Well, we’ve survived a week of ‘sheltering in place’, and as I wrote about in my previous blog post, I’ve used this housebound time to explore new creative projects and skills.

About a week ago, a friend shared an article about a Chrome browser extension — Netflix Party — that allows people from different locations to all watch the same Netflix title together in real time and pipe in with their own live commentary through a chat thread that appears on the side of the screen. Since then, I’ve seen a number of articles floating around about the Netflix Party extension, as it’s the perfect tool for this period of quarantine — a way to stay connected with friends and family virtually, when you can’t physically.

For me, I immediately thought about how Netflix Party could be a new and interesting way to engage and build the Bring Your Own Movie audience. As I mentioned in my last post, one of my creative goals during this period of quarantine was to do more with the podcast social media channels, and this was a great opportunity to try something new.

This was also a great opportunity to see how quickly I could put something together. Facebook used to have an internal tenet: “Move fast and break things.” While they may have shed the latter part of that motto, employees were still encouraged to move fast. But I often had a difficult time moving at the speed they wanted, as I always wanted to develop a well thought-out, perfect product, while teams were really just looking for the minimal viable product.

As it became clear that people were going to be spending more and more time at home, looking for things to alleviate their boredom, this was a time when that speed was paramount. The very day I saw the article, I was texting the BYOM crew about hosting a watch party with the tool and the next day we were promoting the event. A lot of that speed relied on me just making a call on things, not waiting for 100% consensus and not necessarily having the whole thing figured out before we announced the watch party.

Organizing the watch party

There is such a thing as moving too fast, and before we announced our watch party, I wanted to see the Netflix Party tool in action and make sure everything worked smoothly, with no lag. So I enlisted a friend to help me test. Once I confirmed it worked great, we were ready to announce the watch party!

Oh wait, but what movie would we watch?

That could have been a decision-by-committee kind of thing, with a lot of back and forth among the BYOM team, delaying the announcement of the watch party. Or we could use this as an opportunity to engage with our audience — why not ask our fans for movie suggestions?

And that’s exactly what we did. We received a lot of suggestions. It was a great way to get the conversation going. In the end, I just made an executive decision on the film from among the options. We announced the film the next day and started promotion with social media posts and a Facebook event.

I also read up on the reviews to see if there were any common issues people were experiencing with Netflix Party. It seemed like the tool did work well as long as people were already signed into Netflix in their Chrome browser. I made a note to include that in our instructions to people.

Movie was selected. Instructions were given. We were ready for our watch party on Friday.

Hey, how about a livestream?

Ok, you know me — I can’t do anything small. I was inspired by a number of my friends that have been doing livestreams during this time. They got quite a lot of comments throughout the video and, once again, I thought this might be a really great way to engage our own fans.

At first, I thought simple — Ryan and I would do a watch party pre-show through Facebook Live (we get the most engagement on Facebook compared to Instagram and Twitter). It could be similar to our podcast, where we would talk about the film, maybe do a little trivia and ask for our viewers to pipe in with their own thoughts.

But I thought about what a shame it was that we couldn’t have the other two hosts included on the livestream to make it even more like our podcast. This is where, since I had some free time, I thought that maybe we wouldn’t just settle for the minimal viable product.

I researched our options. Was there a way to switch the host of the livestream, while keeping it the same video? Was there a way to bring multiple people simultaneously into the same livestream.

It turns out Facebook Live used to have a feature where you could bring multiple presenters into the same livestream; unfortunately, they had sunsetted the feature last November. However, there were a number of third-party tools that still let you do that. After a bit of research, I decided to use Streamyard, as there was a free membership level that allowed us to bring in three hosts.

I worked with the BYOM crew to brainstorm topics for the livestream. We tested out Streamyard to make sure it worked. And we were ready to go.

Putting my audio skills to the test

We promoted the watch party all week through our social media channels. But we are a podcast after all, so it only seemed right to record an announcement about the watch party and pre-show livestream and publish it to our feed.

