Are you a therapist or assistant looking to start a podcast? Starting a podcast can have many benefits, including: reaching patients on a global scale, creating a name for yourself as an expert in your field, and it is a very inexpensive way to advertise your clinic! In this article, we’ll walk you through why, as a therapist or assistant, you need to start a podcast and the exact steps to start one today!
Why should I start a podcast?
There are tons of benefits to starting a podcast! Here are my top 5 benefits:
Greater impact on society: Podcasting allows you to reach people, for a very low cost (and in this article, you’ll learn how for free) around the world! This means you can have a greater impact on society.
Grow your clinic for FREE:
Podcasting can be extremely inexpensive. In fact, in this article, we’ll walk you through how to even make and run your entire podcast for free! When you publish your podcast, it becomes available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Anchor and more sites! Anyone around the world can listen and hear your voice – and perhaps, want to get treatment from you. And the neat thing about podcasting, each episode will last a lifetime. So it’s content that you can make once, and forever get clients from.
Be the expert in your field/niche: You can proudly say to your patients that you have a podcast! You are now famous! Okay, not famous, but it’s another notch in your belt to help patients and others hear your intelligence and expertise in this area and prove that you are the provider they want to work with!
Creates a great way to connect with experts and create a referral network: Creating a podcast allows you to have a reason to reach out to physicians, chiropractors, massage therapists, other therapists and assistants, and experts in your niche. Why is this helpful? It can be awkward trying to create referral connections. When you have a podcast, it helps that awkwardness go away – because you are creating a “win” for that provider. Of course they want to get some free advertising and a way to brag about what they do on your podcast – and, in turn- this time on the podcast creates a bond, where these practitioners may want to also share your story down the road.
How to start a Podcast for FREE
Now that we’ve convinced you to start a podcast, here are the steps you’ll need to accomplish your very first podcast and episode – and yes, with no cost!
- Figure out your niche or topic
- Come up with your podcast name
- Create your podcast cover art
- Come up with the outline of what you’ll say on your 1st episode
- Record your first episode and edit if needed
- Upload to a podcast host
Here are the steps to create your first podcast and episode in detail:
- Figure out your niche or topic
If you already own a therapy practice, then I would suggest that your overall podcast topic, the overall theme of what you talk about, revolves around the type of therapy you practice in your clinic.
For example, if you are a sports focused clinic, then you could have your podcast be about sports recovery. You could have your podcast be even more specific, and just talk about the shoulder or the hand, but the main idea is to have at least a general topic that is maintained across your episodes.
You can get some theme inspiration by going into any podcast player app and looking up various theme ideas to see the podcasts that are currently published. This research will also help in the next steps of picking your name and creating your cover art as these podcasts can give you inspiration and ideas.
- Come up with your podcast name
Using the research from step 1, you can title your podcast. There are many trains of thought when it comes to how to best title your podcast. Some ideas for naming your podcast are your name, your clinic name, the injury/diagnosis/pain point you solve within your practice, or maybe a fun slogan you’ve come up with! It is important to have key words as just like with Google, your podcast will be searched and so having the proper keywords will help you become found easier. As a result, I do recommend in the title or in the subtitle to try to make it as clear as possible what problem your podcast is solving.
- Create your podcast art
You can easily create your podcast’s cover art using a free Canva.com account. Simply create your account, login, and click logo and you’ll see lots of examples that you can tweak with your ideal color, element, and font style. Also, as of 2022, the dimensions for your podcasts logo, also called cover art, should be 3000×3000 pixels according to 99designs.com. (https://99designs.com/blog/), so make sure when you create your image that it has these dimensions.
- Come up with the outline of what you’ll say on your 1st episode
Podcasting episodes can have a number of styles. You can have an interview style podcast, where you interview other people. This is nice as it takes the majority of the pressure off of you however you do need to prepare the questions and also it is time consuming finding and organizing guests. You can have a podcast where you alone are talking or you can also have a podcast where it is you and a consistent guest, like a co host. There is really a lot of flexibility in podcasting, and you can always change your format. In addition, you can record as long or as short of an episode as you want.
Some people will write out their entire episode while some people create a general outline and bullet points. Podcasting is extremely flexible, with not one method being better than the other. Experiment, and see which one you like best and which allows you to achieve a consistent podcast that people love!
- Record your first episode and edit if needed
How you record your first episode and edit it will first depend on if you have a PC computer or if you have a Mac. If you have a Mac, then you have a free program already installed – Garage Band. Simply find that in your programs, and use that to record as well as edit your podcast. When you are happy with your first episode then you can download it as a MP3 to then upload into your podcast host.
If you have a PC, then you can use the free program Audacity, which is very similar to Garage Band. Just like above, when you are happy with your recording then you’ll save it as an MP3 and upload into your podcast host.
This sounds too simple – and it is! But luckily you find lots of free trainings on YouTube for both of these software.
- Upload to a podcast host
Podcast hosting is where you store your audio file and where your audio file gets distributed to different podcasting apps to be found and played. There are many different podcasts hosts, but a popular new host, which is free, is called Anchor.fm (https://anchor.fm/). This player will allow you to store your audio files and it distributes these files to all the players as well. I have used this podcast host for 2 of my podcasts and it is very user friendly and reliable – it was also just purchased by Shopify so it’s not going to disappear anytime soon. The biggest downside of using this host is that, in exchange for it being free to host and distribute your podcast episodes, they play advertising at the end of the podcast episode. You can always move hosts, so I think this is a great host to start with and then see if you enjoy podcasting.
We really hope this article helps you take action and start your own therapy podcast!