to spend a lot of time on today, but that is the why.
Why do we podcast? Why would anyone want to create a podcast? Well, when I was over at your convention in Zephyr Hills, the international convention in Zephyr Hills, I was one of the speakers. I was one of the last minute speakers because an earlier speaker had to cancel.
So I drove over. It was actually held at an Elks club in Zephyr Hills. I've never been to an Elks club. I walked in the front door to get my bearing.
I heard someone in speaking before me. So I sat down for a minute and then I left. I looked over there and I didn't notice all Elks clubs have bars and restaurants. I didn't know.
That's pretty cool. And I said, I would like a diet coke to drink while I do my presentation. And so I went in and I did that and then I went out and did my presentation. Well, one of the questions I was asked while I was doing it was this lady said, well, I'm in the Elks club.
And she's also a board member of APCUG. And she said, what kind of a podcast would our Elks club do? And I said, you know, and I said, wow. I said, I have been here for approximately 20 minutes.
I walked in, I sat down. And as I sat down, I looked at a blackboard that you have in your hallway when I walked in. And this was fascinating to me because on the blackboard, there was people's names that were either ill in hospitals, in rehab centers or had passed away with contact information for other members to see to go and just be friends with people and help them in this time of need. That touched me.
I thought, man, this is a community. That's a podcast. That blackboard is a podcast. I could do a whole, I could do a 30-minute episode just on the blackboard.
As I looked to my right while I was sitting down, there was a table setting in the hallway. It had plates. It had glasses, silverware, everything. And it said reserved.
And then you saw who it was reserved for. And it was reserved for the missing in action people from the Vietnam War or any war for that matter. I saw that and that really moved me. I'm one of these people.
I'm somewhat of a patriot. I saw that. My brother is a Vietnam veteran. That just really, really moved me.
That in itself, that table is a podcast. I could do a whole episode on that. I wandered into the bar to get myself a diet coke. And there's just a million things on the wall in this place.
By the way, it was a beautiful facility. But one of the things that struck me, and it was a box with a light. And inside that box was an American flag that was blowing like in the wind. And I looked at that and I went and got my diet coke and met the exalted ruler.
Very nice man. And walked over to look at that box. And somebody had built that box. They put a light in it.
They put a fan in it so that the flag would always be waving. And I don't know. Again, I'm someone who has parents from World War II. I saw that.
That struck me. I was just thrilled with it. There's a story there. I could do that.
You know what? That's the only amount of time I had to wander around in there. And in that short amount of time, I came up with three episodes just in the back of my head about that particular Elks club. So I went and I gave my talk.
And I said, listen, if you guys created a podcast about Elks club of Zephyr Hills and you emailed every Elks club in America and they started listening to these podcasts and they heard these stories about the flag in the box, the flag in the box, which still, I took a picture of that and I shared it on my Facebook page at one time. It was just absolutely fascinating. I guarantee you, I guarantee you, I said, when people travel to Florida, they're going to, you know, that are members of other Elks clubs. They're going to show up at your Elks club because they're going to want to see all of this stuff.
They're going to want to be part of that community. So those are the reasons why. For the purposes of this presentation, though, I want to really spend my time on how to, how do we create a podcast? How do we start podcasting?
You're just somebody sitting there and you say, I want to start podcast. What do I need to do? How do I do it? Well, it's, it's, it seems really complicated, but it's not.
Well, but we can make it really complicated. And some people do, but some people make it very, very simple. If you want to learn podcasting, you can pay someone to teach you. These two young ladies have a podcast called Almost 30.
Very nice, attractive young ladies. They also have a program, which I guess you're probably too late to join, that you can join and they will teach you over the Internet how to do a podcast. It's called the Podcast Pro Program for $1,297. Isn't that exciting?
You have two girls under 30 who, by the way, listen to the podcast. And anyway, we'll just move on from there. Or there's another guy out there named John Lee Dumas for about the same amount of money will teach you how to do it. There's another guy out there by the name of Pat Flynn, who for about the same amount of money will teach you how to do it.
