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This summer, we want to show tweens how easy it is to make your own podcast for kids! The Middle School Mind is launching a three episode series to guide you step by step to create your own tween podcast.
If you enjoy listening to The Middle School Mind podcast for kids and you’ve wondered how easy it is to make your own kid’s podcast by kids for kids, we are here to help.
Making your own podcast is easy, fun and does not cost a lot to start. We are here to show you step by step how we make The Middle School Mind podcast in hopes that you will start your very own podcast. And, summer is the perfect time to start!
To get started, you will need the help of a parent or responsible adult to help you create your podcast on the podcast app, Anchor and download graphics and create your own podcast title card, you will need to access free sites like Canva and Pexels.
To make this process even easier, we recommend you download the attached PDF guide that shows you handy screen shots to walk through the process every step of the way!
Download the following step-by-step guide to help you out!
Register your podcast on Anchor.fm
Now that you’ve got your podcast name and your very first episode mapped out, it’s time to claim your podcast and start your very first episode! We started with and continue to use Anchor for The Middle School Mind.
Anchor is free and we think it’s got some great tools to build your episode from scratch. There are other platforms out there that many podcasters use, but we will highlight Anchor because it’s what we know and what we use.
You are going to need a grown-up for this step!
- Go to: anchor.fm/signup
- The grown up will need to enter in the following information: Full Name, e-mail address, Anchor password, date of birth and confirm they are not a robot/spam account. Note, you need an adult to complete this step to register your podcast. Kids are not allowed to do so!
- The adult who registered your podcast needs to confirm their e-mail address to complete registration. Anchor will send them an e-mail with a link to confirm their e-mail address shortly after Sign Up.
- Once your parent or guardian has verified their e-mail address, Anchor makes it very easy to set up your first episode
Make your first episode
Once you’re ready to create your first episode, hit the Let’s do it button!
This should take you to the Create Your Episode page that lets you record directly from the Anchor app, find past recordings for you to add to your episode and include great music and transitions to make your show sound like the professional podcasts.
On the left-hand side, you see a handful of colored tabs:
- The red tab lets your Record new content
- The purple tab Library allows you to access previous sessions you recorded
- The blue tab allows you to insert Music into your episodes. Anchor is associated with Spotify so you have access to the Spotify playlist. We haven’t used this feature in the past so we are not familiar with this one.
- The Messages tab in green allows you to add listener voice messages to your show. We also have not used this feature in the past, so we won’t cover that on this episode.
- Finally, the pink tab gives you some Transitions in case you’re jumping from segment to segment in an episode or if you are running an ad in an episode. For example, we use the Transition “Smooth” in our episodes where we are running our Anchor ads.
We usually add the transition during a break in the episode when we are switching topics or it’s usually the later part in the episode when we are switching over to the game or trivia segment before we close the show.
Check your microphone inputs
Ok, get your talking points in front, take a deep breath and hit that Record button!
You should be taken to the following screen.
In the field Input, it will most likely default to the Internal Microphone that is on your laptop, Chromebook, tablet or phone. If you don’t have an external microphone, you should be all set and you can hit the red Start Recording Now button.
If you have a USB microphone, make sure you click on the purple drop-down arrow to the right of the Input field and choose the microphone that you want to use.
For our show, we use the Logitech Blue Snowball microphone so before we start recording, we make sure that it shows up in the Input section instead of the default microphone.
Once you have the correct Input microphone selected, hit the red Start Recording Now button!
This is your time to shine!
Once you hit the Start Recording Button you are on the clock! Anchor gives you up to 30 minutes to record using your web browser before it cuts you off.
Don’t worry, though, you can build your episodes into 30 minutes segments if you really want so it’s not that big of a deal.
For your first episode, record away and hit the black Stop Recording button when you are finished.
Start building your first episode
Once you hit the Stop Recording button, you are taken automatically to the purple Library tab and the segment you just recreated will take a few minutes to finish downloading. Don’t worry if it’s not there immediately. Anchor is saving your file to the cloud and depending on how much of the 30 minutes you used up, it may take more time to finish downloading.
