Two Key Traits We’ve Seen in Every Successful Podcaster
We’ve been workig on podcasts since about 2013. That’s back when people remembered where the term ‘podcast’ came from.
Along the way, we’ve noticed 2 traits that were present in every single podcast that was successful in the long run. And all the other podcasts that didn’t do well and eventually faded away, didn’t have either one of these traits.
These traits were:
- Quality content that actually provide value to the listeners
- Consistency of publishing
Let’s dive into each of these.
Quality content
This comes down to two aspects; content quality, and production quality.
Content quality is the value you provide to your listeners or viewers. This, for the most part, can only come from the podcaster. In every episode you release, you must present something that’s actually helpful & valuable to your audience. This could be a piece of expertise from you guest or youself, stories that resonate with your niche audience, or some practical advise to solve a problem for your audience. The bottom line is that it needs to provide genuine value, and it better dive deeper than what a typical 5-10 minutes YouTube video can cover.
The other side of the quality equation is the production quality. While podcast listeners are typically more forgiving on this than other audiences, you still need to keep a decent level of production quality. This includes things like:
- Clearly intelligible audio with low noise & low echo/reverb
- Even volume levels throughout the episode
- Distraction-free content
- If you’re a video podcaster, high quality video with good editing & VFX
These elements of production quality signals professionalism and credibility, and it influences the trust you build with your audience.
Consistency of publishing
We know this is easier said than done, but it’s a pretty simple concept. Pick a schedule, and stick to it!
This calls for a lot of work & planning ahead. Between planning content, talking to guests, prep calls, recording, editing, pushing content into podcast apps, it could become a lot to handle. Therefore, you need to pick a frequency that’s actually feasible according to your availability of time & effort.
It could be once a month, twice a month, weekly, or more if that’s your thing. Whatever frequency you pick should be feasible enough so you won’t miss an episode. That way, you’ll stay consistant with your schedule and both you and your audience will get into a routine of having a new episode in a timely manner. This will heavily contribute to the success of your podcast.
We often advice our clients to start with twice a month, and upgrade to a weekly schedule once they get the hang of managing everything.
Another best practice we recommend is to keep a couple of extra episodes ready to release. This way, if life happens and one day you’re unable to prepare a new episode, you can publish one of the extra episodes instead.
Hope you’ve learnt something that benefits your podcasting journey. If you’re interested in geting some professional help to improve your podcast, head over to podlab.net/contact and drop us a message.
Happy podcasting!