Or I'm teaching you how to do it right now. And guess what? It's not costing you anything. Or you can, at a local club, you can join a local meetup group.
And there are several local meetup groups where I live, just where I live, that talk about podcasting. This is ours, by the way. Ours is Clearwater Podcasters. There's also the Florida Podcasters Association in this area.
There's the St. Pete Podcasters. There's the Newport Ritchie Podcasters. But you just go to meetup.com and you type in podcasting.
You will find a local group. By the way, the picture you see there is our podcast studio that we have here at the Tampa Bay Technology Center. And it's a pretty good setup, but it's pretty easy to use. We're going to go into some detail of how you can set up a system at home because, you know, if you're a member of the Tampa Bay Technology Center, you can come in and you can use the studio whenever you want if they're not holding other meetings here.
You know, you work around the schedule. But what I really want to teach you is how to set up something at home to do it yourself, and it is very, very, very easy. By the way, another thing that you can do if you want to learn about podcasting is you can go to conventions. And there's lots of them.
The largest one is called Podcast Movement. I believe this year it's going to be in Texas. The second largest one is this one, which is going to be in Orlando next month. This is called PodFest.
It is a, I speak there, as a matter of fact. I've spoke there for the past couple of years and I'll be speaking this year. But every podcaster in the world, I mean literally in the world, who is anybody, shows up to these conventions, one of these two conventions. And you will meet, you go, if you sign up and you go to one of these conventions, you're going to have all these breakout sessions, which are good, but the real good stuff that you learn is in the hallways talking to people or in the lounge talking to people.
You will meet people who are very successful podcasters and they will teach you stuff. You have no idea how much that happens. So what is it that we need if we want to start our own podcast? I mean, it's really not near as complicated as you might think.
It really isn't. So let's take a look at what you need. The first thing you're going to need is a microphone. Well, that can be really complicated, which I'll show you in a moment, or it could be really, really easy.
I know right now personally two very successful podcasters who are using this as their microphone. It does everything that this one does equally as well. This one has a shock mount, and if you look on there, you'll see the foam cover in the part. That gets rid of your plosives.
That has a shock mount built into it, and the cover takes care of the plosives for you. It's all built in, and it's $99. This microphone is becoming a very, very, very popular microphone for podcasters because of the professional build, the quality, and just how good it is. I have mine right now in our podcast studio here so we can have a third guest.
It's just a wonderful microphone. Or if you want to be, this is the broadcast microphone that I used for 34 years, and this is an RE20, Electro Voice RE20. That's about a $400 microphone. I know podcasters who use it.
You don't really need it. Or if you really want to get fancy, I'll show you personally the microphone I would like to own. This is a Shure SM2305, I believe is what it's called. Are you familiar with this microphone?
Well, actually, you are, but you don't know it yet. I'm going to tell you how you are familiar with this microphone. I'm looking out into our audience, and I see some people may be the right age. There's a band out there called the Beach Boys, and Beach Boys had a song called California Girls.
I remember it very distinctly. And in California Girls, another thing you didn't know about the Beach Boys that I'm going to teach you slightly off topic, the Beach Boys did not play their own instruments in the studio. They used studio musicians on all of their recordings. And for California Girls, there's a section in there where they're singing the chorus, and then it goes, ba-bump.
I wish they all could be California Girls. There's a downbeat on that. That downbeat was created by a drummer by the name of Hal Blaine. Hal Blaine was a marvelous drummer in the way that he could do a downbeat on a snare drum.
Most people did downbeats on a kettle drum, but he could do a downbeat on a snare drum where the stick would touch the drum, and then he would move it to the right just a little bit, and you got that distinct sound. That distinct sound was recorded with the microphone that you're looking at right now. And that is a Shure microphone made in America, about a $400 microphone, but it is used in recordings. Shure microphones, by the way, just to let you know, some of you will remember Walter Cronkite telling us all that JFK died.