This was a great opportunity to practice recording and editing audio. I wrote a script, recorded a few takes, popped the audio file into GarageBand to edit, and uploaded it to Libsyn.

Show time!

Well, Friday came around … and everything went wonderfully!

The livestream was fun, looked really professional and got a lot of fans engaged. The watch party tool worked smoothly and the chat thread was lively and funny. We got great feedback after the event.

It was amazing how with one event, I was able to touch on four of the creative projects I wanted to accomplish during this quarantine.

I am definitely looking forward to hosting additional online events for the podcast — more watch parties, virtual movie trivia nights, podcast live shows? It’s a great way for us to engage with our fans, and hopefully will result in even more downloads of the podcast.

I’ve written extensively about my work on the Bring Your Own Movie podcast. The project was never part of my sabbatical plan, but it’s been one of the most fruitful and rewarding endeavors during this time of exploration. 

It taught me a lot of skills that would have served me well in my past jobs, especially learning to cope with (and seeing the value of) launching a less-than-perfect product, and then iterating on that. It’s also been one of the most entrepreneurial undertakings of my sabbatical, forcing me to learn how to get something completely new off the ground.

And most importantly, it’s just been plain fun!

Obviously, the hope is that one day down the line, we can make some money off of this podcast, but that is likely a long way off. However, it got me wondering — what type of professional podcasting opportunities are out there?

What is a podcast producer?

As I wrote about in a previous post, I defined my own role as producer for our podcast. For the most part, I’m the person managing the logistics — booking the guests, making sure we have a recording venue, coordinating episode prep and launch, and overseeing promotion.

But what are the typical duties of a podcast producer? Well, I went to LinkedIn to find out.

Here are the responsibilities for a podcast producer role open with CBS Interactive:

• Support high-profile partnership by writing scripts, produce, record and edit 5-6+ audio stories on a daily basis
• Record, edit and contribute to the development of content for podcasts.
• Conceptualize and pitch programming ideas/segments and show formats
• Project manage production schedules, workflow, roles and responsibilities
• Attend regular meetings to discuss and refine strategy, programming, and tactics in pursuit of our editorial and audience goals
• Use analytics to clearly communicate best practices and give timely feedback

And I see similar tasks required for the podcast producer position open at SiriusXM:

• Produce, edit and publish podcast content to Pandora, 3rd party platforms as well as the SXM App.
• Collaborate with relevant programming counterparts to develop podcast formats of existing content as well as new content, lending additional production assistance, as needed.
• Participate in creative and production discussions around new podcast formats with internal and external stakeholders.
• Act as primary point person for all podcast needs within assigned content verticals.
• Gather and package all relevant audio, metadata and creative assets for delivery in SXM Publish platform.

Essentially it seems like podcast producers do everything short of hosting the show (and I’m sure some do that as well!). The whole lifecycle seems to be helmed and executed by the producer: coming up with creative concepts and scripts; coordinating the production; doing the actual recording; editing the episode; making sure it’s uploaded and published; and analyzing stats.

Looking at these responsibilities, I identified a big gap in my skills and experience: recording and editing the audio. Luckily, I happen to be married to our podcast’s audio engineer and editor, so I had the perfect teacher!

Podcast Recording and Editing 101

Although Ryan records and edits our podcast in Logic, he taught me about recording and editing in GarageBand, as that program is free. 

Recording

We began our lesson with a review of the equipment. Now, you can record a podcast with something as simple as your phone, but luckily, we had the Bring Your Own Movie equipment on hand. We use proper microphones and a USB audio interface, which then connects to a computer and audio recording software of choice (again, we used GarageBand for this lesson). Ideally, you would be recording to an external hard drive, but for this lesson, we just recorded to my computer’s hard drive.

