Congratulations! You picked a reason for making a podcast that doesn’t stink after you read Part 1 on my blog. Now you’re ready to do the work every aspiring podcast spends their nights dreaming of: the planning and strategy to make it a success.
I’m sharing this knowledge assist your podcast efforts in being as effective as they can be. That said, just brute-forcing your way into launching a podcast is a great way to learn, if you actually focus on learning from your experiences. If you’re reading this guide to study and prepare so that your time is used wisely, welcome!
Define Your Podcast Goal
Your goal is going to be more concrete than your reason. It’s a high-level thing you want to achieve through the medium of podcasts. Sometimes the goal will be high-level and qualitative, or very functional and qualitative. Pick the style of goal that works for you.
And if you’re trying to do the whole thing yourself, remember to start small so you don’t get overwhelmed.
Picking a good goal helps you make all the smaller choices along the way. Even a good idea can be detrimental if it doesn’t help the goal in some way.
For each reason listed in the first blog post, here are some example goals.
| Reason | Example Goals |
| Content Machine (Business) | Publish daily new content on social media Only record content for a few hours per month |
| Lead Nuture (Business) | Convert mid- and bottom-funnel audience into customers |
| Make Money Directly | You didn’t listen to me the first time, don’t start now! Close this tab! |
| Casual Fun | Record and release your first few episodes |
| Make an Impact | Grow downloads over time Generate positivie, qualitative feedback from your audience Book a speaking engagement |
| Show Your Expertise | Generate qualitative feedback from your industry or field Book a speaking engagement |
Who are you talking to?
If you can’t tell me who your audience is off the top of your head, you have work to do. Don’t publish an episode until you have at least a basic idea of one type of person you’re making this for.
If your business already has traction on social media, if you focus on your local area, or if you’re an influencer who already has and audience, then you know exactly who your audience is. If you’re in one of those categories and you’re saying “What the heck, Zach, no I still don’t know who my audience is!” then just call me. Really. This info is already in your social media accounts and you need the help.
Depending on your goals, you may already have a highly specific audience like the following: 70% men, ages 35 – 65, interested in World War II, usually in engineering.
Or, it may be more general: People who like to talk about fiction books.
Either audience description is enough to start with, depending on your goals and your situations. Either this podcast is a business or professional tool so you already know who you are speaking to, or your passion for a topic or community has given you insight into what other people like you want to talk about.
Your Podcast’s Format
Here’s something kinda terrifying. You can do literally anything with sound and turn it into a podcast. However, the most common podcast formats are common for two reasons: they work, and people know what to expect. Pick something from this list; or go wild, see what happens, and let me know what you learn.
- Interviews. Everyone knows interviews. You’d practice being a strong interviewer if you’re not already. Start with my guide on interviewing.
- Pros: Lots of relationship building with your guests. Get interesting folks, cool folks, people you want to build a network with.
- Cons: You can show off your great interview abilities, but if you have expertise to demonstrate there are much better formats. Also, interviews can be a lot to coordinate.
- Solo episodes. This format should be your bread and butter if you’re using the podcast to generate lots of derived content. You talk about your topic for 10 – 30 minutes, and that’s it!
- Pros: Easy to record on your own time. Simple to pull clips from for your social media accounts.
- Cons: Hard to make these engaging if you are trying to Make an Impact. You need a strong sense of narrative in how you script the show; creative and production assistance from a producer is important in this instance.
- Duo episodes. Like solo episodes, but it is you and a regular cohost. The pros and cons are quite similar, but now the show’s value moves to how much your audience enjoys the relationship between the two cohosts. If you’re great on the mics together, it’s a huge win; if things drag and either of you are bad at sounding natural and confident, then the show will drag.
Those are the most common formats for people who will be reading this blog. If you want to get creative, here are other formats that could work with some creativity and strong direction:
- Narrative. Few narrative podcasts have reached fame, but there are many good ones and popularity of podcasts as a medium for storytelling will only grow. It is a much different process than writing a book; the production and profitability are harder, the publishing and advertising are easier. But don’t get jealous of the authors, they’re not making money anyways.
- News and Current Events. Whether you cover new movies or weekly moments in politics, there’s a real strength to a podcast that lets the listeners analyze and process recent events they are interested in. You can’t plan this kind of podcast very far ahead, which has its own benefits and challenges.
- Comedy. Son, come here. Listen. I won’t stop you from making this podcast. But my goodness, you need to actually be funny. It takes a lot to learn, I know. But practice in a place where you have more immediate feedback, and Funny People to train you up. Then start the comedy podcast.
- In-depth Research. For those who have a lot of reading to do to prep for each episode. I note this specifically, since podcasting has several very successful in-depth research shows like Lore ↗️ and Acquired ↗️. If you really want to dive deep into topics, briging together hard-to-find information and bring analysis and synthesis to your audience, this is for you.
Producing Your Podcast
How will your podcast actually come together? How will you take time, action, and knowledge, and come out with a podcast on the other side?
At the end of the day, your Producer is the person responsible for the podcast becoming reality. That might be you, or you might hirer this to someone you can trust with your vision.
Where will you record? Who schedules sessions? Who all gonna be there? Who’s running the tech? Did you get sponsors? Are we really recording all day long? Wait, are you editing this too? Do you have to bleep the curse words? Who wrote the script, or the show notes?
The above represents about .01% of the possible questions someone producing the show needs to answer. If you’re committed to learning and doing it all yourself (you’re in good company, that’s how I started), then you’ll get used to not knowing, doing lots of research, then knowing and trying things yourself.
If you’re in a position to hire someone to be your producer, it will greatly free up your time and energy to focus on making the core of your podcast the best it can be.
What’s everyone else doing?
If no one else is currently producing the same kind of podcast as you, that means there is little competition for listeners; it may also mean there are very few listeners.
If there are many other podcasts like the one you want to make, there will be more noise to break through but there is already an established listener base. The way to get ahead will be to not quit, and to keep improving.
Doing research on similar shows is a very smart idea to look at feasbility and pick ideas from other that might work for your show. Aside from just looking at their format and content, look everything else in that podcast’s ecosystem: do they have a good website? Do they post a lot of content on social? How are they involving themselves in the conversaion online?
Keep Going. Keep Growing.
What I love about podcasts is that they’re old tech in a new world. The base technology for podcasts, the RSS feed, is a relic from Internet 1.0 that, in the form of podcasts, has not died off.
There’s no instant gratification with podcasts. Most will quit. That’s fine; I’ve sunsetted plenty of shows, because I learned enough to take the next step with confidence.
My goal is to help people leverage this medium the best they can. Whether it’s to make content generation simple for a business, or to get your voice out there as an expert, we can use it for just about anything.
But a podcast, like marketing, is just wind in your sails. If your boat is leaking, if the rudder is busted, if your rigging is falling apart, I can’t do anything for you.
If you’re sea-worn and happy about it, if you’ve made something happen because you fought for it, if your sea legs feel more a part of you than your land legs, and you’re ready to make a podcast work for you, let’s set sail.