Veteran podcast creator and Sonnant founder Tony Simmons sat down with us to share his best tips and tricks on how to become a successful podcast creator. With 50 episodes as a podcast creator under his belt, Tony Simmons shares a few podcast creator tips for you to steal and master.
If you’re looking for ideas on discoverability to monetisation to understanding why you want to make your podcast – these podcast creator tips will help send you on your way to greatness!
Create an engaging podcast
Podcasts are an excellent way to reach a large audience. And, podcasts are not all the same and can take many forms. There are many different types of podcast genres around, that a podcast creator can choose, or you could seek to be original and try something completely new. Whatever your approach, these questions will help you with your content creation so you can build a successful audience:
- Why am I starting a podcast? E.g. marketing, passion, personal brand, money etc
- What type of show do you want to produce? E.g. interview, comedy, news, opinions
- What will I call my podcast? Find a name and check that it hasn’t already been taken.
- How long will my episodes be? 10 minutes, 30 minutes etc Be aware what the best length is for your podcast type – some simple research can really help you frame your times.
- As a podcast creator, how often will I publish my podcast? Daily, weekly, fortnightly?
Once you have answered all of these questions, you should have the underlying concept and structure for your podcast. As a podcast creator, this will help you uncover how to build a successful audience.
Really understand your goals and reasons for creating a podcast
Podcasts are hard work and being a podcast creator takes dedication. At Disciplinn, as a successful podcast creator, one of the reasons we were able to build a successful podcast audience is that we had a clear goal – a story we wanted to tell.
Ask yourself “why” you are creating a podcast. Is it to:
- Create a brand
- Make money
- Create business leads and brand recognition
- Create marketing content
- Create though leadership
- Entertain
- Have fun and fulfill an existing passion
What type of production values will I have
To make an audience love you, you can’t just have great content, your content needs to sound great. This means having a good microphone, using good recording and editing practices and software and output your sound at an optimum level. You may also want an introduction or music. This may cost some money but will help in the overall professionalism of your show.
- Podcast equipment – this might be determined on whether you are recording from home (if so, check out this blog: 6 tips on how to record audio from home
- Podcast software – what are you going to recording and edit with. If you have guests, what platform will you use for interviews?
Publishing your podcast
You will need a hosting platform for your podcast – generally, this will help you create an RSS feed. Then you will need to syndicate your podcast to all other audience platforms like Apple, Spotify, Google and more.
Platforms such as Buzzsprout, Omny, Sounder and Spreaker provide simple distribution and submission steps within the platform. Again, do research on your needs and costs are and what level of publication sophistication you are able/willing to go to.
Promoting your podcast
Lastly, you need to promote. Podcasting is not a set and forget approach. You need to push and engage, and do that for your launch and then for every episode thereafter. Don’t expect that you will be the next Joe Rogan with the flick of a switch. Getting found and discovered takes effort:
- Turn your long form podcast into snippets, audiograms and social posts
- Reach your audience with regular social posts
- Use transcripts to make your podcast SEO ready – see here for tips!
- Share with family and friends
- Write blogs and post on Reddit and Quor
Most of all, have fun. Podcasting is an incredible medium, but if you don’t enjoy each part of the process, then podcasting will soon become a punishment.
Want to appear on Discplinn’s podcast – connect with them here.
