If you’re planning on starting a podcast, or maybe you’ve recently launched your podcast, this is for you! Of course you want listeners, and not just any listeners, but ones who are obsessed with your content, leave raving reviews, and are anxiously waiting for the next episode to drop every week – but with over 5 million podcasts to compete with and the limited time you have as a busy CEO, it’s not as easy as it sounds. Today I’m going to help you make sure that happens by sharing everything I’ve learned as a podcast manager for female owned small businesses that I think beginner podcast hosts need to know before starting a podcast.

Why is Podcasting good for businesses?

Podcasting can be an extremely valuable tool for growing your business. Not only is it a great way to showcase your expertise, establish thought leadership within your industry, and develop a deeper connection with your audience (without having to spend hours replying to DMs), it’s also a great way to increase your visibility through omnipresent marketing. 

Podcasts cater to people who may not find other forms of content, like blogs or social media, fitting for their lifestyle. Whether they are commuting, exercising, or doing chores around the house, listeners can tune in at their convenience as opposed to having to dedicate all of their attention to a screen. Plus, your podcast content can then be repurposed into other formats, like blog posts, Pinterest pins, or Tik Toks, creating an omnipresent content strategy that reaches your ideal client through multiple channels and accelerates their trust in you. 

So, if you enjoy educating or coaching through speaking – podcasts are an excellent form of long form content for your business.

5 Things You Should Know Before Starting a Podcast

1. Successful podcasting requires a LOT of planning and organization

There’s the obvious part of podcasting (the recording and editing) and then there’s the not-so-obvious part (the planning and organizing.) In order for your podcast to be successful you’ll need to strategically come up with episode topics 4-6 weeks in advance, create episode scripts/outlines to ensure you stay on topic, send guest invites via email, and schedule interview times for guests, just for starters. Since consistency and quality are crucial to podcasting, before you launch you should have systems in place to keep everything running smoothly and be prepared to do a lot of coordinating, planning, and organizing (or hire someone to do it for you.)

2. Growing your audience and making money from your podcast will require effort

Growing your podcast takes work, not only will you need to come up with the content ideas, record the episodes, edit them, and publish them. You’ll need to create and execute a marketing strategy to make sure that people actually listen to it. People can’t listen to and love your podcast if they don’t even know it exists.  And in order to make money from your podcast, you’ll need to master storytelling sales tactics to nurture your listeners into purchasing the product/service you sell.

3. It is a time commitment

While there are a lot of tasks that you as a business owner can outsource, recording your podcast episodes is one thing that will always require your face and voice. If podcasting is something that you want to do for your business, be prepared to commit 1-2 hours (at a bare minimum) of your time per week to working on it.

4. You need a workflow

The process of creating a podcast episode begins before you hit record and ends long after you step away from the microphone. In order to make sure you’re producing high quality episodes every single week, you’ll need a podcasting workflow. A podcast workflow is simply a process you follow to produce an episode from beginning to end. Having a workflow will help you increase the quality of your podcast and improve your productivity.

5. You should prioritize SEO from the start

If you want your podcast (or your website in general) to appear on page one of Google when your ideal client goes searching, you need to prioritize SEO from day one of your podcast. SEO stands for search engine (aka google) optimization, and it’s crucial for your discoverability. But, SEO is a long game strategy, it can take 6-12 months to see the results of your SEO efforts pay off, which is why starting from day one is so important.

Most Common Questions that Beginner Podcasters Ask

As a podcast manager, I have podcast hosts and aspiring hosts ask me these questions all the time. So I figured you might be wondering about them as well. Keep reading to learn the best length for podcast episodes, how often you should release new episodes, how many people should be on each episode, and other tips to grow your subscriber count and increase the visibility of your brand.

What is the best length for a podcast?

