Transcript

00:00 - As a newbie podcaster, you probably have a lot of questions swirling around in your head. Things like is there a right way to be publishing my podcast, should I be formal or more humorous or is there best practices to get my podcast out to new people. Well we have done a lot of research on the top podcasts that are winning right now. And I wanna give you six of those best practices to help you stand out on your podcast. -. You gotta just press record. -. This video is in partnership with Buzzsprout, the company that we use for our podcast. And I love them so much because they help make podcasting easy. Now if you're anything like me, time is very limited. You maybe are running your YouTube channel, running a business, and so you need something that is easy to use and Buzzsprout allows you to be able to post your podcast and distribute it to all of the places that people can listen to it on. What's up, my name is Heather Torres with Think Media and on this channel we do tech, your reviews, YouTube tips and podcasting tips just like this. If you're new here, consider subscribing.
01:05 Best practice number one is to have a publishing schedule. Think about this. How we have been consuming content for decades. Now is on a television, right? And with that, you knew exactly when your favorite episodes to your favorite TV shows were going to be released. Now obviously this is before the days of Netflix well. They would just give you all the episodes at one time, but if you think about traditional television, the traditional ways that people have been consuming content, it is by knowing when something is releasing.And so I wanna encourage you to have a publishing date. Now you might be thinking well is there a good day that I should be publishing my podcast. It should be on the date that works for you so if it's Tuesdays for you or if it's Sundays for you, you as the actual podcast producer needs to hold firm to that date. Now of course there's gonna be times when your podcast may not be able to come out, but I would just encourage you that come hell or high water, that your podcast episode comes out on that date because you want to be someone who is trustworthy to your audience. You don't want them to love your first three episodes and then you ghost them for the next three weeks. You wanna have the right schedule in place so that your people can start to fall in love with you. So tip number one is to get your publishing schedule in order. Best practice number two that the pros are doing right now is being authentic. Now I know you've heard this before, right? Be yourself, just do you.
02:34 But this is real when it comes to producing your podcast. Think about the intimacy of a podcast. You're in someone's ears. You and them are on a walk together, you and them are on a train together or in the car together. You and them are hanging out and so you wanna be the real you. So if you like to crack jokes between things, put the jokes in there. If you like to be more formal and more professional, make that your podcast. But be you times two. Be you, meaning actually bring your personality to what you're doing. You know, here at Think Media, we have our podcast that Sean and myself host and some people really love the episodes that are just Sean because he brings a different energy than I do. But then some people are on team Heather and they really love the podcast that I do. I talk faster. I use my hands a lot. Sean's more structured and really dialed in. So you just need to figure out what your personality is. And I know that at the beginning, you'll feel like you want to be someone else. It is kinda weird at first to start producing a podcast, especially if you're going to be turning on the camera. But here's the thing. You just have to be you.
03:42 Just pretend that it's you and a friend across from coffee talking about your favorite topics which is what your podcast is about. Just pretend that it's you and someone you're trying to help along the journey in whatever problem you're trying to solve. Be authentic, be yourself and make great work. Best practice number three is to optimize your podcast. Now Buzzsprout makes this so easy. When you sign up for Buzzsprout and you get your podcast on all of the major listening platforms, you have the ability to reach more people. Now what does it mean to optimize your podcast? It means that you should be looking at the analytics. Buzzsprout gives you a quite a bit of analytics for you to see what episodes are winning, which ones have the most views on them and which ones have the least views on them, which ones are showing that people are listening longer versus not listening at all. You wanna use the analytics that Buzzsprout gives you to be able to optimize your podcast to be best for the listener. That's the thing. You wanna fight for the listener. You wanna fight for them to have the best experience.And so one, distributing your podcast on all platforms and two, looking at all your analytics on a regular basis, that's gonna help you optimize your podcast. Now if you want to get signed up for a free trial of Buzzsprout, I'll make sure to link that down below for you. It is the platform that we use here at Think Media to distribute our podcasts on all major listening platforms. I love the different features that Buzzsprout allows. When you want us to share it on social media or if you wanna partner with brands to be sponsoring your podcast, Buzzsprout makes this easy. So you can get your free trial started today down in the description below. Best practice number four is to be present outside of your show. You know, podcasting right now doesn't really make it easy for you to be communicating with your audience. So you need to actually go to other platforms to be able to be creating deeper relationships. What does it mean to be accessible outside of your podcast?
