Full Transcript: Top Podcasting Tips & Tools for Recording, Interviews & Exporting – Pat Flynn

Top Podcasting Tips & Tools for Recording, Interviews & Exporting – Pat Flynn

: Hey, what's up guys, it's Pat Flynn here. You know I've recorded over a thousand podcast episodes, conducted hundreds of interviews. I'm excited to share with you today in this video some of my best and favorite tips. We're going to talk about recording your episodes. We're going to talk about interviews.

: We're actually going to dive into the editing software. I'm gonna show you different kinds of episodes you can create and how they're structured and then finally, I'm going to show you how to export an MP3 file and tag it properly in a way such that it has all the right information in it for the person listening on the other end. All right. You ready to get started.

: All right, let's start with tip number one. When I first started podcasting, I thought that when you recorded a podcast episode you had to record it all in one fell swoop, meaning just one take and I would get frustrated every time I made a mistake. I would go back to the beginning and re-record everything over and over and over again and over time it would get longer and longer the amount I could go without actually making a mistake, but I eventually found out the secret.

: You don't have to record everything all in one take. You can and you should be stopping at certain points, going back and redoing something if you feel like you can do it better and at the end, your podcast episodes are going to look like a bunch of pieces all put together. So, don't try and be One Take Jake because that is very difficult and unusual.

: All right, tip number two. You don't have to script your entire podcast episode either. I actually used to do that too because I was so scared that I was going to miss something. I wanted to make sure I structured my episodes and said everything I wanted to say in the perfect way. But what ended up happening was a lot of those episodes that I scripted out word for word kind and it didn't sound like they had a lot of personality in them and you can make sense of that when you start to read your own stuff.

: My best tip for you is to actually just outline your episode. Start with the end in mind – the transformation. What is it that you're trying to teach or share with this audience member of yours and then work backwards from there, listing the examples; the case studies; the stories that you want to tell; the facts. All those kinds of things. You don't have to, and you should not, script everything out. Trust yourself to use that outline to be able to tell stories in a way similar to if you were to just go to a cafe and talk to a friend.

: All right, tip number three and this relates to microphone placement. So, a couple of things here. You need to know that your mouth needs to stay in generally the same position at the same time. Now you obviously want to talk naturally too and this can be a little bit tricky for some of you but you want to make sure that your mouth is pointing the same direction the whole time.

: And, trust me, it's so easy to forget that you need to do this because we often move our heads around, especially when we're talking, especially during an interview. But always try to make sure that your mouth is pointed in the same direction. You also want to make sure the distance from your mouth to the microphone remains the same too.

: One trick that I like to use, especially on this particular microphone is I like to have basically the tip of my nose touching the windscreen because that allows for that deep resonant voice, whether you're a man or woman, to come through and make it sound very natural and soothing sounding, so try to stay as close as you can to the microphone and obviously check your levels when you're recording, run some test recordings, make sure you're in the right spot. But, generally speaking, mouth always facing microphone and always having it be the same distance from the mic.

: All right, tip number four and this is a quick one. Make sure you remove all distractions when you're recording your podcast episodes. This means turning off your phone, making it silent or turning off the notifications on your desktop or closing the door, obviously, or if you have kids or people around the house, let them know that you're recording and not to distract you during that time. One of the worst things that can happen is obviously losing your flow because when you're in a podcast episode, you're often in a state of mind where things are flowing, things are going really well. When you get distracted, it can throw you off. So, remove those distractions as much as possible and just make sure that becomes a habit for you.

: All right, in tip Number 5, the final one for now. I'll give you some more tips related to interviews specifically once I show you how to conduct an interview because it's a little different beast, but the last one is no matter what kind of episode it is, make sure that you create some sort of hook in the beginning of that episode because, you know, kind of like with a website or with a YouTube video, you know, people watch that or they read it and then if they're not interested right away, they're going to click away or exit right away, right? Same thing with your podcast although you have a little bit more time. You have about 20 to 30 seconds to really convince the listener that they should stick around. I mean, that magic moment is when they take that device of theirs and they put it in their pocket, they're saying to themselves, yes, I commit to listening to this episode. You want that and the best way to get that is to actually give them something that they can look forward to. So, whenever possible, especially in the beginning or the introductions of your episodes, tell them what they're going to get and why they should stick around.

