A RADIO presenter turned marketing podcaster has written a complete guide to broadcasting online.

Chris Huskins published The Most Comprehensive Guide to Podcasting Ever (Probably) after hearing how many podcasters lose heart and abandon their efforts.

Mr Huskins – who worked for the community radio station Voice FM, Southampton University’s Radio Sonar, Sam FM and JACKfm – is now the co-host of You Are the Media, which helps businesses build a loyal audience online and offline. He advises small businesses on simplifying their marketing.

“I wrote the book because there is a statistic floating around that many podcasts only reach eight episodes in iTunes or Apple Podcasts. Someone must have a lot of passion for something to start a podcast, so to see them burn out after such a low number seems sad to me,” he said.

“The book sets out to help podcasters with the full journey through podcasting starting with planning out your show and how to verify your idea and work out who your audience are. It then takes you through the normal questions most have on setting up: the microphones, mixers, hosting etc.

“The remaining chapters take you through how to get the podcast out to all the apps and the world, how to keep the momentum and not hit that burnout, plus the major task of how to promote it to get the listeners you want.”

The Romsey-based author said it was still possible for a new podcast to make an impact, even though there are a bewildering number around.

“We recently learnt there are 600,000 podcasts in iTunes. Yes, it does sound a lot. However, compared with 500million blogs and 500m YouTube channels that are out there already, it’s a tiny amount,” he said.

“The opportunity is there, and it couldn’t be a better time as the ‘big boys’ are starting to invest serious money into the podcasting industry with the likes of Spotify recently spending over 350m US dollars million on acquiring podcast companies, and Google developing interesting new tech that will help with discoverability.”

He said it was not necessary to have high-end equipment at first. “One of the biggest issues with us as podcasters is that we are happy to let excuses stop us,” he said.

“‘I can’t afford a microphone’, or ‘The Amazon man hasn’t been’ or ‘I don’t know what hosting company to use’. The best advice I can give is to grab your smartphone and just start recording. You learn so much more from getting started with recording your own voice.”

He said it was possible to build a loyal following by picking a topic that isn’t “overly broad” and finding an audience online.

“If you were in a pub and 100 people showed up to listen to your story, you would feel like the most popular person ever,” he said.

“So why should 100 listens on a podcast make us feel any different? The only reason is because big companies boast high numbers and advertising specialists talk about 10,000 downloads – a silly number.”

He said he was inspired by something he heard author and business coach Chris Ducker say at an event: “We need to stop comparing everyone’s 100th step to our first.”