Once the equipment is set up, it’s all about getting the right settings and levels in place. As Ryan told me when talking about the recording equipment: “More important than getting the ‘right thing’ is using the thing you have in the right way”. Two of the biggest factors in getting a quality recording and making editing a lot easier:

• Microphone placement: while distance away from the microphone can make a difference, what is most important is that the host keeps a consistent distance from the microphone throughout the recording. That way, not as many adjustments need to be made throughout the recording process, and if there are any level changes that need to be made during editing, they can be applied to the entire track rather than bits and pieces throughout the recording.
• Setting up gain staging: Without getting too much into audio terms, gain is how loud something is before it goes through any processing; it’s the volume level being sent into your plugins, preamps, and amplifiers. There are multiple places along the recording path where gain can be adjusted, but it’s best to do it in as few places as possible (we focused on the dials of the interface). For our interface (and because we’re not in a studio environment), Ryan recommended turning the gain knobs all the way up and then backing off just a little.

As for setting up the tracks in GarageBand, the only thing that Ryan typically does is place a limiter, which essentially flattens out parts of the audio that get too loud and prevents clipping.

Then it’s time to record! Throughout the recording, you can make adjustments to the gain knobs if people are getting too quiet or too loud, too close or too far away from their mic. It’s also good to note time stamps of notable parts of the recording that will be helpful during editing. For example, did somebody hit their mic and you want to edit that out? Noting the time stamps can make it a lot quicker to edit.

Editing

Once recording is done, it’s time to edit. For our podcast, Ryan has five main steps for his editing process:

• Step 1: Raw cut listen OR making just the large obvious cuts (bathroom breaks, large tangents, hitting the mic, etc).
• Step 2: Go through again and listen for more nuanced things: weird sounds people make, longer than comfortable silences, off-topic bits, etc.
• Step 3: (if necessary) Mastering pass (EQ, compression, volume adjustments, etc.)
• Step 4: Put in other clips (music, movie quote, etc).
• Step 5: Export. For spoken word, usually just low quality, no more than 96 kps.

We did our own sample recording so that I could practice my editing skills. I really enjoyed this part. The big challenge is when you cut out a section but need to find the right place to make the edit so that the final piece sounds seamless. It felt like such an accomplishment when I would edit out a large section, and it would sound like it was never there.

I also got practice adjusting the EQ, compression and volume, as well as adding in music clips for the intro and closing. 

Here is the final product:

Next steps

I want to start by getting more practice editing. Even if I don’t even become a full-time podcast producer, there could be good opportunities to do freelance editing. I’ll get some practice with our own podcast episodes and may reach out to my network to offer my services for additional practice.

As a content creator, if you really want to build and maintain an audience, it’s not enough to just produce the content. You really have to hustle and push hard on promotion. Whether it’s paid advertising or taking advantage of free channels, plugging your content can often require more time and effort than actually creating it.

That has certainly been the case for the podcast. Back in March, I wrote about our plans for promoting Bring Your Own Movie. The team and I sat down to identify our target audience, craft our brand’s voice, decide on the best promotional channels (for us, it’s social media), understand our marketing goals, and create a promotion calendar.

And although I had a background on social media advertising, I didn’t have much experience managing a brand’s social media page. So, this was a fun challenge for me and an opportunity to learn new skills.

We started out strong. We were very regular with our social media posts across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. We were seeing good engagement with likes, comments and shares. 

And then, as so often happens, life got in the way, and our busy schedules were making it hard to coordinate podcast recordings, let alone keep up with promotional efforts.

But when we decided in late June to switch from a bi-weekly episode release schedule to a monthly one, we knew more than ever, that it was imperative that we bump up our activity on social media. We needed to keep our audience engaged in between episodes now that they were going to be a month apart.

So, we regrouped, nailed down a new promotional schedule and, most importantly, made it clear who would be in charge of what. For the last two months, we’ve successfully pushed out regular posts from our social media channels.

Diving into the Metrics

With the logistics of promotion smoothed out, it was finally time to address something we’d been neglecting for far too long — analytics. Afterall, with the amount of time and energy required to produce and publish our social media posts, shouldn’t we make sure they are working?

And what does it mean for them to be “working”?

