There’s literally no limit to what you can do with your podcast. Podcasts are as individual and unique as the people who create them. And as you work on your craft, strengthen your voice and build confidence, your podcasts will begin to attract a larger audience.
To begin, ask yourself some basic questions about your overall goals and what your target audience will likely be most interested in. This will become part of your podcast’s overall theme.
Here are some common reasons for creating a podcast:
- Generating business leads.
- Creating brand awareness.
- Cost-efficient advertising.
- Increasing the size and value of your network.
- Positioning yourself as an authority in your niche.
- Testing out new markets.
- Coming up with ideas for future products or services.
It’s important to choose a theme or topic that aligns with your brand. This can be as broad or as narrow as you wish – just be sure to think long-term. You’ll want to choose a theme that will allow you to create content regularly and over the long haul.
So, don’t box yourself in with a theme or topic that is too narrow.
Another thing to keep in mind is that you should be passionate about your topic. It should be something that gets you excited to talk about so you can create fresh content regularly. It won’t feel like a chore when it’s time for a new episode. The more personally invested you are, the better your content will be.
One important step when coming up with a theme and topic for your podcast is to spend some time researching your niche. Search various platforms for other podcasts in your genre or niche so you can determine what kind of content is out there, what people are most interested in and what your best approach should be.
Studying popular, established podcasts is not only a great way to evaluate the type of content that’s already available to your target market, but it can help you identify areas where there is a strong demand for content that isn’t easily found. It’ll give you an entry point and help you come up with a unique selling point (USP) for your own channel.
You’ll also want to decide on a title for your podcast and pay extra attention to the title, author, and description tags as Apple Podcasts uses these three fields for search.
Make sure your title is very clear and that your audience will understand what your focus is. A general podcast title that is too vague won’t attract many subscribers, no matter how compelling the content may be.
You’ll also want to make it easy for people to find your podcast, so include one or two focus keywords in the title (don’t stuff the title with keywords though!). Make sure they are relevant to your overall theme.
Most podcast titles are between 20 and 24 characters long, so try to keep yours short and direct. Further, you also don’t need to include the word “podcast” in your title.
In addition, try to avoid ambiguous titles, or titles with numbers or symbols that could be misspelled. Your title should be easy to type into a browser and easy to remember.
Next, decide what format you want to use. Typical formats include the interview (you talk to people such as thought-leaders in your market), scripted non-fiction (serial podcasts with a single theme per season), scripted fiction (like a radio drama), the news recap (summarizing the news in your genre), and the educational podcast (scripted non-fiction that teaches your audience something).
There’s no optimal length for a podcast episode so make your podcast as long as it needs to be in order to create a high-quality session that your market will enjoy.
Note: You should always spend a bit of time editing or removing any parts of the podcast that aren’t particularly valuable before airing it. The length of your podcast isn’t important: it’s the quality that matters.
You should typically aim to publish a podcast at least once a week, both to make a regular connection with your audience and so that you’re consistently broadening your outreach.