Statistically, 32.1% of podcasts are between 30-45 minutes long. However, just because that is what the majority is doing, doesn’t mean it’s automatically the right decision for you. As with all content, you need to first consider your audience — when will they most likely be listening to your episodes? If your ideal listener has a long commute to work, 45-60 minute episodes may serve you well, but if they are popping in earbuds while they wash dishes, you’ll lose them after 20 minutes. 
In general, studies show that most podcast listeners stay engaged for an average 22 minutes (Stitcher). So I recommend creating episodes in a variety of lengths. Mixing the occasional 15 minute quick tip episodes with your regular 30-45 minute episodes can be a great way to add variety and engage new listeners who aren’t ready to commit to a full length episode quite yet. And of course, each quarter be sure to evaluate the data and see which episodes performed the best, to enhance your strategy moving forward.

What are the best ways to promote your podcast?

I’ll let you in on a secret. No one is going to Apple Podcasts and searching for things to consume their time with. People are busy and you can’t assume listeners will find you. Which is exactly why you need a marketing strategy for your podcast to be successful. 

The good news is, it doesn’t have to be time consuming. There are very simple ways to repurpose your podcast episode onto other platforms to ensure that your dream listeners know about your podcast.  

A few of my favorite ways to help clients repurpose their podcast episodes and increase the visibility of their podcast are:

Ensuring that every episode is SEO optimized before publishing. You can do this by adding a keyword rich title and description to each episode. 

Convert your podcast into a blog. Use AI to transcribe the episode audio, add keyword rich headings, and publish it as a blog post. Don’t forget to embed a link to listen to the podcast on the blog page as well. 

Visually record your episodes and create reels with them. If you have a podcast, you should never ask yourself the question “what should I post on social media today.” You have hours upon hours of podcast content that should be shared on social media platforms. 

Share it on Pinterest. If you’re converting your podcasts into blogs and/or creating video snippets from your episode – you should be sharing it to Pinterest. Create graphics with the episode title on them, link them back to your blog, and watch your subscriber rate rise. 

But repurposing your content isn’t the only way to market your podcast, you can also: 

Host industry renowned guests on your episodes. As I mentioned above, guests aren’t a requirement, but they can be a great way to increase your visibility and boost your authority if chosen strategically. Reach out to people that your audience would recognize and ask them to join you for an interview, their credibility can help boost your authority and access to their audience can increase your visibility.
Make sure you are sharing your content on a variety of listening platforms. Make it as easy as possible for people to find and listen to your podcast, the easier it is, the more likely they are to tune in. You’ll do this directly through your hosting platform. At a minimum, make sure to publish on the big three: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts.

Where should you put ads in a podcast?

If you decide to include ads as a part of your monetization strategy for your podcast, nobody will blame you for having a few ads here and there, but too many or poorly placed and they could affect the growth impact of your podcast. If you’re planning to use ads as a part of your podcast strategy, reference this article from Marketing Brew on best practices for podcast ad placement.

Do I need to have guests on my podcast? How many people should be on each episode?

Guests are always a great way to add a fresh dynamic for your listener and increase your visibility through collaboration. I could go on for hours about best practices for hosting podcast guests, but I’ll keep it simple – guests are a great added bonus, but they are not a requirement for successful podcasting – especially if you’re just starting out. 

When it comes to how many people should be on your podcast episodes, the only requirement is you. But, if you want to have a more conversational format, consider bringing on guests or extending a co-host invite. However, keep in mind that the more people you have on the podcast (guests or co-hosts) the more potential for mistakes, the harder it is to stay on pace with time, and longer it takes to edit the episode. I wouldn’t recommend having more than four people (including you, the host) on your podcast at a time.

How often should you release podcast episodes?

There are a lot of nuances to deciding how often you should release new podcast episodes. Should you post monthly, weekly, daily? The truth is, there is no universally correct answer.  just like with all content quality should always trump quantity, and above all be consistent. To create a loyal subscriber base, your listeners need to know when they can expect to see new episodes go live, regardless of how often that is. So, when you’re deciding how often you should release new episodes, evaluate how much time it takes you to plan, record, edit, and publish each episode and determine a number that you can sustainably commit to. In general, I recommend a minimum of one new episode per week, always shared on the same day of the week.

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In case we haven’t met yet, I’m Michaela – marketing and operations assistant, and experience curator (aka the virgo energy to your creative spirit) who is completely obsessed with helping you turn your journal full of ideas into profit driving offers.

If you liked this post and are craving more, here’s how I can help:

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