Starting Your Own Gaming Podcast
You’re listening to the next gaming podcast via your headphones and think that you can do it better: the conversation is too slow, the topics – out of date, the host – boring, etc. So, it’s time to start your own gaming podcast concentrating your ideas and vision. With the amount of hosting podcast services, it becomes easy to launch podcast on any topic. However, if you want your podcast to appeal a large audience, you should be ready to commit. Here are our useful tips to start with:

Here Is the List of Best Books About Podcasting:
- “Podcasting for Beginners: Start, Grow and Monetize Your Podcast” by Salvador Briggman - an autobiographical story of a man who managed to grow a show with more than 150,000 downloads. Useful tips and strategies.
- “Out on the Wire: The Storytelling Secrets of the New Masters of Radi” by Jessica Abel where she shares the storytelling secrets behind the most popular podcasts and radio shows.
- “Podcast Launch” by John Lee Dumas, the host of the weekly Entrepreneur on Fire podcast - an ideal start for those who haven't heard about podcasting before.
- “Profitable Podcasting” by Stephen Woessner – the story based on the author’s experience who managed to build a $2 million venture from scratch. The author shares tips for creating, launching, marketing, and monetizing podcasts in any industry followed by software recommendations, checklists and examples.
- “Introduction to Podcast Technology” by David Power – a step-by-step guide for learning the most essential tools and techniques necessary to record, produce and launch a podcast.

A Descriptive Name
The name that can be easily found by your target audience. If you call the show “The Hearthstone Podcast ”, there is evident what the podcast is about. A descriptive name for your podcast can be not memorable and eye-catching, but it makes SEO and marketing process easier. Avoid giving a long descriptive name: you will have to say the podcast name in every single episode. Examples: Gaming History 101, Go Nintendo Podcast, Game Informer Show, The Stream Coach PodcastA Catchy Name
If you’ve managed to come up with a unique, funny and eye-catching title, be ready to describe your podcast well in the tagline. Catchy names are good because they are memorable, but absolutely not effective in terms of SEO promotion. If people don’t know the name of your show, it may be hard for them to find it using search queries. Examples: Hey You Video Game, Completely Unnecessary Podcast, Kinda Funny Gamescast, The Giant Bombcast, Let’s Fight A Boss PodcastA Self-Titled Name
You can self-title your stream only if you’ve already got a stable audience. If you start “The Peter Smith Show” and it is about gaming, people would think “Who is that Peter?” and move on. Better idea is incorporating your name along with something descriptive (for instance, “Everything About Gaming, with Peter Smith”). Examples: The Broman Podcast, Jackass Podcast Pro Tip: Equally important is naming of all your episodes. Choose searchable and descriptive titles. Avoid calling them "Episode 1”, “Episode 2”. People won’t listen, if they don’t know what to expect.

Which things to consider when choosing a co-host?
- Is this person genuinely interested in the same topic as you?
- Is this person an expert in the chosen subject?
- Do you have a connection with this person? Other words, if this person is somebody you can talk and laugh with?
- Is this person good at any other field (SEO, marketing, editing etc.) and can make some work for your project?



- Having a guest related to your gaming topic may be an effective way of cross-promotion. Guests usually bring additional listeners to your show. Prepare interesting questions and ideas for discussion.
- Use an audiogram that converts a short audio file, a caption and a background image into mp4 video file that can be directly played on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks. It’s also possible to create an outstanding design with engaging moving audio waves to make audiogram look pop out and appealing when shared on social media.
- Use speech-to-text transcriptions. Most people prefer read the text first and decide whether to listen or watch the whole thing. Speech-to-text transcriptions increase accessibility of your gaming podcast for people that are deaf or hard-hearing, with ADD and some other auditory disorders. Moreover, this extra content is beneficial in terms of SEO: transcripted texts have more chances to be found via search engines than audio.

- Keep a consistent schedule: this helps viewers not only find your podcast, but also direct friends to check it out
- Interact with a chat only when you want to add some new points into discussion, otherwise the chat will control your podcast which is not good
- If you upload the audio podcast on iTunes and other feeds, don’t forget to repeat questions in the chat for the audio listeners and describe the actions of your co-host if he/she is doing something physical
- Continue your discussion, ask for feedback in social media, post updates of the next stream
- Editing some parts of the show as clips and posting them in social media will help lead more people to your podcast
Takeaways
These are the basic things you should think of when starting your very first podcast. Remember that if you have a story to tell and are enthusiastic about your idea, you can podcast. Keep the stories flowing and don’t stop after first edited episodes. Indeed, if you submit only first episode, it can leave listeners disappointed if they want to listen more. With one episode, it’s unlikely that you will be featured as something new on podcast directories. So, try to record 5-6 pilot episodes before you start grow the audience and move on.11/17/2018