My Journey into Podcasting

I have been an avid fan of the audio form since I was little one. I cherish the memories of getting ready for school with the radio on. Music, public service announcements, slightly corny adverts, the news delivered in clipped accents and radio plays were the background to much of my childhood.

My father bought my siblings and I a tape recorder when I was about 8 or 9 and we would spend countless hours recording ourselves. We would stage pretend radio shows, vox populi interviews and sing with no apparent inhibitions.

As I grew older and started university, one of my first purchases for my room was a small CD player with a radio and my room was never silent. When I started working and as soon as I graduated from sharing a cubicle to having my own office, I would stream music and radio programmes as I worked.

When I moved back home,  I discovered podcasts as a way to keep listening to my favorite radio programmes. In all, I have been a podcast subscriber for about 15 years. Despite this, it never occurred to me to start one of my own……..until this pandemic. Honestly, this pandemic has given rise to so many experiments and adventures.

My new podcast The Other Room is one of them. On The Other Room, I speak to African women about their lives and the decisions and circumstances that helped shaped their career story. I focus on accomplished women who have defined success on their own terms. So they might not be the women who are popularly featured in newspaper and magazines. You might not have heard of some of my guests and that’s fine, because I want to show that there is no one definition of success and especially career success.

Some of my guests totally changed career tracks. Others stopped working outside of the home at various points in their lives. I want the listeners to see a range of what’s possible and not think that career success is one steady, constantly upwards trajectory. I will write more about the thesis of my podcast in a future blog post.

The idea that I should start a podcast came to me so suddenly one day and, as is my style, I acted on it immediately. I signed up for an account on Anchor (a free podcast building and hosting app), started planning my content and making a list of guests. I recorded the first episode a week after I had the idea (that’s how quickly I like to move)!! I have published 10 episodes so far.

And what has the experience since then been like? Absolutely fabulous!!!

I love talking to people and finding out about their lives. In public speaking, I particularly enjoy moderating discussions, because it’s a golden opportunity to quiz people and find out more about them. So the format of my show, which is to speak to one guest at a time is a comfortable space for me.

I have received so much positive feedback and some constructive criticism too, so I know people are engaging with the show.

As any creator knows, when you launch or publish new content, you are CONSTANTLY checking your numbers. How many people have listened, how many reviews and ratings have I received (I check the Apple Podcasts app for this).  I would say not to get hung up about the figures and enjoy the process (easier said than done, I know).

Depending on what your plans for your podcast are, those early high numbers might matter to you and I have seen a lot of resources on getting your podcast out there.

Some tips for early high numbers are to:

• Create a lot of pre-launch buzz (I did not do this)
• Launch with more than 1 episode – ideally 3 (I launched with just 1)
• Film yourself during the podcast recording so that you can release visuals with your podcast (This sounds like an incredible amount of work and I do not plan on doing this)
• Create a website and social media channels for your podcast (I have the Anchor webpage for my show and recently launched an Instagram page. I can’t manage more than that for now.)
• Do sponsored posts (I did this for 2 episodes but the number of listens was low relative to the number of views. At least I got publicity and new follows.)
• Invite hosts of popular podcasts on your show (An interesting idea that I will explore for a future season)

It has been an incredible amount of work. I only visualised the recording of the podcast (the fun part). I did not account for the logistics and admin-related work (planning the guests, reaching out to them, reaching out to them again and again if I don’t hear back from them, scheduling the interviews, re-scheduling the interviews when the original time no longer works out or after you have started the interview and the technology just fails).

I didn’t reckon for the hours I would spend editing. My plan was to record and upload. I didn’t imagine my daughter bursting into my recording with crying or screaming so disturbing that I would be forced to learn to edit. And once I started editing, I’m compelled to keep going to cut out dead air, repetitions, crackling and para-language like urms, like and ahm. A 1-hour show can take 6 hours to edit. And for me who believed that I have no free time, making the time to edit is as miraculous as Jesus with the 5 loaves of bread and 2 fishes.

Doing the publicity is another task. I have kept it simple to what is doable for me right now: about 2 Instagram posts, 2 Facebook posts and 1 LinkedIn post per episode. More recently, I added WhatsApp messages and my status to this. I did sponsored posts earlier on but haven’t done them since.

My highest-downloaded episodes were largely due to publicity by the guests for those weeks, so I always tag them in the social media posts and send them a post and an image on WhatsApp that they can share.

Would I have created this podcast if I knew all the work involved? Absolutely!!!! I love to document information and stories and a podcast is a fantastic way to do this. I am capturing women’s stories and sharing them with the world. The impact will go beyond what I am ever aware of.

I really hope that The Other Room becomes a resource of women who are questioning their work lives and maybe thinking that they missed it along the way. I want them to know that women’s career paths are not straight and consistent but more like the jungle gym on children’s playgrounds. Sometimes you go up, sometimes you move horizontally, at other times you go back down, but you keep moving.

Season 1 is winding down now and I am already lining-up my guests for season 2. If you get the chance, listen to my podcast and please rate and review it. You can do this in Apple Podcasts or the other platforms you use.