Podcast Content: 6 Ways To Make it Exceptional (No More Guesswork)
You’ve defied the odds and put your podcast out into the world.
Bon voyage 🍾!
You’re manifesting your creative expression. All that’s left is to watch the listener count go up and wait for the flood of clients clamoring for your digital products and services.
But something’s wrong. Listeners aren’t coming on board the way you expected.
The most challenging part wasn’t your launch. It's ahead. It’s making your podcast something people will love. Is there a predictable and measurable way to do that?
I say there is. It’s time to make your content great.
Great content can be broken down into 6 measurable elements.
You don’t even need to hit 6/6 to gain the massive benefits. Your content must be Engaging, Consistent, Authentic, Actionable, Sharable, and Valuable.
Struggling with growing listeners is hard. It’s worse when you’re podcasting for your business. It’s a total waste of time, money, and effort that you’ve invested.
Let’s rethink what it means to connect with our listeners and take a deeper look at making great podcast content!
1. How to Inspire Engagement
TL;DR Don’t make a dull, droning lecture. Your content needs to elicit emotion - positive or negative - and feedback.
Here’s what an engaging episode is not: a long lecture.
In my rebellious teenage life, my mom standing over me and going through the list of “shoulds” and “should-nots” got me looking for the exit fast.
And it will have your listeners skipping to the next podcast.
So let’s go for the opposite of that, shall we?
Inspiring engagement means that your listeners can’t help but have a strong emotional response to your content.
Like that time you burst out laughing in the car to something you heard, or you opened up Twitter or IG to send the host a DM that you really appreciated their point of view.
Engagement is not a binary option - either you’re engaging or not. It exists on a scale.
On the left, there’s negative engagement -
waving a defiant fist in the air,
mean tweets and sh**posting,
Hitting pause to talk to your friend about why you disagree with what you just heard.
On the right, there’s positive engagement -
taking aggressive notes,
leaving a comment on your audiogram post on IG,
finding your community to talk to your other listeners.
Being in the middle, toeing the line, being perfect with your words, and being politically correct lead to balance. If you’re in balance, you’re trying to say something by not saying anything.
Here’s the reality, all feedback is good.
The people on the negative side will find the nearest exit to hop off.
Some of those people may make a case for burning your house down on social media. But that also publicly signals the people it’s meant to be for.
Look at what happened recently with Joe Rogan.
In a recent episode, he spoke about how his podcast was doing after his current controversies. He said, “It's interesting; my subscriptions went up massively — that's what's crazy. During the height of it all, I gained 2 million subscribers.”
I may disagree with his politics, but I respect what he’s created and love what he’s doing for podcasting.
I’m not telling you to go out trolling and baiting the wrong people to get the negative attention to fuel your growth.
Instead, create content so intentionally for your perfect audience that everything you get is net positive and pushes your growth upward.
🎬 How can you do the same?
Make a list of the things you stand for, and stand against. Talk about them openly on your podcast.
Don’t shy away from being polarizing. Be your whole, authentic self.
Use the scale to measure how engaging you’re being on your episodes.
2. How to Show Up Consistently
TL;DR Listeners need to know your episodes will be ready for them as scheduled and in fantastic quality every time.
This section doesn't surprise you if you’ve spent enough time podcasting.
Yes, of course, consistency is critical. But why?
When I was a teen, before girls became the preoccupation, every Thursday, I would bolt home as fast as possible as soon as the final bell rang at 2 pm.
I’d try to avoid the pickpockets and street bullies, get home, change, and turn on the TV for 3 pm because Rurouni Kenshin was on. Drama, sword fighting, incredible effects, what’s not to love?!
Man, that’s where my anime obsession started.
I'd looked forward to Thursdays. The more I watched, the more in love with it I fell. Rurouni Kenshin showed up consistently.
But just being there is only one side of the coin. The other side was that the show was really freaking great!
So your podcast has to be consistently there, on time, in people’s feeds, and consistently exceptional.
But life happens.
I’ve been in situations where things got down to the wire. A guest I really wanted for my show ghosted me, and I didn’t have enough time to get a new one before the episode was due to be released.
