According to the latest reports, there are more than 460 million podcast listeners around the world. This number is expected to reach 500 million by 2024. Considering the growing popularity of podcasts in today’s digital landscape, more and more brands and content creators are looking to dip their toes in podcasting.
However, podcast creation is a lot more challenging than people think. Starting a podcast is not as simple as recording yourself and publishing them online. Instead, podcast content creation requires a ton of effort and extensive planning to successfully launch a high-quality channel.
But more than that, it is critical for aspiring podcast creators to avoid making crucial mistakes that can easily break their podcasting career and halt their podcast journey. With that in mind, here is a list of the ten most common mistakes you need to steer clear of when starting a podcast to give you a better idea.
#1: Failing To Identify A Target Audience
One of the key principles of successful marketing is to target and reach the right people. Without this, campaigns are more likely to fail since efforts are too widespread to effectively convert the most qualified leads.
The same goes when it comes to creating podcast content. Despite the growing popularity of podcasts in general, it can still be difficult for new podcast channels to gain listeners. In fact, podcast channels typically take a couple of weeks or even months to receive a couple hundreds or thousands of streams on their channel.
With this in mind, having a target audience at the very beginning can help increase the chances of your podcast reaching people who are most likely interested in what you have to offer. Otherwise, you are broadcasting to a very large and diverse audience, hoping that some of them will stick and become avid listeners.
But more than that, having a target audience in mind during the planning stage can help you create a podcast that they would most likely like. A part of the podcast content creation process is determining key podcast elements that would be the identity of your channel. This includes the likes of the style, format, and tone that your podcast would be set in.
The idea is that you design your podcast in a manner that your target audience would enjoy the most in order to meet their preferences, keep them interested, and possibly turn them into loyal audiences.
#2: Copying Other Podcast Creators
There is no harm in taking inspiration from others. However, some podcast creators make the critical mistake of copying exactly what other podcast content creators are doing.
It’s understandable to look at your favorite podcasts and see what they are doing right, but copying everything from their setup, style, format, and even tone can be harmful, especially for new channels. Not only do they take the risk of copyright infringement and plagiarism, but copying others can also harm their brand’s reputation and credibility.
To prevent this from happening, new podcast creators need to find and build their own brand image and personality. Find your own voice and style that will differentiate you from other content creators.
#3: Not Having A Podcast Structure
Different from the common misconception, podcasting is more complex than going in front of a mic and recording yourself talking. Some podcasters believe that they can just wing it and simply cut and edit out anything that doesn’t make sense.
While some podcast styles can work with this strategy, most of the time, having absolutely no podcast structure can lead to a messy and directionless recording. When this happens, conversations can turn uncomprehensive, even with extensive editing. In relation to that, a structure-less podcast also doubles the effort needed at the editing stage.
To avoid this, it is ideal to maintain some form of structure by having something like a script or outline to guide the podcast discussion. This helps keep conversations on track and minimize the possibility of meandering too far from the topic.
#4: Choosing The Wrong Podcast Platform
Your choice of podcasting platform is a critical part of your podcasting career. In fact, it can easily make or break your journey. One of the key factors to consider when choosing a podcast hosting platform is its current user base.
There are two things to this. Mainstream podcasting platforms, such as Spotify and Apple Podcast, provide access to a significantly large and diverse demographic. However, these platforms also have a higher degree of competition, making it difficult for new podcasts to gain traction.
#5: Disregarding Podcast SEO
In order to increase online visibility and boost brand awareness, it is essential for podcast content creators to pay attention to their optimization efforts.
Podcast search engine optimization is an effective and powerful marketing strategy that is used to make the podcast visible on search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Considering the organic traffic that search engines can generate, podcast content creators should leverage search engine optimization as a primary strategy to promote their channels.
#6: Having Inconsistent Podcast Schedule
All content creators are striving to catch people’s attention. When you successfully do so, the challenge is to keep them in your audience base. Unfortunately, one of the primary reasons why listeners lose interest and jump ships is because podcast creators fail to produce content consistently.
When a podcast content creator suddenly goes missing in action for a considerable amount of time, it is highly likely that their listeners would look for an alternative and develop a new favorite podcast. Under this circumstance, it can be podcast channels to target and draw this group again.
Considering this, maintaining a consistent publishing schedule is essential not only to engage your audience but also to build a stronger relationship with them. To avoid disappointing listeners with missed upload schedules and other broken promises, try to ensure that any announced release is feasible, given the time frame.