Rename your files
The file name is automatically the Date when you made the recording. Next to the file name is a pencil icon that allows you to rename the file so you can categorize it much easier.
For example, you may want to call it Episode 1 or if you only recorded the Introduction, rename it Introduction.
Add your audio segment to your episode
When you have your audio file renamed and ready to add to your episode, click on the red Plus sign on the right side of the audio file. This should add that audio segment to your new episode!
Use transitions to add intro music
Anchor is great because it gives you amazing tools to make your podcast sound legit as possible, like the professional, big-time podcasts you listen to.
It’s easy to do this and click on the pink Transitions tab on the left hand side to check out the available options to add to your show!
There are transitions available with different lengths of time. Some are short 2-3 seconds of transition audio, while others are more long-form.
Take a listen and see what works for your show. For this example, we will use 96 West which is a 13-second clip and sounds kind of fun for an intro song.
Click on the pink Plus sign at the right to add the audio Transition to the show you are building. If you want your show to start and to end with this clip, add the audio clip twice.
You will want to rearrange the order of your audio so the first 96 West clip plays ahead of the Introduction segment you recorded and the second 96 West clip plays after your Introduction segment has finished.
It’s as easy as dragging and dropping the segments on the right-hand side so it’s in the right order that you want them to play.
Click on that blue Save Episode once you get everything perfect to save all your hard work so far!
Name your episode and other episode options
Once you save your episode, you are taken to the Episode Options screen.
This is where you name your episode in the Episode Title section.
The Episode Description section is also called the show notes section. This is where we typically enter the key topics from the episode outline that we wanted to talk about.
That’s why we recommend creating an outline. It makes it so easy to populate the Episode Description section when you prep your episode before recording.
So in our first episode, we had three talking points for our outline:
- Who are we?
- What can listeners expect from The Middle School Mind?
- Son talked about video games that were really frustrating for him.
You can put as much detail as you’d like but Anchor has a limit of 4,000 characters for the show notes section.
When do you want to publish your episode?
After the episode description, you can choose your Publish Date.
If you want to get your episode out there right away choose Now and click on the blue Next button at the top of the page.
For The Middle School Mind, we typically publish our posts every other Monday at 8am Central Time. So if you click on the drop down in the Publish Date field, a calendar opens up and you can choose the date and time you want your episode to go live on Anchor.
Once you choose your Publish date, click on the blue Confirm button to schedule your episode.
Customize this episode
Since you are a new podcaster with lots of awesome ideas and content to share with your audience, it’s a good idea to organize your show.
After you choose your Publish Date, scroll down to the Customize This Episode section.
Here, you can enter the Season Number, Episode Number, the Episode Type and the Content of your episode.
At The Middle School Mind, we are a kids podcast and we keep the content clean and family friendly so our episodes are always Clean. If you talk about things that maybe younger audiences should not hear, you can choose Explicit if you have some not-so-family-friendly language on your show.
We’re not judging, but as a parent, please make sure you flag your episode appropriately so there aren’t any surprises if little ones find your show.
Create awesome episode art for your show
Our goal here is to make you as legit of a podcast as the big time podcasts you listen to. Part of that is to make sure you have awesome episode art to highlight your show.
Episode artwork shows up when your listeners are scrolling through their podcast app and is a good first impression to see if they want to give your show a listen.
We have a few free websites to recommend to help you create your own episode art.
Again, you need a parent or guardian to register for a free account on Pexels.
Once you’re registered, you can search for free, royalty-free photos that you can use for your own Episode Art.
Going back to our earlier example, I searched Kid Painting in Pexels and found a cool picture of a kid holding up painted hands which would be a good choice for our cover art.
Hover over the picture that you want to download and click on the Download button on the lower right section of that image. It should download to your computer so you can use it as your Episode Art on Anchor.
Or if you want to get really fancy, you can customize it in another free website called Canva which we cover below.
