The Podcaster's Path

00:00 - Speaker 1
What's up people, welcome back to the podcasters path. I'm your host, chris. Today I want to get into how you build your podcast brand. How do you build a brand that stands out and separates your show from all the other shows in the marketplace? I feel like I should explain why this is so important.

00:17
If you think about where we are in terms of content creation, podcasting, all of that, right, we're at a different place now, where pretty much everybody has a show or they're listening to shows. So if you're creating a new show or if you have a podcast and you meet somebody that is into shows or whatever, you have to replace the shows that are already in their playlist. You know what I'm saying. Like, everybody's posting their Spotify rap right now. If you wanna be a part of their Spotify rap next year, you got to replace the shows they listen to this year, because it's just not an unlimited amount of time, right? Um, and I think we as podcasters kind of forget that it's competitive in this space and that there are other people that make content, that have shows, that produce content and and make things and have their opinions and perspectives. You got to remember that when you're making your content. You know what I'm saying so that you make sure you stand out. Like when I'm making content like this, I always remind myself that there is some other I don't know podcast expert, guru, coach, whatever you want to call it that's trying to give this information, it's trying to, most of the time, sell this information right, and that I won't say it changes what I do. It just makes me focus even more right, because when I make content, I always like to and this is what I think helps you with your branding is always vision yourself, talking to one prospect. You know, think of it as I'm talking to this one person about this one subject and I got to get my point across, like I got 20 minutes to change their mind about this thing.

01:48
Taking that more serious and structured approach makes it really, really easy to make this type of content, whether I'm doing a solo or if I'm doing an interview. It's now easy to make this because I'm thinking about talking to just one person. So I'm going to go through some very specific tactics and strategies you can implement to make sure that your podcast brand stands out completely. Okay. So the first thing is you want to have a very clear, direct outcome, like very clear and direct. And one strategy I use and this is a little framework you can use listen to podcast name if you want this desired outcome. I want you to listen to the Startup Founder Roadmap if you want to learn more about becoming a profitable startup founder. That simple, it's that simple. And that show is for bootstrapping startup founders. That's it.

02:38
And when you have that clear of a specific and direct message and an outcome like it doesn't get any easier because now people listening to the show, they know exactly what they get from listening and if I'm thinking about listening to your show, it's not really that hard to make a decision at that point. You know what I mean Because you've said what it is. And I think you should put this kind of direct outcome into your social media posts, your bio, a pin tweet, your pinned post on Instagram or Facebook or whatever. It should be very, very clear that, hey, if you listen to this podcast, this is what you get from it. This is important for us as the smaller podcasters. Like when you're starting off doing something new, you got to be clear and direct about it.

03:19
Like I'm working on a new show currently about you know, about the seattle area, so what I'm doing is I'm kind of creating a show and a newsletter for events, the best food activities, all that stuff in the seattle area from as far south as, like I want to say, lacy, as far north as like kirkland, maybe both or something like that. So within that I don't know 80 mile like radius or whatever 80, 100 mile radius, whatever it is, I'm gonna cover all different restaurants and go around interviewing business owners and all that stuff like that's gonna be my thing, right and so, with me taking that approach, I got to make it clear that when you listen to the show, you're going to learn about the most popular trends, the best food places and the most fun, affordable activities within the Seattle area. Simple, right. And I think, taking that approach, when you're direct, like that, again, I want people to come across that show that might be visiting Seattle Like, oh man, what can I do? Look, check out the podcast, check out the newsletter, right, look and see what we just talked about. If you want to try certain types of food, this is where you go to check it out.

04:37
You know, I think it could be really simple to get people to listen if you're always direct with what they get. Now imagine to get people to listen if you're always direct with what they get. Now imagine if I flipped this and I did it a different way and I'm like, yeah, listen to this, if you want to check out seattle, and it's not really as specific or detailed, it will be hard to get people to listen to it. If I said, yeah, check out the west coast show, like that's just too broad and I think the broad thing can kind of hurt your brand too. Like I know a lot of people say you should do that. I don't agree. Like I don't agree that you should be super broad, because for me, again, with my show, to start a founder roadmap, if I was super broad with the kind of founders I'm talking to, it would be very, very difficult to get the result that I want.

