I’ve been helping brands produce podcasts for over ten years. In those years, I have spoken with executives like you responsible for delivering a company podcast.
I imagine you have come across many lists, including “Best Practices for Branded Podcasting” or “5 Hacks to Top Apple’s New and Noteworthy” lists. Having collaborated with companies for so long on their podcasts, much of this advice makes no sense to me whatsoever.
There’s no free report forthcoming.
TL;DR
In-House Production: Encourages producing podcasts internally, highlighting that it requires a substantial commitment and staffing.
Understanding Audience: Stresses the importance of knowing your audience and crafting content that stands out and meets their needs.
High-Profile Guests: Argues that hosting high-profile guests isn’t as effective as getting the podcast host featured on other popular platforms.
Ranking and Repurposing Content: Questions the value of ranking highly on Apple Podcasts and advises against lazy content repurposing; instead, tailor content to each platform.
AI and Technology: While acknowledging the potential of AI, the post emphasizes the irreplaceable creativity of human producers.
Quality and Consistency: Emphasizes the need for consistency and quality, suggesting working with experienced professionals and taking time to produce a meaningful podcast.
Produce it in-house.
“So, I’m in charge of the company’s podcast project.” I hear this on nearly every info-gathering call. “But I already have a full-time job.”
It’s you. You’ve opened the “Podcast?” folder. You might be new at the company, and along with the actual job somebody hired you for (I hear this one a lot), you have to somehow produce a podcast for the marketing department. Or worse, research a little side project slid into a Slack channel during the dreaded AOB portion of those Friday meetings your CEO seems to enjoy.
Let’s be clear. You can produce a quality podcast yourself. You are resourceful, willing to learn, and multi-talented. You can hire and manage a small creative and editorial team. Plus, the audio engineering aspects of podcasting are becoming more accessible with new technology every day. It’s something you can learn, and you enjoy a creative challenge.
However, you “already have a full-time job.” Staffing and producing a quality podcast takes more work than some realize. By today’s audience standards, a quality, interview-based podcast often requires a part-time staff of at least four. A narrative podcast can take three months to produce and, at minimum, six to eight people.
My question to you is: Do you want to be known by the company as the one that produces the podcast? Or would you rather be known as a rising star who headed up the podcast initiative that quickly became the darling of the media mix?
My job is to empower you, and our company philosophy is to support you. We help build a sustainable team with talent from both companies. We have learned that a ‘teach one to fish’ approach leads to hybrid (in-house + outsourced) podcasting that scales.
You don’t need R&D.
A podcast listener is busy, picky, and unforgiving. Competing forces for her time and attention are heavily researched, funded, and run by experienced media companies. Earning a listener, or better yet, a subscriber, means understanding their needs and what you can consistently offer them - for free.
Any podcast worthy of our time is a compelling story told by the people uniquely qualified to tell it. Though any story may be original, how it’s told must frame and highlight that originality. It has to be different enough to make a desired person take notice.
Podcast R&D leads to a clear understanding of who the podcast is and isn’t for. It defines what the podcast is and what it is not. Listeners can tell you did the work, and it’s much easier to report ROI and KPIs to leadership when you set and express clear milestones in advance.
I work with Bumper, a podcast growth agency, on our most significant ventures. They help enterprise podcasters increase the success of their shows by creating data-informed audience growth strategies.
Book high-profile guests.
This advice has been circulating for as long as podcasters have interviewed guests. It’s a holdover from the broadcasting era, and frankly, it’s misleading.
I’ve seen no data to support this. Sure, a high-profile guest may win a small bump in listeners. However, this is an outlier, and your guest’s followers are gone as quickly as they arrived.
However, the opposite approach is more practical. A host appearance on a popular platform (another related podcast, TV segment, or radio program, for example) has consistently proven to be a reliable way to earn a new audience. Listeners of that program hear or see your host, relate to her mission, and discover that she herself has a podcast over at her organization that they, in turn, sample.
It’s the Oprah effect. While having Oprah on your show may attract some one-time listeners, being on Oprah’s show can also earn you a whole new audience.
What works long term is being Oprah. Focus on nailing a great host.
Rank highly in Apple Podcasts.
