My Best Business Decision
Do you want to know what’s had the biggest impact in my business? You can probably guess. It’s been starting a podcast!Why?
I was writing a blog for five years and within just three months of starting a podcast I had doubled my number of clients. It was huge!
I’d always been a big fan of listening to podcasts, especially American podcasts, and I knew I wanted to do one.
Obviously, I wanted to talk about online marketing because that’s my area of expertise! I wanted to make my podcast daily.
I think it’s so important to find a way into your audience’s daily routine. My show is only 20 minutes, that’s all I need.Maybe it’s their commute or they’re walking the dog, just something small. And it worked.
I wanted to talk to you a bit about the strategy behind starting your own podcast, and how you can achieve similar success to what I’ve been able to do with the medium. Let’s begin!
First of all you need to know who your target audience is. This will help you determine how long your own podcast should be and how often to release new episodes. It could be daily, weekly, monthly, etc.
In my case, I said, it’s daily. And I chose daily because I know I can provide high quality content on a consistent basis.
Every time I record a podcast, I listen back to it to make sure it truly is highly valuable. And if it’s not I scrap the whole time and start again.
If I’m asking my audience to give me those 20 minutes a day that’s a ton of time. There’s a huge opportunity cost! They could be listening to anything else, music, TV, a movie. But they’re choosing to spend the time with me, that’s a huge honor and a big responsibility.
Planning Your Content, And Getting Messy
Now how do I plan my content so I always have something unique and valuable to talk about?
Here’s the thing, when I started I only had a list of 20 topics. I was scared that when I finished those I’d have no idea what to talk about.
But I started anyhow and began recording my episodes. They were messy and unpolished, and I couldn’t stand to listen to myself.
But over time they began to improve and after about 50 of them I was pretty happy with how they were sounding.
Jumping into it wholeheartedly was the best decision I could have made. Yes, I didn’t have more than 20 topics, but as I started recording, new ideas for shows would pop into my mind and I’d jot them down. General topics led to more specific subtopics and so on, and so on.
Now my list of topics is around 300. I have almost a full year of content ideas just waiting for me if I’m ever stuck or having a day where I feel a little less inspired.
When you get started with your own podcast I promise you, you’ll have a similar result.
Topics seem to appear out of the blue when you’re in that creative zone.
Also, don’t forget about your audience! They’ll have plenty of suggestions for topics and other ways you can improve your show, so don’t forget to use them as a resource.
Just go for it!
Action Steps
- Decide on who your target audience is for your podcast.
- Decide whether you will be daily, weekly, or monthly.
- Write out a list of topics to get yourself started.
- Start recording and jot down new topics as they come up.
- Ask your audience to suggest new topics and other ways you can improve your show.
Result You Will Achieve
A place in your audience’s daily routine.
This article is based on an EHQ interview with the mentor.