Top 5 Podcast Tools for Recording, Editing, Marketing, Audience Growth, and Discoverability

[00:00:00] If you're not using these 5 tools, you're making content creation way harder than it needs to be. I'm going to help you fix that. What up potty people and welcome back to the show. I'm Eric, you're listening to Clipped, a podcast where I bring you the tips, resources, and people to help you crush your content goals. And today I'm breaking down the 5 tools that'll save you time, help you sound better with your production, and ultimately help you grow your show.

[00:00:24] Okay, so why these tools? Well, these tools cover recording, editing, marketing, audience growth, discoverability, repurposing, and more. They're great for beginners and they're going to give you everything you need to be successful and streamline your workflow with your content. Let's get into it. Okay, so the tool number one is Riverside. So I'm a huge fan of Riverside. The URL is riverside.fm.

[00:00:49] And essentially, it's, at least for me, my favorite place to record online audio and video. So if you're using Zoom or something like that, you're going to want to ditch that because Riverside takes recording remote audio and video to the next level. The technology built in it functions so that there's no weird glitches or blurbs or that weird internet-y sound that you get with Zoom.

[00:01:15] With Riverside, you're going to be able to record crystal clear audio and 4K video all remotely, all from your web browser. You don't even need to download anything. In addition, there's lots of cool features like Magic Clips. So Magic Clips uses AI and Riverside's going to take your video when you're done and chop it into vertical shorts for social media, all with the click of a button.

[00:01:45] You can then share that across YouTube, LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram, whatever it is. And it's going to automatically give you those assets. So super easy to use, super high quality clips where you can change the background, add captions, add your logo, etc. Additionally, one thing that I really like is the free transcription. So after your recording, Riverside's going to send you a transcription.

[00:02:11] And then you can go ahead and see if you want to edit chunks out. You can put that transcription on your website. And if you'd like, you can actually edit the transcription within Riverside's text-based editor. So you're going to be able to edit words from your podcast by editing text and moving things around. If you want to delete a couple sentences, you simply highlight those sentences, hit delete,

[00:02:39] and Riverside deletes the corresponding audio that those sentences relate to. I'll write your show notes for you using AI, and it just helps streamline everything and put that all in one place. So you log in, you record, then you get that transcript, then you turn the video into magic clips, short clips for social media. Then you've got your show notes, boom, tweak or copy-paste, post into your podcast hosting platform, etc., etc.

[00:03:09] Great tool, love it, been using it for years. So definitely the best place, in my opinion, to record remote audio and video online. Okay, moving into number two, which is Descript. Okay, moving into number two, which is Descript. So Descript is a little similar to Riverside, although there's, let's see. Okay, so Descript is sort of similar to Riverside.

[00:03:38] They do have a recording feature, so you can record directly into Descript. Descript is app-based, so you do have to download Descript, whereas with Riverside, you just use it through your web browser. But what's going to happen is you're going to upload your audio or video, and then you're going to see a screen like this. It's going to automatically transcribe that audio and video. And if there's multiple speakers, you can label that in the transcript.

[00:04:07] It's going to give you a text-based version of your show that you can edit as well. So if I wanted to delete this chunk of audio, as you can see here, I hit Delete, and it actually deletes that from the audio file. There's also Edit for Clarity, so you can edit filler words for your podcast.

[00:04:26] And what that means is if you say, um, a lot or like a lot or, you know, you know this, you know that, you simply click here on Remove Filler Words. You're going to go here to All Filler Words, and you can select if you want all of these or you want to uncheck them. But these are called filler words. It's kind of like that extra speech that we add in between things when we don't fully know what we're saying.

[00:04:53] You can select all, and then you can click Remove All. So right now, this episode, which is a previous episode I recorded, has 22 filler words. It highlights them here. You can see it. Ah, ah, um, um, ah. And I actually did a first editing pass, so that's not that many. Sometimes these transcripts have hundreds of filler words. But in any case, you can click here, Remove All.

[00:05:19] Boom, it removes them from the transcript and from your actual audio or video file. Love that feature. I use it. I also use this right here, which is called Studio Sound. So Studio Sound is basically like an AI processing, and it's going to beef up your audio. So it uses an algorithm. It, like, beefs up the low end. It's going to reduce any, like, background noise or reverb. It's going to level things out.

[00:05:49] Essentially, all the EQing and processing and compression that you would have to do, like, in a traditional audio editing program, Descript does that automatically with Studio Sound. It does take a moment or maybe even a few minutes, depending on how long your podcast is. So let's stand by for one moment. Boom. Okay, so then once it's done its processing, you can adjust the intensity. So I don't recommend putting it on 100.

