At some point of time in your business, you’ve thought about starting a podcast channel for your followers, viewers, subscribers and listeners. You tend to get too overwhelmed by the amount of data available on starting a podcast, on the internet. This just ends up taking more time than usual, maybe months or years. Thus, it is better to learn from an expert.
So, if you’re new to the podcast world and want to know what it takes to start a podcast for your business, then SAP Expert Solutions is the right place for you. Let’s begin! Let me #BreakItDown, some of the hacks I recently used for a podcast and I believe these hacks will be useful for you too.
Key Points to Remember for Starting a Podcast for your Business
- Idea: When you’re thinking of starting a podcast, think of the best idea to start your podcast about. If you cannot think of one, do your research and figure out the trending idea or topic for podcast on the internet. Whereas when you’re already running a business, you should think of the topics in-line with your niche, something that maybe your main single niche or expertise, or maybe a sub-category of your niche. Identifying the IDEA is the first and foremost steps in starting your podcast. So, you should have your idea ready and decided before you begin the whole podcast process.
- Audience: Now, I want you to think of the audience for your podcast. You should know who are you creating your podcast for. The idea you choose should be compatible with the type of audience or a limited targeted audience that you have. If you don’t know for whom you’ll be making your podcast channel or show for, then probably you won’t be able to grow your business and get new prospects and clients. If you’re niche is Business, then obviously you’ll be developing content on Business and various aspects and types of Business and your audience will also be interested in Business. So, knowing your audience is equally important before starting a podcast for your business.
- Create Actual Content: Now that you’ve the idea for your podcast show and know who your ideal audience is, it’s time to give your audience something to listen to. At this stage you should start creating content of value that your audience would like listening to. When you think of the actual content of your podcast, think of the value you’ll provide to your listeners and audiences. Creating content for your website, personal channel and blogs is different than creating content for your podcast. Plan out your podcast shows in advance, better write them down! I mean it. Planning is really crucial here. Thus, plan your podcast shows as per your niche or expertise, that you think your audience would like to listen.
- Podcast Description: It’s great to name your podcast something that grabs attention from people on the internet. Apart from giving the podcast a catchy name, it is equally significant to describe it properly. The visitors should know what the podcast is about from the title or name of your show. In order for people to search and find your podcast on search engines, it’s advisable to name your podcast show a catchy and use appropriate keywords (keep SEO on point!). The podcast won’t even reach the audience if you name it randomly that’s hard to search online. Make sure you use great set of keywords in the title/name of the podcast as well as in the description. Since you’ll be using the name or title of your podcast many times, so make sure to use something that’s easy to remember and search.
- Length of Podcast Episode: Now comes the important part – how lengthy your podcast episode should be? There’s clearly no limit or bar at the length of your podcast. As long as your podcast has all the great data for your listeners, the length of the episode doesn’t matter. But if you look at the common podcast episode duration, it’s between 15 minutes to 2 hours. Your podcast episode holds your asset, that is your content. And in order to let your audience get the content you want to share, the length of the podcast totally depends on you. If you’ve so much content on one of your niches, then why cut it down to some less minutes? If you deliver great content for your audience through the podcast, then you shouldn’t stick or follow the duration or rigid length of the episode. The whole purpose of the podcast episodes, is to deliver and provide valuable content to your viewers, listeners and subscribers.
- Episode Frequency: Once you publish your first podcast, you want to give valuable content again to your audience. But how frequently should you launch an episode? I’d suggest you launch or publish your podcast episodes regularly, like every week. This keeps up the momentum, plus it gives your audience something to hold on to. The monthly frequency of podcast episodes have proven to grab a lot more attention than weekly episodes. Blogs or businesses with good hits every month, eventually transform the podcast episodes into Book, E-Books, and even Online Courses.
- Plan Format: Since planning is the heart of every business. Thus, planning the format of your podcast episodes is also damn important. Your podcast format could be an interview, or a solo episode, or co-hosted show or even a round table conference with more than 5 people.
