BEGIN PODCASTING: The Hack For Creating Your Podcast Themes & Topics - Episode 49
A question that comes up a lot amongst podcasters is "how do I come up with my themes and topics for my show?" The task can feel daunting and overwhelming. In this episode I share with you 3 major guiding questions that will center you in this process as well the Boss-Goddess™ System for Designing Themes & Topics. In addition, we have some pro-tips around formatting, segments, monetization goals and more.
Barsi [00:00:00]:
Hi, welcome back. This is Barsi, your host. I truly hope you've been enjoying this mini series as much as I have, all about how to begin the process of creating your own podcast to leverage for your brand or business. I also hope that you're enjoying your podcasting resource guide and if you haven't downloaded yours yet, you can grab it at Bebold Download and there is of course a link in the show notes for it, but I do suggest downloading it once you are on a computer because it's a pretty big document of around 25 pages. So we are nearing the end of the series here with just today's episode and next week's episode left to share with you. So I do recommend listening a few times to the episodes that might feel more layered or complicated just to get a better grasp of it and how it can apply to you and what you're wanting to create. So I spent some time perusing a few podcasting groups to get a good pulse on what podcasters are asking to learn more about right now. And the thing I kept coming across was how to organize themes and topics.
Barsi [00:01:19]:
There were so many people asking questions about how to go about that and and as I was reading the many posts that were asking for advice about that topic, I realized it's actually one of the tasks my own clients feel the most daunted by as well. And my system for this is all about organization. So I thought it would be the perfect episode to follow last week's, which was called the Secrets to Systems and Workflows that Work. And we talked all about organization and creating those systems that will work for you. So it makes sense to have this one follow last week's episode. So here we go. The Avant House Media system for designing themes and topics. Of course, you've already done a lot of this work, you may just not realize it yet.
Barsi [00:02:04]:
In episode one, you defined your message, which is built on your core values that are all fueled by your bigger purpose and the reason you're starting your big why. That alone will help you niche down if you trust it. Trust the process and trust yourself. So first, revisit what your message or mission is and your whys. Then revisit your who, meaning who are you serving? Who's going to be your listener? These together are going to determine how you approach all of the next steps. The questions you always need to be asking yourself when you start to create content and choose themes and topics 1. How am I serving the mission and or message? 2. How does this serve myself and my goals and 3 how am I serving my ideal listener? These are all related, but the first two are very closely related.
Barsi [00:02:58]:
Your bigger goals are tied to your mission and message, and then you have smaller goals that you want to create along the way that can inform your creative. These smaller goals will change as you grow your brand or business and your podcast. I did a whole presentation on this idea at Podcast Movement Evolutions around this time last year actually, and it was the most packed room I had ever presented to. The audience kept pouring in from both sides of the room and ended up being six people deep in the standing room past the chairs. It was awesome. So if you were in that crowd and couldn't hear me, this one's for you. So here's an example of what I mean by letting your smaller goals inform your creative if you have a business or brand goal to draw attention to yourself as a coach, let's say you want people to get to know you and understand how you work when you're consulting with them, and you want to be known in the corporate world. Let's say.
Barsi [00:03:55]:
So let's break that down. I just listed three goals you might have here that are related to your coaching or consulting business. Again, just as an example. So goal one getting people acquainted with who you are. Goal two showing people your style of coaching or consulting. And goal three you want to be known in a certain arena. We're using the corporate world as an example now. How can you leverage these goals with a podcast? The first thing to do here is decide how many episodes at a time you want to be planning for.
Barsi [00:04:26]:
I usually do 10 for a weekly podcast. That means the show runs for two and a half months. This also helps you with having a long enough run to kind of begin to look at analytics, like seeing seeing how topics and themes and guests measure up against each other, or even different segments, which we'll touch on a little more later on. And it also gives you an opportunity to really experience the process, to gauge whether it's for you, and then make adjustments if you want to keep going. Now, how clear you are on these goals can really change how easy this part of the process is or how confusing it is. So using our examples of goals, here are some basic ideas of how you might want to approach your themes and topics. You may want to list common hurdles or issues that occur for those working in the corporate world. You could also list who you want to help within the corporate world, as in what positions do they hold? Are they managers? Are they C suite? Are they employees? Are they hr.