: Now, when it comes to creating content for your podcast episodes, some of those episodes may lend itself to just be you. Have it be a solo episode where you're chatting with that audience on the other side. Other times, it might make sense for you to have an interview type of episode where you have a guest or a number of guests on your show and this is beneficial for a lot of reasons. Number one, a person might have an expertise that you are able to share with your audience through that interview when it's an expertise that you might not have yourself. Number two. Guess what, you get to have a lengthy conversation with somebody, perhaps somebody who you look up to in your space that allows you to start building a relationship with them at the same time. And, number three, now you're associated with that person, which means if a listener comes through and sees that you have this connection with this other person, I mean, that means a lot. Now, in order to capture an interview – I'm not going to go into the details of how to do all the interview process, scheduling, and all that kind of stuff. A lot of that is common sense. I also talk a lot more about it in my premium course Power of Podcasting, but for now I'm going to give you a quick rundown of how to capture an interview using Skype. Skype is a free tool that you can download online that allows you to do audio and/or video chats with other people, even messaging as well, but using some third-party tools you can actually capture those things, take those MP3 files and just drop them right into your editor. If you're on a Mac, likely you'd want to use Call Recorder for Mac by the Ecamm Network and then if you're on a PC, you'd want to use either Pamela for Skype or Amolto, which a lot of people are using now too. Obviously, links for all these things are below this video.

: All right, so really quick I'm gonna show you how to record an interview on Skype using Call Recorder for Mac and then we'll get into some interview tips after that. ok, so here you are on Skype and a few things you want to do. First, make sure you follow this account here, the Skype name Echo 123. This is a robot test call tool that Skype provides you so that's Echo 123. We're going to record a conversation with this person in just a moment to show you how easy this is to do. Secondly, after you install Call Recorder for Mac, for example, if you go to view up here and click Call Recorder, you'll see the call recorder pop up and simply you click on this red button to record the conversation. It will record the audio on my end and it'll record the audio on the other person's end too at the same time. Now, as you can see, it is greyed out and that's because we are not initiated in a call right now. It'll only initiate and be able to be clicked on after we're on a call, so let's go into that Skype call and let's actually test this out. So, I'm going to click this button here, call the Echo Sound Test Service and then I'm going to hit record and then I'm also going to speak so that we can capture that and then I'll show you where that file ends up and what to do with it.

: Hello, welcome to Skype Call Testing Service. After the beep, please record a message. Afterwards, your message will be played back to you.

: Hey Skype, this is Pat Flynn here. Welcome to the Smart Passive Income Podcast. Woo hoo. Yeah.

: Hey, Skype. This is Pat Flynn here. Welcome to the Smart Passive Income Podcast. Woo.

: If you are able to hear your own voice, then you have configured Skype correctly. If you hear this message but not your own voice, then something is wrong with your audio recording settings. Please check your microphone and microphone settings or visit skype.com for more help. Thank you for using Skype Call Testing Service.

: All right. So, there we go. I closed the conversation and that recording ended and we're going to go find it really quick, but briefly she mentioned that you can check your preferences for Skype if your mic is not hooked up and to do that all you have to do is go to Skype and then audio and video settings. If that setting is not there, just go to preferences. It's likely there instead. And, now you can see my camera. So, my camera is working, which is great. Good to see you guys. And then microphone, as you can see, is the built-in mic and we did that for the purposes of this demo. If I wanted to do a real podcast, I would hit this and select the ATR USB microphone. So, that's how you would make sure that you have the correct mic.

