How to Kick-Start Your Podcast

Starting a podcast always comes with a rush of excitement, nerves, and big ideas. To help you put your best foot forward, I’ve put together a step-by-step guide to setting up your new show. Below is everything you need to know, from strategy creation to search engine optimisation.

A podcast with a solid strategy will outlast one that doesn’t.

Before you do anything else, you need to create a strategy. You need to figure out the important things, like who it’s aimed at and its purpose, both for your company and your audience. This could look like building more brand awareness with potential clients while becoming a go-to source of information for your audience. To help get the ball rolling, have some conversations with people who would be your ideal listeners and guests. Figure out what’s important to them. Running polls on LinkedIn will also help you get more data and build some momentum with your audience.

It’s far more important to figure out your topics than your guests.

It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of deciding who you’ll invite to the show, but it’s important to get your ducks in a row first. Rather than lining up your industry influencers, you should prioritise figuring out the topics that will benefit your audience. After all, your listeners are the most important part of your podcast.

At this stage, you should focus on conceptualising what your podcast’s core theme or topic is. Most podcasts can be set up with five or six topics. For us, it’s email marketing, social media, marketing strategies, podcasting, and recruitment websites. Brainstorm what your topics could be, then narrow them down to a cohesive group that you can keep going back to with each guest.

Don’t choose style over substance when it comes to branding.

Once you’ve established what you’ll talk about on your podcast, you can start thinking about the show’s name and branding. For B2B podcasts, it’s generally best to keep the branding similar to your company’s, as this fosters more brand awareness and recognition. However, the name needs to be searchable and reflect the topics that you’ve chosen if you want it to appear in organic searches. Some tips for naming your podcast are:

• Don’t choose anything too abstract
• Put your main topic, like ‘marketing’, in the title
• Keep it short and memorable

A lot of your listeners will find you by searching for your topic on Spotify, Apple Podcasts etc, so optimising your title will be well worth the effort.

When it comes to visual branding, there are plenty of routes you could take, from echoing your company’s brand colours to using your host’s face to give it a more personal feel. Visual assets are the easiest thing to change further down the line, but it’s still important to create something that your audience will recognise and gravitate towards. For example, if you’re hosting a more serious podcast about financial technology, choosing a cartoon or caricature as your thumbnail is probably not the way to go. Spend time experimenting with your branding (or outsource to some professionals like us) until you find something that really clicks.

Now for the fun bit - recording your first episode!

Now that you’ve got a purpose, topic, and name, you can start reaching out to some guest speakers and inviting them on the show. You can also start thinking about your ideal recording setup, whether that’s at a swanky studio or with a crisp background on Zoom.

Make sure you’re subscribed so you don’t miss out on the next instalment, where I’ll explain the more practical side of hosting a podcast, like my go-to recording setup and some small tweaks that can make a big difference to your podcast.