Our first 3 months of podcasting on Youtube and Spotify having zero experience. Mistakes and Learnings.
“This idea is so cool, Let’s start this side project!”
How many of us have been at this stage? driven by the enthusiasm of this new cool idea that we just want to deliver something ASAP and let the world discovers it. This can bring unexpected issues and scenarios, technical problems like the whole recording of an episode completely got wasted, or your content not getting enough visibility because you are not using the right keywords, etc.
This is a recap of the disadventures and achievements of ITALNAUTI, a podcast that I and my dear friend Alberto Pisanello started only 3 months ago...
A bit of context
Italnauti is a podcast on Youtube/Spotify where we interview Italian talents around the world, people with great and interesting stories behind or that are succeeding in their careers. More simply people that jumped out of their comfort zone, changing their lives. We share their experiences, and path in order to inspire and help the Italian community back home, and all those who are planning (or dreaming!) to live and work abroad.
Understand Youtube’s algorithm
This is a generic insight for all the possible projects and ideas: don’t rush, read and study first, then do it.
I think this was our first mistake, we published the first videos without knowing properly how Youtube’s algorithm works. We did not pay the right attention to things like the title and description of our first episodes, which are some of the main things used by Youtube for pushing your content to the right users.
Here some tips:
- Include the keywords in the first 2 lines of your description. They are the most used by Youtube’s algorithm
- Don’t duplicate your title in the description. You’re up to 3 lines for convincing a potential viewer to watch your video. So duplicating the title is both a waste of space and the same for reusing the same keywords.
- Keep the title short, play with 1 or 2 keywords, and make it unique.
Technical tools and Software: Choose the right ones for your needs
We did well here, but here’s something wise to keep in mind :
No one cares if you are using the most expensive camera, microphone or if your room is full of cool lights and plants. Focus on the content. In the beginning, only your close friends and your mum will watch you anyway.
I’m not saying that quality is not important, but that you can still create good quality content without using the most expensive tools in the market. What we did was to buy a good Microphone (£40), HD Camera (£20) and a Ring Light (£20). They work absolutely fine, considering our needs at this point of Italnauti and our current audience.
Also, it’s important to keep in mind that most of the projects don’t last more than one year, for N reasons. So there’s absolutely no point in investing a lot of money in tools for then selling them for half the price on eBay one year after. Validate your idea/project first, if it has good potential and can work in the long term, then you can invest additional money.
We had technical issues when recording the first episode. We used a Software that was probably too much and complicated for our needs. The configuration of the audio was not right and the result has been that we interviewed a great guest and the episode got completely wasted, unfixable echo all over the duration of the recording. We did few tests before, but of course that was supposed to happen with a real guest. Luckily we knew him and we are going to make the episode again in the future.
Make better tests beforehand, and do not use a Ferrari if you just need to buy milk 300 meters far from your home.
Use socials in a way that suits best your needs
How you appear on social is everything, it contributes to that first impression that potential viewers/followers will have of your project. Experimenting, exploring, and trying to change things like your profile’s layout is absolutely fine, it helps you to understand what brings you better performance, better visibility, etc. So do it, especially if you are at the beginning like us and you do not have a big audience yet, it’s the perfect time for making mistakes and learns.
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. — Samuel Beckett
For example, we tried 2 different layouts for our profile on Instagram
The first one on the left (just the first row of posts) has a better appearance, very professional, using the whole row for the guest. The second one instead has one post about the guest’s name and episode’s info and then other two posts for short video clips of the episode itself.
What happened was that with layout 1 we had a low amount of views, not our usual average. Using layout 2 we get more views and more traffic in general. Why?
It’s very simple, using the number 1 we have only one shot, usually Sunday evening, we publish all the three posts which also give only one info: Who we interviewed and what we talked about.
Using the number 2 we have the first push publishing the post with the guest’s name and episode’s info, plus every three days we publish a video clip, giving to the users a preview of the content and engaging more often with them.
What we learned is that what works for other podcasts/pages, might not work for you. Understand your priorities, what you are trying to achieve at this stage of your project, and then find what suits you better.
It’s a marathon, not a sprint
Finally the last one and the most important for us:
Obtaining results needs practice, and practice needs time and effort. Keep going, focus on making progress, and don’t worry too much about the pace. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.
Gaining muscles needs a lot of hours of training, a lot of reps. Graduating and getting a degree requires loads of hours of study. Same for learning a new language, becoming a good basketball player, a good chef, etc.
Failures are another thing that all of them have in common. But even when you fail, you are still moving forward, still learning.
Embracing the process and accepting it helped us to don’t lose motivation when getting only a couple of new subscribers after recording and editing a new episode for many hours (after work, we both have classic 9–5 jobs), or when getting only one new follower on Instagram after putting a lot of time and effort engaging more.
Conclusion
Thanks for reading! I hope we gave you some good insights and inspire you. If you want to comment with some other good tips for us, please do it! :)
If you want to listen to us (and learn some Italian)
