How to create a powerful podcast when you have no idea what you’re doing
But you’re pissed enough to do it anyways
It was the spring of 2016, and I was pissed. Like unbelievably, never-knew-I-could-get-this-pissed, pissed!
I had just had an encounter with someone that really upset me. I’ll spare you the details, but in essence, I was trying to consult someone and they didn’t agree with me. That happens — only this time, he screamed at me.
I had never been yelled at in a professional setting in my life (who does that??) and I couldn’t help but feel like there was something more to why it happened than simply what I said.
This was at the end of a Friday afternoon. As I drove home, I was seeing red and playing the conversation over and over in my head. Why did he yell at me? I don’t get it. The conversation was at a level 1 and he took it to level 10 within seconds. I couldn’t figure it out.
Rather than go grab a glass of wine with friends, like most 30-somethings without kids would do on a Friday night, I put on my best leggings, sat on my couch, and googled to try to find answers.
The “Women’s Assertiveness” Spiral
I just could not let this conversation go, and I needed to understand what I could have done to prevent that type of reaction from ever happening again.
Somehow I stumbled upon an article that talked about communication style and the need for consultants to be more assertive. This led to another article that said in order for women to get ahead in the workforce, they need to display “male characteristics” of aggressiveness, assertiveness and confidence.
Then I got even more pissed! Like capital letters, PISSED.
Why are those male characteristics? Why do I need to be aggressive? That’s not me. I don’t want it to be me.
Confidence I get, but why is that only for males too? Have I been under my 90s “you can be anything you want to be” rock? I thought we could all have confidence.
The more I searched, the more I fell into a scary rabbit hole all about how women need to be assertive.
What I didn’t find in all my searching was…how?
The Start of MarketHer
This whole issue was on my mind for a year. 85% of the consultants on my team are women, so I knew if I was dealing with this, they were too.
Turns out I was right.
But I still couldn’t find a solution for it. I found some speakers and some programs but I wasn’t sold on their effectiveness. Learning to be assertive or how to better communicate when dealing with potential sexism isn’t something you can go to a training on once and be cured.
In May of this year, a couple co-workers and I were all in the office together (we’re a half remote team), and somehow we discovered all three of us had similar feelings and similar challenges in how to solve for them.
After a team outing to a winery, it was official. Over glasses of Cabernet, we developed the concept for MarketHer, a video podcast for women in creative careers. Meet my co-hosts, Angela Hilliard-Myrtetus and Britt Schwartz.
How We Got MarketHer Off the Ground
None of us had ever done a podcast. We had no equipment. No microphones. No time.
But we did it anyway.
We started as any good marketing strategists would do — with strategy.
Strategy
First, we fleshed out our concept more so we would know what topics are appropriate and which ones are not, and developed our content marketing mission statement — which identifies who you’re speaking to, what you’re speaking about and what outcome you want your audience to get from consuming your content. I wrote in more detail about content marketing mission statements here.
Here’s what we came up with for our show:
Relatable stories, lessons and tips for women in creative careers to become more confident and successful in the workplace.
From there, we determined our frequency, format and promotion plan.
Planning
There is A LOT of stuff to do when setting up a podcast. Here’s the list that we worked off of (I may even be forgetting some because we weren’t completely organized at first considering we were all doing this as a side, passion project).
- Perform competitor research (technically a strategic activity, but as we found our niche, we are better able to come up with topics because we know we own the space). Fortunately for us, or unfortunately depending upon how you look at it, there’s not a lot of competition in this space.
- Develop a topics list to pull from when doing our editorial calendar. It’s an ongoing list for any time one of us gets inspired. This works really well.
- Design a brand and logo (fortunately we had access to one of the best designers in the world, Marcella Jalbert.
- Get podcast hosting determined and set up (this took a lot of figuring out. We tried Lybsyn, but because we’re a video show, it didn’t work for us due to the large file size. We went with YouTube).
- Get the equipment you need. In our case, we had Zoom for work, so we just use that and our own microphones. Some day we’ll get nicer ones :)
- Build and set up iTunes
- Build and brand a Youtube channel (in our case, we incorporated our show into our parent brand’s Youtube)
- Set up a Feedburner to import our YouTube playlist to iTunes podcasts so people can subscribe
- Set up a show email address
- Create a landing page
- Get the right software for editing (in our case, we use Adobe Premiere)
- Set up a recurring filming calendar appointment
- Create an editorial calendar and know when to invite guests to your calendar appointment if you have them
- Create a production calendar to keep you on pace. Ours includes when we are filming, when each episode is due to be edited and published, where each episode should be promoted and who is assigned to each task. This is how we don’t lose our minds with everything going on.