Some of you saw it live on television like I did. I'm that old. But many of you have seen the audio recording. Walter Cronkite was wearing a lavalier microphone when he came on crying telling us that JFK had passed away, and that lavalier microphone was made by Shure.
So a good microphone is very important. But Michael, what if I want to have two microphones or maybe even four? Okay, if you've got a USB microphone, remember that Audio-Technica that I showed you a while ago, USB microphone? Well, it's also what's called an XLR microphone.
You can plug an XLR cord into it. What's an XLR cord? I'll show you. Hang on.
But if you want to have two microphones, you cannot plug two microphones directly into the computer. You're going to need something to plug those two microphones in to work their way into the computer. We use a mixer, but there's also this thing. This is a Scarlet 212.
It has two connections on it that you can plug two microphones into. And that way, and by the way, if you're looking at the picture, there's volume control for each microphone, and then over on the right, there's a volume control for the headphones that you can listen to. This is a very well-made piece of equipment made in America, metal construction. The wiring is, everything is hand-soldered.
I've seen these things beat to pieces and they keep working. They're better than a Timex, I will tell you. That works very, very well. Or up to four or more, you'll see on the left-hand side is the mixer that I have at home and the mixer that we have at the Tampa Bay Technology Center.
And we can plug into that and we can have four microphones hooked up at one time. Actually, we could have more than that because you'll see on the left at the top left, those little black things, those are XLR. And then on the right, you'll see what they call the, I forget the name of it, it's just left my brain where you can just plug a conventional microphone into that. But you really want that XLR connection.
So that is that. To the right, depending upon how much money you want to spend, and I want to spend the money for what is on the right, there is the Rode Procaster mixer. This thing is dandy as can be. It has connections for four XLRs.
You can plug a cell phone into it so people can call you on that cell phone number, or you can call people and you can record them right through there. Over on the right, you see all those colored buttons there? Each one of those colored buttons has things in there that you can put in there. You can put pre-recording, you can put your show opening in there, you can put a commercial in there, you can put a funny noise in there, you can put a horn in there, you can put a burp in there.
You can put anything you want to put in there to do it. This thing, the other thing, you don't need a computer with this thing. You can plug a memory card into the back. You can record the entire thing, save it onto the memory card.
And even with this, you can connect to the internet and upload it right to your hosting service. So that's pretty nifty. That's $600. I want one.
If any of you want to get me, my birthday is coming up next month. If anyone wants to buy that for me, we'll let you know how to get it to me, but I would absolutely love to have one of those. That's kind of high-end stuff. How do you take your podcast on the road with a portable recorder?
This one is by a company named Zoom, and you can't see it really well, but you can plug four XLR microphones into that recording device. And you can interview, have four microphones going, and you can set that down. It also records everything to a memory card, which you can later upload to your computer. I've got the TASCAM version of this where I can plug two in.
And when I go to conventions or places where I want to interview, I have two of those. You know those microphones that I showed you way at the beginning, the $16 microphone? I plug two of those into mine and interview people out in the field. So, we've talked about hardware, and hardware is very important, but so is software.
And you're saying, but Michael, what software is best? That's an opinion. What I'm going to show you is all excellent. The one listed on the top is called Audacity.
You can get it for free. It works on PCs and it also works on Mac. Five years ago, this was a terrible program. You could not even load an mp3 onto it unless you downloaded some other thing that you had to plug into it.
It was terrible. Now it is absolutely wonderful. It is just really, really good. A lot of my students are using Audacity to record their podcasts, and they're doing just marvelous things with it.
I recorded a, I helped record a small book and I used Audacity. In my home studio, I used Audacity as my audio source to do that. And the other one that's listed on here that's free, if you're a Mac person, is GarageBand. It comes, I think it comes free with every Macintosh or any MacBook Pro or anything like that.
Okay, the thing about GarageBand is it was not created for podcasters. Although I know many successful podcasters who use it and use it all the time. It is, but you have to make all kinds of adjustments. You have to jump through all kinds of hoops.
