By Valerie Geller
“Podcasting, like karaoke, is open to anyone brave enough to pick up a mic”
THE RADIO PODCAST: A SECOND CHILD
The challenge in successful podcasting for radio: To offer listeners additional content that breaks through a deluge of abundant competing content; plus enhances your brand, attracts new and younger listeners and makes money.
Your podcast doesn’t replace your radio station or broadcast. Think of it as a second child, Your podcast efforts ADD to it, it’s an additional canvas upon which to create.
Many radio personalities enjoy the freedom of not dealing with over-the-air broadcast rules and regulations, time constraints or formatic restrictions. But stay true to brand, radio podcasts should protect the image and brand of your station as well as the expectations of the audience.
HIGH QUALITY PODCASTS ARE EXPECTED FROM RADIO PROS
Podcast training has become one of the joys of my broadcast coaching and training business. Successful hosts come from everywhere: newspapers, comedy, TV, magazines, theater, law, real estate, and teaching. Although anyone can be a podcaster with a microphone and a smartphone, radio podcasters are expected to be better, coming experienced.
PODCASTING IS THE NEW OVERNIGHT SHIFT
You now have a golden platform to develop new talent. Your station may be filled with talented or funny, creative off-air staff or support staff, who want to be performers. It’s a place for the less experienced or those not ready to be on the air to show what they can do. You may have a star in the making.
GET THE “HARD TO GET” MEETING
“Be on my podcast” has become the new “Let’s have lunch.” Here’s an excellent way to gain access to hard-to-reach decision makers. Savvy radio account executives have found podcasting can be a new way to get to and meet with previously elusive potential clients. If you’ve been trying to contact an executive CEO or business owner who didn’t, take your call, or answer your email, you may find they’re happy to be a guest on your podcast.
THIS IS NOT a commercial for a potential client’s product or service but rather, getting to know someone — try asking each how they got started and to share their advice and stories. As with any content, to engage audiences, it has to be interesting, fun, informative, entertaining or relevant.
WHAT’S YOUR PODCAST ABOUT?
One of the great strengths of podcasting: it is narrowcasting rather than broadcasting. As long as a radio station keeps to its brand image, go as weird and niche with your topics as you’d like. Find your unique niche.
MAKE AS MANY AS YOU WANT
Canada’s Lead Podcasting founder says, “People think that once they start a podcast they have to keep going indefinitely. They feel like they’re on a hamster wheel — producing once a day, week, or once a month, forever. Before you publish your first podcast, commit to a certain number of episodes that you think is realistic and sustainable. Stop there. Call it ‘Season One.’ Decide later if you want to continue.”
CREATING POWERFUL PODCASTS
Anyone can talk, so hosting a podcast should be easy, right?
Coming Soon…
If you’ve tried it, you know it can be harder than it looks. Whether your distribution platform is over-the-air or online–the Geller Media International Creating Powerful Communicators Principles work.
- Speak Visually – in terms a listener can picture
- Start with your best material
- Podcasts are pre-recorded. They last forever online. Make it perfect.*
- Never let anything go too long
- Listen
- Always ask: “Why would someone want to hear this?”
- What is the unique journey? What is the talkable topic?
- Did you inform, entertain, inspire, persuade, and connect?
- Address each listener individually, use the word “YOU.”
- Stay Curious
- Relax, let natural humor happen
- Be who you are
- Take Risks.
The rules for powerful broadcasts also work for podcasts: Be authentic. Make it matter. Never be boring.
EXCERPTED WITH PERMISSION FROM THE FORTHCOMING 2024 EDITION OF BEYOND POWERFUL RADIO – An Audio Communicator’s Guide to the Digital World by Valerie Geller, Routledge Press
International broadcast consultant Valerie Geller is an author, talent coach and trainer for radio and podcasting. An in-demand keynoter, and workshop leader, she is one of Radio Ink’s Most Influential Women, and has worked in 42 countries, helping more than 500 stations get, keep and grow audiences. She will be in Australia presenting a Powerful Radio session in October 2024 for the CBAA