Well, back in March when we were putting together our marketing strategy, we did identify our key goals:

• Primary goal: Getting people to download and listen to our podcast
• Secondary goal: Getting people to connect with our social media pages
• Secondary goal: Encouraging people to engage with our social media posts
• Secondary goal: Getting iTunes reviews

For my first look at the metrics, I focused on one of our secondary goals — engagement with our social media posts. Why not start with our primary goal? Well, with the tracking capabilities available to us, it’s difficult to identify whether or not a certain social media post directly resulted in an episode download. We can try to make correlations, but that analysis will take some time, so I wanted to start with some concrete metrics that I could more easily and quickly pull and analyze.

The theory is that an engaged audience is one that will keep listening to the podcast and hopefully share it with their friends. And from a more technical perspective, for many social media platforms, engagement does influence the algorithm and can help get your posts in front of a larger audience.

Facebook, Instagram and Twitter all allow you to look at a variety of metrics on your posts. For Facebook and Instagram, I focused on reach (number of unique people who saw the post in their Feed), reactions/likes, and comments. For Twitter, I looked at impressions and engagement (number of times a user has interacted with a Tweet, including all clicks anywhere on the Tweet, retweets, replies, follows, and likes).

Findings

It was interesting digging into the results and identifying some patterns. There were some similarities across the platforms and some big differences. Here are the highlights from my analysis:

• For Facebook, posts where our guests were tagged saw the most engagement. 
• Shares can also help increase reach in Facebook.
• Instagram posts with popular hastags helped increase reach.
• Instagram posts with tagged users also saw high reach and likes.
• Twitter posts where users with big followings are tagged receive a high number of impressions and engagement.
• The live-tweet thread also received a high number of impressions and engagement.

Takeaways

With the findings above, we are now armed with some “quick wins” to maximize engagement:

• For Facebook, find more opportunity to tag people in our posts, especially past guests.
• For Instagram, increase our usage of hashtags, especially popular ones and tag users when applicable.
• For Twitter, find more opportunity to tag users with a large number of followers. Also, try more live-tweet sessions.

With this initial analysis completed, I will now take the time to dive into our episode download metrics. I’ll see if there are any patterns regarding when people download our podcast episodes and look for any correlations between social media posts and spikes in downloads.

This dive into the metrics has been an interesting intersection between my old life as a marketer and my new journey as a content creator!

It’s been two weeks since we’ve launched the Bring Your Own Movie podcast, and we’ve gotten a great response. There have been a lot of positive reviews and comments for the show and a decent number of downloads.

With our successful launch complete, there was no time to slow down, as we needed to quickly pivot and go into major promotion mode. For our initial push, we’re focusing on free tactics, dedicating the majority of our efforts on social media marketing, since we have complete controls over those channels.

Here are a few early learnings and tips:

Start with your goals

Any marketer will tell you that before you put together your promotion plan, you need to identify what you are trying to accomplish.

For us, our top priority is, of course, getting as many downloads and listens of the podcasts as possible.

Our secondary goals include:

• Getting people to connect with your social media pages
• Encouraging people to engage with our social media posts
• Getting iTunes reviews

These goals will help guide the content of our marketing, as well as outline the metrics we should be measuring.

Identify your target audience

Of course, we hope everyone enjoys our podcast! But we think that the show will particularly resonate with people who like to have fun discussions about movies. And for our social media channels, we’re also targeting people who are likely to weigh in with their own opinions.

Knowing who we’re speaking to will not only influence the topics we post about, but also the tone of our posts. Which is a great segue to …

Find your brand’s voice

We also needed to think about what we wanted the tone of our social media posts and other written promotional materials to be. In general, we want the Bring Your Own Movie voice to be humorous and irreverent. We want to avoid sounding too serious or high-brow. We want to feel like the type of easy-going, funny people that you’d love hanging out with at a party or a bar, grabbing a few drinks with, and having a lively, but light-hearted, discussion about films with.

See things from your audience’s perspective

When it came to brainstorming the type of social media posts we wanted to make, I thought about the types of posts I tend to engage with.

I tend to comment on posts that ask me to weigh in with my own opinions. I will often ‘like’ posts that include some interesting fact, a funny meme or cool art. And I tend to share posts that feature big news that I think other people need to know about.