Canva is another free tool to use to create professional looking Episode Art for your podcast.
Again, you need a parent or guardian to sign up for an account so you can use their free design features.
The way we created our Episode Art for The Middle School Mind podcast was to select Social Media and choose the Popular options.
Under the Popular section, click on the option Instagram Post. You don’t need Instagram, but we chose this option because the layout is a square 1080 x 1080 pixels which works out great for the Episode Art layout for the podcast.
On the left-hand side, you have an option to look through a variety of free templates to choose from. You can choose the standard pictures that come with the post and you can also customize the artwork by adding in the artwork you downloaded from Pexels.
Canva also has some free Photos that you can use as well. On the left-hand side, click on Photos tab to see what Canva has to offer.
For this exercise, we chose this nice Happy Mother’s Day Template with flowers and cool looking text that shows script and block text.
Next, click on the Uploads tab on the left-hand side. Here, you can find the picture file that you want to use and upload that image into Canva.
Once it’s uploaded, you can click on the image or drag and drop into your template.
Once the image is added to your template, you can drag the corners so it fits the entire template and the picture is centered the way you want it.
After you have repositioned the picture where you want it, click on the original Happy Mother’s Day text from the template and customize it the way you want.
Here, you can type in the name of your podcast. In this example, let’s call it Tween Art Techniques that we talked about before. You can also customize the font size, the text color, how big you want it to be and where you want it positioned on the image.
Once everything looks good to you, click on the Share button in the upper right corner of the page.
You want to save it as an Image file, so we save ours in PNG format.
Once you’re ready, hit the Download button and your new Episode Art will be saved to your computer and ready to be used in your Anchor podcast!
Upload your new episode art to Anchor
Go back to your Anchor account and click on the Upload New Episode Art in the Customize This Episode section.
Select the file you downloaded from Canvo from your computer. Zoom in to the picture if you’d like to get it exactly the way you want and hit Save.
Your awesome, professional-looking Episode Art is now available for you to launch when your new podcast is published to the world!
For right now, Save As Draft so you don’t lose your hard work and we will cover Editing Your Audio and Naming and Publishing your first episode in the next episode.
Enter to win your own Blue Snowball microphone!
Thank you for listening to the show. We really appreciate our listeners and we hope this summer school series will inspire you to Make Your Own Kid Podcast this summer break.
We want to help our listeners with making your own podcast and we will be giving away a total of (2) Logitech Blue Snowball microphones this summer to two of our lucky listeners. The Blue Snowball microphone is the same one we use to record The Middle School Mind and hope you will use it to make your own podcast!
If you want to be part of the drawing, here’s how to enter:
- Please leave us a 4 or 5-star review on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or the podcast platform that you listen to.
- Please go to our website at themiddleschoolmind.com/about us and at the bottom of the page you can Contact Us.
- Send us your name, contact information and let us know where we can find your review. Once you send us this information, you will be entered into our drawing.
- We will be pulling out two names at random and will be following up with those winners directly by August 1, 2022.
It’s that easy!
Links to our Make Your Own Kid Podcast series
- Episode 1.20: Equipment Checklist and Plan Your First Episode
- Episode 1.21: Register on Anchor.fm, Record Your First Episode and Design Your Podcast Artwork
- Episode 1.22: Edit You Audio, Publish Your First Episode on Anchor, Truths About Podcasting
We are now a proud member of the Kids Listen community!
The Middle School Mind is now a proud member of Kids Listen. Kids Listen is a grassroots organization of advocates for high-quality audio content for children.
Kids Listen is creating platforms for producers to share ideas, and publish data and information relevant to creators, consumers, and supporters of podcasts for kids.
Thank you to our listeners!
You can reach The Middle School Mind on our About Us page, Facebook page or Twitter (@TMSM_Podcast). Thanks for listening!
Thank you for listening to the show. We really appreciate our listeners and we hope you have a wonderful summer.
For more episodes of The Middle School Mind podcast, check out our latest podcasts below