05:21
I want to build a product from the show. Long term, I want to build a whole product, a whole brand. I want to work with startup founders myself long term I'm talking in like three, four or five years. But I can't do that if I'm focused on all types of founders across all spaces, across the entire world. No, that's why I chose to work with bootstrap founders, who are where I am right now, because we're on the same playing field. You know what I mean. And long term, I want to work with founders on their marketing, on getting more users, getting more customers. So that's kind of why I positioned my show that way. You see, like this is a getting more customers. So that's kind of why I positioned my show that way. You see, like this is the kind of in-depth thinking that has to go into your show. You know what I mean. Like that's just so important.

06:04
Another part of this is leveraging your experience. I think it's a really big deal when you can talk about your experiences and things that you've done, things that you have gone through yourself, that you've seen with your own eyes. Like you need to put that into your show. You need to put that into your content, and I think a lot of founders run from this. I don't know why. I don't know why so many creators run from being personable.

06:29
Now, I do think part of it is if you want to have privacy, I get that, but I also think, with that, is there different types of privacy, right? Like I do think there are certain a part of your life that you should be willing to share and talk about. Like I'm not going to talk too much about my family. That's just not something I want to share online on a podcast or anything Like. I like to keep that part private. But in terms of anything I go through in business or with my content and stuff, any of those experiences, I'm less fair game. I'm willing to share that with the world and I like sharing that stuff. I think me talking about my failures and things that I've done, good or bad, it helps my audience in some way Because if I made a mistake, you can now not make the mistake because you heard me say I did this, I did that and that was a mistake. I think that's kind of how I look at it is. I'm providing more value to my audience when I leverage my experience, when I talk about things I have done.

07:22
And a big trap here is talking about things you want to do as if you've done them. You don't want to get into that because that's a blurry line. That's kind of dangerous. I think it's a lot better when you can say I've done this thing, I've done this thing, like I had this outcome, blah, blah, blah, like when you can take that approach of what you actually done. That is a bigger separator, you know, because you're not leaning into it Like well, this is what I kind of want to do. I thought about doing that. You don't want that. It's not something you can really stand on, because you may have somebody who DMs you on social media or you get invited to an event to actually talk about it. Like if you've never actually done it and you've only had theories about it, you're going to look crazy when you try to talk about it in depth and you want to avoid that. So talk about things you've done and outcomes that you've gotten, okay. So last thing here is to remember that social media can help you position your show. It can help you, but it's not for you to tell people to listen to your show and I'm going to do another episode on this but social is for you to give updates on what you're doing.

08:30
A lot of times we use social media as a billboard and I don't think your social media should be a billboard, like it can be if you're trying to be a model or a photographer, that works, but I find that if you're trying to build a community, you have to use social as not more of a billboard where you're constantly promoting something it has to be more of. I want to say it's called an art board, like when those cartoonists are like drawn and taking notes and all of that stuff. That's what it should look like. It should look like the behind the scenes and then it should look like your process and then some finished work. Yeah, you want to do some promotions, but it should be a mixture of those things. So, if you're on on Instagram, people should be able to see what you're building. So if you're on Instagram, people should be able to see what you're building.

09:19
Like with me building PodCentral, one of my biggest goals is to continue to put out more content about just what I'm building in terms of software. Because, you know, in my mind I thought, like man, everybody's just something like this, I don't need to talk about it that much. That's what I was thinking back in like 2022, when I actually built the thing. And like I realized, like a few months ago, that most people don't even have an idea to build a software tool, let alone actually go and build it. And I built one Right. Like I've actually built something that people pay for and they use and actually helps them and I make money from it. It's kind of insane, like as I it's, even with ai, like I think sometimes we think like man, we're on, I'm on twitter, I'm on um, in facebook groups and we know a lot because we're in those worlds every day. Man, I had to go to la to see my family and when I'm there made me realize just how far ahead some of us are in terms of, like, what's going on in the world with crypto, ai, all of that stuff.

