A lot of work goes into creating a company podcast. Probably more than you realize.
In fact, I see companies make a series of mistakes when they launch a podcast, most of which come down to the planning stage.
When you don’t spend enough effort in the podcast planning phase, you then have a difficult time maintaining, promoting, and growing your show. Ultimately, this leads to lackluster results, a show that doesn’t help you achieve your business goals, and overall frustration because your podcast didn’t turn out as you expected.
According to Amplifi and Podnews, 44% of podcasts never publish more than 3 episodes. I bet the majority of the podcasters behind those shows rushed to launch what they thought was a great idea, only to realize it wasn’t going to work as they expected.
Now, I’m not saying you can’t be successful if you try to launch a podcast fast. However, after 10+ years making podcasts, I’ve noticed that the most successful shows spend a good amount of time on strategy before they record a single episode. When it comes to podcasting, it pays off to be deliberate.
In this article, I cover the 6 most common mistakes I see people make when starting and planning a company podcast.
Mistake 1: Not understanding how much work it takes to consistently produce a podcast.
I’ve seen some crazy stats when it comes to podcast failure rates. According to Podcast Industry Insights (courtesy of Daniel J. Lewis), out of the 2.7 million podcasts available on Apple, only 15% have published an episode in the last 90 days. The industry even has a term for podcasts that fade out, podfading.
But why does this happen?
Meredith Metsker, Director of Content and Community at uConnect, sums it up well with this post:
Podcasting is a ton of work!
For example, one of our clients has been producing an interview-based show for over 5 years. For every single episode, they need to take care of the following tasks:
- Identify the guest
- Research the guest and write questions
- Interview the guest
- Create and review rough transcriptions
- Provide production notes for the editor
- Edit the audio
- Review the edits
- Create final transcriptions and show notes
- Post to the media host and the website
- Communicate with the guest
- Promote via newsletter and social media
Bear in mind that this is for an interview-based show, one of the easier types of podcasts to produce.
Another client of ours produced a narrative-style show featuring a variety of interviews, scripted narration, and original music for every episode.
II recently broke down the amount of work and resources necessary per episode, and this is what it looks like:
- Final episode length: 51m:26s
- Sourced from 11 interviews from 9 different people, totaling 11.5 hours of audio.
People involved in producing the episode included:
- 2 production assistants
- 2 writers
- 2 producers
- 2 audio editors
- 1 sound designer and original music composer
- 1 host
- 9 guests
Tasks included things like:
- Researching the episode’s topic, identifying guests, scheduling guests, preparing for interviews, and conducting interviews.
- Reviewing all audio collected, choosing the best parts to use, crafting a narrative that makes sense from all the audio, and scripting all narration for the host.
- Pulling all audio to be used, editing all audio to be used, recording all host narration (tracking), reviewing said tracking and choosing the best takes, and assembling a rough version for review.
- Reviewing the rough cuts, making notes, more editing, more tracking, etc.
- Reviewing the new version, determining the best places for music and sound design, choosing sound design, adding sound design, writing original music to be used, adding original music, and finalizing audio.
- Final reviews, notes, tweaks, and edits.
It’s true that everyone works differently, and there are many variables that affect the size and scope of a project, but the fact remains the same: Great podcasts take more work than you realize.
Before you start a podcast, plan accordingly.
Mistake 2: Focusing on the medium instead of the goal.
As marketers and business owners, there are thousands of shiny objects that can grab our attention.
Podcasting can be one of those things.
One of the first questions I ask any new prospect is “What is your goal with starting a podcast?” If prospects can’t convince me that podcasting is the right medium for them, I simply can’t help them.
For example, let’s say your company needs to immediately increase awareness. A podcast probably isn’t your best medium. You might want to invest in ads or borrow someone else’s audience instead.
However, if you are looking to increase your authority over time or to grow and improve your network, podcasting might be an excellent choice.
After so many years of producing podcasts, I can say our best clients don’t come to us because they want a podcast. They come to us because they want the result that a podcast can deliver.
Mistake 3: Not aligning your goal with the show being planned.
Similar to the previous mistake, you can have a misalignment between the type of show you are producing and what you hope to accomplish with it.
Once, on a discovery call, a prospect told me their goal was to get 50,000 downloads per episode in the first 6 months. So I asked what their idea was, and they said they wanted to interview other industry leaders, just like everyone else. They assured me that they had unique things to share.
I hate to break it to you, but niche, industry-specific, straightforward interview shows won’t get you 50K downloads per episode. Not to mention, “lots of downloads” isn’t a good goal to begin with (track this instead).
For reference, at the time of writing this article, Buzzsprout data showed that only the top 1% of all podcasts are getting around 5,000 downloads in the first 7 days of being live. I hope you can see that a generic expert interview show isn’t going to do 50K downloads per episode.
So, what show types can you make?
At this point, I think we’re mainly limited to our creativity in terms of what is possible. That said, there are four common podcast formats you can use as guidance:
- The solo show: where one or more regular guests teach and/or discuss ideas.
- The interview show: straightforward interviews, typically about specific themes or particular niches.
- The narrative show: a story-driven show with a host (aka narrator), multiple guests, music, sound effects, and more.
- The dynamic show: this type of show lives between the interview and the narrative. It might feature a few interviews combined into a single episode, with less bells and whistles than a narrative show.
If you want in depth information and examples about these four format types, you can read more about it here.
