It's hard to believe it's been almost two years since the very first episode of Audio Branding. We've featured over forty exciting guests since the show started and talked about everything from audio branding (imagine that) and healing harmonies to machine learning and the sounds of the planets and stars. In this episode, we'll take a look at podcasting itself and some of the tools I use for my show that might be helpful to anyone thinking of starting their own podcast.Just so you know, some of the links I'll be sharing are affiliate links, but you're welcome to check out the websites without my affiliate codes, if you prefer. Either way, they're a good place to start when it comes to creating your podcast empire.With over a hundred million people in the U.S. alone listening to podcasts just last year, plus over twelve million in the U.K. and thirteen million in Canada, the audience and market influence of podcasting is only getting bigger. More than half of the people listening to digital audio, now listen to podcasts, and that audience is more attentive than ever before: podcast listeners devote on average thirty percent of their listening time to podcasts.If you have a brand, a product, or even just a message that you want to share with the world, podcasting is becoming one of the most effective ways to reach your audience. It fits into all the corners of your multitasking life because you can listen while you’re taking a walk, driving to work, washing the dishes, whatever.  But there are some basic things you need to consider when you’re ready to put your podcast out there.  For instance, where do you start when it comes to hosting your podcast? There are all sorts of options, and my show uses Captivate.fm for its hosting services.Not only do they offer marketing information on the site for promoting your podcast (Mark Asquith and his team really share some stellar information), they charge by the number of downloads per month rather than the number of podcasts. While a lot of other hosts charge per podcast, you can have as many as you like on Captivate, which can really come in handy if you ever want to start a new podcast while keeping your old podcast’s episodes archived. You can also create podcasting networks and even share ads within that network – an option that previously has only been available for content creators with very deep pockets. I highly recommended them, and you can find a link to them on my blog:https://www.captivate.fm/signup?ref=jodikrangleOf course, there’s also the matter of recording your interviews, especially if you’re working on the go or, like me, you’re often interviewing guests from all over the world. Cloud-based audio software and interview services have come a long way just over the past few years, and the interviews on my show are recorded using Squadcast.fm, a browser-based remote service with stellar audio quality that can host up to four people in a session.Each speaker’s audio track is separated into a high quality .wav file, as long as you make sure echo cancellation is turned off (and to make that work, everyone involved, needs to be wearing headphones – just so you know!). The service also just added video recording this year. There's a link to them on my blog too, and it comes with a free seven-day trial:https://squadcast.fm/?ref=jodikramps1Once you have your podcast recorded and hosted, you’ll probably want a website for it, not to mention an app for people listening on their mobile devices. Why not?  There are quite a few different ways to go for hosting web and app content, but this show uses SupaPass.com since it specializes in podcasts. It offers a free trial too, and a...