Let’s talk about the elephant in the room: There are a lot of podcasts out there, with more appearing every day. And each one of those podcasts is vying for the limited time and attention that a listener has to offer in a given day. If you’re interested in how to start a podcast to strengthen your brand, connect with new audiences, and establish expertise in a given field, it’s natural to look out at the massive (and growing all the time) landscape and ask, “What do I have to offer that others don’t?”
How does one go about focusing in on the topic and approach that will produce the best series with the best chance of achieving the desired effect? At ModPod, we can’t make those decisions for you, but we can tell you the big questions that you should be asking yourself as you get going on your journey to create the best podcast possible.
Who Are You?
Before you can begin to worry about what your audience might want, you need to engage with your first audience, your toughest critic, and your most constant companion: Yourself!
If you’re going to create a podcast in which you will be talking a lot, ask yourself: What do you like to talk about? What are the knowledge areas where you feel most confident? What are the subject matters that you are interested in not only explaining to others but in learning more about yourself? No matter how rock solid or stunningly original a concept you might come up with for your series, that won’t matter if the process of making it is something you find tedious. Instead, the big successes in the podcast field come from series where the creators are truly passionate and engaged with their subject, and that passion and engagement attracts like-minded listeners.
The same extends to developing the format for your show. Are you someone who feels comfortable talking alone for extended periods of time? If so, then you can develop your series around a structure that involves you delivering monologues. More comfortable with letting others do most of the talking? No problem, your starting place can be, “This is going to be an interview show in which I’ll be setting up others to bring the expertise” and build your show’s approach and central thesis from there.
Who Is Your Audience?
If you’re still struggling to nail down a topic, or are looking to develop more specificity for a general area of interest, that’s when you can start engaging with the audience and taking a look at what listeners seem to like.
You can check out your podcast apps to identify the top series in your field and review what are the approaches that listeners respond to. What are the weaknesses of those shows: the gaps in coverage that you could fill with your own expertise, the missteps in production that you could do better
The demographic make up of your intended audience does affect the tone, style, and pace of what sort of series will engender the best response. All of these factors can come into play as you refine the general subject matter into a specific topic and format for the final series.
Finding Your Place
Podcasts are at an interesting area in their evolution as a medium. On the one hand, it is still a relatively young field, with huge evolutionary jumps still to come. And on the other hand, it is a medium already overflowing with active shows, defunct shows, miniseries, covering just about every subject matter you can think of and fighting for attention.
That makes it harder all the time for anyone wondering how to start a podcast to come up with a topic and approach that can differentiate your series from the pack.
At ModPod, we can work with you to help you zero in on the series that will fit you best, and the format that will unlock all the potential to create the optimal version of your vision. And we can dig into the competition, so that you can build off of what already exists to create a show that speaks to what your customers and partners need while being uniquely your own thing. We can work with your every step of the way to create the best podcast possible.
Contact us today, and let us help you find your voice.
