How to Start a Podcast You Love

Set your goals and motivations before getting into any other areas of starting a podcast. Once you “find your why” for the podcast, you’re set to tackle the work of recording, producing, distributing and growing your podcast.

Once you begin planning your content, understanding your audience is a key advantage. Doing something that you love is a great way to guide your thoughts. Is the listener like you? Do you share a common interest ? Why are they listening? If you can get to the heart of that topic, then you will be getting off on a good footing.

This podcast episode is the audio companion to the blog article “How To Start A Podcast: Goals, Topics and Motivation“

Episode Transcription

0:14
This episode is the audio companion to a blog piece called How To Start A Podcast goes topics and motivation. I have to admit, I blatantly wrote this blog post in response to search queries, which were coming in and drawing people to my website. So I thought, Okay, if that’s what people are searching for the “How To Start A Podcast” bit, I’ll share what I think about how you should start a podcast.

DIY 1976

I always have two kind of competing drivers when I’m writing these sorts of things. So the first one is a little bit historic; it’s the punk rock era where there was a saying, and an illustration, “here’s three chords, now form a band”

It sort of got latched on to, in retrospect, to something which really typifies that kind of punk rock era of – here’s some building blocks now go off and do something even bigger. There’s probably lots of parallels around that now. But that was like 1976, or there abouts. And it I think it really resonates like, let’s do the show here. You know, just however, you can do it, if you’ve got something to say, find a way to say it.

So, I have that point of view, which kind of says, Alright, if the best you can you can muster is a recording on Zoom, then go for your life. But on the other hand, I’ve got my sort of audio snob point of view of going? “Well, of course, you could do that. However, your audio would really be communicating a sort of lower view of your brand.” Which you probably would but at the end of the day, the basic choice is do it or don’t do it. So doing it wins every time.

Love Your Topic

Here’s my take on getting into some of the nitty gritty about it.

Love your topic, before you get into any of the sort of technical stuff about how you’re going to record it, how will it be produced? How are you distributed and promoted and grow the audience? We need to identify at the core, what is your content. Now I’ve seen a lot of advice from internet experts about researching niches and approaching the the topic of your podcast from a strategic point of view. And of course, there’s nothing wrong with doing research. But my view of podcasting as a medium is that it excels at authenticity. So whatever it is that you talk about, you should love that topic. Because that will come through in your voice.

It might be that through researching, you can discover a niche that has less competition or a commonly searched problem that needs to be solved. But there’s not really a practical way that you could jump on that and sound like that, that you really have a passion in in that area. And it’s another sort of feature of podcasting because generally speaking, people who are hosting and speaking on podcasts are not trained broadcasters, but they’ve got their finger on the pulse of a community, or they have an enthusiasm about a certain topic, or they’re an authority on a certain topic. And that’s where the real juice is, in podcasting. It’s actually people who are letting their passion speak.

So you may have used Google Trends to find something that’s a popular kind of SEO Term of the day. But I don’t recommend that that is your guiding light. So if we were to condense it down, it would be choose a topic you love. And ask yourself, How can you be useful to the listeners who share the interest in that topic. And I think that second point, be useful to your listener is key in in lots of respects.

So keeping the listening audience in mind in in all of your decisions will be a really valuable guide as you build your show. Knowing what it is that you’re offering them will guide your choice of topic and of guests and the line of questions that you take and the whole general sort of vibe of the show. So coming back down to something which anyone who’s had any business mentoring, as I have recently gets asked is “What’s your why?”, why are you doing this, this thing and what does it give you and what does it give the people who you’re hoping to offer it to?

Motivation

I sort of break down my clients into a couple of different areas when I sort of tried to work out, what’s their why, so that I can offer them a better, better service that that caters for their why. So it usually breaks down into reputation building for them, or their, or their business, engagement and promotion of those same things, or more broadly, a kind of strategic content marketing strand where they’re engaging with the industry that they are a part of.

5:41
Producing a podcast is not a small undertaking, and that the relentless promotion that’s needed to grow an audience is definitely not something to underestimate. So why are you why are you doing it? If you don’t know that all of that time and effort and workload gets pretty overwhelming quickly.

80% of all podcasts started in the last 12 months, never get past episode six. And this is why it’s people discover that there’s not an automatic audience for it, and you need to make time and possibly your Sunday afternoons for forevermore are gone while you work on all of the details of the podcast.

Ask The Internet

I kind of have these impressions and opinions that I get through working with the clients who come through this case, Julio. But I thought I would road test that thought a little bit. So I went on to a couple of Facebook groups that I’m a member of and pose that that question to the group, What’s your why? What’s the goal of producing your podcast for you?

I got some really interesting responses, which I’ll share with you here. There’s two groups, actually one of them is based in Australia, and one of them I think, is probably more US-centered.

So from the Australian Podcasters, the responses of ‘what’s the why” came in like this.

Well, it’s mostly to have fun, and probably socialize and make professional relationships to help promote and service heavy music to the masses, because mainstream still consider it a niche market.