05:41 Share with your audience where they can be talking to you on a one-to-one basis or a one-to-many basis, meaning maybe you should set up a Facebook group. Our friend Shalene Johnson, she has a Facebook group just for her podcast. That's where she's gathering ideas, that's where she's having conversations and going live and talking to her actual audience, the pod squad, that loves her content. Maybe you wanna tell people that they can reach you and give you ideas or share their stories inside of Instagram DMs. Maybe you wanna create a group or something inside of the DM space where you and a few of your audience members could be having a conversation. There's a lot of different ways that you can do this. Some podcasters actually have blogs linked to their podcast where people can go and actually leave more valuable interactions on their actual blog. There's a lot of ways, but you want to let your audience know that you're accessible. The top podcasts right now are having conversations with their audience and I wanna encourage you to open yourself up and get feedback from your audience rather than just creating in your own world. It's better to know exactly what the person on the other side needs than you thinking you know exactly what they need. So this week maybe you tell your podcast listeners, hey, you can reach to me on Instagram DMs and let me know your story. Send me a voice memo or maybe just send me an email.
07:02 Either way you wanna be accessible to your audience. Best practice number five is to invite guests on your show. Now a lot of shows actually depend on a single host charisma style, meaning that it's one person talking kind of in the same way every single time. And that's not a bad idea. You definitely can have a successful podcast as just being the only player in that podcast, but switch it up every now and then and invite a special guest onto your show. It allows for this intrigue in conversation. When someone gets to be a fly on the wall to you having a interesting conversation with someone of influence or someone that is influential to that group or that audience, it can really spark more interest in your podcast. The other benefit of this for a best practice is that that person then shares that with their audience where then in turn you can get more eyeballs to your podcast. So even if you don't have a "interview show," you can be inviting people on. Now here is my tip for you though.You wanna make sure you're steering the conversation in the right direction. People love to talk about themselves and especially. When you're interviewing them, they really can start to shift that conversation down a road that may not be beneficial for the audience listening. So go into it best practice with giving the actual questions you're going to ask upfront or structuring the conversation in more of a five tips that they need to know or something like that to give it a little bit more handles to the actual intent of that conversation so that your audience is getting the best from that guest. So invite a friend, invite an influencer onto your show and see what happens next. Best practice number six is to hire help.
08:48 Podcasting in itself, being a content creator in itself is something you can do as a solo creator, but if you wanna reach the masses, if you wanna be able to be running a business and running a podcast, if you wanna be able to be a full-time content creator, then I wanna encourage you to hire help. This can start with someone just editing your podcast or someone helping you with social media or someone being an assistant in the admin things that you need help with. But as you grow, it is best if you can actually get help with your podcast. Think about this as an investment into your future. And what is crazy is think about the time you're going to get back when you can hire someone to do a skill like edit your podcast. This is a rising industry, right? Getting audio and getting video out to the world is still an emerging industry. There are people that are skilled that can do it in 1/10 of the time that it takes you to actually get these things done. So set aside some of your budget and hire help. You can actually reach out on like fiverr.com, you can go to upworks.com or I would actually just say look in your own community. Who are the kids at the church who are helping do the audio and the video? Who in your community are the people that are obsessed with social media? Maybe get one of them to be a part of what you're doing.
10:10 Now here's the thing. When you hire help, it is going to force you to be accountable, meaning that you are going to be now having someone else relying on you to get your podcast out there. So I think it's actually a good thing to push yourself outside your comfort zone and have someone help you with your podcast. You could even do something like going to a podcast studio or hiring a podcast helper that comes in and you batch produce a ton of content like I'm doing here. I didn't set up all of this. Kyle from our team got everything ready. I am here batch recording for our podcast and for this YouTube channel. So you can do the same thing when you can hire help to get your podcast out to more people. Now I have a bonus tip for you, but if you're getting value out of this video, make sure you like it and if you like content like this, subscribe here on the channel and let me know down below what is your podcast about.I love seeing all the different emerging podcasts that have come out in the last year and I wanna know what podcast that you are doing right now. Here's my bonus tip for you. Best practice from all of the top podcasters out. There, they kept going. So best practice is keep posting your podcast, keep recording your show, keep going. One week and then another week and then another week because the top podcasters, if you look how long they've been doing it, they've been here for awhile. So I wanna encourage you to keep going. Keep publishing your work, keep getting your message out there and keep going. If you wanna know actually how you can get started with your podcast, you can click or tap the screen right now for my free walkthrough that I have. Or if you wanna catch the latest episode of the Think Media podcast, click or top the screen right now so you can go over and watch that. Thanks for watching and I'll catch you in the next video.