For those of you out there who are content creators, whether you call yourself an influencer or not, you know I am a loud champion of owned channels. I harp on the fact that you can’t rely on the social networks … borrowed channels … for your content or audience forever. You need to have your own website. Your own email newsletter and list. Perhaps your own podcast.

I do talk about podcasting a lot, but it’s not because I love podcasts and podcasting. It’s because podcasters are influencers. And understanding them and their world, which is a little different than a regular social media content creator, is good for those of you who are brand or agency side professionals. It’s also hopefully inspiring and helpful for the creators among us who are trying to build something out of their online presence.

The challenge for many people with podcasting is that there’s so much technical know how perceived to be needed to start, it’s intimidating. You have to have software to record and edit. A place to host. Maybe software to make it sound better than you can muster in Garage Band. Do you have a website for it? How do you get it to post on all the podcast apps …

It can be a challenge. The less technically inclined someone is, the bigger the challenge.

Zencastr recently made some holistic changes to its software platform to make all that technical challenge go away. By way of disclosure, I am a paying customer of Zencastr and use it for my interviews here on the show. Zencastr is also a recent sponsor of Winfluence and its Creator Network has placed advertisements on the Marketing Podcast Network. Neither of those things have anything to do with my guest being invited on today.

Josh Nielsen is the co-founder and CEO of Zencastr. When you have the opportunity to interview a big shot, you take it. Sponsorship or not. 

Josh and team unleashed a new beast on the podcast industry in late August. Zencastr now is far more than a place to record your web-based interviews for podcasting. It now has full production and editing capabilities for shows, hosting, transcripts, the Creator Network which matches shows with advertisers for monetization. It’s a whole new animal. 

Josh visited with me to talk about the new features there to help make your owned content easier to manage. But we also talked about the industry as a whole, why podcast apps are terrible at search and discovery and more.

This episode of Winfluence is presented by Tagger, the complete influencer marketing software platform. Sign up for a free demo today at jasonfalls.co/tagger.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices