92: The Three Key Parts of a Great Podcast Foundation
I know it's tempting to want to launch right into the fun parts of starting a new podcast like creating the cover art or picking out your music, but you're putting the cart before the horse at that point.
Before making ANY decisions for your podcast, you need to have a solid foundation to build off of.
In this episode, I explain the three key parts to a great podcast foundation that will be the guide for every decision you make about your showing; during and after your launch.
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Transcript
Welcome to podcasting for coaches. I'm Britany Felix and I'm a podcast launch consultant who specializes in helping coaches and consultants utilize the power of podcasting as a way to build brand awareness and generate new leads for their business. I realize not every new coach or consultant can afford to hire someone to help launch their show. So I created this podcast as a way to guide you through the process of launching and utilizing your very own podcast to help you grow your business and reach a new audience of adoring followers and potential clients. If you're ready to get your voice and podcast out into the world, head over to podcasting for coaches.com to learn more. Welcome to Episode 92, of podcasting for coaches, this is probably going to be a fairly quick episode today, because the concepts that I'm talking about is actually really simple. But unfortunately, is incredibly important and often overlooked by I would guess, almost every single podcaster out there. And I can say with certainty that it is overlooked by pretty much everyone who comes to work with me in launching their show. And this concept is the three key parts to a great podcast Foundation, a lot of people say they're going to start a podcast for their business, and it's going to help bring in new leads. And that's awesome. And they're super excited. And they get into all the fun details, like creating the artwork and picking out there music and actually recording the content for those first few episodes. And that's fantastic that you get super excited about that. I love that. But as with anything, there needs to be a good foundation, or you could find out three months from now six months from now, a year from now that your podcast is not actually doing what you want it to do. So to just break this down, right up front, the three key parts, I'm not going to make you wait through a 10 minute explanation. Are you, your audience, and your objective for the show? It seems simple, I know that it does. But most podcasters don't keep these three things in mind when making decisions for their show. So we need to make sure that with every decision you're making during the launch process and even after you've launched and as you're going, that you're keeping all three of these things in mind at all times. Now, I realize you can't always make a decision that serves all three of these. But you really want to try to do that if at all possible. And what I mean by that is, you can make a decision for your show that serves you and your audience. Like you just giving out a ton of free content and teaching them all kinds of things, and not ever trying to sell to them because you don't want to feel icky. And that serves you you feel fulfilled, that serves your audience, they get a lot of great value. But it doesn't serve your objective if your objective is to get new clients and get new business. And to contrast that you could make a decision that is really, really great for your audience, and really great for your objective but doesn't serve you. For example, you could put out a podcast episode, every single day, your audience is getting a ton of free content, and they are probably loving it you are giving them so much value. And you're selling in every episode. And you've got all of this stuff to promote. And you're building your audience and you're growing like crazy. And yeah, maybe you're bringing in new business, but you are wearing yourself out. You can't keep up with that publication schedule. So what happens is eventually you get burned out, and you cannot sustain it. So you just stop the show. And that obviously doesn't work. And then a decision that you make for your show that could serve you or your audience is to only release an episode once a month, because that's not as much work for you. And you're selling like crazy, all throughout that episode. So maybe it serves your objective, maybe you get a sale or two. And you're not having to do as much work you're only doing an episode a month. But that doesn't really serve your audience because they're not getting enough from you. Unless of course, you're one of these shows that puts out like a six hour long episode, which I hope that you're not doing for your business. But you know, there are exceptions to every rule. But generally speaking, only releasing one episode a month is not really enough to keep your listeners engaged and hooked, they're going to go find another show that's putting out content more regularly and giving them more value. So again, keep all three of these things in mind when making any decision. I like to think of it like a Venn diagram. You know, if you go all the way back to school, where you have those three overlapping circles, and you're finding places where these different things intersect, but you want to find that sweet spot right in the middle where it serves all three purposes. So again, as you were just deciding whether or not you want to have guests, or do a solo show how often you want to release episodes how long you want your episodes to be, where you want to promote your episodes, how often you want to sell on your show, what types of things you want to sell on your show, any of these questions can pretty easily be answered, if you just try to find the solution that serves all three of those parts of your podcast foundation. Now, just to give you a few more examples of what might not serve all three parts, say for example, you are starting your podcast because you want to become known as an authority in your niche. And then you decide to do only interview shows, well, that may serve you because you love connecting with other people and you're networking. And that may serve your audience because they're getting a lot of really cool interviews with some guests. And they're learning some new things that maybe you can't teach them. But it's definitely not fully establishing yourself as an authority in your niche. You will be seen as an authority by proxy and authority by association. But you would have a much higher success rate of being known as the authority in your niche if you're constantly doing solo episodes, where you're the ones doing the teaching and the training and giving out your expert advice. Another thing that might serve your objective in your audience would be to create this special freebie, this free PDF this free giveaway for every single episode, one of my clients used to do this, and she saw pretty moderate success with it, her email list grew. But it was unsustainable. every single week, she was putting together a new lead magnet. So that served her audiences heard her objective, but it did not serve her. Another thing that may serve you but not your objective, or your audience is doing interviews on subjects that really don't have anything to do with the overall theme of your show. But you just thought it would be cool to interview this person, or maybe this person is a big celebrity, and somehow you got them on your show through a connection. But they honestly don't really have much to offer your audience about the topic that you speak about. So while that may be really, really cool for you in the moment, and it serves you. And it's just a fun experience for you. It doesn't really help your audience in any way and therefore won't really help your objective. So I hope that you're kind of seeing how these three foundational pieces for your podcast can be the basis for every decision you make, they can be your guide on how to ensure that you're starting your show off in the most accessible way possible, and that you're growing it in the most accessible way possible. Because if you constantly make decisions with these three things in mind, you almost can't fail unless your audio quality is just terrible. Or let's be honest, you really don't know what you're doing. And I don't think that's the case. So now that you have these three key foundational things in place, and you know exactly what you need to use as your guide to make all the decisions for your show. What about the actual process? Do you know all of the tiny little micro steps you need to take in order to get your show from idea to launch? If you don't, luckily, that's exactly what I'm here for. The doors will be opening to the public for my first podcast launch live group program on September 1, so that's in just a few days. And with a max of 10 participants in this program, you're going to receive high level attention that's usually reserved for my one on one clients, but at half the price that I currently charge them. This is an eight week program where I walk you through every step of the process, and we ended up with your show live on all the major platforms at the end of it. If you want to learn more, just go to the show notes for this episode, which you can find my going to podcasting for coaches. com, click on the podcast tab in the main menu and go to episode number 92. There will be a link in the show notes to the group program. start a podcast in eight weeks or less. Thank you so much for joining me and I will see you back here next week. Have a fantastic week. And that wraps up another episode of podcasting for coaches. If you'd like to connect with me further, you can do so on Instagram at podcasting for coaches. If you know it's time to finally get serious about starting your podcast, go to podcasting for coaches calm and click on the work with me tab in the main menu to learn more about my one on one launch consultation packages or my self paced online course. And I look forward to seeing the podcasts that you create and put out into the world.