#7: Prioritizing Quantity Over Quality
While it is important for podcast channels to consistently provide their listeners with new content, it is critical to never sacrifice your content’s quality just for the sake of creating more.
As podcast content creators, quality should always be the priority. It is essential to provide your listeners with something that is of value instead of pumping out content after content just to meet demand. It should be in a creator’s mindset to extensively check and maintain the quality of their podcast episodes before uploading them online.
#8: Promoting The Podcast Inadequately
Podcast marketing is an equally important part of your podcasting journey. What is the point of creating content if you don’t put the effort into promoting and advertising it to your target audience? Generally, it is not enough to rely on the word of mouth of family and friends to gain a considerable number of listeners.
Considering this, it is essential that podcast players put the same amount of effort and resources into their marketing campaigns. One of the most common yet effective ways to promote a podcast is to use social media.
Having a social media page for your podcast makes it easier for people to learn more about your content. Furthermore, engagement and interaction become more accessible on social media platforms, increasing the reach of your brand.
Other strategies that you can use to promote your podcast online include video marketing, podcast collaboration and guesting, as well as the above-mentioned podcast search engine optimization.
#9: Overlooking Legal Considerations
With the growing popularity of digital content creation, the industry has become a lot more strict when it comes to intellectual property, copyright infringement, and other legal matters. Being caught in violation of these can significantly harm your career. Thus, aspiring podcast content creators need to be well-versed and knowledgeable about the different legal issues that may arise throughout their journey.
One of the most common infractions in the content creation industry involves music licensing and copyright infringement. Basically, some music online have agreements that prevent the use of their content without proper licensing. On the other hand, copyright infringement is another regulation that prevents the use of copyrighted materials online, such as images, videos, text, and the like.
To avoid this altogether, consider using digital content that is licensed under Creative Commons or is public domain. When it comes to music, leverage the multitude of royalty-free music instead of risking licensing issues. Keep in mind that ignorance is not an excuse, especially when it comes to legal concerns.
#10: Thinking Of Doing Everything On Their Own
Arguably, one of the biggest mistakes an aspiring podcast content creator can make is thinking that they can do every part of the content creation process all by themselves. Podcast content creation is a long and tedious process.
It requires some hefty preparation way before you face a microphone and press the record button. Before anything else, you would need to conduct some intensive research about your topic and spend time writing a script or outline for that episode. Once you have all of these polished, it is time to record your audio, which normally takes at least a couple of hours, depending on the length of the recording.
However, this is not even the hardest part. The post-production process in content creation is a lot more demanding as it requires the utmost focus and attention to detail. And even after that, you would have to deal with the podcast hosting and distribution process, podcast search engine optimization, as well as marketing.
Under this circumstance, the podcast content creation process can take anywhere from a couple of days to weeks. This affects the channel’s ability to produce high-quality content as often as possible. To add to that, doing everything can add to possible creator fatigue and burnout.
So, instead of taking all the responsibility, it is best to consider having team members who can help, assist, and support you throughout the process. It is common practice to hire virtual assistants, either full-time or part-time, to provide necessary aid when creating content.
Since most virtual assistants work from home, all they need is a reliable internet connection, and they can help you with the research stage, script writing, editing, marketing, and even some administrative tasks.
Bottomline
Podcasting is an exciting but equally daunting journey. With its growing demand and popularity, digital marketers and content creators alike are looking for ways to start their podcasting campaigns.
While it is relatively easy to sit in front of a microphone and press record, podcast content creation is not as simple as that. Podcasting is more than just recording audio, it involves a complex series of steps necessary to create high-quality content that listeners would enjoy.
But in order for listeners to even find your content online, it is critical to prepare your podcast for this from start to finish. Furthermore, there are several critical mistakes that new podcasters are at risk of making, effectively harming their careers.
To even get your podcast off the ground, it is essential to understand how proper podcast content creation works. From research, writing scripts, to podcast marketing. Aside from that, it is also critical to know how to gain listeners and nurture relationships that will help in building a strong audience base.
Through this, new podcast players have a higher chance of breaking into the industry and enjoy fruitful podcasting careers.
Want to know more about the podcast content creation process? Sidekicks is an on-demand virtual company, and we’re eager to help visionaries and entrepreneurs like you. Get a free ebook and learn more about how we can help you by signing up for our newsletter. We also offer a free 30-minute consultation if you prefer something more personal.