Barsi [00:05:22]:
And here's a pro tip. Think of it from a resource perspective. Who can you get as guests from this community? We talked about resources in last week's episode also. And who you can reach out to for guests right away is a resource you have. So list who the people are who you can reach out to right now if you wanted to that fit that description. Then take another look at that list and decide if these people might have the experiences you can explore based on what you want to talk about here, which would be the issues they face at the corporate level. And do you feel confident enough that you could at least ask them if they're open to some discussions about coaching where you take take a moment to help them with their issue? Or you look at that list and ask them to simply share their story of their hurdles and how they solve them. And then maybe you take a question from someone else who writes in or sends you a voicemail.
Barsi [00:06:15]:
Who has a problem that you can solve in a Q and a segment as a team or on your own to position yourself as an expert. Or maybe you cut that guest list in half and the other five are solo episodes. Sort of like this show where I'm sharing how to solve problems with you around creative blocks and getting started and choosing to outline those five solo episodes based on what most people have issues with. Or you do all 10 episodes with guests and record your Q and A segment and then release that Q and A segment as a bonus series that gets released on another day of the week. So those are just some ideas and examples of how you might start to think of an approach. You can let your resources, your attainable guest list inform how you decide on topics and themes. You can let your expertise inform topics. You can let your first set of goals inform the theme and topic.
Barsi [00:07:09]:
So hopefully you're starting to see how this all fits together. Okay, here's another example. Maybe you're a new writer who wants to develop a career around this more centricly. You've published a couple of articles and won a few competitions, but that's it so far. Your bigger goal is to build a platform for yourself to be seen as a reputable writer. Your mission is to offer space and understanding for those in the world who feel othered. This is what you want to write about when you have the opportunity to publish. So here are some of your smaller goals.
Barsi [00:07:41]:
Goal number one. Develop yourself as a storyteller. Goal number you want to feature your writing somehow. Goal number three. You want to create space for people who feel othered in this case, let's say your resources are that you know lots of people who have felt this way. Do a little brainstorm of who from your life can speak well on this, who has a good story, and think of how you want to feature their story based on the feeling and tone you like to write in. For example, is it deep and transformational? Is it pondering and open ended? Start highlighting who you think can show up this way and who you're confident probably can't. This also starts to inform tone and format for your show.
Barsi [00:08:24]:
The actual structure in this case, you can choose to create maybe written inserts to help tell the story you want to highlight. Now you have some of your own writing in each episode. The way you craft your questions will also inform how the story is told. This will help you develop your skill as a storyteller. Are you starting to see how this all starts to fit together? Your themes and topics can be informed by your first set of goals and the guests you have available to you for your first set of 10 episodes or whatever you decide to plan for. And I do suggest not planning for more than 10 for your first set, just to keep it doable. 10 is actually a lot to plan for, but I really think it's the perfect number to get the whole experience and the most benefits. So ask yourself, now that you have your mission and message, how do you want to establish it first through your smaller goals? You may have noticed that all of these goals are related to your why and not to monetization.
Barsi [00:09:22]:
It may be important to monetize as well, but if it is the reason you're podcasting, then my suggestion is to try another method for making quick dollars rather than podcasting. It's not a quick path to making money and I'll touch on how monetization ad sales work in this industry a little later. I'll get back to that, just so you have the information. So one other tip regarding guests. If you have access to anyone who has an engaged audience and you think they will be willing to promote their episode if you have them on, that is something you want to try and integrate wherever you can as well. Of course it still has to check the boxes of adding value to your content, it still has to be a good fit there too. So other people with similar podcasts is a great place to start. Even if you don't know them yet.