And one of the things, and I've never used it, but I've been told by many people that know it, is friends do not let friends record podcasts on GarageBands. Friends let their teenage kids who have speed metal bands record music in the garage with GarageBand. Now, if you want to get into the commercial ones, there's a lot of commercial products out there. The one that I use and that we use here at the club is called Adobe Audition.
I first ran into Adobe Audition years ago before Adobe owned it, back in those days, it was called Cool Edit Pro, and it is a fabulous, absolutely fabulous piece of software that record albums are made out of and movie soundtracks are made on it and a lot of television shows. The next one, if you have an iPad or an iPhone, and I have an iPad and I have this, oh, by the way, going back to Adobe Audition, Adobe Audition, you can't buy, you can only rent. I pay $21.50 a month to use Adobe Audition, but again, high quality. I like it.
On my iPad, I have this app, and the app is now called Backpack Studio. When I got it, it was called BossJock Pro, but now it's called Backpack Studio. It costs $9.95. I downloaded it onto my iPad and I put my show music opening and everything on it when I did that.
And I messed with it for a minute or two, and I said, well, this seems to have a There. Next to that is, we'll design a podcast cover for $15. There's one for $10. You can still find people who will do it for $7.
I just got an email from one of my students, a lady who is creating a podcast about children's books that she writes. And she went on Fiverr and spent $7 and had, she got back four different designs to choose from, and they were all quite nice. So I had mine designed on Fiverr. Now, the next thing that we're going to talk about is hosting.
All right, you got your iPhone or your smartphone or your microphone or whatever you got together to create your podcast. What do you do after you've recorded a podcast? You got to put it somewhere so people can download it and listen to it. And that means that you have to use a host.
And there are a gazillion hosts out there. There's just lots and lots of hosts. Probably the Mac Daddy of all the hosting is the one up on the top. It's called Libsyn, liberated syndication is how it came out.
They're the biggest one. They're also kind of clunky, but they are the biggest, and they've got a really nice player. You can get them for $5 a month, but you don't want to get the $5 a month hosting. You're going to want to spend the $20 a month hosting with them because at the $20 level is you can get statistics.
And statistics are very important for your podcast. Very, very, very important for your podcast because you have to know how many people are listening to you, where they're listening to you from, and all kinds of things like that. All of that kind of goes back to marketing your podcast and monetizing your podcast. So you need statistics.
Over to the right, you see Buzzsprout. Buzzsprout has a free option, no statistics, and you're limited to, I think, two hours a week. And then the podcast disappears after a certain amount of time on their free option. If you get to their paid option and you get back up to around the $20 a month situation, you're going to get statistics and your podcast is going to stay there and you can record more on there.
Podbean is another one that is very, very popular. Same situation. I do believe they have a free option, but with no statistics and very limited, a lot of limitations on it. And then over there in the left hand corner is one that we're going to talk about for a little bit here.
It is one that I used to tell people to run from. It is called anchor.fm. And I would be back to the same situation as the other thing. Friends do not let friends record their podcasts or host their podcasts on anchor.fm because it was terrible.
It was just absolutely terrible. And then all of a sudden a strange thing happened. By the way, you could host there for free, but a strange thing happened. They were bought out by, and why is the name escaping me?
They were bought out by Spotify. Okay. Spotify bought them, made a million changes to them, and still they are free. Now my podcast, one of my podcasts is Ask the Garden Geek with Michael Kroos.
By the way, that's my album art that you see there that I paid $7 for on Fiverr. And, uh, but, and I, the guy who told everybody to stay away from, uh, to stay away from anchor.fm, I host all my podcasts on anchor.fm. And the nice thing about anchor.fm is besides the fact that you get free hosting, you get free statistics. And then one other little thing, they, you see where it says more places to listen.
