This series is all about Libsyn’s podcasters. Its sole purpose is to introduce these awesome podcasts to the world as well as share their podcasting insight to empower the community!
Q & A with Elizabeth Laime From Totally Married
When did you start podcasting?
My husband and I started podcasting three years ago with our other podcast, Totally Laime. We then started Totally Married four months ago.
Why did you start podcasting?
I was transitioning from writing/performing to just writing. What I hadn’t accounted for was how writing is extremely isolating (there’s a reason writers are self obsessed and angst-ridden and drink a lot!) and I wanted to do something to keep me interactive in the comedy world.
My husband is a record producer so we combined his skills and recording equipment with my funny friends as guests and voila: a podcast! After a few years we decided it would be fun to have a podcast with just the two of us shooting the shit. That’s how Totally Married came to be.
What’s your show about?
Totally Married is mostly about my professional modeling career. Er… I mean, it’s a fun/honest conversation between me and my husband about our lives and marriage.
The second half of each show is us answering questions from listeners. The questions run the gamut but are mostly about relationships, money, sex, and in laws. Andy and I give our unprofessional, unqualified advice on these topics.
The advice is usually pretty terrible, I’m sure, but it’s honest and we have fun giving it.
What’s your podcasting set-up? Hardware, software, CMS, etc.
We have two shure mics, an interface and my husband uses digital performer to record and edit. I think it’s rare for someone to use DP but that’s what he uses for producing so he’s comfortable with it.
How have you promoted your podcast?
Our first podcast had a really slow growth, there wasn’t much promotion besides on our facebook and twitter pages. I remember that on episode 16 – which at the time felt like we’d been doing it forever – we only had around 60 downloads per episode.
I remember thanking my sister for being our only listener, only to find out later that she hadn’t even listened… A year later we had thousands of listeners. Eventually Totally Laime got on the podcast network, Earwolf, which gave us a much bigger audience.
Thanks to that platform, our new podcast started out with a great listenership. We only really promote still through facebook and twitter.
What do you know now that you wish you knew when you started?
I wish I’d known how fulfilling and fun it could be! I wish we had started this earlier!
I don’t think I’d change anything about our choices or the journey. I would recommend going into podcasting with low expectations and doing it just because it’s fun. If podcasting doesn’t feel fun to you, then I’d consider not putting in the time and effort.
The external returns of podcasting can be a real slow burn if you aren’t going in with a platform, so you might as well enjoy yourself along the way.
My other piece of advice is that consistency really is key in podcasting. I’ve seen a lot of great podcasts fall by the wayside because they weren’t consistently releasing episodes and therefore were unable to build a following.
We just celebrated our three year podcastiversary and have never, not once, missed a week. I think that’s a big part of what’s allowed us to build our listenership in an organic way. If people know it will be there every week and it is, then they’ll keep coming.
It’s just like that baseball field that I built and then the next thing I knew, Kevin Costner showed up.
You know that you wanna get yourself some terrible advice about relationships, sex and money, so get off your behind and subscribe to Totally Married! If you wanna just start lurking about and getting to know Elizabeth, then go ahead and follow her on twitter @totallylaime
As you can read podcasting is great as a transition from one career focus to another or simply as a way to give your brilliant creative voice a way to express itself. If you’re ready to take the plunge and have fun, then you need to host your podcast with us 🙂