We’ve been addressing this since 2014. In fact, one of our copywriters wrote about it way back when one would “Subscribe on iTunes.” Nearly a decade later, this still makes no sense to me.
When was the last time you opened your podcast app, went to the directory, and subscribed to a podcast because it was ranked highly? My guess is next to never. Additionally, many of the shows in those rankings and recommendations are not in your company’s niche. They are designed to attract broad audiences from wide-ranging demographics.
This advice is valid if your podcast is ad-funded and downloads is your KPI. However, your brand may measure success by another metric, and having a “hit show” is not necessarily it.
Repurpose your content, especially on YouTube.
You want the podcast to be available wherever your audience is. That’s a clear distribution and syndication goal. YouTube can be a part of that strategy, so let’s be thoughtful about it.
Successful podcasts earn listeners through trust over time. Copy-and-paste, repurposed content is lazy and ineffective. A well-written LinkedIn post explicitly crafted for that audience can generate genuine interest in the deeper conversation within the podcast episode. That identical content isn’t helpful on Instagram and turns people off.
Respecting each platform’s visitors by posting relevant content in the spirit of that platform makes for true social capital and subsequent awareness of your podcast.
YouTube is another animal entirely. A surprising number of people already listen to podcasts on YouTube. More watch video versions of interviews rather than listen.
This data interested me when I met the head of product development for Google Podcasts—nice kid with good intentions. Unfortunately, like most Google products, it’s gone, and so is he.
Google kills projects at a ruthless rate. There’s an entire website devoted to all the products in the graveyard (some I loved and even relied upon!). Want to guess how long the Google Podcasts project lasted? 11 months. They’re officially shutting down the service this spring.
So, when Google says they are making podcasts part of Google Music and allowing RSS feeds and monetization, I take it all with a grain of salt. Like all things podcasting, I watch it and help clients appear on the platform appropriately.
Consistency and understanding how to make content for a given platform means respecting the audience you speak to in that community by delivering on their expectations.
Everything you need is online; AI will take care of it soon anyway.
As of today, AI largely sucks at almost everything it produces. Microsoft has the right idea with Copilot, and I know plenty of talented people who use LLMs as ‘conversation starters.’ But that’s what it is: a tool. You can’t just buy the newest hammer and leave it to build a safe crib for your baby.
Writers, researchers, and producers are experienced professionals. They have what AI still, and may never, have: creativity. They filter the world through their experiences and reflect it uniquely, compellingly, and artfully.
They can tell a story, and humans love hearing a good one.
Yes, AI will continue to improve and as a technophile, I’m here for it. As a musician and composer, I can tell you that technology has made producing music more straightforward and more accessible than ever before. However, when I kick on the new Willow album or re-listen to Billie Eilish, I can hear the human having big feelings. We may be able to simulate that, but we’ll never replace it.
As a person - with a job today - I wouldn’t count on fleeting AI startups with your company’s brand voice and audience - yet.
OK, I’ll stop now.
I could write fifty more of these: “Just Start Recording!” “Tuesday is the Best Release Day.” “You Can Just Use Zoom and AirPods!” “Podcasting is Dead!” It’s a mess.
Unfortunately, when there’s money to be made, marketers, former PR professionals, and opportunists will muddy the water to confuse you and make themselves the last bastion of knowledge and truth. Good folks like you and I can wind up following an outdated map.
Boomers are trying to preserve their 20-year-old jobs, companies are hoping they don’t need to change with the times, and stats trickery is lame. Go home, podcast consultants. It’s over.
Advice that DOES make sense to me.
I advise working with kind, skilled people who’ve been there and back a few times. There are certainly some best practices to follow. The formula from that ‘Podcast? folder’ to a head-turning podcast isn’t hacks, tips, and lists. It’s good people with patience and experience who care deeply about both the listener and you.
PRODUCE a really, really good podcast with an engaging host. (That’s not the CEO interviewing his buddies)
CONTRACT really, really good people. (That’s often not the provider that comes in under budget in response to an RFP)
STOP and don’t do this at all. (If you have to have a show by next month because something, something “Podcast?” folder, don’t do it. Stop, take a beat, do it right)