I compromised my show and pulled out an episode I was hoping to never release just so I could stay consistent. It wasn’t worth it.
I don’t want you to go through that, so I created something that can help.
You can use this tool to make a bottomless well of podcast topics your audience will love you for. I call it the Kaleidoscope Episode Planner.
I take all the problems my clients have along their journey from “where they are” to “where they want to be,” put them in the sheet and break them down into different angles and content types. For example, Deep Dives, How-Tos, This Vs. That, etc.
Whether you batch or record as you feel the moment, you can use this tool to extract an excellent topic.
Then once you’ve had your fill of podcast topics, here’s another tool to help you go from a blank page to having a great episode outlined and ready to record.
It’s a doc you can use as a template for outlining your episode content. It has an example structure with prompts to get your brain juices flowing. You’ve got the keys to the kingdom now.
Never run out of content again. Never compromise your quality. Solve your consistency problem forever.
3. How to Convey Your Authenticity
TL;DR Tell relatable, honest, human stories that connect with hearts and minds.
The mistake that makes me weep about experts who haven’t “figured it out yet” on their podcasts is that they're stuck in teaching mode.
It comes from a good place, I know.
You learned something through experience or study, and you want to share that information.
But if you’re just relaying information, what does it matter if you say it or someone else? It doesn’t matter.
Nothing is keeping me here.
The differentiator and the glue to your content is authenticity.
The unique, lived experience that you can bring into the light for your listener. You and only you.
When you wrap your expertise with authentic stories from your life, you’ll build rapport, relatability, and stickiness with your audience.
Authenticity is the honey that brings all the bears to the yard.
Authenticity is not about oversharing either.
In his book “Show Your Work,” Austin Cleon helped me understand genuine authenticity and what is just oversharing. It's a super quick read. But I’ll put an excerpt here:
“There’s a big, big difference between sharing and oversharing. The act of sharing is one of generosity; you’re putting something out there because you think it might be helpful. I had a professor in college who returned our graded essays, walked up to the chalkboard, and wrote in huge letters SO WHAT? Ask yourself to turn in a piece of writing.”
Leave it on the cutting room floor if there’s no purpose for your tangent. If telling me about your day has nothing to do with the topic you’re discussing, cut it - until you’ve earned it.
One hack I use to get the ball rolling is this: specificity is the mother of authenticity.
I actually did this earlier in the previous section. I’m sure that while you were reading about what I did after school, you were thinking about your own childhood and what you got up to.
Adding the details about the time my show started and what the show was about only aided in making the image in your mind more real.
If you’re going to tell stories, the little minutia you might think is irrelevant matters more than you know. The more specific you can be about the scene the story is set in, the more authentic you will come off.
Soberful by Veronica Valli is a podcast that conveys authenticity really well.
Full disclosure: she’s a client of ours. She’s had immense resonance with her audience because she, her co-host, and guests share profound and outrageous stories of their time in the throes of addiction.
4. How to Get People to Take Action
TL;DR Simplify your content so that people can do something with it right away.
People don’t take action on content because it’s too complicated or overwhelming.
Imagine arriving at a conference at 8am.
You grab your lanyard and goodie bag, hustle from session to session, take notes, and soak in all the speakers’ genius.
You leave at the end with a ton of motivation and notes. You arrive home, tired yet hopeful.
“I'll tackle these plans tomorrow when I’m fresh,” you say. You pass out. The problem is that your motivation wore off. Now all you have are notes.
It’s an overwhelming set of scribbles, but you make a to-do list of what you’ll tackle first and when…
You just have to get through your company’s day-to-day stuff first.
You never look at that list or those notes again. It’s a tragedy.
Personally, I only go to conferences for networking, so I attended zero virtual ones in these unprecedented times. But I digress…
You don’t want your podcast content to make your listeners feel overwhelmed. The discomfort won’t make a repeat listener.
So how do you get people to take action on what you teach on your podcast?
I have a framework for that. Nail these 3 things and watch your listeners take action:
Tap into their why
Keep it simple
Pre-framing the action you want them to take
A. Tap into their WHY
You can’t make people take action. It has to be their idea.