I also think about podcast-specific posts that I engage with or that I see get a lot of engagement. Those are things like episode discussion threads and fan art/merchandise posts.

From there we were able to brainstorm some post ideas for Bring Your Own Movie, such as:

• Special guest bios
• Movie trivia
• Episode discussion threads and/or polls

Create your calendar

Now, it’s time to get everything in place and figure out a good cadence for your marketing plan. For us, since we’re releasing new episodes every two weeks, it made sense also to have a two-week marketing cycle.

In the week leading up to each episode’s release, we’ll have posts introducing that episode’s special guest, as well as teasing the movie that will be discussed, asking people to comment with their guesses on this episode’s film. After the episode goes live, we have a week of posts promoting downloads & listens, as well as encouraging engagement with our posts through discussion threads, polls, and fun, shareable content.

Find the right tools

In order to execute a marketing plan smoothly and efficiently, it’s important to have good tools at hand. We, of course, are using a ton of tools, but here are a couple that I want to highlight:

Calendar

When planning out a social media plan, it’s helpful to create a marketing calendar with information on when you’ll post, what channel(s) you’ll be using, and what will be contained in each post. Any spreadsheet tool will do the trick (Excel, Google Sheets), but we find that Airtable gives us some extra capabilities that are particularly useful.

With Airtable, it was easy for us to organize and separate out posts by social media channel. We were able to customize our column, like one can with any spreadsheet, so we could include information of the topic, the date, and the copy for each post. We were also able to include a column where we can drag in the images we’ll be using.

Scheduler

Anyone who’s run a robust social media plan will tell you that having a scheduling tool can save a lot of time. Instead of manually posting every day, you can queue up your posts in a scheduling tool ahead of time and then the tool will publish your posts at the scheduled date and time. This means, for example, that instead of having to take time out of your day every day, you could dedicate, say, one day a week to setting up all your posts for that week.

There are many scheduling tools out there, and a lot of people are familiar with Hootsuite. We ended up going with Buffer, partly because they have a free account option, while Hootsuite does not.

Measure your results

Next, it’s time to see what worked and what didn’t. Even though our main goal is episode downloads and listens, it’s actually difficult to attribute those metrics to our social media posts. While we’ve included links to our website and the episode page on our site in some of our posts, people will typically download, subscribe and listen to podcasts in their app of choice. We, of course, can try to correlate this. Do we see a spike in downloads on a certain day? We can look at what posts were made that day.

We also look at our secondary goals, particularly engagement. Unsurprisingly, our big podcast launch post has received the most engagement. After that, big winners were our guest announcement post, our posts about our iTunes reviews, and a post that featured a funny Rotten Tomatoes review. I think it’ll take a few months to see if there are any strong patterns in the types of posts that get the most engagement.

What’s next?

We’ll continue with our social media plan and track engagement. We’ll fine-tune along the way, as patterns start to surface as to what’s working best.

We’d also like to explore other free marketing avenues, such as co-promotions with other podcasts and getting featured in related email newsletters.

Have any ideas yourself? Feel free to leave a comment!

Well, I’m just going to cut to the chase — today, we officially launched the Bring Your Own Movie podcast!

I know it’s a cliché, but this was a true labor of love. From being brought on as a producer and putting together a full project plan to working with the team to record our first official episode, it’s been an interesting journey with a lot of learnings.

One big learning — just because you’ve recorded your podcast doesn’t mean you’re anywhere close to launching.

Here’s a little glimpse of what is takes to get your podcast from audio file to public launch, along with some of our stumbles and learnings along the way.

Choosing a media host

Much like you would choose a service such as WordPress or Squarespace to host a website, when it comes to having a podcast, it’s recommended that you select a media host where you’ll store all of your audio files. Why is that? Well, audio files are big, and if you upload through your regular website hosting service, you might slow down your entire site.

Also similar to website hosting, there are a lot of media hosting services, many of which are specifically geared toward podcasts. There are an overwhelming number of choices, in fact. I read countless articles comparing the options. I joined the Podcasters Support Group on Facebook and searched for past posts about the hosting services.

