Getting Started

Firstly, Thank You for being a podcast guest on Stitchery Stories – I hope you enjoy the experience and get greater exposure for your art & business! My podcast guests all say how much they have enjoyed being on the podcast, so please don’t be scared.

I have included all the information that you need to feel prepared and ready for our chat. I say chat because that is precisely what we will be doing – sharing your art & stories in a friendly and light-hearted way to entertain and educate our audience.

Please listen to some episodes beforehand, so that you know the format & tone.

The better prepared you are, the more confident you will feel, and your episode will be much improved.

If something isn’t clear, or you want to go over anything at all, then please drop me an email hello@stitcherystories.com and we can organise a chat if you want to.

There is a lot of information on this page – please take the time to read it so you are fully aware of what you need to do to be a guest on Stitchery Stories.

Use these links to make it easier to see what’s what!

How We Are Going To Record Our Chat

I would like to use Zoom to record our chat, via our computers, over the internet.

This will be a video chat for us but I am only going to use the audio part for the podcast, so please don’t worry about what you look like or what you are wearing or anything like that. I will look as scruffy as I usually do!  I think it’s just much nicer to chat and interact via video, and it also gives a much nicer ‘feel’ to the finished recording.

I will send you a link so all you have to do is click on it and we will be connected. Easy!

If you have a computer problem that day then please don’t worry! Things happen! Life Happens! We can go with the flow and do what we can. No stress needed here, we all have enough stuff to deal with, without getting stressed about a podcast interview.

Tips For Recording A Great Sounding Chat

With a podcast the audio recording needs to be of good enough quality so that listeners are not thinking about the quality – if you see what I mean? There are a couple of things that you can do to help your chat sound nice. If you don’t know what I am on about and need some help getting organised, then please give me a shout, I am here to help.

  • Using a computer or laptop typically gives much better quality than using a mobile phone or tablet.
  • Please can you use a ‘wired’ connection between your computer and internet rather than ‘wireless’ as it makes the connection and quality so much better.
  • Please can you use a headset with earphones & microphone (if you have one?) or earphones and a microphone. You may have something that came with your mobile phone, or other such device. Even that would be better than nothing as having a microphone and earphones cuts down on the dreaded echo and / or feedback which can really spoil an audio recording.
  • Please be aware of sounds and background noise in your area. Please be aware of jingling earrings and jewellery.
  • Using a headset does help to block out or minimise background noise, but maybe you want the dog (or any other pets) in another room.
  • Please also switch off things that beep – notifications on your computer, your phones, that sort of thing.
  • Please also pause or stop programs and apps that are running on your device. They all take processing power away from Zoom and that affects the quality of the recording. Please pause things like Google Drive, One Drive, Carbonite etc.

Planned Structure Of Our Chat

This is just a chat between the two of us – I will guide our conversation and help you hit the key points you want to share. I share below the ‘typical’ questions that I ask, although I do tend to use these as a guideline, and sometimes I might not ask any of them in that specific wording, although the questions I do ask will typically be along those lines. It all depends upon what we are going to focus on with our conversation.

You may be thinking that you prefer to ‘just wing it’… that rarely works well and it makes it much harder to make a nice episode, and usually causes me a lot more editing too!

We will chat beforehand to go through any specific areas that you want to talk about, or anything that I think would make an interesting focus. It also helps you relax and for us to get to know each other a bit better before I hit record!

A very important point is around the length of our conversation. Over the years the conversations have got longer and longer, which is lovely BUT it costs me even more editing time, and costs me more in podcast hosting, and podcast production services as they all charge by size and time. And too much audio editing now tends to hurt my hand. I’ve been working on a keyboard since 1989!!! Or rather it’s the small mouse movements involved with audio and video timeline editing which tens to be the most painful.

Therefore I have taken the decision to stop paying for Zoom, so I only get a 40 minute recording window through using the free level of account. This is a deliberate decision. This makes us focus on what’s important for the conversation and episode recording!

Introduction & Welcome

I start with a show introduction and introduce you.

Welcome to Stitchery Stories where textile artists share their life in fabric & thread… inspiration, techniques, disasters & delights.  And I’m Susan Weeks, enthusiastic embroiderer & textile art dabbler who also loves podcasting.

Today we welcome ‘guest name’

(Please say a big HI SUE 🙂 )

Then I will read out the ‘bio’ that you send me. A paragraph or so that describes ‘you in a nutshell’

Basic Questions

Q1          Before we get started with your Stitchery Story would you like to share with us what you are working on at the moment – what has got you excited?

Q2          How did you first get interested in embroidery & textile art? Who taught you? What did you do?

Q3          Who or what have been major inspirations to you over the years? And currently?

Q4         What are your favourite techniques? Why do you like them so much?

Q5          What has been the highpoint of your textile art & embroidery journey so far?

Q6         Do you have any stories of when something didn’t go quite as planned and was a bit of a disaster? What did you learn from that experience?