You can help them decide to take action, but only if you understand their motivations.
In an earlier iteration of my business life, I was helping post-partum mothers lose weight and get back in shape.
Imagine me, a young twenty-something whose body can snap back like a rubber band.
Imagine that weirdo trying to tell new mothers what to do while they’re running on low sleep, low support, barely feeding themselves, and literally have a baby crying in the background while I’m talking to them.
My stance was, “you know, just do it.” Clearly, I had a negative success rate and had to pivot very quickly.
I didn’t understand them, their problems, or what they wanted to achieve.
And for you to inspire action, you need to be speaking to someone you actually understand.
You can hack the process of understanding your audience by looking at your niche's top influencers, books, magazines, and communities.
They’ve already spent thousands of dollars on the research. So look at what they’re writing and listen to what they’re saying.
Learn their language, and speak from a place of being an understanding friend or mentor, giving them what they need.
B. Keep it SIMPLE
To avoid the conference-notepad-gathering-dust-itis, reduce the action item list down to 1.
You’re up against a lot.
Your listener might be driving, doing chores, or jogging. Don’t ask them to memorize your 10-step action list.
Pick the biggest domino - the thing that will make other things way easier or entirely irrelevant if they take action - and have them do that.
Keep it to one. Just adding one more action item increases your mental load exponentially.
And mental load leads to a feeling of pain. We’ll do anything to avoid pain and, thus, your episode.
So keep your action item simple. Limit it to one thing.
C. PRE-FRAME the action
“What will taking action do for me?”
That's the question you need to answer before you present the task. Before addressing the thing, pre-framing shapes someone’s perception or thought process about the thing.
I could tell my 3-year-old daughter Zoe, “Hey, here’s a bouncy house, have fun!” Or I could pre-frame it by saying, “Hey Zoe, ready to have the most fun you’ve ever had! Daddy got this new toy, it's big, and you can play with it all at the same time!”
Because of pre-framing, she’s set up to approach the toy with more excitement and curiosity than caution and confusion. She’s more likely to take action.
So before you lay out the action you want your listeners to take, tell them:
Why you selected it, or
How it will help them, or
What good will happen to them if they do it, or
What bad might happen to them if they don’t do it, or,
All of the above.
The world is your oyster.
5. How to Make Your Content Shareable
TL;DR Make your content so remarkable that listeners have to tell their friends about it
Going viral - what happens when a ton of people share your content - is highly unpredictable.
That said, entire news sources are built on the back of shares, and the top podcasts get so many shares that someone trying to buy their way in would never be able to afford it.
So there must be some method behind this madness.
Let’s explore this sucker!
We’ve already covered the basics in this post of what would make a show sharable; it has to be authentic, engaging, and highly valuable.
But what moves listeners from “oh, that was great info I’ll keep for myself” to “OMG, this is so awesome I should tell Jane about it”? Let’s look at why people share content.
A. People share content for Status or Online Identity
The type of content people share says a lot about them, and that’s by design.
“If I share great content, my perceived value online will increase! Granting me other benefits such as networking with high-status individuals and being seen as an authority.”
It’s also used as a badge or signaling beacon for more of their kind.
A way of saying, “I’m one of you.” So if you’re sharing episodes about UFOs and alien sightings, you’ll be found by the community and embraced as an official member.
So how is your content tapping into an online identity?
I have a fantastic client who hosts the “Get Pregnant Naturally” podcast. That name alone is incredibly signaling. But beyond that, the content she shares clearly speaks directly to couples who are ready to look outside of conventional medicine after failed IVF cycles.
They want more primal, alternative solutions to their fertility issues.
So when people share her content, we know which side they stand on.
B. People share content to strengthen their relationships
Whether you want to be seen as someone with value or altruistically want to make your world a better place, the emotional goal of sharing is to strengthen your relationships.
We’ll share recipes, instructional How-Tos, and this blog post (*wink*) because we’ll get the feeling and results of bringing people closer to us.
So how do you bolster your content to benefit from this aspect of sharing?
Were you a part of the Dalgona coffee craze?