[00:06:19] I usually shoot for, like, 40, and then I'll listen. If I feel like it could sound a little better, a little fuller and more professional, maybe I'll bump it up to, like, 60. It depends on the clarity of your audio. If you have really trash audio, you might need more intensity. If you already have pretty clean audio, probably less intensity.

[00:06:39] But you do have to be careful because if you put it up to, like, 100, it'll overprocess and you'll run into, like, other problems where it kind of sounds like robotic and fake. There's tons of other features. There's a stock library here you can see if you're editing video for B-roll, GIFs, actual, like, audio clips. You can layer things. It essentially functions as, like, a professional audio or video editing program.

[00:07:09] Not going to get into all the details. The filler words and the Studio Sound are my two favorites, so that's what I wanted to focus on for this. But great tool. Also free to use. There's a free plan. Don't know exactly what's included in that, but it's a great place to start. And then you can upgrade the paid features and you get more tools and more export options, etc. Okay. So the third one is chat GPT.

[00:07:38] And if you haven't used chat GPT, basically it's this crazy, like, AI search engine and, like, an AI modeling where you can ask it to do things for you. You can actually ask it before you record in Riverside to structure an outline for an episode that you would like.

[00:07:57] Please structure an outline for a podcast about the best dog food options for small breeds. Okay. Okay. Okay. And so it's going to shoot you an outline. As you can see here, you could then adjust it. You could tweak. You could copy paste into Google Docs. Put some stuff in your own words. Okay. So that's all well and good planning.

[00:08:26] One thing I really like to use it for is creating social media posts. So once I record my episode, copy paste that transcript from Riverside or from Descript, I'll put it into chat GPT and I'll ask it to create, you know, several LinkedIn posts for me. Maybe a post for YouTube. My favorite is a blog post. So take the transcript of this episode and turn it into a blog post.

[00:08:57] Really, it's excellent for repurposing content because you can get text for newsletters, text for LinkedIn, how to write the post for an accompanying YouTube reel. Really, the possibilities are endless. Okay.

[00:09:18] So now write me a LinkedIn post for based off this outline. I want to promote the episode. Okay. Okay. Boom. It's shooting me a LinkedIn post right here. I then go in and I edit. So the possibilities are endless.

[00:09:44] I mainly use this for planning and I mainly use it for repurposing, but it can come up with images. Okay. Now I need a landscape rectangle shaped image that reflects this topic. Again, you want to be more specific. I'm doing this for time. It can create images. Man, this tool is crazy.

[00:10:13] It's only going to get better. Don't be scared of AI. Hit up chat GPT. Start coming up with ideas for your podcast. Create social media outlets, posts for X or threads or whatever you want. Look at this. That's sick. This is dog with like healthy food. There's like carrots and stuff in there. Looks like it's a French bulldog. Well, you could be more specific. You could say you want a Maltese or whatever it is, but use this to your advantage, guys. Everybody's doing it. It's free to start.

[00:10:41] The paid plans give you, I believe, and I could be wrong, but I believe like the algorithm kicks in to like be better and faster. Sometimes on the free plan, I noticed, unless this has changed, but like this system would be overloaded and so you'd have to wait to use it. But with the paid plan, that's not an issue. It works so well. Got to do it. Okay. The next is Beehive. So Beehive, this is number four.

[00:11:11] Beehive is an email marketing provider and I'm pulling up here. This is my list. Guys, you got to have an email list. When you create that YouTube video or that podcast, tell people to sign up for your email list. Put the link in the podcast show notes in the YouTube description. Make sure you include a link. Get people to sign up because you want to own your audience. These social media platforms, the algorithm is restrictive. It doesn't show your stuff to everybody. Some come and go. TikTok was gone.

[00:11:40] Now it's back. So if you build an audience on just one of those platforms, you're going to be limiting yourself. What if you did have a massive TikTok following and what if it didn't come back and it just went away and you had thousands or millions of people following you, consuming what you're putting out and then it's gone. You need an email list. I like Beehive. Beehive has a free plan. Super easy to create an email. Lots of rad tools. This is a previous one I did. You can edit.

[00:12:10] You can click. You can add photos, links, whatever it is. Also sign up for my email list. I'm going to drop a link for you guys. You see how I did that? There's features to grow your audience with boosts or magic links and a referral program. So you can actually start to partner with other Beehive newsletters. Make a little bit of money for referring them or they refer you. It's a community. I think it's the best one I've used. I've used several in the past.

