► Tell us about you and your podcast
This Might Get Uncomfortable is hosted by Whitney Lauritsen and Jason Wrobel. The podcast navigates the complexities of mental health, emotional wellness, and life purpose. We explore success, failure, love, relationships, creativity, courage, and all the things that comprise the human experience.
Our mostly female audience is between 28 and 55 years old. They tend to be family-oriented with children and/or companion animal(s). Religion and/or spirituality plays an important role in their life. The listeners are passionate about wellness, including fitness/movement, healthy eating and mindfulness practices (such as yoga and meditation).
► Why & how did you start this podcast?
As close friends who often have in-depth conversations, podcasting felt like a great platform to express ourselves and go deeper into subject matters. Whitney has been an avid podcast listener since 2013 and is connected to many hosts who encouraged her to start the show.
We launched in December 2019 after spending over a year recording episodes and reflecting on how we wanted to release them. Since the production process was so satisfying, we went into podcasting without major goals. After learning about this industry, we became motivated to grow our listenership for more opportunities like booking prominent guests and collaborating with more brands.
► How'd you find the time and funding to do this podcast?
We release 3 episodes a week (Monday, Wednesday, Friday), which requires us to record at least that many each week. Sometimes we record extra episodes so we can fill the queue and take time off in the future. Each episode takes between 1-2 hours to record, depending on the subject and whether we have a guest. Then we submit the tracks to our team at Podetize to edit and create the show notes.
When the episode is live, we spend about 1 hour creating social media graphics and audiograms, and writing a newsletter. Throughout each week we plan topics, book guests for future episodes, work on our website, and focus on various business tasks.
Since we both work for ourselves it's fairly easy for us to allocate time to the podcast. We fund our show through affiliate partnerships and sponsors, which cover expenses like cloud storage, website hosting, graphic software, and video editing tools.
► What do you gain from podcasting?
Revenue is not the main focus of our podcast, though we do work with the occasional sponsor, promote affiliates, and mention our online services. We landed our first sponsorship through an existing relationship with a brand, which involved packaging together social media promotion along with podcast ads. Packaging was a good strategy as our show had about 300 downloads per episode at the time.
Now our podcast averages around 600 downloads per episode. Though we don't actively seek out sponsorship, we keep our eyes peeled for opportunities and sometimes receive invitations from brands. There are many benefits to running the show, from promoting our work, sharing our ideas with the world, and amplifying the messages of our guests.
► How does your podcasting process look like?
We have two USB-powered microphones, pop filters, boom arms, and Logitech webcams. We record separately on our MacBook Pros via Zencastr. You can view all our equipment on Kit.co.
We find guests via The Podcast Collaborative, PodMatch, Audry, Podchaser, and ListenNotes.
Files are uploaded to Dropbox then sent to our post-production team at Podetize. Whitney edits the videos in Final Cut Pro for YouTube, and Jason turns those into short clips. For social media, we made audiograms on Headliner and images on Canva.
► How do you market your show?
Our show is distributed across all major streaming platforms plus podcast review sites and databases like Listen Notes. We even list it on IMDB! Each episode has show notes with a transcript, which gives us great SEO. And, we post the full length episodes to YouTube along with a keyword rich description and optimized tags for discovery.
The majority of our listenership comes from Apple Podcasts, where we have a long show description and SEO optimized titles and descriptions for each episodes. According to Google Analytics, the majority of traffic to our website show notes comes from organic search, followed by direct traffic, then Facebook and Instagram.
We promote every episode in our weekly newsletter and create audiograms and image graphics for Instagram and Facebook each week. Sometimes we post videos to TikTok, graphics or videos to Pinterest, and links to Twitter. Each of us guest on other podcasts to reach new audiences.
► What advice would you share with aspiring (new) podcasters?
Quality is of up-most importance to us as podcasters, in terms of audio and professionalism. Attention to detail has served us well, and we're often complimented on this. Since launching the show we've tweaked the audio to ensure it sounds as great as possible. We upgraded our microphones and bought boom arms and pop filters. Then we experimented with our recording software and mic positioning to ensure we receive a crisp sound with minimal glitches. We also adjusted our internet connections to ensure this didn't impact the quality of our remote recording.
As we want to represent our guests well, we regularly optimize the flow of the experience to help our guests prepare, record, and promote their episodes. We want each person to feel honored and elevated throughout the process. This impacted the way we guest on other shows too.
Supporting other podcasters brings us joy. If you have further questions about our process please don't hesitate to reach out. You can find our email address, social media contact information, and podcast player on our website: http://podcast.wellevatr.com/