To find order in all of the chaos of possibilities, I had sit down and identify our top needs. For us, the biggest priority was having enough file storage at a reasonable price point, having a service that was reliable, and choosing a host that would make it easy to upload and submit to podcast directories.

We narrowed it down to Libsyn, Blubrry, Podbean or Buzzsprout. I read through the capabilities and pored over reviews, noting the top features and competitive edges for each service. Buzzsprout seems to have the most intuitive interface, while Podbean has unlimited storage. Blubrry has one of the easiest integrations with WordPress, and Libsyn is probably the most established and widely used service.

In the end, we went with Libsyn. Being one of, if not the most used media hosting service for podcasts, we knew it would be reliable, and it accommodated our file storage needs.

Developing the artwork

Yes, this is the fun, artistic and creative part of launching a podcast, but it’s also an absolutely vital step. First of all, you must include show artwork in order to submit your podcast to iTunes and other podcast directories. And there are strict specs you have to follow.

Secondly, this is a way to brand your podcast and help you stand out from the competition!

Show artwork must be square, and when submitting to iTunes, the file must be a minimum of 1400×1400. However, while the original file size is large, you also have to consider how it will look as a small thumbnail image.

One of the co-hosts, Sam, is an amazing artist. He and I worked closely together to develop the artwork. We knew we wanted to feature our abbreviation — BYOM — because it would be easy to read when sized down small. We also wanted to hint at the two main elements of our podcast — movies (of course) and alcohol (did I mention the hosts and guest are all drinking throughout the episode?).

It took a lot of iterations. We made sure to send it to people unfamiliar with the podcast to get their impressions. And in the end here’s the final artwork:

I love how we were able to hint at the drinking element of our podcast through the martini glass that serves as the “Y”. And we referred to the movie part of our podcast with the popcorn olive and the film reel “O”. I also like how much the orange pops against the blue.

Setting up our online presence

Very early on, we secured a Facebook page, Instagram profile and Twitter handle. We also purchased a number of website domains that will all redirect to our main site.

Once we had the artwork secured, it was time to get all these pages set up. For Facebook and Twitter, you want both a profile pic and and cover/header image. For Instagram, you need the profile image. For all three platforms, there are also areas to list a description of your podcast (with various word count restrictions, of course).

For the website, we decided to just start with the free website (or Podcast Page, as they call it) that Libsyn provides as part of our media hosting subscription. It’s a simple template with limited customization capabilities, but it serves our needs for now. We figure that eventually most people will just find our podcast in their podcast app or directory of choice and not necessarily come to our website. While the Podcast Page has a Libsyn-branded URL, we were able to set up redirects for the domains we purchased, so that we can use those shorter URLs on our promotional materials.

Uploading the episode and submitting to directories

This is one of the last steps to getting a podcast live. It’s also the part of the process that was difficult for a newbie like me to fully comprehend until I actually started digging into the system.

First, I had to go into my show settings in Libsyn and set up our profile. The most important things here are confirming the public-facing name of the podcast, including a show description (which will be used by directories like iTunes), uploading the show artwork, and connecting our related online properties like our website URL and social media profiles.

Then, I had to set up our RSS feed. This RSS feed URL is what you use to submit your podcast to most directories. During this step, I had to select our categories (TV & Film for our primary category, Comedy for our secondary category) and designate our rating (our podcast is Explicit).

Next, I needed to upload our episode. You need at least one episode uploaded in order to submit your podcast to the various directories. Here you bring in your audio file and enter your episode title and description.

After this last step, the episode was officially live and available for listening through our website. But that’s not how people typically listen to podcasts. They don’t go to each individual website of the podcasts they follow to listen to the episodes there. They download and listen to podcasts through their podcast app of choice. And these apps pull in from the various podcast directories (a good number of them pulling in from iTunes).

So the last important step is submitting your podcast (using your RSS feed URL) to the various directories. iTunes is the most important one, followed by Stitcher, Spotify and Google Play Music. There are specific instructions for each directory. Luckily, Libsyn has a lot of support materials and integrations to make this submission process easy.

