The politician’s guide to podcastingA cheat sheet to understand and start your own podcast as a politician.

- What is a podcast & how does it work?

Included in this guide:

by Greg Gilbertwww.politicast.fm

- Why you should start your own- An easy plan to get started

ForewordNever in history has the landscape of communication been changing so rapidly. If you are an early adopter, it feels like a new platform is launched every single day. So how should one choose which platform to invest time and effort in, in order to communicate?

Nowadays, Facebook is ruling the social media world but the recent turn of events showed the limits of this giant, American corporation. The content you post on these platforms is never presented in a fair way. Their algorithm decides what your audience should see and when. They use the content you create for their own benefit: drive engagement of visitors, so they can sell more ads.

So what is the best investment when it comes to digital communication?As much as possible, we should use platforms that are open and offer standards. Whenever you write your ideas and post it on a blog or on your website, it is openly accessible and distributed without elements that escape your control.

Podcasts are to the voice what blogs are to the written art. It is a stable, open technology that has been around for over a decade and is now being promoted by radio stations, brands, journalists and entertainers. And as we’ll see in this book, the public is also adopting it!

It is the perfect time to start sharing your ideas and your political action on a podcast.

So let’s get started!

What is a podcast?1

A podcast is an episodic series of digital audio files accessible to an audience over the Internet. You can think of it as some sort of on-demand radio. Listeners subscribe to podcasts of their choice using a podcast player on their phone or on their computer. When a new episode of a podcast they are subscribed to is available, they can listen to it using the same app!

There’s a variety of podcast players. Both Apple (iPhone) and Google (Android) offer a free application, but there’s also a lot of smaller and independent applications to subscribe and listen to podcasts.

You can think of a podcast as a on-demand radio station that people subscribe to.

1) The podcaster (person recording the podcast), records a new episode.

2) The podcaster sends the audio file to a hosting server.

3) A software on the podcast server creates a list of all the episodes.

4) On the phones of this podcast’s subscribers, the podcast application retrieves the updated list, downloads the new episode and notifies the person!

How does it work?

Why you should start one.

2

There are several reasons that can explain the exploding success of podcasts. For instance: the ease of access to original content and the possibility to listen to these shows while driving, walking the dog, or working out.

In Europe, radio stations have also started using podcasts to distribute not only replays of shows aired on the radio, but also 100% original content. They do so because of the shift to digital happening accross all generations. By investing in this technology, they contribute to its democratization, bringing it to the attention of people outside of the early adopter demographic.

This creates a tremendous opportunity for politicians like yourself. You can now share your ideas and explain your political action as often as you want, directly to your audience.

of the US population is familiar with the term “podcasting” and 26% declared listening to podcasts at least every month. 44% of the US population has listened to a podcast.* Europe is catching up: over the month of December 2017, 23% of the UK population has listened to a podcast episode.**

And these numbers are growing quickly.

64%

* Source: Podcast Insights** Source: Acast Audio Intelligence Report

Pssst.. connected speakers are also rushing to the market. Amazon’s Alexa, Google Home and Apple’s HomePod are putting podcasts right into people’s homes.

Voice gives a unique feel of authenticity & proximity

Podcast for politics:1

Easier and faster to produce than video2

A podcast enables you to explain your action and your thoughts easily and as often as you want.

3

Easy to consume for your audience (in their car, etc.)4

Your own independent media channel.6

Leverage the momentum around this “new” medium.5

Gettingstarted.3

FAQWhat equipment do I need?If you want to, you can invest in a USB microphone. Good models can be bought under 100 €. That being said, smartphones today have more than decent microphones.

Where should I record?Quite obviously, you should try to put yourself in a calm environment to record.

What software should I use?To record, you can use a regular audio note taking app. Most smartphone have one pre-installed. When it comes to editing, you can download Audacity for free. If you are unsure how to proceed, the best is to partner with a hosting company that can assist you with the different technical steps (see next page for the technical checklist).

How long should my episodes be?There is no rule! This is something you will have to find out because it depends a lot on your audience. A good idea is to begin with short episodes ranging from 5 to 20 minutes.

What should I talk about?As a politician, the best use you can have for a podcast is as a field book, to share insights regarding your political action and contribute to the ongoing debate.

Tell your audience what you are currently working on and explain to them why it matters.

How often should I record episodes?As often as you have interesting ideas or events to share! You could start with 1 or 2 episodes per week. We believe it is better to keep episodes short and sweet, but post more often.

While podcasting is fairly easy, getting your audio file ready to become a podcast episode usually involves a multi-step process .

After recording your audio, you need to do at least some basic editing like trimming silences at the beginning and the end of the recording. You often need to boost and/or normalize the audio and add your intro and outro music tracks. You then need to compress and convert the file to the proper format, add what are called ID3 tags to identify the audio file.

You are then ready to review the result and upload it to your podcast hosting service.

On the right, you’ll find a checklist that summarizes the steps to get your audio ready.

From audio to episode

Record the audio part(s)

Merge audio parts

Trim silences

Enhance the sound

Add intro & outro music

Export to the proper format

Add ID3 tags to the mp3 file

You can now upload the file to your podcast hosting service!

PromoteFinally, promotion. Always remember to spread the word about your podcast! Of course the best time to do it is at each release of a new episode. Tell the world about it! If your podcast hosting provider offers a webplayer (so that people can listen to the episode from their browser), share the link to the episode on Facebook, Twitter, etc.

We also encourage you to ask your audience to help you spread the word about your podcast. You can ask them in the episode itself or when you share a link to it on social media.

To increase discoverability, make sure that your podcast is available on iTunes, which is the biggest catalogue for podcasts.

Ideally, you also want to notify your listeners via email, to make sure they don’t miss an episode! At least the ones who asked to receive emails notifications.. you don’t want to send spam

!

And of course, if you have a blog, make sure to add a link to your podcast there.

When picking a podcast hosting provider, have a look at the options they offer to make your life easier when it comes to promotion!

Interested?If you want to get started in just a few minutes, Politicast might be of interest to you!

We are running the first independent podcasting platform dedicated to politics.

Our software does all the heavy-lifting required for a podcast, so you can focus on recording great content for your audience.

The Politicast offer includes:

- A super easy recording system over the phone (no app required!) or upload the files recorded using a microphone.

- Automatic editing of your audio file to turn it into a podcast episode: enhancement of the sound, addition of the intro & outro music, tagging, export to the proper format, etc.

- Hosting of your podcast episodes and of the episodes list so that people can subscribe to your podcast.

- Sharing features, to distribute your episodes on social media and via email.

- A Q&A feature to allow you to include questions from your audience to your episodes.

Visit: www.politicast.fm

Contact

Greg Gilbertg@politicast.fm

+46 76-082 34 04

If you have any question about this book or Politicast, for a demo, or to create an account, contact us: hello@politicast.fm

You can also contact me directly:

About Politicast:

We created Politicast to allow politicians to easily share their political action in an audio format.

Like you, we are witnessing the excesses and abuses done with our data. We believe it is time to reconsider how we grant access to our bits of personal lives in order to use "free" services online. We also believe that Europe should progressively get the ownership of its data back. And it makes perfect sense, to start with politics.

As much as possible, we are using services hosted in Europe.

Politicast is made in Uppsala, Sweden