Kylie from Halfwit History asks, "What makes a successful podcast?"
TL;DR
How you choose to define success is up to you. There's no right or wrong answer, but having a clear sense of purpose for your podcast will help you stay focused on the right metrics instead of getting caught chasing download numbers (which is only one way to see if your podcast is doing well).
Regardless of the definition you choose, you can maximize your podcast's potential by doing a handful of things consistently right - get listed in the major podcast directories, focus on audio quality, and promote new episodes when they come out.
4x Possible Ways To Measure Success:
- Get leads for your business
- Interview cool people
- Share your passions
- Build an online community
More Tips From Sarah:
- Our favorite microphone for new podcasters is the Samson Q2U, a USB/XLR mic that records great audio at an affordable price
- Check out our blog post with a dozen royalty-free music options for podcasters (including nine free options)
- Need an easy way to create compelling social media posts? Try out the Buzzsprout Visual Soundbite and turn Facebook and Instagram followers into podcast subscribers
Audio Editing Software Options: (Click the link to watch our YouTube tutorial)
Record your podcasting question at Speakpipe.com/Buzzsprout to be featured on a future episode.
Review Podcasting Q&A in Podchaser to let us know what you think of the show.
Disclosure: Some of the links above are affiliate links, which means that if you choose to make a purchase, Buzzsprout will earn a commission.
Sarah: 0:00
in today's episode, we're going to talk about what it takes to make a successful podcast. Welcome to Podcasting Q&A, where we talk about how to launch, grow, and monetize your show. This week's question comes from Kylie.
Kylie: 0:16
Hi, my name is Kylie from Halfwit History. My question is, what makes a successful podcast? Thanks.
Sarah: 0:23
So thanks for your question. Now, to be honest, how you measure podcasting Success is really up to you. Maybe you are really interested in getting leads for your content marketing business and podcasts are just a way to get them. Or you're really, really wanting to just fangirl or Fanboy over some really influential people in the space. And you want to use your podcast to interview them, or you have a really amazing topping that you're super passionate about that. You just want to talk about it and explore it in the podcasting medium, or you're really interested in building a community and using podcasts to do that. So take some time to really figure out what is your measure of success. And again, that's really up to you. And it's individual based on what it is that you want to get out of your podcasts, And when you have figured that out, we want to be here and help give you some tips on how to maximize your podcast potential.
Sarah: 1:24
Number one is to get listed on the major podcasting directories. So I'm sure you've heard of Apple Podcasts is a pretty big one. So some of the other ones include Spotify tuning Google podcasts stitcher and getting listed on these podcasts means that more people are gonna be able to find out about it again. Maximizing potential
Sarah: 1:52
Number two is to make a high-quality show with high-quality audio. Creating good audio is really key to keeping your podcast listeners engaged because no matter how good the content is, if your audio quality isn't good, it's unfortunately just gonna turn them away. I know what you're thinking is. You probably think you have to spend thousands of dollars on equipment or rent of podcasting studio just to make sure everything sounds great. I'm here to tell you that's not true at all. I have created some pretty good audio from mics that costs less than $100 so if you're interested in that will leave a link for you to check some of the options that we recommend. And I have also recorded in places like in my home office, even in the closet. Yes, no one's going to see unless recording video like this one, um, wherever you can, just to muffle the sound is going to really make that difference between meh quality and good quality. Then what I want you to think about is creating an intro and outro, and you can use royalty-free music for this. There's once for all sorts of budgets that you can choose from. When it comes time to putting your episode together, consider using audio editing software again. I sound like I'm repeating myself. But there are ones for all sorts of budgets, even ones for free that you can use to edit out things like awkward phrases, um's and ah's, and again putting that intro and outro together. So hopefully that will help you boost that audio quality and again keep your listeners engaged.
Sarah: 3:27
Number three is to promote new podcast episodes when they come out. Now I'm gonna give a couple of suggestions and don't feel like you have to do all of them because, to be honest, there are so many things you can do to promote your podcast episode. It's going to feel really overwhelming. And some of the things I'm about to say aren't necessarily relevant to your situation. So pick and choose maybe one or two to start, and then you can build from there. So one of the first suggestions I like to suggest to people is to email your new episode to your email list. So these are people that have opted to sign up for your newsletter if you have one these are people that are already interested in what you have to say. So it's a really great way just to send them a link, and then hopefully they'll click on it and then listen to that new awesome podcast episode of yours and then consider using social media. So there are lots of again free and inexpensive tools where you can create audio clips, graphics for your Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or wherever you have your social media accounts, and just putting it up there is going to let people know that again. Do you have a new podcast episode out? Quick, maybe Summary of what it's about, and then hopefully that will encourage people to go over to your link. Finally, if you have a website, put your new podcast episode on your website so it can help Google or other types of search engines know that you have a new podcast up so there so that when listeners are searching for the topic that you were talking about, or even for a podcast to listen to, yours will show up on their search list.
Sarah: 5:05
Thanks for sending us your question, Kylie. Now, if you have a question you want us to answer on future episodes, head over to speakpipe.com/buzzsprout or click on the link in the description below and send us a brief audio message. Podcasting Q & A is available in both video and podcast formats. So if you like watching videos, make sure to click subscribe on YouTube or, if you like listening to audio, make sure to subscribe to Podcasting Q&A wherever you listen to podcasts. And please leave us a review on Podchaser to let us know how we can make the show even better for you. That's it for today. Thanks for listening and, as always, keep podcasting.