They will, you know, after you have hosting, you've got to put your podcast out into the world where people are going to listen to it. The number one location that people listen to podcasts on right now is Apple Podcasts. The second largest is Spotify, followed by Google Podcasts. And there's a bunch of them out there.
Uh, well, one of the things that anchor will do for you is after you sign up and you set your account up with them and you record your first podcast, they will populate it to nine different syndicators for you. They'll put you on Apple Podcasts. They'll put you on Stitcher. Stitcher used to be the big one for Androids.
Now Spotify is Spotify is big one for Android and for Apple devices. But uh, but all of these, they will put all of those on there for you for free. A caveat, they, they will just, they will put all of that stuff out there for you. A caveat.
I'm starting a new podcast here within the next three weeks. One that I'm going to be very, very serious about. And I'm going to host it on anchor, but I am not going to allow anchor to do my population as far as all of the syndicators out there until I set up Apple Podcasts myself, because when you sign up for anchor and they say, okay, now we're going to populate this. They give you one and only one uh classification to put your podcast in to where's Apple Podcasts gives you three.
Okay. You have three classifications on Apple Podcasts. So if you set your podcast, now ask the garden geek before it was hosted on anchor, it was hosted on another one. So I'm on, I have that benefit with Apple Podcasts already to have the three different classifications.
But people who just do anchor get one classification all the way across the board, which is fine for just about all the other syndicators, but it is very important on Apple that you want to be, have three classifications that you can list to. It is vitally important to you if you are going to have a serious podcast. So I highly recommend that. By the way, anchor also gives you this cute little website right here, which I can't scroll down on because it's just a picture of it where you put all of your episodes on there and people can go down and they can see all of the episodes when you get hosting with anyone, anchor or anyone, you're going to set this page up with any of the hosts.
What is vitally important is you see up there on this one, it says, ask the Garden Geek with Michael Groves. And this is by Michael Groves. And then there's a thing about there that talks about my show. All right.
You want to keyword the bejeebies out of that. You really want to take the time to make sure that you keyword that because besides, you know, where do people go to look for podcasts? Well, a lot of people go to Apple Podcasts or iTunes or they'll go, you know, to Spotify and they'll look at those directions. But the overwhelming majority of people who want to hear a podcast, me included, I go to a website called Google and I type in what kind of podcast I want to listen to or the name of a podcast I want to listen to.
All right. And I go on there and or say I wanted to hear a podcast about woodworking. I would go to Google and I would type in woodworking podcast. And because the keywords in the description, the smart person who has the woodworking podcast is going to say, oh, golly gee, look at that.
That's going to show up on the Google in that description. So that's very important. The other thing, even with whatever host you use, every time you record an episode, you're going to have show notes for that episode that is going to show up on any one of your hosts where they list your show. You want to keyword to the Gigi's out of the show notes about your show.
The one that you see there is what is diatomaceous earth? I did a description of what is diatomaceous earth as far as an organic pesticide. And I keyworded it like crazy. So say someone is looking up diatomaceous earth as an organic pesticide or how do I control pests with diatomaceous earth?
Guess what? That episode of my podcast is going to show up on Google. These things are very, very, very important that you do that. So just know that and let's go.
Uh, Oh, these are statistics. Now this is statistics I pulled off of anchor. Uh, when I had my show on there for two weeks and then two, this is a slide from back then. Now the neat thing about anchor, but all of them have interesting statistics.
You can see that uh, the platforms and you can either look at apps or devices. So this one I think is set to apps. You can see that 38% of my audience was listening on Apple podcasts and 29% was listening on Spotify anchor 13% uh, cast box, 5% overcast, 5% and then other, if you run your mouse over the other, it'll tell you what all the others are. Well, this is kind of important information.
And at that time, two weeks in, I was in the United States. If I go to my statistics right now, my podcast is now heard in nine different countries. And depending on week to week, either Apple podcasts is number one as far as how people listen to it, or Spotify is number one. They kind of go a week to week.