My wife and I saw it in an IG story and had to try it. It came out splendid and tasty too. So we shared it in our IG stories and kept the chain going.
People will open the floodgates and share you with their friends if they perceive that it’s highly likely your content will help them be successful. So don’t skimp on the details.
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I skipped over the obvious -
“make your episode titles subversive,”
“use pattern interrupts,” or,
“ask people to share the episode.”
because I want you to prioritize thinking deeper about your content. Then use those quick tactics to further polish.
6. How to Create Something That’s Highly Valuable
TL;DR It’s not fluff, and it can potentially improve someone’s life tangibly.
You create something highly valuable by giving away your best stuff.
“If I give away my best stuff, they won’t value what I’m selling!”
That belief is a trap. A trap of scarcity.
It assumes the only value you can provide is the information you clutch tightly in your balled-up fist.
It assumes that once your listener feels the relief of your advice, they’ll run off into the sunset, a happy, changed person.
Both of those are false. The opposite is true, actually.
I used to listen to this podcast about overcoming your money mindset.
The host was a big influencer, and the show was kinda fascinating. Still, I unsubscribed and never listened to her again.
Because every time she’d start by digging into the problem, she‘d get me so hyped, “Give me the answers NOW!” She’d send me off to her site to book a call, join her email list, or come to her next webinar.
And that’s it. No payoff, no answers. End of episode.
Her podcast was her lead magnet.
Your podcast becomes worthless if you suck out all the value and put it behind some wall.
Instead, if you give your best stuff freely and abundantly, you join the pantheon of amazing creators.
Amazing creators who are publicly recognized with radicalized followings and a residency in the top charts for constantly putting out great content.
Amazing creators whose listeners actually want more hands-on help for which they’d happily pay a premium.
Here’s an example of a podcast rocking this exceptionally well right now.
Sam Parr and Shaan Puri of My First Million have multiple sold-out online courses and paid newsletters. They’ve grown because they literally pimp slap you several times a week with the best business ideas to make money from. For free.
Putting it all together
So let’s do a recap/tl;dr with action steps from each section.
This was a meaty post, so allow me to break my rule in #4 and instead of giving you 1 thing to take action on, here’s 6 to beef up your podcast going forward:
Inspire Engagement - Take one thing you stand for and talk boldly about it in your next episode. Avoid Virtue Signaling - saying the thing most people will agree with to win status points.
Show Up Consistently - Collect feedback from 5 of your listeners - people you’ve never met before - about the quality of your show. Are you hitting on the problems they have and proving valuable solutions? Those answers will show you what you’re nailing and what you may be missing.
Why do this? Because if you’re consistently off target, your podcast is lost. But if you’re consistently nailing, you’ll reach the promised land.
Convey Your Authenticity - Everyone has pivotal moments that transform them into who they are today. Break one of yours down in detail. What happened that day, and what are the minute details that help to set the scene? What was the lesson you learned, and how does it ties into how you help your clients? Work that story into your next episode.
Get People to Take Action - It’s time to simplify. KISS - Keep It Sweet and Simple. If your next episode is about the 4 things you need to do to build your marketing funnel, it might have to be 4 separate episodes. Each one has only 1 action point.
OR, if you want to request engagement (a share on social, reaching out to you, joining your email list, whatever), pick one and make it easy and straightforward.
Make Your Content Shareable - This will happen automatically due to doing everything else (1, 2, 3, 4 & 6). If you have low shares, spend the next few episodes being really focused and intentional about prioritizing asking for shares and feedback over other Calls-to-Action.
Create Something That’s Highly Valuable - what part of your framework can you break down in an episode? You could deliver it as a deep dive, as a case study, or as a conversation. Identify where the real value is, and bring it to the surface. Hint: the nuances of how you solved a common sore point for your listeners are brimming with significance.
Try to hit all 6 over the next 6 weeks. Watch and measure metrics like growth, shares, and engagement on social.
Great content is about being among the people you're trying to reach.
It’s about absorbing their fears, thoughts, energies, and desires and creating something that will reflect that you know them, value them, and care about helping them move towards their dreams.
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