🙌 Tips and Wisdom from a Podcast Consultant

Presented by Podcast Movement 2024

🎧 Be a Listener

Podcasting is an infinite game—we play in order to keep playing. To be a better player for our audience, we have to consistently get away from the mic and step into the shoes of a listener.

Make time to exchange the megaphone for headphones and listen to your favorite shows (and make a point to discover new ones). The less we spend with others’ podcasts, the more untapped we become from an industry that asks just one thing of us: to listen.

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🎙️ Signal Flow: Ana Xavier

Industry game changers and valiant minds from creative professions share their wisdom, adversities, and paths to innovation.

In January 2020, Ana Xavier founded The Podcast Space, an online podcast consulting agency. She works with female, minority, and multilingual businesses that support the betterment of others and their common communities. Along the way, she mentors them to make a greater positive impact on their audience and become more confident hosts. Her weekly show, The Podcast Space, is a 5% Top Global Reach podcast.

You don't always need to create the best episode, the best social media posts, the best newsletter, the best resources on your website. What you do need to do is consistently show up, to represent your brand and core beliefs, and adjust to the seasons of life as they come.

People were booking podcast power hours with me to look at whatever was wrong with their content. And it was a 50/50 rate in terms of them actually implementing the strategies after our calls. I started digging into the type of people who were booking meetings with me and I realized my neurodivergent clients were super overwhelmed. They're like, “Oh, my gosh, one hour after we meet I don't know what to prioritize, I don't know what is important, and I don't have any accountability.” 

So, I started splitting my services based on the type of podcaster, whether they were neurotypical or neurodivergent. A neurotypical podcaster is the one who sits down and can map everything about the content strategy, they can work months ahead of time. And my neurodivergent clients tend to go through ups and downs of creative bursts. So I take that into account when building a plan and providing tools.

I’ve had so many clients who would be like, “Oh my gosh, I'm totally booked up. I'm gonna not bother with posting or the newsletter or even the podcast.” And then the pipeline dries out. And when you stop training your podcasting muscle, you atrophy. You definitely need to make time. But if your time needs to fluctuate, as long as you set up expectations with your audience, they’ll stick around.

Something that works really well is to look at high-performing pages on my website and slide in related episodes on those pages. I see consistent spikes in those specific episodes I embed.

My primary audience is podcasters. My secondary audience is podcast experts, my peers. Something that I noticed on my show is that, because it's a podcast about podcasting, I’ll get these cycles every three months. I see a dip, I think people may have graduated from my content. They binge my content, and then get to the end. That’s when I drive them to my advanced courses.

I run a mastermind on Fridays, and I have a Discord for us. Whenever I feel like business is slow, others in the group confirm they’re in the same boat. So it seems to be like we're usually synced in a rhythm. It helps to be connected to the community in that way, knowing that lulls can be an industry-wide situation and not just specific to me.

One strategy that always works no matter what: going to events in person. Every single time I go, I see a spike in downloads and new listeners.

Often, a client’s content strategy is based on things that are easy for them to talk about, and not strategic business goals. For example, if you want business to come to you, and you're never talking about your expertise, or you're not inviting people on your show that are industry experts (or potential clients), you’re missing out on a big opportunity.

Content is great for being top of mind. But what actually moves the needle in your specific situation?

I would love to challenge people to question what they're creating. It’s easy to get caught up in trying to match or beat what everyone else is doing versus understanding what your community needs from you. Find how you can make that happen within your given availability and skill set. Once those expectations are clear, you can silence the panic and anxiety of content creation. Because as long as you're providing one piece of content that is valuable, one thing that they can take away from that episode, you’re golden.

🥾 Further Exploration

Every failing podcast does this.

Pat Flynn shares five reasons podcasts fail, an intriguing watch for newbies and veterans alike.

ICYMI:

🎤 Storytelling Insights from The Moth

🥊 What Makes It to the Ring + Lindsay McMahon

🤔 Where do you keep your ideas? + Drew Ackerman