: Now, let's go find that podcast episode or, excuse me, that interview that we just "recorded" there with that test sound service. So, if you actually click on this find your icon or this magnifying glass here, that will actually open up a list of your previously recorded episodes here or interviews and if you click on this, you can you can actually play it and preview here. So, you can do that. Now you're hearing a little bit of echo with mine there because I didn't have headphones on. It's always best to kind of have headphones in when you're recording so that your microphone doesn't pick up what the speakers are putting out. So, that way it's in your ear, there's no echo. I'm not going to play here because there is an echo, but here's what you would do from here. You'd go to export as MP3 and then click export and then you can save it wherever you'd like. Save it as the best quality and it's going to be something that you can easily drag and drop into your editor for your interview shows. Cool.

: All right, now really quick, three simple tips to help you increase the likelihood of having a great interview. Number one, make sure that you and the person you're interviewing are both on the same page, meaning when that interview is going to happen; where does it happen; what are your Skype user names together and what is it going to be about. Also, make that person feel really comfortable when they get on with you. That way the interview just goes that much smoother. All right tip number two, as much as you might want to write down questions beforehand, which you can, my top recommendation is to don't always stick with them and see how deep you can go. A lot of those questions that you might ask initially are just surface level questions. The gold lies deep down below so, continue to ask questions like, why or how come you felt like that or what was going through your head at that time. Try to pull stories out of that person too. That's how you get into the golden, great information that your audience is going to really enjoy. And finally, just overall, the third and best tip I can offer you as an interviewer is be genuinely curious. Yes, you're going to have to listen, obviously, but it can be very difficult to listen because you're going to want to make sure you ask the right follow up question or you might be keeping track of notes or certain things but when you are genuinely curious, when you approach your interviews as that, nothing can go wrong because you are putting yourselves in the shoes of those who are listening. You're collecting information, you are learning about that person and you're getting valuable information that your audience will benefit from.

: ok, so to finish up this video, a really, really important step here and that is taking your file, right, after it is completed, after you got all the pieces in there, the music, the interview, intros, outros, call to action, all those necessary things. Once that's ready to go, well what do we do next? Well, we have to export it. Take it from our editing software into an MP3 file but then we need to take that MP3 file and add a little bit of data behind it to make sure that the information in that file matches what it should be so that when a person listens to it on the other end it's exactly the way it needs to be. So, let's dive right into the editing software right now. I'm using Garage Band. There's like a made-up episode that is put together for you for the demonstration purposes here and then we'll export it and we'll tag it and then we will be done for today.

: All right, so here we are in Garage Band. We have this made up episode here as you can see. This is my track here with the intro and outro. There's like a middle piece here for the interview and then there's music on either side to kind of cap things off. Now, at this point, what we want to do is export, and to do that, quite simply we just go to the share area in the menu item and then click export song to disc and what we want to do is make sure this is an MP3 file. So, we're going to click on MP3 file and in terms of quality, there's a number of different selections here. There's a low quality, medium quality, high and then highest. The higher you go, the bigger the file size is going to be, but the lower you go, the lower the quality of that episode is going to be as well. High quality or medium quality will work just fine and because we want the highest quality possible, that makes sense. Just click on high quality, 192 gigabytes per second. But don't worry about highest quality. That's too much. That's for, like, music production. High quality will work just fine and then what you do is you can name it. You can name it the episode number, if you have episode numbers, or the name of that episode or the guest that you might have, for example. It's nice that they include this timestamp here for you automatically so that you just know when you exported this one so, I'm just going to keep it as Test Episode and hit export and it should take just a moment. Obviously, it can take a little bit longer depending on the size of your episode. And boom, we're done. It is converted now to an MP3. So, let's go and find it. All right, so I found it here in this Test Episode Folder. Now, hopefully, you can have your own file management system in your computer that has different numbers and just makes it easy for you to find these kinds of things. So, this is Test Episode. This is the Garage Band Project file and this is the MP3 file that we just created and if we were to play that, it would play properly. But, as you can see, it uses just the default logo there because we don't have artwork put into it yet nor do we have any information related about this episode that would play on the other end. If a person plays this on their device, it would literally say test-episode-010918-335pm, and that's not what we want. We want to put the proper metadata behind it. In other words, we want to tag this thing. So, how do we do that?