Right, amen. I’m behind you with that

I’ve heard a bunch of people say, and I agree that if you find what you do to be of service to your audience, you will never struggle to stay motivated.

Kind of philosophical sounding take, which I agree with, I think the key to that will be how do you know whether what you do is of service to your audience, I think it’s a great motivation, to be of service. So I guess it sort of indicates maybe this podcaster has a really good feedback loop with his with his listeners, and kind of gets a good sort of gauge on whatever he’s talking about. And how that’s how that lands with the listener. Here is another one,

to share something myself and my team love gaming and storytelling.

There we go, you know, find your passion, do something that you love. And there it is. He’s using the very words as well share something that you love,

it’s just for fun. We love sport and talk sport. So why not record it and see if people like it? We have a small audience, but honestly, we do it for our enjoyment.

Yeah.

Networking, get to meet a lot of interesting people and hopefully make a bit of coin from it once we build an audience.

Yeah. Why not? Good luck with making the coin. But I wouldn’t put that in the why not unless you’ve got a whole other sort of support network around you about commercial, podcasting.

Share my passion with the world. All of my other work is focused on highlighting other creatives and their passions. So my podcast is for me to share mine.

Intriguing Jamie apps. I wonder what? Maybe that’s the that’s probably the answer, which kind of begs kind of “ask me more”.

Maybe I’ll get Jamie Apps on on this podcast, I will talk about that.

Now I thought the US-centric group might just kind of give me a little little contrast or, you know, I don’t know I just thought maybe this will come up with some some sort of different angle on that kind of “What’s your why?”. So here’s a few of those.

I started my show for increased visibility and to provide a resource that would help end shame and stigma around my topic area.

Yeah, so it’s the same kind kind of thing, someone articulating something that they have an interest in and kind of exploring that,

To carry the message of 12 step recovery to those who still suffer. My podcast is called fragmented to whole life lessons from 12 step recovery.

Good one, Bob, getting the name of the podcast in the response, that’s something that I would try and do as well. But yeah, it’s another kind of life, you know, core sort of life experience thing that someone’s exploring and communicating here.

Here’s an interesting one

Generosity, I want to help people and meet people to expand my network in order to help more people.

My sister and I started our show, because one like it doesn’t exist. We both have a four hour round trip commute and found ourselves talking a lot about the crazy things we witnessed or experienced on the road. And that’s where the idea sparked.

Yeah, that’s, that’s, it’s almost it’s, yeah. I think my podcast, which has become a podcast about podcasting is not alone in its topic now. But podcasting about commuting for people who commute is similarly like really good, but convoluted as well.

I used to have a four hour round trip, commute, actually. And it was a killer. It was a real killer. By the time I’d done that for just over a year, I was very ready to stop doing it and move to the other side of the world. Which, which is how I came to be here in Australia, not exclusively because of the commute, of course. But it’s, it’s tough. It’s really tough. And it depends on what modes of transport that you have. The train network that I was using, was very frustrating, and a very poor experience.

Anyhow, yeah. So that’s the responses from I would say, from the US end of podcasting. Yeah, I think it’s probably I one point, I thought, Oh, well, they were they were different. But that’s kind of the same in the motivations, really. Some people doing things that are very personal to them, and others doing it for that reputation enhancing kind of piece.

Tony Moon, Sniffing Glue and Sideburns

So moving on, Punk Rock DIY, “here’s three chords now form a band”. Yeah, when I was doing this, I, I had that little saying in my mind, and I thought, I wonder, could I look this up? And what’s you know what’s behind that because all I had, I knew it occurred in a punk rock fanzine like a homemade little magazine. I thought properly, it seems to have been incorrectly attributed for much of its life to being published in a fanzine called sniffing glue, which is one of the more famous punk fanzines actually was not published in Sniffing Glue. The editor of Sniffing Glue is now kind of vocal. It’s saying, “Hey, I didn’t publish this”.

But I researched and I put a link in the end of the blog article to a gallery, which is publishing a signed edition of that, that page. And it’s basically a diagram of three guitar chords. “This is a chord, this is another this is a third now form a band”. It’s by a writer called Tony Moon. And I’m not being critical here, he’s making a bit of money out of it right now, which he never most likely would have done at the time.

So you can buy that and have that on your wall, I’m pretty interested in getting that assigned a number as well. I’m always a sucker for signed and numbered. And let me just tell you, just for the sake of completeness, it was in our there it is, it was in a magazine called Sideburns. Not Sniffing Glue at all. So there we go, Punk Rock.

However you are doing your podcast, whether you’re recording your chat on Zoom, or whether you’ve got a little bit more refined and higher quality, audio production. This piece about goals and topics I think is still really valuable. And it’s really good for you to get that down – why are you doing it and if it is to make a bit of coin or to grow a network or grow an audience.

You might need a few other bits of strategy around that which you can then sort of hook into the into the promotion. You might have some other URLs or the content even, you might have some other ways that you want to engage and sort of collect your audience together so that you can actually convert them into whatever useful conglomerate you wish to.

So anyway, let’s not get distracted into other things. Here’s three chords. Now form a band.