Barsi [00:10:12]:
You may be able to ask if they'll be on your show because they are used to podcasting, they understand the culture and they may be easier to say yes if you're picking people that make sense for your content. So let's revisit the questions you always need to be asking yourself when you start to create content and choose themes and topics. They are Number one, how am I serving the mission and or message? Number two, how does this serve myself and my goals? And number three, how am I serving my ideal listener? The examples covered so far take care of questions one and two. But what about question three? How am I serving my listener? One thing to acknowledge when you're just starting out is that your listener at the moment is imaginary. You haven't launched yet, so your listener hasn't had the opportunity to show up yet. This, by the way, is another reason why it's so important to get clarity on all the points I've made so far, which all have focused on getting clear about your values and message. Because the only controllable you have right now is you. You are the only component that is definite right now.
Barsi [00:11:23]:
So how do you serve a listener that doesn't exist? Well, you get to launch based on who you'd like to show up. You are creating for the person you expect this all to resonate with. They will most likely share your purpose, your message will feel aligned to them, and you will be helping them with something. Okay, that last part. What do you want your listener to experience and walk away with? This is what I call the takeaway. What will be their takeaway? For the first example I gave the one where you are a coach who wants to help those within the corporate world. The takeaways here might be learning how to shift their mindset or how to solve their common problems at work, or inspiration from the stories told by other executives with a can do sentiment or resources that are shared that they need. Some extra takeaways based on your tone and vibe might be humor or entertainment or thoughtfulness or sentiment.
Barsi [00:12:18]:
Those are takeaways too. So oftentimes I have a client that gets shiny object syndrome. And what I mean by that is they see something someone else is doing and they suddenly think it's better than what they're creating and they want to change everything. This is when I first listen to their idea and then ask them these three questions again. How does this serve you and your goals? And how does this add to the listener's experience? Usually it doesn't because it's not coming from them and their own truth, but just from an outside observation of something that looks cool or might seem to be successful. Then we try and find a way to break apart the idea to see why they may not be trusting themselves in the moment or why they gravitated to that idea, and see if there's anything from it that we can incorporate. Okay, so for our second example, the one where you are a new writer wanting to build a platform for yourself, become a better storyteller, and start publishing more. The guest takeaway might be feelings of belonging to epiphanies that they're not alone, resources that might have been shared on the podcast connection.
Barsi [00:13:26]:
Other takeaways from tone and format might be entertainment, warmth, sentiment, relatability, and comfort. There are many ways to serve up your themes and topics, but this way I've outlined is a great way to start to organize your ideas and your assets and then have them work together once you decide on your small goals. These can inform your tone and your format. And I just want to point out that those two elements are what stay consistent. They should be the container that holds the themes and topics that the guest can expect to be there each time they show up to listen. You can experiment a little with this, but keep in mind that in order to measure an experiment, you need to do said experiment consistently for a period of time. So say 10 episodes. Okay, so the first set of goals and resources can then inform what your first topics and themes can focus on.
Barsi [00:14:23]:
Pick that low hanging fruit to get yourself started. The flow will follow and you'll start to see how themes and topics will start to naturally flow into the next and deciding on them will become easier. I did mention that I would come back to segments. Now this is something that is connected to format. I suggest creating segments with your episodes that might go a little something like this opening statement, then an intro to the show's theme. That's something that's maybe pre recorded with music. Then your native intro meaning you in the episode telling us what and who we're going to be talking to and what about. And then you start the interview.
Barsi [00:15:06]:
So the interview segment, maybe you have a button question you ask every time, meaning something you ask every guest towards the end perhaps, or maybe even at the beginning. And then maybe you have a segment like a Q and A or a featured highlight of something relevant to your episode topic. Like if you're a tech podcast, maybe you want to feature something that is new in the tech world during your highlight, maybe there's a segment for that. Then you have your closings and then your outro which is your call to actions and it's also pre recorded and thank yous and stuff like that. I also Want to mention that the podcast resource guide that I made has a whole section on format examples and how you might approach that. So there's a little bit more there and it's visual, so you can see it versus just hear it. So here's another pro tip. If you want to do two releases a week, an easy way or a trick to do it is you can turn your Q and A segment, for example, into another episode entirely.
