PodSchool Podcast | Five things you need to do to get your podcast started this year

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Hello. Welcome to the show. It's been a long time since I did the last one of these, and it is nice to be back behind the microphone. I have had a lot on my plate, including having a baby on my own. So that has been a time and I've actually started a podcast about it.

And so while I was firing up a new podcast, I thought, you know what, I better bring this baby back because I get a lot of questions and if you have one about podcasting, you can submit it via the link in the description of this episode. And I cannot get back to every single email, every single question that I receive.

And so I thought I would just move on through some of these questions and bring this podcast back to life. And here I am.

So today I thought I would kick off the show by taking you through the top five things that you need to do if you want to start your podcast this year.

A lot of people have just come through the New Year's resolution so season and have probably put a few resolutions on the list that they had on the list last year and never got around to. So if podcasting has been one for you, then I really want to help you think about some of the things that you need to do.

A lot of people jump into this and do not give it much thought. They don't understand what it takes.

They see a lot of the good news stories on Instagram and they think this is the only option for when you start a podcast, is that you are successful like that. And I'm a mug for not jumping into this sooner because all of these people are earning millions of dollars and I could be too.

And the answer is just that it's not really what happens for everybody. It happens for a select few.

And a lot of those people speak very loudly on Instagram and there's a lot of news about a lot of money thrown around the industry. But that isn't the story for everybody.

And certainly it's never going to be the story if you don't properly jump into this understanding what you're getting into. So here are a few of the things that you need to really keep in mind if starting a podcast is really important for you.

And it's been on your to do list and you just want to cross the damn thing off, because there's nothing worse than looking at this Thing constantly, every single year, and thinking, I didn't do it again. And forget. Fear should not be holding you back. You really need to get started to see what this thing could be.

It could be one of those things that gets massive, massive downloads and earns a lot of money. It could be just something that brings you a lot of personal joy. So whatever it is, you just will not know what it is until you get started.

So here's what you need to do. Number one, come up with a good idea. Now, before you start going, wow, what an expert opinion. That seems pretty obvious.

It is not easy to come up with a good idea. And a lot of people start a podcast and their idea ain't great.

And they haven't really thought that much about whether there is an audience for that idea, whether people need this idea. And that doesn't mean that they need to learn something from it. It could just be that they're entertained by it.

They just need to get some kind of value out of it. And I see a lot of people starting a show based on kind of what their ego wants them to do, rather than what an audience is actually crying out for.

So a good idea has to have a few things. It has to have an audience, and that requires some thought. That's not just something that you don't give any consideration to.

And then all of a sudden, you're like, oh, my gosh, people like this show. You have to actually think, will people want to listen? Is there a market out there for this?

And if there is, how can I make sure that I'm serving those people exactly what they want? It needs to be easily definable. So I have a lot of people pitch ideas to me that I could not tell back to them in a sentence.

And if you cannot explain what your idea is in a sentence to somebody and they are finding you for the first time and they don't know you from a bar of soap, and they're like, is this a show I want to check out? If they don't get it immediately, they'll move right along. You need to make sure that it is an idea that they go, oh, that is right up my alley.

I've really been looking for something like that. So that is really important. It can't just be. I'm just doing a show on stuff I find interesting. That's not an interesting idea for other people.

Might be for you, but it's not for people listening.

Because what they think is interesting is different and they want to know, okay, but are the things that you're going to find interesting the things that I find interesting. So you're going to need to tell me kind of a bit more about what you think is interesting. So that's really important.

The third thing that you need to do is have enough content so that you can keep this thing alive for a long time. If your goal is audience growth, you have to be consistently releasing episodes over the rest of your days.

Now, if you just want to get this creative project out, you can just drop 10 episodes and be done with it.

If you want to do seasons because you really want to do a show and you want to get it out, but you cannot commit to having 52 episodes live per year, go for your life, that's fine. But if your main goal is growing your audience to the maximum that it could be, then you have to be releasing episodes consistently over time.

And even if you don't want that to be your goal, you still need enough content to get people interested.

