Hello everyone, and welcome to the first episode of the Voxonic Studio Digital Marketing podcast. That's a lot I know. And on today's episode, we're going to talk about all things, podcasts, and how to get you started. So I'm going to start off with some quick and easy tips to let you know how to get started. So the first question you have to ask yourself when you're starting a podcast is why am I starting a podcast? Are you a freelancer, a business, a marketing manager? Let's say you might have identified podcasting as a great way to build authority and provide your customers and target audience with valuable and entertaining content? Or are you looking at podcasting from a hobby point of view, it might be the reason you're creating a show in your spare time, and the subject would be something that you're passionate about. In either case, you can identify your why that's important to keep in mind. So you can stay motivated, even when you're finding it difficult to get a shirt. So who are you making this podcast for? That's another thing. Unless you know exactly who you're making your show for, and why you're doing it, you've got no chance at all at growing an audience. If you're coming at it from a business point of view. And you're, for example, working in the health industry, Europe, you're a personal trainer who wants to make a health and fitness podcast, then your target audience might be people who are interested in healthy eating, weight loss, exercise, or bodybuilding. Or if you're creating a hobby show, let's say it's are in your love of cars, then your target audience will simply be the same people with the same passion. They might be fans of TV shows like Top Gear, or fifth gear, Wheeler dealers, and such. Those are the people that you will be targeting for your hobby podcast. So the best way I find in trying to figure out who your target audience is is to sketch out or create an avatar of the type of person that you would like to listen to your content. So that persona is something to keep in mind every time you want to plan an episode, where John or Mary, our listener persona like this, is this content focused on what he or she likes, what they're interested in that persona. And those questions help you to keep your show focused and on track, both of which make for much more engaging content. So once you know who you want to reach, how do you reach them? Well, you need to give people a reason to listen. This means creating content that they will get something out of when they hit play. Before we get into that there's a couple of questions that always come up. So one of these questions, when you're starting a podcast, do I need an audience to start a podcast comes up time and time again. So some people already have an audience in place when they start a podcast that could be anything from a business or a brand to musician, athlete, author, blogger. If you already have an audience built around something other than your podcast, then it's a good opportunity for laying the foundation of the fan base. This assumes, of course, that your podcast is relevant to that audience already. You could reach out to this fan base already. If you have one. If you could ask them, what's your biggest pain? What are you struggling with right now, this could help you shape your content going forward? No, this is great. And all you know, just don't let it become a source of procrastination or you know, some sort of design by committee. Because the sooner you start, the better you have to throw the pebble into the water to make those waves so people can hear you. And here's the other side of the coin. What if I have no audience? Well, welcome to the vast majority of people who started a podcast of all the things that made put you off launching your own show, please don't let it be this one. Most podcasters do start it this way. But if you follow the next episodes in this podcast series, I'll show you how to steadily grow your audience from scratch. So first off some good news. Okay, so in the 2002 podcast discovery survey, the data showed that potential new listeners don't give a damn if they've never heard of you. In fact, it's the least important factor they'll consider when weighing up whether or not to hit play, you can check out the survey in my show notes. So know that you're starting to get over your anxiety and starting a podcast and the reason for starting the podcast. Now you have to give them a reason to listen. Whether you're providing information that will help somebody to lose weight in the case of our personal trainer podcast, or you're doing a really entertaining interview with a mechanic about cars. You're providing value for your listener. Not only have you given them a reason to listen, but you're also giving them a reason to come back for more, it's really important to think about this in the planning stages of your podcast, can you write down 1015 potential episodes that you think your target audience would love to listen to? So now you've got a rough idea of what you want to talk about and who your target audiences are. So now, your podcast description, also known as the short summary is the most important thing potential new listeners will judge you. So if that's the number one thing they're gonna judge you on, then you need to get it right. Go to my show notes, and I'll show you how to write the perfect summary for your podcast. So now that we know who our target audiences are, we know the content that we'd like to put out, what are we going to call the podcast. So you might think, have a really clever name for your show. But remember that people need to be able to find it when they're searching for made information about your topic. If you have a catchy name for your show, fairplay to you, then try to also incorporate a description into the title. There's no point in putting out great content if nobody can find it. For example, one of my clients is Brian kin. And he has the Brian Kean Fitness Podcast, simple, straight to the point, incorporates his name, and incorporates what he does. This is something that everybody should try and do. So now that we've got our title. And we know what we're going to talk about, how long is our podcast going to be? So there is no wrong or right answer to this, but many will reference the time of the average commute to work, which is 20 minutes to 30 minutes, which is a good length to shoot for. But don't really worry about these figures too much. Ultimately, your episode length should be decided by just two things, your content and your audience. If you have an hour of valuable relevant content, we chop it down to 20 minutes or 30 minutes. Likewise, if you said everything you need to say in 10 minutes way padded up to 25 minutes. In other cases, so you do an interview. And it's a really good conversation from start to finish, but it runs for two hours, you can always chop it up in half and create two-three episodes. So finally, for this episode, I want to talk about how often should you release new episodes. This is another one of those How To Start A Podcast questions. And so here's the answer. The best schedule is normally the most frequent one that you can stick to on a regular basis. So if you can only manage once a month, fair enough, if you can manage every two weeks, that's even better. If you can manage weekly, then that's great. You can still have a big impact with a fortnightly or monthly show. But people plan their lives around what day of the week it is, it's the routine at the forefront of our lives, and tapping into it can be powerful in saying that sticking to a deadline just for the sake of it is pointless, you'll have a bigger impact if you just put out one excellent episode a month instead of an average one every week. Quality over quantity every time. What I encourage my clients to do is to batch record their episodes. So if they have a particular amount of time where they're ...
