You plan to launch a podcast. Why?
How you answer that question and how you follow through will determine if you are successful or not, and you must define what success is for your context. Success takes many possible forms: publishing your first episode, publishing your 100th episode, hitting a certain number of downloads, creating a profitable show through sponsorships and other monetization, pulling content from the podcast for your business, using the podcast as leverage for clout in your field, or using it to build relationships.
A podcast is a channel for content, not an end unto itself. If your only desire to create a podcast is “because I want to have a podcast,” you need to develop your reason further. While you can be a great podcaster, the most successful podcasts feature someone with a set of skills or experiences who leverages a podcast to tell their story in highly relational format.
Two Kinds of Podcasts
There are two kinds of podcasts: podcasts that exist to grow themselves, and podcasts that exist to grow a parent organization that isn’t the podcast itself. These are called entertainment podcasts (grows itself) and content podcasts (grows an organization), respectively. Read about the strategic differences between these two in this post: Entertainment Podcasts versus Content Podcasts: What’s the Difference?
Why Start an Entertainment Podcast?
Podcasts that exist to grow themselves are usually passion projects or businesses unto themselves. Like a YouTube channel or a book, they are a medium you can use to interact with an audience at scale, delivering them something they want. If you don’t already have an audience, you will be building one from scratch. This is completely doable, but will take along time and involve much work and relationship building outside of the podcast itself.
The podcast will be the primary vehicle through which you deliver something people want, whether it’s niche (looking at a specific topic) or broad (coverage of culture, or a narrative podcast).
Some of the biggest names in podcasting are people who had an audience already and chose to use the medium of podcasting as their medium to deliver content at scale, like the Joe Rogan Experience ↗️ and Armchair Expert ↗️ with Dax Shephard.
Other media podcasts came to their subject matter with expertise and care and grew from there, like the mother of all True Crime podcasts, Serial ↗️, or the landmark narrative podcast The Bright Sessions ↗️.
All of these shows exist to grow themselves as a business.
Between a Content Podcast and a Entertainment Podcast, the Entertainment Podcast bears a harder road to success since the show needs to be a success for its own sake. The strategy for doing this well will vary depending on what you want to accomplish with it.
Please note, if you dream of making a successful Entertainment Podcast, you will need to practice many skills through making “bad” art before you make something successful. This is a truism with all art.
Will you do news coverage? Narrative? Comedy? Sports? Guided meditation? The possibilities are endless. The very basics of a podcast are a name and a sound file. Anything you do with a sound file, you can release as a podcast.
Why Start a Content Podcast?
A podcast that exists to grow a parent organization leverages the medium for that organization’s benefit. Generating content from the podcast for social media can tell the story of the organiation through their founders, principles, VIPs, clients, or anyone who works there.
A podcast is an appropriate direction for an organization to use in their content marketing when relationships are core to what they do. Showing off a founder’s expertise in the field, especially a service business where the entirety of the reason to purchase is found in the skills of the service providers, can really make a difference in the mind of the audience.
Podcasts also pull towards authenticity, or at least showing who someone really is. A personal injury lawyer who embodies the worst money-grabbing tendencies of the “ambulance chaser” archetype may choose to avoid launching a podcast, since their true character would be clear over time. A personal injury lawyer who truly wants to serve people who need leverage in a litigation situation could show off how much they actually care about their community and advocate for people facing off with well-resourced insurance companies.
Strategically, a content podcast provides a route to quality and quantity of content. A well-planned episode on a relevant topic where the host is comfortable, shot and recorded well by a production professional, and with relevant video clips pulled for social will provide a truly large amount of high-trust, relational content for just a few hours of time on the part of the host.
Many government and non-profit organizations leverage podcasts to tell the story of their work and invite on relevant experts and legislators to build relationships. This can be done with a narrower scope like audio-only, very little editing, and no promotion, to a full-scale production with video episodes, promotional clips, a dedicated website, and more.
A business leader may be in the impact phase of their career and choose to use a podcast to engage and audience on their expertise and invite on guests they would like to build a relationship with. The podcast, as owned media, lives on in perpetuity and provides a public record of their expertise. Clips from any of these shows can be put all across social to draw attention to the business or organization.