If you're dropping a six part series, you have to really have an audience already there that's going or an idea that's just going to go absolutely bun that people are just going to seek out because it really is hard to find people in a short amount of time.

And the longer your show is on, the more chances you get to bring people in as you're going and to go, oh gosh, this show's been around for a while ago and check things out. So you really need to be able to consistently deliver the content to be able to get an audience to stick around.

So that's the really important thing, coming up with a good idea, think about all those things and you will much be much better placed to create a show that people actually want to listen to. And then everything comes out of that.

If you can find an idea that people are sort of yearning for really, or when they find it, they're like, oh gosh, this is made just for me. This is exactly what I love. Then you've really hit that sweet spot and you will have a much better chance of growing audience.

The second thing to do is to define your ideal listener. So this is really important when you don't have any listeners because you need to be making decisions with this person in mind.

You don't want to be making decisions with yourself in mind. Especially if you are going to create a show about your expertise. You are the exact opposite of where your audience is.

You need to be creating a show for people who want to eventually get to where you are because you are the expert in that topic.

So if you really sit down and think about who is this person that I am doing this show for, then you will be much better placed to make content decisions, format decisions, decisions, decisions about the length of your show.

All of those sorts of things that you really need to think about strategically will be much easier if you have somebody in mind and if you're thinking, you know what, My ideal listener is Jan, who's got three kids and a couple of jobs and not a lot of time on your hands. I don't think you'll be making hour and a half episodes for Jan because Jan ain't got time to listen to your hour and a half episodes.

So those kind of decisions become much easier when you're thinking about someone and someone is in mind. You also want to make sure that you are making decisions on what they want to hear, not what you want to say.

So again, this is this kind of audience and ego thing that I see a lot of people struggle with. You need to be thinking about what brings them most value, not what brings me most value.

Even though you can't discount your desire and your needs in this kind of process and what you want to bring out, you really need to be thinking about your audience first. That's the most important thing. The third thing to do, work out if this is something that you can commit to. It ain't for everybody, it ain't easy.

If you are doing this properly, it will be taking you hours of work to get one episode out the door. And that doesn't need to be like a really long episode. That could be a 20 or 30 minute episode.

If you are doing things properly and really giving every aspect of podcasting your best possible crack, then sometimes you could be spending eight to nine hours a week on one episode.

I was just cutting up some promo videos for my podcast the other day and to cut those promo videos, put the branding on them, get them all in my spreadsheet, ready to get to the point where I was going to schedule them. I hadn't even scheduled them yet.

I think I spent about four hours on that task for one episode and that wasn't even recording it, prepping it, editing the actual audio, putting the show notes together, scheduling all of the social media stuff. So if you are really going to give this your best chance, it is going to take a lot of your time.

And if you're not making any money, which most podcasts don't, and you are doing this on top of your 9 to 5, which most podcasters do, then it is going to really need to feed your soul for you to keep this up, because it's hard and you need to know what you're getting into because you do not want to get three episodes in and go, nobody told me it was going to be like this because then you will drop the show and you won't continue.

So it's really important to even have a practice run when you're going through things to see if you can work out how much time is this actually going to take me, that can be really helpful when you're trying to work out if this is something you can genuinely commit to in the long term. And if you can't, that doesn't mean there's no other option. Maybe you do just a season of a show and you come back when you can do it again.

But ideally, if you want your show to grow audience, you're going to be releasing those shows consistently over time. So you need to know what that commitment is going to take, because they give you the hot tip, it's going to take a lot.

And one of the most boring things about podcasting is that audience growth is incremental. The idea that you have two listeners today and 750,000 tomorrow just ain't the usual path of most podcasters.

You sort of, you launch, you hit a kind of base, and then you slowly but surely grow, ideally over time.

So those shows that are shouting about their massive downloads have often been on for years and have been dropping an episode every single week consistently, sometimes more than that for that entire time.

So if you really want this to be something that grows and is successful and builds audience and that you can have a really engaged relationship with those people that listen to you, then you really need to be showing up consistently over time. And that just takes commitment. The fourth thing is to set yourself up for recording high quality audio.