Q7          We all have those dreaded UFO’s lurking in the back of a cupboard somewhere – what is your longest standing UFO – do you think you will ever finish it?

Q8         How do you manage your creative time?

Q9         And talking of future plans, what plans & projects would you like to share with us today?

Final Wrap Up

Thank you so much, guest name, for sharing your Stitchery Story with us today – it has been fascinating finding out more about you and your art.

And I am sure our listeners would love to find out more about your work. I have included some of your art on this episode on the Stitchery Stories website, but where else can we see your work? How can people get in touch with you?

List the places where you want people to go to…. Website? FB Page?

How can they contact you? Email or contact form, or social media – keep it simple

That is fantastic, thank you!

So that’s the end of our Stitchery Story for today – please come back next week and hear more, and in the meantime, Keep Stitching, Keep Smiling and keep Sharing Stitchery Stories!

Then I will pause so that I can easily edit the end of the episode when I come to add the music on later. I will begin speaking again when it is ‘safe’ to do so!

What I Need From You As A Guest Please AT LEAST  2 Days BEFORE our recording

  • Your ‘bio’ a few sentences that sum up you & your work in a nutshell.
  • A high resolution headshot
  • 5 high resolution images of your favourite pieces of work – the name of the item in the file name is really helpful thanks.
  • A quick description of each piece so I know what they are and can write about them when I share – saves me making stuff up!
  • The URL you want people to go to for more information about you. That may be just your website home page BUT think about if you have a newsletter advertising your latest courses, or free patterns, or anything like that you use to encourage people to sign up to your email list?
  • Social media links (if you want but recommended)
  • The best email address to keep in touch with you.
  • Your landline & mobile phone numbers please – if we have internet problems on the day it’s easier to sort out via phone. If you are on Instagram then that is always handy way to message too.

Please email this stuff to hello@stitcherystories.com then I have it all in one place – not scattered about the internet / email / Facebook etc!

I create Stitchery Stories branded artwork with your images, with your name clearly displayed too.

I will use these on the episode ‘show notes’ on the Stitchery Stories website.

I also use these images to share about your episode on the Stitchery Stories Instagram channel. By the way, Instagram is a great place to see and share fabulous embroidery & textile art and connect with other artists. If you are not on there yet I highly recommend it!

It’s also a lot simpler than Facebook 🙂

Sharing Your Episode

Being a guest on a podcast is a 2-way bargain! I share your episode and your links and stuff, in the expectation that you will put as much effort into sharing your episode to your audience and followers. Then we both grow our audience and followers and visibility.

I spend well over 10 hours working on each episode, as well as time sharing and producing content to share on social media.

In addition to the podcast blog post on the Stitchery Stories website, which has a gallery of your images plus all your links and other related stuff too.

I create:

  • a post on the Stitchery Stories Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/stitcherystories
  • I sometimes share that post to relevant groups and pages, and your personal profile if you want.
  • a newsletter that shares the episode with my email list The Fan Club
  • a ‘static’ Youtube video – it’s just the cover art with the audio track.
  • 4 posts on Instagram – a static post, a reel, a carousel post and a quote post.
  • Several Instagram Stories
  • and of course, it is distributed to all the podcast platforms and apps, including Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon and ‘everywhere else’!

Therefore, I would expect you to share your episode as much as you can! 

It’s very disappointing when guests DON’T reciprocate my efforts and share their episode enthusiastically. If you don’t want to put a lot of effort into sharing and marketing your episode, then please don’t ask to be a guest, and please don’t accept if I offer you an invitation to be a guest either. OK? I hope you aren’t offended by my honesty here 🙂

Good places and opportunities to share are:
  • Write a blog post
  • share from the FB post to your page and any groups, and tag me.
  • create posts on Instagram, and on Stories, and tag me.
  • share to your email list
  • and anywhere else that you can think of!

Stitchery Stories is a globally popular textile art podcast, with listeners around the world, and it ranks within the Apple Podcasts Top200 charts on most days, in different places around the world, in Visual Arts and sometimes the higher Arts category too.

To help with sharing, I will provide you with:

  • the link to your episode
  • the episode artwork in square and widescreen formats
  • the embed code for your episode – this enables you to include your episode on your site with the proper player etc so visitors can listen right from your site. It looks so much better than a plain link and it’s better for your site and visitor experience too.

What Happens Next?

  1. If you have any questions or concerns at all then we can have a chat, no problem. Please just email me hello@stitcherystories.com to get that sorted out.
  2.  I will email you with the link to book your recording session.
  3. All our organisation will be done via email so it’s all in one place.
  4. Please also send me the information listed above, in an email to hello@stitcherystories.com

I Am Really Looking Forward To Your Podcast Episode

And I hope you are too! You never know you might decide you like doing this and have a look around for any other likely podcasts to go and be a guest on. It’s a great strategy for spreading the word about your art, your work & your business!

Thank You!

Sue xxx