: There's a number of third party tools that you can use to add tags to your file. You can also do it within your podcast host, which we'll talk about in the next episode, but I wouldn't recommend doing that. I would recommend just doing it on the file itself using iTunes. The reason I like doing it on iTunes is a) because it's very simple; and, b) you can get a sense for what it's already going to look like as you go along. So, I'm just going to open up iTunes right here and, in my library, I'm gonna create a new playlist just to house these episodes that I create and build over time. So, I'm gonna click new playlist and just do a Podcast Episode – I can't speak and type at the same time. There we go. And now, what I'm going to do is drag this over and literally just drag and drop this test episode, the MP3 file, not the Garage Band file, into that playlist. Now, here it is. So, let me expand this really quick so we can get more of you there. ok, so now we have that podcast episode. As you can see here, it's Test Episode with the day and the time and it has the default image file. This is all the information that is in this file right now.

: So, let's change that. To do that, you can right click and click on Song Info and, as you can see here, now we have a number of fields – Artist; Album; Album Artist; Composer; Grouping; Genre. But, hey wait, we didn't create a song, we created a podcast, so we have to change that first. First thing you wanna do is go to Options and then change the media kind from music to podcast. This changes the menu items up here. Now, if we go to details, for example, you'll see that this has changed. So, title here is the title of this podcast episode. So, podcast episode title goes here. The author, this is you. The host. This should be the same as what you're eventually going to put into your media provider, which we'll talk about your media host in the next video. So, same as media host then, podcast. This is the title of your podcast so your podcast title goes here. Your release date, this is the date that this is going to be published, if you know that already, if not, that's ok. Genre. That's something that doesn't have to be filled out either. Runtime, as you can see, that automatically populates and then simply to add your artwork, just click on Add Artwork. You're going to find your file and then it'll be essentially embedded in that episode. Boom and now that artwork is in there for my podcast and when I click ok, it's going to show that artwork there but we're not ready to click ok yet. I'm going to click on description and this is where we add a little bit of a description of what this episode is about. Not your show, but what this particular episode is about and you can have it as long or as short as you want. In some applications they truncate this so don't spend too much time on this, but you do want to make sure that when a person reads this, that they are enticed to go and listen to it. So, I'm just going to put a description for Episode goes here. Then, I'm going to hit ok. Whoa, what happened? Our playlist disappeared. Well it didn't disappear, it just moved because remember we switched from music to podcast and we are in the music library right now. You're seeing music from the movie Frozen and a TV show called Happy Endings. We need to go to the podcast library so, to do that, just go to the drop-down menu here, music podcasts. Now after this, you won't ever have to change it anymore. But, as you can see there's your episode. You can see the title of our episode. Podcast episode titles go here. You host, same as me, host. Podcast title goes here, but where's our artwork? Well it's not necessarily gone. It doesn't often show here right away, but if we were to click play on this it should show up here at the top and that's how we know it's connected. So,let's press play. Check, check, one, two. This is Pat Flynn. We're ok because see there's the logo up there and it played that funky music which was what we just used for demonstration purposes and all is good to go. So now our file is ready for the world.

: All right and final step here relating to this podcast episode that we just tagged. We want to take this tagged file and put it back into our folder. That way we know that that's the final one that is tagged. So, we're actually going to click on that here in iTunes, drag and drop it over to our folder and then just one thing I like to do is just click on here and add the words final at the end and that's how we know that that's the file that we should be uploading to our media host.

: All right, great job. In the next video, you're going to learn a few things such as how to get set up with media hosts properly, get your show ready for the world. Also, distribute your show on directories like iTunes, Stitcher and Google Play. We'll also get into how much does a website play a role in all this and also show notes and what that means. All right, and really quick before you go, I have a gift for you and that is the Podcast Cheat Sheet. You can get it for free using one of the links in the description below and what that does, is it helps you just make sure that you have all the pieces into place to help you get your show up and running and also has a checklist to go from nowhere to a podcast up and running on iTunes and also to make sure that you are creating the right kinds of content and can plan properly ahead to just do a great job with your podcasts. I'm excited for you. You can get that link, again, below in the description for the Podcast Cheat Sheet, and if you're ready just head on over to Day 3 and we'll finish this off with a bang.

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