Be realistic🔗

Firstly I think we need to reevaluate what success looks like for a founder's podcast.

Unless you have a big budget to throw huge marketing spend behind your assets or bring on a big name host, your podcast isn't going to get a ton of listens; not to begin with anyway.

That may seem counterintuitive right? Surely getting listens is the whole point of a podcast? But unless your business model is selling advertising off huge podcast audience numbers, then having a huge amount of listeners really isn’t as important as having the right kind of listener.

A podcast should be seen as a way of building trust, authority and influence in your chosen market, solidifying your reputation and helping you reach and develop new networks and the right kind of customers or partners who are strategically important to you.

Who is your ideal listener and what do you want them to take from it?🔗

If your podcast could only reach one person, who would that person be and why? What are the conversations they would be interested in hearing? Which networks and people are they tapped into already that you would like access to? All these questions will help shape a structure for your podcast, the conversations you’ll have and the people you’ll have those conversations with.

Look at the data🔗

If your brand has an audience already, whether on socials, LinkedIn, via email or on a website already, then don’t ignore the data. Have a look at the kind of content that resonates with people. Is there a theme to the stuff that gets the most likes and views? What content is your ideal listener, defined above, sharing and engaging with? This short amount of research will really ensure you create something that resonates with the right people.

It’s a long game🔗

If you’re going to do this, you are going to need to commit to doing a lot of episodes. We recommend doing at least 6-8 episodes per season to see any sort of traction.

Consistency is key too. We are creatures of habit, so releasing those episodes at the same time every week is critical. We recommend batch recording these in advance to ensure this happens; it also allows you to properly schedule your satellite social media and marketing campaigns around it.

Video killed the radio star🔗

It is now essential to do a video podcast, if only to capture those little social media clips that are going to grab your audience's attention online and draw them into the full episodes.

It is also worth noting that YouTube is now the biggest platform for podcast consumption. That doesn’t mean sticking it on YouTube will automatically generate you an audience – for that see my next point – but it does demonstrate how people are increasingly engaging with the visual side of the medium, so much so that Spotify have just launched a creators program that looks to reward producers through shared ad revenue much like YouTube does.

Video doesn’t need to be fancy, you can record remotely using platforms such as Riverside of Descript, or we’ve just updated our studio here at Reform Radio with a custom rig that allows HD multicamera filming at a fraction of the normal cost.

Don’t forget the wider strategy🔗

Imagine throwing a party, not telling anyone about it, then being upset when no one turns up. The same is true of a podcast. Distributing a podcast across the relevant platforms isn’t going to automatically generate you an audience; you need to tell people about it and keep doing so consistently.

Using video clips is super important here, as are your existing networks – mainly on email and LinkedIn. More than likely these are the people you’d be looking to engage with anyway, so don’t neglect to tell them.

Plan, plan, plan🔗

As you can see, creating a successful podcast requires a fair bit of organisation and planning. Batch recording in advance will be your friend here, giving you the space to properly plan a release campaign and ensure it meets your desired goals and reaches your target audience.

It might seem like a lot of work, but we have found that clients who commit to these principles come back time and time again, seeing the value in podcasting and the work we all put in.

Feel free to reach out to our production team if you want any support, at podcasts@reformradio.co.uk