How I made my podcast(s) in Substack and how you can too!

Audio embeds, voice over, podcasting top tips, lessons learned, quirky surprises and (finally) making friends with your own voice...?

“Podcasting is a way for people to have meaningful conversations with others that can then be shared with a target audience. There are over 100million podcast listeners in the USA”

Forbes

Making friends with a voice…

Podcasting is not a new medium but it kind of is new for lots of us creators. The permission to take up space is new…Perhaps you’ve listened to podcasts for years but never dreamed about making one? Perhaps you are being called to share your voice but the tech side makes you nervous?

Lots of us are only just wrapping our heads round HOW to show up online in a way that aligns with how we feel most comfortable… There’s the what to say, what to wear, whether to do audio and video, add a zoom filter, the dreaded vulnerability hangover to navigate 1and a whole load of dynamics of accent and tone to manage. Here in the UK it’s pretty obvious if you were privately educated or if you weren’t - internal judgements aside there IS (or so I’ve learnt) space for us all in podcast land!

Our confidence has perhaps taken a few years to catch up with the true digital natives who were podcasting/ vlogging from the breakfast table while we were still learning how not to freak out about instagram stories. Just me?

A treat for your listening ears…

I used to listen to podcasts on my commute to work. I felt like I’d got to know the speaker and I’d had company. I always followed them online after listening. Podcasts brought expansive thoughts, permission to daydream, space, creative insights, tools, how-tos, solidarity. I would always look forward to the drive home and never mind at all if I was stuck in traffic. I had my podcast friends for company.

I have 3 podcasts hosted on Substack.

1. Here’s the very first one (GULP) I recorded - I call this one ‘My Beautiful Reality’ - it accompanies my monthly email but it’s more focussed on a moment or two in life. I didn’t email this out - at the time it felt like it was just for me and whoever found it. I email them out now and they get over 300 listens - it blows my mind that people want to listen to me check in on how my month is going. I recorded it straight into Substack! A little 'My Beautiful Reality' Podcast test

2. A co-hosted podcast for mums called

   Company of Two

3. I also started a ‘Slow Lived Growth on Substack’ podcast which was very much an art in life podcast as I navigated away from social media and find audience and creativity on the Substack platform. It’s now moved and new episodes will be hosted right here. Sparkle on Substack- again I record these straight into Substack and have never had any issues. My guest episodes are recorded with video and I share these on YouTube with captions with my members first and then with everyone else here as audio.

What’s the difference; hosting audio, read aloud and podcasts

1. Here’s how to embed audio or a voice over into your post… you’ll need to open it in a new window to see the whole post to read it.

Press the little headphones button in any post.

2. Here’s how to set up a podcast here. Substack is the ‘host’ and your can then distribute your podcast via it’s RSS feed into other places. This is what I do with

   Sparkle on Substack

   - The Podcast!

3. Once your podcast is all set up here you’ll have a URL to embed or share it.

Read the rest of this post over on Substack...