Gone are the days where you could develop an audience off the back of a crappy sounding podcast. There are some exceptions to the rule.

Like sometimes I hear some shows and I'm like, you guys have a decent audience, you need to get yourself a better setup. Or like stop recording in your kitchen. But audio quality is really important. The landscape is very, very crowded.

There are a lot of big, big organisations with a lot of tech in their favour that are making shows and you do not need any of that. You can do all of this at home. I'm sitting in my lounge room right now recording this episode.

So it is very possible to create a show that sounds really high quality without having to be in a half a million dollar radio studio. But, you just need to know what you're doing and you need to make a few small tweaks at home to make that possible. But the main thing is you just need to think about it. You can't just set things up and go, I'm not going to wear headphones.

I'll just park myself wherever. Won't test the audio to see what this sounds like or just give it a go and release it. No, no, no, no, no.

Like, even when I sat down now the cicadas are going nuts outside. And so I did three tests working out, how am I, am I going to be able to do this so that I can't hear the cicadas?

You know, I'm turning my air conditioning off. I could hear something out of the bathroom door. So, like, I've closed the door.

You need to be thinking about how your audience is going to hear this piece of content and really adjust your recording space accordingly. The fifth thing is set realistic expectations.

I've gone through a bit of this already in this episode, but the idea that your show will get a million downloads and make a million dollars, it ain't going to happen. I hate to be the bearer of the harsh truth, but for the vast majority of podcasters, they ain't making a dime.

And the majority of podcasters are getting probably closer to a hundred downloads than they are a hundred thousand. If you want to monetise your show, you can do it with a smaller audience, for sure.

I have seen success with some podcasters who I've had direct contact with sponsors. I've also had some people who have decent small audiences.

They're engaged, and then they've tried to contact sponsors, and the sponsors are like, you don't have a big enough audience. A lot of advertisers who are jumping into podcasting now, they are interested in reach, they are interested in numbers.

So to monetise effectively via ads, you have to be, at a minimum, getting 10,000 downloads per episode, and that would put you in the top 5% of podcasts. Not many people get that. So you really have to think about what is my success metric?

Because if it is money and downloads, you're just constantly going to be disappointed. And nothing kills your mojo like disappointment.

You will be very swiftly packing up the headphones if you are like, this is not delivering me what I thought it would deliver. And so I really do advise anybody who has been through my podcasting course who has come to one of my podcasting webinars will know.

I am very passionate about having reasonable and achievable success metrics. And that could be as simple as, I am going to be really proud of myself when I release this.

And that is a brilliant success metric because you can achieve it. And if you can achieve that, then you can set the next milestone and the next milestone after that.

And to get any kind of progress and to feel any kind of positivity about your progress, you must be able to do the things that you're trying to do. So that is essential. And you really want to make sure that you are setting goals that you can achieve so that you just feel good about yourself.

And then you can keep going. Because as soon as you start to go, I'm not taking any of these goals off, you're just going to think, I've failed. And you haven't failed.

You just have set yourself unrealistic goals. And if you're always chasing these things, you just won't stick it out. None of us can.

Who can muck through the idea of, I'm constantly missing Mark on this? Nobody wants to feel that way. So set yourself some realistic expectations and you will be much better placed to make your show a success.

So those are some of the things that I think you need to really get your head around this year. If you want to start your show. If it's been something you've been dreaming about, I really do hope that you do get it started.

Because it can be such a wonderful experience to be able to A, know you've achieved it, and B, to have a community of people who are enjoying and getting value out of the content that you are providing. And if you can think about something that will provide value for people, it's a really, really rewarding thing to do.

So I do hope that that has helped you think about things.

And if you do want a bit of extra help, I also have a podcasting course that can assist you that you can find out more at podschool.com.au if you have a question about podcasting, please just head to the link in the description of the episode and submit it. And I will be collating all of the questions that I have. I have so many. But you want to talk about having enough content to keep going.

There's content there, so I would love to add yours to the mix. And I will see you next week.