ROLEY

Tag: How-to

  • The 3 Questions You Need to Answer Before Starting a Podcast

    In my last article, I made the case that there are three different types of podcasters: The Hobbyist, The Corporate Podcaster, and The Entrepreneur. Each one has its place in the world of podcasting, and I believe every one of them belongs here.

    You might come into the world of podcasting for fun and find yourself as an entrepreneur at a later time. You might create a podcast for the company you work for and do something for fun in your off-time. You may do all three if you’re in the game long enough.

    When I started in 2006, podcasting was still very much a pirate thing, and there weren’t any “rules.” Incidentally, there weren’t as many podcasts out there either. Today, according to Nielsen and Edison, there are at least 700,000 live podcasts.

    You’re free to take anything I’m saying with a massive grain of salt, but if the days of “If you build it, they will come” were ever a thing in podcasting, those days are long gone. If you want them to listen and subscribe to your show, then you need to make something people can find and want to listen to.

    If you’re a hobbyist, this may not be that important to you. That’s fine. Podcasting can and should be fun. However, if you’re a podcaster that wants a following, engagement, community, and a possible way to market a product or service down the road, then there are some things to consider.

    In my mind, there are three questions that any podcaster who is serious about the craft needs to answer.

    What’s It About?

    While this would seem to be an obvious question, it would astound you how many people simply turn on a microphone and just ramble all over the place. Full disclosure, I’ve done this as well. Go look at the descriptions of podcasts and see how many of them are a variant of “whatever I feel like talking about.”

    If you look at the reviews, you may not see many. In fact, you may only see less than 10 episodes, the last one being more than six months ago. Why? Because they didn’t define the show. If you can’t describe the show, then you can’t tag it correctly in the Podcast Directories. You can’t write a good description. You won’t know where you should promote the show, or you’ll promote it in places that will have no interest at all in it. If you can’t do these things, then no one is going to find your show.

    Who’s It For?

    Do you know who your audience is? I have a client that found his audience in a unique way. In fact, without this experience, he wouldn’t have a podcast. He’s a Civil War historian from the South with a contrarian point of view from other Southern “Civil War historians” you may have heard of. He made a video explaining this on Twitter, and it went viral. He had a built-in audience of hundreds before he even decided to do a podcast.

    When he announced that he was thinking about starting a podcast, his audience enthusiastically encouraged him. Ten episodes in, he’s doing quite well, and he’s leveraged his success to drive people to a Patreon account that’s pulling in over $100 a month. Not bad for a first-time podcaster who’s still learning.

    My client found his audience, and a passionate one at that. Do you know who your audience is? What’s your subject? What are you passionate about? Try testing your idea out as my client did. Post your idea somewhere on social media, and see if it travels beyond your followers. Does it engage with people who usually never engage with you? Does it get the attention of Opal in Toledo, who you’ve never met? If it does, you may be onto something. Test it out.

    Why Would Anyone Listen to This?

    Of all the questions needing to be answered here, this one is possibly the most important. After all, there are many podcasts about podcasting or creative work out there. Why in the heck would anyone want to listen to mine? How am I different?

    With over 700,000 podcasts out there, the market for every niche is filled in some way. Do some market research. Listen to the other people in your category. What are they doing?

    In the Podcasts about Podcasting category, most of the podcasts are more about marketing and less about what appealed to me back at the very beginning. The appeal was the act of creating art for fun, for therapy, for a purpose, or for any reason that floats your boat. This is in direct opposition to the supposed podcasting ‘gurus’ who believe — in my opinion — that podcasting should be done by certain people with a particular purpose.

    I rebel against that philosophy, as any good pirate should. That’s the podcast I wish to present to the world, and I think that’s why people should listen. Find what sets you apart from the others in your space. That’s your lane to occupy.

    Final Thoughts

    This is the very beginning of the process, but if you’re treating podcasting as a serious venture, then you really can’t afford to overlook these questions. Answering these questions provides you with clarity. If you have clarity at the very beginning, then every other decision you make as you go through the process is less complicated.

