Listen Up: 7 Tips For Building a Winning Podcast (From Someone Who’s Been There)
Two and a half years ago, Don Halliwell had no podcast experience and no idea how to make one work. Today, he's the co-host of Risk Management: Brick by Brick, a leading risk management podcast that's helped TrustLayer, where he’s head of marketing, build its authority and credibility with risk managers.
How did he go from zero to 50 episodes and establish TrustLayer as a serious industry player in the process?
I asked him exactly that on a recent call. Read on for the seven things he'd recommend for anyone interested in launching a podcast for their brand.
1. Hire an Agency to Help with the Gruntwork
Don and Jason Reichl, his podcast partner in crime and TrustLayer’s chief revenue officer, didn’t know much about podcasting when they started out. But they knew how much they didn’t know, so they partnered with a company that did. From offering guidance on launching, booking guests, and building an audience to handling many of the technical aspects of the production, Don says Fame continues to be a huge part of the podcast’s ongoing growth and success.
“Don’t feel like you have to do everything yourself,” he notes. “If you're more interested in just creating the content and having the production side taken care of by someone else, certainly explore that.”
2. Focus First, Then Broaden
One early piece of advice that Fame offered TrustLayer: go smaller rather than broader when building its audience. So Don and Jason started by focusing on risk managers in US construction companies, going very deep in a niche segment.
Once they had an audience, they found it easier to broaden, slowly expanding to incorporate risk management experts from a range of different industries. In a recent episode, for example, Jason spoke with a risk manager from the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team – a fair departure from construction.
3. Always Remember: Tech is Fine, But Content is King
Don says that if you have a great idea for a podcast, start brainstorming topics, seeking out guests, and recording rather than sweating the technical details.
“Of course a thousand-dollar microphone will make things sound better, but if you're just starting out, you can do it with your laptop microphone,” he explains. “You don’t have to have the best studio-quality technology to build an audience. What really matters is the host, the content, and the guests that you're bringing in – that's the mix.”
4. Build a Great Roster of Guests
Make no mistake – producing a podcast over the long haul can be a grind, and no more so than when it comes to booking guests, managing frequency, dealing with scheduling and cancellations, etc.
Don says some of TrustLayer’s earliest guests were loyal longtime customers, folks who were happy to help out without any evidence of how this was all going to play out. That’s a great place to start. From there, use completed episodes as proof of concept for expanding your guest network by:
- Reaching out directly to potential prospects via LinkedIn
- Tapping PR firms, who are no doubt looking for placements for their interesting clients
These types of outreach efforts have yielded an impressive roster of guests for TrustLayer over the years, Don says.
“We're talking with real risk managers and sharing their voices, and that's always impactful,” he says. “Why say it ourselves when we can have our customers and our community talk about it instead? Now it's not just a pitch for the software – it's genuinely helping out the audience with great information.”
5. Turn Every Episode Into Multiple Marketing Opportunities
Recording an engaging podcast is one thing, but distribution is really where the rubber hits the road. Fame helps TrustLayer get its shows on all the major platforms – Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Audible, etc. – but from there Don goes into promotion mode himself.
For every episode, he also…
- Produces three video snippets for social media, designed for easy swiping on a phone or LinkedIn.
- Writes a blog post, preferably something that is less transcript and more thought leadership piece (a critical piece of the growth puzzle).
- Encourages the guests’ companies – and the guests themselves – to share their episode with their networks.
For example, a recent episode spawned…
- An episode listing
- The episode itself on several platforms
- A blog post
- A YouTube video
- Multiple social media posts, including a promo and several short clips
- Social shares from the guests and their employer
Ultimately, Don’s goal is to get up to 10 pieces of content from every 30-minute podcast (a terrific reminder of the value of repurposing).
“That's the sweet spot,” he says. “That orchestration of distribution is what has really helped us go from this relatively new risk management show to kind of being seen as a standard in the industry.”
6. Be Ready for the 6-Month Slump
Don says it’s easy to get caught up in the early excitement of starting a podcast, only to get discouraged as the metrics trail off or the grind of producing a consistently good product becomes wearying.
TrustLayer confronted that ennui by switching up the podcast format six months in, adding a game-style feature called “risky or too risky” that Jason plays with every guest. The key is to find a way to push through.
“That six-month mark is where a lot of people give up – the novelty has worn off, maybe the numbers aren’t what you're expecting,” he explains. “But Jason and I maintained that our mission was to get to know our audience and the rest of it was kind of just gravy. So if we can continue to get to know risk managers and their challenges a little bit better, and share that with our listeners, then the metrics start to matter less. And that keeps us going.”
7. Have Fun!
Don says that for him and Jason one of the best things about the podcast is the chance to get outside the box of their everyday work. For all of the ongoing effort they’ve put in to keep it going and growing, it’s also been a lot of fun.
“The podcast feels like kind of a side quest that's more of a passion project than work for us,” he says. “And getting to meet all of these risk managers who we otherwise would just email with or just advertise to or just have come to our website has been a huge plus for us. That humanizing element has been really special for me.”
Ready to Take the Podcast Plunge?
As Don Halliwell’s experience at TrustLayer demonstrates, one of the biggest keys to building a successful podcast is going in with a sense of curiosity – about the format, about your industry, about your audience. From there, it’s mostly about putting in the work and refining your process as you go.
And the resulting product can pay huge dividends for any B2B company looking to get the word out and build trust. And as we’ve noted many times, building trust is essential in B2B.