Barsi [00:16:10]:
Just clip it from your recording and add your audio design to it. And maybe an introduction if needed, and a closing. So why bother to do this? One reason is you want to test this segment's engagement on its own. Analytically. You can see in your analytics how many downloads it's getting. And in some analytic platforms you can see how much of the episode they listen to. So if it's 100% consistently, then that's a good sign, right? They're listening to the whole thing and they really love it. That might inform how you move forward when you design your next set of episodes.
Barsi [00:16:44]:
Another reason is downloads. You'll see more weekly downloads with more releases per week. This is useful if you're trying to monetize. And another monetization tip is you can include ads twice a week now in two episodes rather than just one. So it's kind of like real estate. If the content is long enough, you can sell minerals. These are bigger payouts. And if not, you can still sell pre rolls which are usually a little bit shorter, so the price is a little lower in terms of what you will get for the pre roll.
Barsi [00:17:16]:
If you need the basics on how ads get sold sold, look up this term, the CPM model that is the industry standard and the acronym stands for cost per mille. And mille is Latin for thousand, not million as the phonetics suggest. The basics for this are that for every 1,000 downloads, per episode is considered one unit. So for example, if you have four episodes that all have around a thousand downloads each and you want to sell one mid roll, an ad that goes towards the middle of your show, and let's say you're selling this spot for $20 and you want to sell it in all four episodes, so the four episodes will yield you $80, assuming you're able to take 100% of the profit. So you didn't use an agency, you sold it yourself, It's a one way deal. So if you had 2,000 downloads per episode for four different episodes and you sold a $20 spot in all four, then that profit number would double. So then you would make 160 for those four spots sold in those four episodes. I hope that's starting to make some sense.
Barsi [00:18:31]:
So you may be starting to see how good content in order to grow your listenership to make monetization possible becomes important, especially if the selling happens based on 1000 downloads as a unit. So if 1000 is equals 1, then you have to have at least a thousand downloads every episode to start to sell anything. And I'll tell you realistically, most agencies and most brands aren't wanting to sell until you have about 5,000 minimum per episode. So that's just the real the reality of it. So finding ways to make your podcast work for you integrated within your business and brand is actually a better monetization system than hoping and relying on just ad sales. You should do ad sales once you're in a place to do them. But before that, there are many other ways to leverage your podcast to fit into your growth plan rather than just ad sale dollars. And that's why I frame it that way, because I want you to understand that that's the reality of how it works.
Barsi [00:19:44]:
So there you go. That was the Avant House media system to creating topics and themes and then some. We gave lots of pro tips today like tone, listener takeaways, formatting, how to leverage segments for measuring and monetizing. I do hope this helped answer some of your questions that you might have. And again, if you don't have the companion Begin Podcasting Resource Guide yet, you can download it for free at bebold.avanthousemedia.com podresourceguide and again, there's a link in the show notes for it. But if you're on your phone, you'll want to download this on your computer because it is pretty large. And if you're feeling a bit of imposter syndrome or fear is coming up for you right now. First of all, you're in the right place and you're normal for feeling those things.
Barsi [00:20:34]:
And second of all, the resource guide also has a really great workaround that I designed for that. It's free and I literally made it for you for your benefit. So we have just one episode left of this Begin Podcasting miniseries. I've had so much fun creating it for you. I would love to hear how you're experiencing this series or how you're liking the resource guide and you can share with me in the review section of Apple Podcasts. Your feedback means the world to me. It helps me create things that are more tailored to you and what you're wanting to learn. So I hope to hear from you and stay safe and well out there and I will see you next week.
Barsi [00:21:16]:
Thank you for listening to Be Bold Begin. Don't forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcast so as not to miss an episode. Help us build a positive community by joining the Facebook group also called Be Bold Begin. I'll be checking it daily to answer and acknowledge any of your questions and comments. Stay positive and safe out there.