  • Four Reasons Why Templates Might Work For Your Podcast

    Have you ever noticed that some of our favorite podcasts follow a certain path on every show? For example, one of my favorite tech podcasts follows a very predictable pattern. There’s a small preshow banter, followed by any announcements or housecleaning issues. Next, they go into follow-up, then they get to the News or Featured Topics of the week. Finally, they have a Q&A segment and possibly some post-credit banter. Strangely, this format is also done by the majority of long form tech podcasts, and at least one comedy podcast is co-hosted by someone who also appears on these same tech podcasts

    Go figure.

    I say all of this to say that this didn’t come along by accident. One podcast started this format, and a co-host or a guest on that show liked it, and used it on their podcast, and so on. It’s easy and predictable. Also, because a lot of these particular podcasts are produced on Macs, they can embed chapter marks in their podcasts so that the listener can scrub through things they don’t care about.

    Using a template to map your podcast out may be one of the smartest things you can do for your podcast. Here are four reasons why you may want to consider it.

    IT STREAMLINES YOUR SHOW PREP

    I can’t tell you how many times I have sat down in front of my microphone, loaded up Audio Hijack, hit record…and nothing came out. My brain literally switched off the second I hit that record button. A lot of the time, I’ll sit down with an idea of what I want to talk about, but it’s not fully formed or mapped out. Learning to fly by the seat of my pants was something I had to learn how to do early on. You never knew if you were going to be stuck on mic because somebody or something left you hanging, so you needed the ability just to go, and try to sound intelligent. As podcasters, we have the luxury of hitting stop if we don’t sound the way we’d like, but what if we don’t sound like ANYTHING? We draw a blank? Knowing that you have, say, four segments to your show that need to be filled with specific content makes your job easier when it comes time to find that content and plug it into your template. SHOW PREP becomes easier, and you’re not breaking your brain thinking of something to say out of the blue with no content to support it. I find — and you may as well — that it is easier to talk about something than it is to make something up to talk about.

    IT TEACHES YOUR LISTENERS

    One of the common bits of feedback I have received from time to time is that my other show follows no specific format. Now in the case of that show, it’s by design. I like RoleyShow to be as freeform as possible, and what I talk about on Monday might be 180 degrees removed from Tuesday’s show. I think my listeners have come to expect that my show is about as frenetic as I am, so they have learned that I jump around. I’ve made that change after years of podcasting in a different way. If you’re just starting out, or if you’re podcasting about a particular niche, then it might be a good idea to make use of a show template. It makes your podcast what some folks might call ‘snackable’. Maybe I don’t need to hear follow-up, I can scrub right through that. Maybe I just want to hear the main idea of your show. Maybe I sent in a question or a comment, and I want to skip straight to that. If you’re consistently using a show template, it helps your listeners go to where they want to go in your show for what they want.

    Now, some of you might be saying that making the show skippable in that way hurts the show. I think exactly the opposite. Make your show as listener friendly as possible, and they’ll keep listening in the long run. That long run is much more valuable to you than today or this week.

    IT PROVIDES NATURAL STOPPING POINTS

    Unless you’re doing an interview show or another kind of show where you need to keep rolling all the way through, I don’t think it’s a good idea to try to do a podcast all in one take. If you’re using a show template, then you can hit stop, save your file and move on to the next segment. Take a short break or a stretch to get yourself back to the center, hit record, and keep going. That way, you can sound fresh and engaging all the way through the show. Some hosts start blazing, but after about 10 minutes, you can hear the voice starting to get raspy, their energy level is fading, and by the time the show is ending, both you AND the host are ready for it to be over. Don’t be like that.

    Also, if you’re planning to monetize your podcast in some way, these stopping points are the perfect place for ads or other kinds of monetization alternatives. Back in the early days, I remember one very big podcaster putting in mid-rolls for their show, and it certainly lived up to its name: These ads would literally drop in the middle of sentences. But the time you got back to the show, you forgot what they were saying. That’s poor practice, and you’ll lose listeners that way after too terribly long. Create space for those opportunities by being able to finish thoughts before moving on to an Ad.

    IT MAKES REPURPOSING CONTENT EASIER

    What if those segments could be repurposed into blog posts, Medium articles, Linked in, or IGTV videos? The larger your reach out from your podcast, the more attention your podcast will get. The way to do that is to consider making parts of your podcast — these separated segments — available in other formats at other places, with a link back to your website or wherever your podcast home is. Ideally, you’ll have your own dot com, but that’s a story for another day.