- It’s Recording Time: Now that you’ve planned everything for your podcast, it’s time to record your episode. You should have a computer or notebook, a microphone and a good WiFi connection to record a decent quality show for your podcast. You can look up on the internet and find other gadgets and systems for recording your podcast shows. You can keep upgrading the type of microphones as per your budget of the business. Once you’ve recorded the episode, take help from a free tool which is mostly used for podcasting purposes, and that is Audacity. And once all the editing is done, your podcast is ready for publishing.
- Publish the Show: Create a podcast hosting account for yourself with the help of Buzzsprout and publish your show for the world to listen to it. The listeners and viewers of your blog/business can listen, download and subscribe to your podcast. Buzzsprout is easy to use and has an amazing interface.
Podcast Versus YouTube Channel
Should I start a YouTube channel? Should I start a Podcast? These questions are always on your mind when you want to become an influencer or grow your business online. Many people are starting a YouTube channel or a Podcast or maybe both, and want to optimize the monetization strategies, and lot more.
Doing Podcast and YouTube both can be really awesome for the personal branding and for your business. But, just dumping or giving away any content on both the channels won’t really help you, unless and until you have certain strategies to actually make it grow and sustain for the years to come.
So, today I’ll discuss with you all the key points one should keep in mind when it comes growing YouTube + Podcast channels, top strategies for building your brand in the market.
YouTube Versus Podcast
- For a YouTube channel, a lot of work is required, starting with shooting good videos, kind of look good (presentable) for the videos, which doesn’t happen in Podcast creation.
- A lot more behind-the-scenes (BTS) happens for a Podcast. For example, you need to setup a lot of equipments and tools before doing a podcast.
- On YouTube, once you have your video file edited and ready to roll, you directly upload it online and start your channel from there.
- In case of a Podcast, you must host your media files on a separate hosting platform (many cheap hosting platforms are available online), before publishing or making it live for your audience/viewers. Why a separate platform to host your media file? Because, you’re not required to upload individual Podcast episode files to iTunes, Spotify, Google. Rather, you must build an RSS feed and submit it these channel, so that it notifies all the subscribers subscribed to those channels and platforms, whenever your new Podcast episode it live.
- If people watch your YouTube videos for over 5 minutes, then you’ve done a great job, which means that you can grab the attention of your audience really easily and quickly. Another benefit of building a YouTube channel, is the YouTube Live feature, where you interact with your viewers live or maybe promote your marketing campaigns directly at the end of the Live.
- A fairly huge amount of people listen to Joe Rogan’s Podcast for over 1 hour/2 hours/3 hours, which happens in just one sitting. And for a YouTuber, this is absolutely great! In a Podcast, you’ve the power to connect with your audience, tell a story, give away valued content in the episode, call out for actions from the listeners, etc.
- Another advantage of a Podcast is the way it is being consumed. You can listen to a podcast pretty much anywhere and everywhere – while driving, in a flight or even while jogging. Whereas, you cannot watch videos on YouTube while doing all kinds of activities. This makes Podcast stronger than YouTube.
- Talking about the numbers, there are about 500 Million YouTube channels running right now and less than 1 Million Podcasts. Thus, competition is less for Podcast, so you can start your Podcasts any time, it’s still not that late. But in the end, it always boils down to the overall number of viewers/views for your YouTube videos versus to the number of actual listeners for your Podcasts!
- You can build an actual deep connection with your listeners on Podcast, with the type of quality content you give away to them. Whereas in case of YouTube, it is always about physical appearances, shooting methods, live feed, valuable content (again), marketing, SEO, appropriate and curious thumbnails and video titles, so that it’s recommended by YouTube to other users online, making it a viral or trending (with maximum number of shares).
I hope you’ll find this blog helpful if you’re interested in learning about Podcast and YouTube, and how both platforms can boost your personal brand and grow your business online. If you haven’t already subscribed to the blog yet, I’d request you to do so, as we publish great content on SAP, Online Marketing, Passive Income, Entrepreneurship and Business every single day (5 days a week!). So, make sure you never miss an update from us.
Finally, CONNECT WITH ME ON FACEBOOK HERE. I’d love to hear about your experiences and what led you to start and launch your own online podcast. I’d also love to help you in your Entrepreneurial journey so that you achieve success in the industry.