10:23
Like I use ChatGPT every day. I'm on ChatGPT more than I'm on Instagram or Facebook any of that stuff. I use that app more than anything. I pay my little 20 bucks a month and I'm constantly doing something, making something like everything every day. So I say all that to say when you're doing those things, I think it's good to show the world you're doing those things Right. So if you go on chat GPT to make this product, or if you use it to make an um, uh like for me, if I use it to make notes for an episode, I can easily make a video of me doing that and just show it off to people.

11:00
Like look, this is how AI helps me with my podcast, like it's kind of that simple. It's really that simple and I think if you're using that in your show's process, you know what I want to give you another example, because this is what I think more people should be using. For my Seattle local newsletter idea. I just went to chat gpt and I kind of broke it down like okay, this is what I want to do, this is what I'm thinking about, and it just gave me a bunch of ideas and a bunch of concepts. You should be doing that, and then you can show behind the scenes on your instagram like look, this is how we choose the top five movies we're going to talk about, or it's end of the year, we're going to talk about the best albums from the year. This is how we got our ranking. And it could be even if you don't use ai. You and your friends could just be on the whiteboard and talking about it and then you record a whole episode later. You know what I'm saying.

11:47
I think we as podcast hosts because we can't get discovered like a youtuber can we got to use social in a way that's going to get us discovered, meaning we start more conversations, we talk about trending topics. We have to put in the effort to make our social platforms focused on engagement over anything else. So if you just focus on clips from your show, quotes from your show, the logo or your guest, like, that works if you already have a massive audience and a massive brand. If you're trying to build to that level, you can't take that approach. You got to take more of an inviting approach where people are like a part of the process. You know what I mean. Like because again, let's say, you're doing a movie podcast and you want to talk about the top 10 movies of 2024. Right, that would be an amazing episode. Right, you have a lot of fun with that.

12:39
You want to go on Instagram before you even record anything and ask your audience like, okay, so we doing our top 10 movies for 2024. What's one movie that you think cannot be left off this list? It may not be number one, but you can't leave it off the top 10 list and think about how many people that are the movie lovers that follow you that are going to. You can make it a post and tell people to put it in the comments. Now, what happens when you post? Again, that person that liked and commented and then shared that to their story or sent it to their friend. When you post again, they see more of your content, whereas if you just posted a clip of you talking about your favorite movies, it'll kind of work. If you say something controversial like this movie was terrible and everybody loved it, yeah, you'll get a lot of comments on that, but people won't come back. They'll start to love to hate you, versus if you make them a part of what it is that you're talking about. That's how you get that engagement.

13:36
Next level, right, and this is a big thing, for I think launching a show or marketing a show, branding a show everybody should be doing this in their own way. Right, this is how you build a community around your show. That's how you get a lot of people to engage with your brand and engage with your content and have the conversations and ask the questions. That's how you get there. You know you get there from using social as kind of a soundboard where your audience can talk to you and you talk back to them. That works. That's way better than just posting clips. Hey, listen to the show. Here's a clip from the show.

14:15
I mean will you get some people? Yeah, but truthfully, you're not going to get a significant audience. I can tell you that for sure. You're not going to get thousands and thousands of people. It'll take you forever to build an audience that way. Versus, if, every week, part of your content strategy, part of your marketing, is to get that engagement, that'll help you get to the next level. So those are just some tactics for building a brand from day one. Like, all of these things I'm talking about, you should be doing from day one of launching your show immediately, and it's something that you don't think is important until you start doing it and then you realize, wow, this is incredible. Like when I started putting more effort into it, it absolutely changed the game for me completely. So do you got any questions? Make sure you hit me up on Instagram. Yes, I'm using Instagram again at Chris podcasting. I want to hear your feedback. Ask me any questions. You got there. I'll see you next time.