Did you know that nearly 51% of American adults listen to podcasts? And estimates put the current number of shows available at over 2,000,000! So the question is: What can you do to stand out and have a successful podcast?
Step One: Get Over Your Fear
There are a lot of fears people have about starting a podcast.
“My voice sounds weird.”
“I don’t have enough technical know-how.”
“The equipment is expensive.”
“A podcast is time-consuming.”
Honestly, the best solution we’ve found is to bite the bullet and get over it. Chances are that once you get started, those fears will dissipate!
Step Two: What Do Want To Say?
One of the most important things about starting a new venture, like podcasting, is to have a mission. For example, our podcast, BeGrowthDriven, was started because our mission as a company is to help businesses grow. We wanted to connect like-minded businesses and entrepreneurs to share advice and resources, and that goal informs all the decisions we make about creating our podcast.
How do you want to help your audience or customers? What is the current goal of your business? You can use this to decide your podcast’s mission.
Step Three: Record Your First Episode
You don’t actually need expensive equipment to get started! Podcast mics start at $30 on Amazon. Here’s which tools we’ve found to be helpful.
After recording your episode, you also need to edit and mix. It’s totally up to you how much editing you do and how you do it. It all depends on what you want the feel of your podcast to be.
Step Four: Publish Your Podcast
There are so many platforms to publish podcasts on. The big three are iTunes, Spotify, and Google Podcasts.
Historically, doing well on iTunes and Apple Music is the goal. For a long time, more than half of all podcast listens and downloads happened through Apple. However, Apple made it tricky to get monetization and failed to update their user interface, so in early 2021, Spotify passed up Apple Podcasts for monthly listeners. However, Apple is now fighting to catch up.
All this to say it’s probably a good idea to have your podcast available on as many platforms as possible! It’s also a good idea to publish three to five episodes at launch, rather than just one, to give your new listeners plenty to listen to.
Step Five: Promote, Promote, Promote
Podcasting has been around for a long time, so there are many resources and tools available for promoting and learning how to promote your podcast. Here are some tips and tricks:
- Tap into your podcast guest’s audience
Chances are if they’re a good fit to be a guest on your podcast, their audience could also benefit from your content. Share all the content you pull from the podcast with your co-star, so that it’s easy for them to promote it to their audience.
- Use social media
This is kind of a no-brainer. It’s possible and easy to promote podcasts across all platforms. For example, pull quotes do great on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Links can be shared on X and Facebook. X also has a great SoundCloud integration tool you can use.
Social media can also be used to promote an episode ahead of time, as well as share past highlights. Social media is a great way to connect with fans and listeners on a personal level and add a channel other than the podcasts for them to interact with you.
Step Six: Repurpose Content
Podcast content can be repurposed into many other types of content. We’ve already talked about pull quotes and highlight clips, but there are way more things you can do. For example, it’s common to capture video of the podcast so it can then be put on YouTube. Putting the video on YouTube gives you some accessibility features such as closed captioning, and since YouTube is owned by Google, videos on YouTube boost your overall brand SEO. Video highlights can also be posted on your social media accounts.
Another great way to repurpose podcast content is to have the podcast transcribed. If you don’t have time to do that yourself, there are several accessible transcription softwares, as well as companies like Rev.com or Fiverr that offer cheap transcription services. Once your podcast is transcribed, it can be used as blog content to make it accessible on yet another channel and boost SEO.
Step Seven: Get Featured On Other Podcasts!
A great way to promote your podcast and reach new audiences is to be a guest on other podcasts! The podcast community is well-connected and very worth tapping into.
There are so many upsides to starting a podcast. What are you waiting for?