[00:12:40] I've switched from MailChimp to Beehive about six months ago, seven months ago and I absolutely love it. You can see here 780 subscribers. It shows you the open rate, the click-through rate. Tons of tools and metrics and this and that. I don't need to get into everything but sign up for the free plan. Use my affiliate link. That helps me and start building that personal connection with the audience so you can send them things of value.

[00:13:09] You can sell or pitch some of your services and offerings and you have that direct line of communication. Beehive is great. They're growing. They have a rad social media presence. They all seem really cool. Have talked to several people from their team and I dig it. So that's number four. That was Beehive. So we got Riverside, Descript, ChatGPT. We've got Beehive and the last one is Google Trends. I almost forgot guys.

[00:13:39] Here you're looking at my show outline which was actually created with my brain and with ChatGPT. Okay so Google Trends. So why do you need Google Trends? Well Google Trends is a keyword research tool and you can type in certain keywords. Then you can see how many people are searching for that specific search phrase. That way if you want to build content around topics that have high search volume you can

[00:14:09] do that. So let's see here. Let's let me. It's funny. It defaults to the Grammys. Best dog food for small breeds. Explore. Okay this is what it looks like. This is the past day so I'm going to change this to I don't know 90 days. It doesn't actually show you like there was X amount of thousands of people searching for this. The way it works is I'll show you here.

[00:14:42] Numbers represent search interest relative to the highest point on the chart for a given region and time. A value of 100 is peak popularity for the term. A value of 50 means that the term is half as popular. A score of zero means there was not enough data. Okay so you can see here there's not a lot of searches for this. Out of 100 this has a score of 11. 5. 11. 11.

[00:15:09] We could go the past year past 12 months. It's probably a little. Yeah. Okay so you can see here it's been trending up as of late. But in any case before we get into the demo here and the geographic stuff. Basically this is a free tool and it gives you an idea of what's popular. So maybe you want to make a topic for a video or podcast about what's popular. Maybe you don't.

[00:15:36] There's other better tools that cost a lot of money that I use where it'll tell you exactly like how many thousands of people were searching for this keyword. How competitive it is. So like how hard would it be if I make content around that keyword for me to like rank on page one of Google or rank on YouTube for YouTube to start pushing that video on that topic out. So this is a little bit of less information but at least it gives you an idea of like what's

[00:16:03] popular and what you might be able to make content about. Keyword research I'm really big on. Yes I think you should make content about whatever the hell you want to make it about. But when you do add some keyword research as part of your strategy maybe not for every video but for some you're gonna have a better chance of the algorithms of the various search engines pushing that out. And you want your shit to be seen by more people. So I think it's definitely something to consider.

[00:16:31] And I've got other videos on it that I'll link below. Okay so then you can see where people searching. I don't know maybe if you have a store like a physical location for something. You want and you sell like what are those beef jerky. You want to see like how popular that is and if people in your area are searching for it. And then you can like tailor a marketing strategy towards that. Here's a related search queries.

[00:16:58] You want to be as specific as possible with titling, with searching, with your content. So in any case this is Google Trends. Let's see here. Okay this is another search for ingredient. It's not related to dog food so this is a bad example. Let's go back to the home page. And so you can see you could dive deeper here.

[00:17:27] This is just various tools and stuff that you can use. This is just a basic overview. But as you can see if you get in here there's tons of stuff that you want to explore. Sign up for their email newsletter too. That way you can learn more about search volume and search data. That was number five guys. So Riverside. Riverside for recording. Creating clips.

[00:17:55] Descript for editing and beefing up your audio and video to make it sound better. Then you've got ChatGPT for research, planning and repurposing content. Then you've got Beehive for your email newsletter. Got to own that relationship with that audience. And number five, Google Trends. Make sure you're searching for something that's relevant that has some kind of search volume. Make sure you're making content around something that's relevant that has some kind of search volume.

[00:18:23] And see all the data behind those search queries so that you can make the best content and have the most people see it with the least amount of effort. That's it for me today guys. Appreciate it. Thank you for listening. If you have insights, questions, head on over to thepodcasthaven.com. Fill out that contact form. Or hey, sign up for that newsletter. I give you weekly stuff like this.

[00:18:50] And my aim is to help you become a better, more efficient creator. Thepodcasthaven.com. That's my company. That's the home base for everything I do. Keep listening. Keep engaging. Keep creating. I'm out.