So, how do you make sure your show type aligns with your goal?
Here are a three case studies from our clients:
Case Study 01: Generating awareness.
One of our clients, the William J. Perry Project (WJPP), wanted to raise awareness about the threat of nuclear disaster. They needed impressions and engagement, and they were targeting younger generations.
We helped them decide on and produce a narrative-style show with 5+ interviews per episode and originally composed music.
As a result, At The Brink averaged 10K+ downloads per episode soon after launch and had an international listenership. Our client considered the show a success because it supported their goal.
Case Study 02: Supporting internal processes.
Another client of ours wanted to support their sales and hiring teams. We helped them produce a highly niched interview show where our team interviewed their clients about using their unique software.
The show only averaged about 100 downloads per episode, but they were able to use it as a sales resource and for training new team members. They considered it a success because it directly supported their internal efforts.
Case Study 03: Generating leads and building a network.
One of our clients, a coaching company, wanted to achieve two major business goals. They ran an in-person training workshop with limited seats a few times a year and wanted to generate leads to fill the seats. Additionally, they wanted to improve relationships with other professionals in the industry and establish themselves as leaders in the space.
We helped them produce an interview-style podcast and were very deliberate about the guests, creating opportunities for our client to build relationships with key leaders. Additionally, we helped them promote their in-person training workshop in a way that felt non-invasive or pushy to attract the right listeners to the event.
You have many options for what kind of show to produce. Make sure you are intentional in the beginning so it supports your goals after launch.
Mistake 4: Failing to use your podcast as part of your marketing strategy.
This one surprises me, but I see many marketers and marketing teams fail to leverage their podcasts in their existing marketing strategies.
But wait! Isn’t this article about planning mistakes?
Yes, but many promotion mistakes start in the planning stage. You need to think about podcast promotion before you even start recording.
Recently, one of our clients decided to launch a full strategy all at once: newsletters, blogs, a podcast, and more. One question I had was whether the podcast would inform the blog or the blog would inform the podcast.
For example, if your podcast informs your blog, it means the podcast content is leading. In this case, you can take the learnings from the podcast and the interviews and turn them into blog content. This will affect the type of content you’re recording and the order in which you’re releasing it.
If the blog informs the podcast, then the podcast needs to follow the blog’s lead. This might mean that if you plan to publish a blog about the benefits of your core service, you can purposely interview clients who have purchased your core services and pull great quotes to use in the article.
That’s just one simple example. Plenty more exist, and I wrote a lot about it in our article on omnichannel marketing.
Mistake 5: Doing a poor job on branding (and ending up with an ugly podcast).
Podcasts are seen before they are heard.
This means your title, cover art, promotional assets, show notes, etc., better be top-notch.
Fortunately, most marketers I know have designers on their team. It’s typically the DIYers who are prone to ugly cover art. There are plenty of amazing artists and designers out there, and many are affordable. Do yourself a favor and hire someone who knows what they are doing.
However, everyone has the potential to give their show a bad title. I could easily write a whole article on naming your podcast.
Here are a few tips when deciding on your podcast’s name:
- Clear beats clever. I’d rather have a title people remember and understand than one that feels “cool.”
- Avoid ambiguity. Using words with different spellings or pronunciations and things like homonyms, acronyms, symbols, or numbers might be easy to say but aren’t easy to type. For example, think of the podcast Twenty Thousand Hertz. Hertz or hurts? Hertz or Hz? Twenty Thousand, 20,000 or 20K? It gets confusing fast.
- Consider how it sounds. You’re likely going to be saying your podcast’s name a lot. Make sure it’s something that you’re comfortable saying over and over again for introductions and when recommending it. I can think of one show in particular that looks fine in writing, but sounds like a “naughty” word when you say it out loud. Be careful! 😅
- Review the competition. Once you narrowed down your title options, check to make sure no one else is using the title or owns rights to it.
Your podcast’s visual and written components will be with you for a long time, and rebranding isn’t fun.
Take the time upfront to get the branding right.
Mistake 6: Not knowing how to deal with guests professionally.
Part of planning for many shows is researching, scheduling, and interviewing guests.
And like all things, lots can go wrong here.
The thing I notice the most with new podcasters is the lack of processes.
For example, it’s easy to find any podcast guest but difficult to find the perfect guest for your podcast. And when you do find the perfect guests for your show, you might be scaring them away without even knowing it.
For example, most people share way too much information the first time they contact a potential guest.
Instead of sharing all the details in your first email, find out if the person is even interested in being on. If they are, send the information they need to know to schedule and understand what they are getting into.
And like all relationships, treat others with integrity and respect. It feels silly to say it, but a lot of people don’t.
I recently had a prospect schedule a call with me. He explained how the hosts of the show he was working on frequently rescheduled with guests and sometimes scraped full interviews without telling the guests.
Most of the time, podcast hosts aren’t that brash, but not knowing how to run these processes correctly can damage relationships.
Take time in the beginning to find the right guests and treat them well.
Wrapping up.
Podcasting is a ton of hard work, and it isn’t easy to know what you don’t know. If a podcast is a great move for your company, don’t rush the planning process. Make sure you carefully think through all the major pieces to save yourself more work later.
And if you want a show but don’t want to figure everything out on your own, my team does exactly that. We work with coaching and training companies to produce expert-level shows that help them build authentic relationships with their audiences.
Schedule a discovery call with our team if you want to learn more.
Thanks for reading! 😎