Some weeks, Spotify is number one. Some weeks, Apple podcasts are number one. It all depends on the week, but also it's really interesting to see right now, 100, that statistic, 100% of my audience was in the United States. Now I have 5% of my audience is in Australia.
Uh, believe it or not, 2% of my audience is in Sweden. Do they speak English? I'm on in China for some, for some unknown reason. I'm on in Japan.
I'm on in Germany. I'm on in the Virgin islands. And I'm on in all these different countries. So my podcast, by the way You have to have music that you own.
If you decide you're going to do a car podcast, you're going to do a podcast about fixing cars, and you decide you're going to use On the Road Again by Willie Nelson as your opening music, On the Road Again, remember that? You're going to hear that? You're going to use that. And there's two companies out there right now, two organizations.
One is called BMI, and the other one is called ASCAP, and they license people's music, okay? Some of you will remember a gentleman by the name of Joey Dee and the Starlighters. Joey Dee and the Starlighters now lives in Clearwater, Florida, where I live, and he's retired. He had a hit in the 60s called The Peppermint Twist.
And every time that is heard on the radio someplace, Joey Dee gets a little tiny bit of money because he owns that song. That's Joey Dee's song. And Joey is living in retirement in Clearwater off the royalties from The Peppermint Twist. I have a very good friend by the name of Terry Kirkman, who was the lead singer of The Association, a band, you know, everyone knows It's Windy, Cherish, all of that.
He lives in California now. He is almost 80 years old. He is retired. He lives off the royalties of that music.
When some idiot podcaster plays his music as his opening, he doesn't get paid for it. Well, either ASCAP or BMI are going to come and see you if you do that, and they're going to take your dog. That's the very least they will do is they'll steal your dog. What they will do is they will file a lawsuit on you, and you'll have to sell your dog to pay off the lawsuit.
There's a thing in the radio industry that everybody used to say was true. It's called the 28-second rule. You could play up to 28 seconds of copyrighted music and it was okay. Guess what?
It's not true. There is no 28-second rule. Trust me, I know, and I know from personal experience of doing a talk show where we used some other music for 26 seconds and got in a whole heap of trouble. So buy your music.
If you go to Google, these are all companies that you can get royalty-free music from, and they are available. I use this guy, Mike Stewart, the Internet Audio Guy. Here at the club, we have, I don't know, probably 500 pieces of his music that I bought, that I paid for. I also paid Mike personally to create the music that I use on my Ask the Garden Geek podcast.
But he has, it's all available, and if you're a member of our club, you get, you get to use it for free. But if you're out there and you're looking for music, I recommend, look for Mike Stewart, the Internet Audio Guy, and you can buy his music very inexpensively. Do not use copyrighted music. So all that's left to do, I've talked to you all of the basics, is to record a podcast.
Okay, told you how to do it, told you about the microphone, told you you could do it on a cell phone, told you how to, you know, if you wanted to have multiple people around, I told you the cheap equipment, I told you how to, the media and the moderate equipment, I told you the expensive equipment. And still, by the way, if anyone out there, birthday's coming up March 18th, if you want to buy me that, that Rode Procaster mixer for $600, I'm sure someone here will tell you how to send it to me. Or if you send me like three of them, I'll sell some. But that, that is how you do it.
And I'm pretty much done. And now, any questions that you have, I will be happy to answer. Sir, do we have any questions? Yeah, we have, have one.
How do, what do I say to Alexa to hear one of your podcasts? Oh, what do you say to Alexa to hear one of my podcasts? Make sure you pronounce correctly. You say, Alexa, play Ask the Garden Geek podcast.
And she's, if you don't say it right, she'll say, I don't know Ask the Garden Gate. Make sure you say Ask the Garden Geek. So you go to Alexa and say, Alexa, play the Ask the Garden Geek podcast. Here's another one.
I'm going to throw in a bonus for you. Trust me, you're going to want to do this because it's a friend of mine. Say, Alexa, play the daily boost podcast. It's just nine minutes.
You'll like it.