The following is what we did a couple months after starting the show. I would definitely recommend doing these things as you set up initially to help you get more traction early on:
- Build and brand Facebook page
- Build and brand a Twitter account
- Build and set up Medium publisher
- Set up Instagram
- Set up Snapchat (IMPACTMarketHer)
All we had left was to actually film and produce episodes.
Execution
Believe it or not, despite the long list I just went through, filming our first episode was actually the hardest part.
We kept waiting for a good time. The right time. The perfect time.
Guess what? That doesn’t exist!
After piddling around for almost the entire month of June (by piddling around, I mean doing all that other planning stuff), we finally filmed our first episode mid-July.
We thought we would have to practice over and over and redo it a few times. We did do the first episode twice, but we haven’t done an episode more than once since then.
We feel the show is more authentic when it’s real. There’s no editing other than adding an intro and outro. What you see is what you get.
As I mentioned before, we have a production calendar we try our damnedest to stick to.
Unfortunately, Hurricane Harvey threw a wrench into this.
While I was actually okay in Houston, one of my co-hosts, Britt Schwartz was not. Strangely enough, she was living in Florida at the time, and the same weather pattern that forced Harvey to hover over Houston for days, did the same thing for a smaller front in southwest Florida.
Her home was lost and she has since relocated to Michigan. All is great now, but it’s a great reminder that you need backup plan upon backup plan for things life throws at you.
We’ve still managed to get a show out every week, despite any challenges we’ve faced. Having a good team and support system around you is a blessing. There are three of us on our show, and we made a pact that the show will always go on as long as there are at least two of us.
Biggest Lessons Learned
If you’re doing any math, you’ll notice we’ve only been at this for 4 months. That means we’re still not even close to being experts.
But we are pretty good at reflecting and knowing what we can improve.
I mentioned we added in our own dedicated social networks after the show had launched. We did this because at the time of our initial launch, we weren’t really sure it 1. it made sense to have our own networks and 2. if we’d have the time to manage them. I’m still not sure about the latter!
Clarity is your friend
If you’re starting a show within a current company/brand, get clarity on where the line is. The very, very first thing we did was have a meeting with our CEO and decide where this show fits within the overall brand and how much support we’ll get. We also defined an exit strategy.
We didn’t stop there. After analyzing our results in the first couple months, we decided we needed to have our own networks if we were going to get the reach and build the community this show deserves. We had a second meeting making our case and it was an easy “yes” for us to get the green light on managing our own social presence.
Know what success is
On that note, pay attention to your stats! One thing that’s proven difficult for us is understanding if the show is doing well or not. (I know, it’s embarrassing as a marketer to admit that.) It helps to know what you’re doing, but since we don’t, this is hard.
Because our show is under our parent company’s YouTube, we can’t really measure YouTube subscribers. We can measure views, and we can measure how many iTunes subscribers we have, but I can’t shake the feeling that people interact with your content how they please, and it may not always be on iTunes.
We haven’t figured out how to make Stitcher work yet, so if we can do that, then we’ll at least get a few more podcast syndication networks as options for consuming the show.
Ultimately, we’re looking for reach, followers and subscribers. I would definitely have liked to have gotten us set up a little better, but hey….we did our best!
Think bigger than a podcast
This one we knew all along, but didn’t feel confident about until our show got off the ground. We knew we had something special, and we set out to build a community vs. an audience for a video podcast.
Now that we have our own social channels to share even more and mainly to get to interact with those who like the premise, we are able to start truly building a community.
See, we were all pissed. And our way to solve it was not a one-time training, but by creating a movement. We’re tired of being told to “be assertive.” We’re tired of the perception that confidence is only displayed one way and only by a man, unless you act like a man. We need a community to start a movement. And a movement brings change.
So just because you have no idea what you’re doing, there’s no reason in the world to not get out there and start a podcast. You have original content (your brain), and the world deserves to hear it.
If you connected with this article, let me know with a recommend or follow!
Hey! I’d love it if you’d provide feedback and/or go check out an episode of MarketHer. Find us on iTunes.
Also, connect with us on social!
Angela: LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram
Britt: LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook
Brie: LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram
MarketHer Official: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (also Snapchat IMPACTMarketHer)