However, this is where I underestimated the amount of time to allow. Once you submit, it can take a few days to be approved. And then once approved by a directory, you still need to be indexed. Essentially, being indexed is what allows your podcast to be discoverable via search.

If I launch another podcast in the future, this is where I will give myself a little more time. We just got approved by iTunes today, the day of our launch, but it still might take a couple of days for us to be indexed. That means, today it might be hard for people to find us by searching, so they will either need to listen to our episode through our website or add our RSS feed URL manually to their podcast app.

Promoting the podcast

Even though our first episode was technically available to listen to a few days ago, when I initially uploaded the file, today was our big promotional push day.

We drafted posts for Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, along with a fun image. We also put together an email to share with friends or family who are not active on social media. We prepped the guest, Carla, who is featured on our first episode and let her know our launch plans so that she can share with her network.

In the next few weeks, we’ll do a lot more to promote.

The co-hosts, Sam and Tonya, will be hosting entertainment at an Oscars viewing party on behalf of our podcast. We will ask friends and other influencers to share with their networks. We’ll ask movie-themed groups to send to their email list. We’ll ask other podcasts about co-promotion, shouting each other out on our respective podcast episodes. And we’ll try to do a big push (maybe with some give-aways) to get iTunes reviews, which can help us get featured.

I’m sure we’ll try a lot of different things. This is the part where we’ll experiment, test, and learn.

So, how can you listen?

You can first try to search for “Bring Your Own Movie” in the podcast app you usually use. If we don’t pop up in your search results, you can head straight to our website to listen: byomcast.com.

You can also manually add our show to your podcast app of choice Just find the option to add a new podcast via URL and paste in our RSS feed: https://bringyourownmovie.libsyn.com/rss

I hope you enjoy!

A couple of months ago, I wrote about being brought on as the producer for my friends’ new podcast, Bring Your Own Movie. After working with them to understand their ideas and goals for the podcast, I set out to create a detailed project plan that would get us from concept to launch.

We then spent the next two months preparing and getting things in order to record our first few episodes:

• Confirming the episode format
• Obtaining the necessary recording equipment
• Selecting and scheduling the first few guests
• Creating our episode prep checklist and assigning duties

Well, this past Sunday, we recorded our first official episode!

The concept for the podcast: Each episode, co-hosts Tonya Narvaez and Sam Bertken, along with audio engineer and permanent guest host (and my husband) Ryan Lee Short, invite a guest to talk about their favorite movie. For this episode, the crew discussed The Shining with guest Carla Lee, producer and head writer for sketch comedy company Nice Tan.

Oh, and there’s drinking involved, of course. Over drinks, the group talks about the featured movie, their impressions, and any personal connection they have to the film. And there’s also a rousing (and alcohol-laden) round of trivia.

In preparation for each episode, the entire team does background research on the film — when it was released, who directed and starred, reactions from critics and audiences, and interesting facts. As producer, I also research and come up with all the trivia questions, which I then share with that episode’s trivia master. Oh, and of course, we all watch the movie being featured, noting our own thoughts and reactions.

On the logistical side, for each episode, we secure a recording location and schedule the guest. We also purchase the alcohol (in addition to their favorite movie, the guest also tells us their favorite alcoholic drink) and snacks (key during the sobering up phase).

I am happy to report that our first recording went incredibly smoothly!

During the recording, I took notes of points where we might want to make cuts to the episodes. I also noted areas of improvement for the subsequent episodes. Next steps for the episode are recording a voiceover for the intro and editing the episode.

With our first episode recorded and the recording process and checklist ironed out, I can now move on to tackling the items we need to address for the public launch, such as:

• Choosing a media hosting service
• Setting up our website
• Creating the cover art
• Putting together a social media strategy and promotion plan

Our plan is to record three more episodes so we have them queued up and ready to go when we officially launch around the time of the Oscars. This podcast is going to be hilarious and entertaining, and I’m so excited for the launch next month!