Thinking of getting into the podcasting world, but have no idea where to start? Over past 4 years of hosting The Patty-G Show, we have learned a thing or two about creating podcasts and setting them up for success. When looking back over the last few years and evaluating what was most important to the success of the show, we put together a list of what we feel are some of the best 5 tips for starting a successful podcast. While there are many factors that play a significant role in the success or failure of your show, these 5 will be able to get you off the ground and heading towards the all desired audience retention and attraction.

1. Make Sure Your Topic Can Survive Several Seasons

While thinking of a topic for your podcast may seem like an easy task to undertake, keep in mind this topic will need to survive through multiple seasons. That is, unless you plan to have a short series for your show. The main focus you want to have is that your show will not run out of content prior to when you desired. Creating a podcast based on a topic you have extensive knowledge on is key to the longevity and success of the show.

With you being either an expert in the subject matter, or pointing out this is just as much of a learning process for you as it will be the guests can be a powerful mindset to have. In addition to making sure your content can survive a few seasons, by having longevity within your show it’ll continue to attract more listeners and continue to expand your audience. After all, isn’t having a large number of listeners every podcasters dream?

2. Determine your podcasting style

While starting a podcast may appear to only need a mic, mixer, and some editing software, there is a lot more that goes into the behind the scenes than just the gear. We will get into a piece of gear that we feel is necessary at number 5. Before then, you’ll need to determine the style of sow you want to have. This will entirely depend on the type of person you are and how much you like to plan things vs rolling with the punches. When discussing podcasting styles, we are referring to whether or not you’d like your show to be scripted or non scripted.

The Patty-G Show is a non scripted show. Meaning, we don’t prep the questions beforehand and send them over the our guests. We merely do our research into their businesses to ensure we can have a conversation around their ideas and values. While some hosts may not feel comfortable going in without a script, it is something we feel seems to flow better for us rather than trying to just go through a set list of questions.

If you are a host that HAS to have your show scripted, by all means write out your questions and have a pre-interview with your guest. At the end of the day, if you are not comfortable going off the cuff, it will be heard by your listeners.

3. Create as many social media channels as you want to manage

How will listeners come to your show? Do you have an existing brand you can leverage to drive traffic? Do you have no brand at all with only your family and friends knowing who the heck you are? Either way, social media will play a significant role in the success or failure of your show.

While it may seem like an unnecessary addition to your show, that couldn’t be further from the truth, especially if you don’t already have an existing popular brand for yourself to leverage. Creating a social media account and driving people to your show is one of the major steps to creating a successful podcast. If you aren’t the social media guru that everyone else claims themselves to be, no worries. You can take it one day at a time and continue to educate yourself on best practices depending the platform.

While you may spend countless hours scrolling through your social feeds across Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or the all consuming TikTok, it is now time for you to embark on the journey of becoming a content creator on those platforms. With Facebook‘s new feature of allowing podcasts to be streamed directly from a company’s page, we’d highly encourage you to start there. It is simple and fairly straight forward to build a Facebook page for your podcast.

Once you have a Facebook page, you’ll need to add the podcasting capability to your page and link your RSS feed. After that, you’ll automatically have your shows imported and updated to Facebook once you upload to your hosting platform. With your Facebook page up and running, start dabbling around with Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and believe it or not, LinkedIn. Even if your show isn’t business heavy, there are more and more people that listen to podcasts while working, and they all mostly have a LinkedIn account.

4. Pre-record at least 5 episodes

Consistency is a fundamental element to the continued success of your show. While some people may want to sporadically record their episodes and release them on their own schedule with little to no consistency, keep in mind people are creatures of habit. If you can penetrate people’s habits and have your show become a part of their routine, you’ve captured a listener for life.

Now, this is not to say that if you’ve already built a successful brand you can’t just release an episode whenever you feel like it, but if you’re just starting out, you want to keep peoples attention at every desired interval of your release dates. We recommend pre-recording at least 5 episodes of your show before releasing the first one. This allows you to have a backlog of content in case anything may come up in your life. You have to work at your job late, the kids get sick, YOU get sick, stuff happens, don’t let the uncertainty that is life cause your show to not even get off the ground.

Having a few episodes in the bank allows you to also take some time off from recording, if it becomes too much. The Patty-G Show is a weekly show, meaning we live stream our recordings every week and will continue to do so. If you want your frequency to be weekly, monthly, or even daily, you’ll need to make sure you’re planning out the next episode even before you record the current one. This not only creates a routine for yourself, but it can help minimize the stress of recording our show and continue to keep it an enjoyable activity.

5. Create a method of bringing video into your show

We’ve all seen those TikTok’s of creators posting their podcast episodes in video form. If you’re not on TikTok, maybe you’ve at least heard of Joe Rogan and his podcast on Spotify. He is infamously known for having one of the first wildly successful podcasts to incorporate video. After striking his deal with Spotify to have his show on that platform, exclusively, he made Spotify incorporate video into their own platform. Thus was created the vodcast.

While being behind a microphone can be daunting enough, adding video is just another element to cause the nerves a little shake. However, once you record that first episode, the rest of them will come naturally. Our first few episodes were not recorded in video and if we had to go back and change anything at all with the show, it would be to incorporate video even earlier. You may be asking yourself, but podcasting is all about audio and inactive listening, while you are correct, your show will need content to post across your social media channels.

Take for example YouTube. It is a place where you can listen or watch content in the long form and is set up especially to do so. If your podcast is an hour long, you are right up the alley of YouTube’s creative intentions. Not only does this provide you an additional platform for your show to be consumed, it gives you the ability to create shorter clips for IGTV, IG Reels, and TikTok all from a single episode. Talk about compounding content!

It doesn’t need to be the fanciest setup for your show. While high quality gear is key, don’t let that stop you from starting your show. The Patty-G Show was first recorded using the voice memos section of an iPhone 8.

Want to be a successful podcaster? It all starts by pressing record. 

Patty-G

At the end of the day, your podcast is your podcast, do what comes naturally to you and what is most comfortable. If being behind a video camera doesn’t get you all excited to record, just create videos audio videos from your content, they’ll still get the job done. These 5 tips for starting a successful podcast are those that we found extremely useful when getting our show off the ground. Over the past few years we have evolved and adapted with the times of increasingly available technology and expertise, don’t stop yourself from starting simply because you don’t have all the answers. Getting the content out there is far more important than taking too long perfecting the idea and never bringing it to market.

Are you a podcaster yourself? What tips have you found to be key in making your show a success?