Brian L.

A big mistake that I see in business podcasts are rotating hosts. It is incredibly important to have a consistent voice for the content. It's totally okay to rotate in "guest hosts" but the show will be empowered by having an anchor voice for the content. For b2b type podcasts, often times there's an executive that hosts the podcast but consider that the host is not the thought leader. The guest is the thought leader. Employees that have backgrounds in theater, improv, and standup tend to make the most dynamic hosts even if they are more junior.

Creating community around your podcast is the holy grail but it's really hard to do; however, there are levers available to you as a creator of niche content. For example, let's say that you publish a business podcast about HR. Are there membership or trade organizations that you can partner with that will promote your content to their community? Often times, organizations are starved for high quality content but don't have the resources to create it themselves. A good "trade" might be to offer your podcast for free and run promotions in the content in exchange for amplification.

Consider evaluating a single episode's audience along the following trend line: 1 day, 3 days, 7 days, and 30 days. If 75% of your downloads are coming within the first three days of publication then it's a strong indication that your fans are downloading with relative immediacy. This might be a signal to publish content with more frequency. However, if a significant percentage of your audience is downloading 7+ days after publication, this in turn might be a signal to decrease the frequency of content creation.

Podcasters should approach content creation with a cut throat lens. Let's say that your podcast doesn't receive much engagement and audience growth has stalled. If you stopped publishing the content for a month would you hear from anyone? Would any listeners reach out and say that they miss the show? If the answer is no, then continuing with the podcast might not be a worthwhile exercise. However, let's say you pause with new episodes for a month and people reach out asking when the next episode will drop: this is a "true north" moment for you as a content creator. Engage with these super fans and discern from them what they want to hear in the future.

Business podcasts often think that the content motion is either a top of funnel branding exercise or a bottom funnel lead gen channel. The reality is that businesses often do not have tools in place to measure either scenario. The reality is that business owned podcasts are most effective as a mid-funnel marketing exercise. People know about your brand and are interested but maybe they aren't quite ready to purchase or apply for a job at your company. Listeners are going to discover your business on a podcast directory and they aren't going to start listening the moment that they're ready to purchase. The most effective business podcasts are designed for this mid-funnel use case. Can you measure brand sentiment?

This doesn't work in all instances, but assuming that your podcast uses (mostly) clean language and is (somewhat) on topic...invite your company to promote the podcast internally. Internal communicators are often looking for ways to amplify employee voices. Your colleagues offer a built-in audience that will not only listen to the episodes but also promote it externally if the content is good enough.