While traditional paid advertising can still be an important part of an overall marketing strategy, organic and authentic content from any organization is important to show build real relationships with customers. A podcast is an ideal core to an organic content machine. There is very little monetary cost to put the podcast on YouTube, on a podcast host, and on social; the cost is instead in knowledge.
Reasons to Create a Podcast
At this point, you should know whether you want to start a Media Podcast (exists for itself) or a Content Podcast (exists to grow a parent organization). Your reasons and definition of success will need to be clear and strategy aligned with your capabilities, the existing tech, and the reality of communicating with audiences.
Reason: Content Machine and Lead Nuture
Businesses must be content creators to create and maintain relationships with current and future customers on social media, and while it’s free to be on these platforms, the process of actually creating content that assists those relationship in the proper way is hard to figure out.
If you’ve seen folks post about “content day” on social media (myself included), this means they have a process developed where they spend an entire day creating content that lasts them for a while. In my case, my content days generate enough short-form videos and quote graphics to post daily for the next month without me lifting a finger once its done.
A podcast is an ideal part of a content process. Once you’re organized, creating batches of episodes lets you easily get ahead of the curve, and you can pull all sorts of content from what you make for the podcast. We recommend video podcasts for this reason: short-form video clips pulled from podcasts are a standard on social media now, and are a fantastic medium to use for business content.
The short-form content pulled from your episodes can help populate social media, you put paid support behind anything that does well organically, and as a part of a refined funnel you can get someone’s attention on social, nuture them as a podcast listener, and convert them from there.
You still need to know who you are and why your work matters. Your podcast is just one part of the business machine, and if you don’t know how to tell the story of your product or service, you’ll need to figure that out.
Oh, what a coincidence! We can synthesize what makes you powerfully different.
Reason: Make Money Directly
If your primary goal of starting a media podcast is to make money, start a business instead. The failure rate is lower and monetization is much easier. See this thread on Twitter by podcast expert and founder of PodMatch.com ↗️, Alex Sanfilippo:
If your goal is to make money and you start a business, perhaps you’ll use a Content Podcast to generate your content and build both relationships and clout. However, monetization on a media podcast is an immense hurdle and traditionally happens for a podcaster who has sustained an “Make an Impact” podcast for several years.
Reason: Casual Fun
This is a great reason to start podcast! If you don’t want to take the podcast too seriously but are willing to put a little money into it so it’s not a drag to produce, jump over to my post on gear and software you’ll need.
Reason: Make an Impact
As of writing, the “serious side project” podcast Acquired.fm ↗️ sits at #2 on the Apple Podcast charts, having shot up to a #1 spot after a feature in the Wall Street Journal.
Co-host Ben Gilbert lays it out clearly: this is a passion project that has gone on for nine years. If you don’t already have a strong audience that you’ve earned elsewhere, growing one through a podcast takes a long time and is much harder to make profitable than a business.
Is it possible? Absolutely. If you want to do it, start building an audience and creating in way that you can sustain, and keep learning and growing. If having a show like Acquired is your goal, the biggest difference between you and hosts Ben and David are whether or not you quit, and whether or not you keep getting better.
When building such a show, your income must come from other sources – and don’t bet on the podcast become a full-time job. If it does, great. This is a great strategic direction to take when you have years of success behind you, have your financial situation in order, and are looking for a way to impact the world around you for the better. Oh, and you’ll want a podcast producer.
Reason: Show Your Expertise
Simply having a podcast gives someone a non-zero amount of credibility and clout, whether they’ve earned it or not. If they haven’t earned it, don’t worry, we’ll be able to tell. There’s a reason folks joke about outlawing overconfident men purchasing podcast microphones.
For those who do have experience and expertise in a subject area, a podcast is a fantastic form of media in which to educate your audience on related subjects, form relationships with others in the field or industry, all in a media channel that you own completely and can go straight to your audience.
Whether you’re an academic, a professional athlete, or an experience business leader, using a podcast as a platform to show the world who you are is a very good use.
Now You Have Your Reason
Once you’ve locked in the reason you want to do this, the next step is to make a strategy that will guide your decisions going forward. Jump into Part 2 of The Guide to Podcast Creation (out soon).
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