Designing the Structure of Your Podcast

All right. Hello everybody to Podcasting for Small Business. This is, uh, I'm Ray Sidney-Smith and this is Steve Orr. Hi Steve.

Hello.

How's it going? This is our companion podcast to our new book, Podcasting for Small Business. And in the last episode, we really talked about podcasting as a content hub, how we can use it really as a strategic anchor in our overall digital marketing And today we wanted to talk a little bit about Chapter 3, some of the behind-the-scenes stuff, some of the background discussions that Steve and I had, and really cover show programming, really the crux of programming your show, also the title. And so let's start with a little bit about what Chapter 3 is about. Steve, do you want to kind of help folks through what the brief overview of Chapter 3 is about?

So basically, as you said, Ray, it is really talking about the programming of your show. And for For us, that includes the format, the content, and the length of your show. And bundled into all of that is kind of the, you know, the consistency— being there every week, every other week, every month, whatever it is that you are going to be doing with your show. But just maintaining that consistency, you bundle all those together, and that pretty much will cover Chapter 3 in our book.

Yeah, fantastic. And so I'm, uh, curious from you, kind of your recollection of our discussion and, uh, kind of what prompted us to devote an entire chapter to programming your show.

I come from a radio background and some television, and as you know, and there is structure which helps make things flow more smoothly. You're much more organized with what your show is going to look like. And when we were having the discussions about this, I felt very strongly that you really cannot have a show that is going to be consistently reaching the goals that you want your show to reach with your audience without having some kind of structure. Now, I'm not saying the exact same structure that you would if you were on the radio or television, because you as a podcaster, you know, you're pretty much your own producer, and there are so many different ways that you can do things which you don't always have with radio or television. And I come from a radio news background, the radio network, where everything was incredibly structured. You as a podcaster, I want to make that clear, you don't need to— I'm sorry, I hit the microphone. Um, But you don't, you don't need to say, oh, it has to be second by second, this and that. But there is a way that structure can help with your form of your show and make it a more consistently interesting experience for your listeners.

Yeah, I think, I think kind of the same thing. I mean, I, when I was teaching podcasting for small business as the, as a seminar and workshop for folks, I think a lot of folks struggled with how they were going to show up each and every episode. And so I had to have some way to bucket and container for them the production of the overarching concept of programming your show. And so this wasn't even just specifically the topics that you were going to cover, because we'll cover that in the future, but really the, the bigger container of who's going to host the show, how are you going to actually structure the overarching types of content that you're going to be producing. And this chapter was just kind of that first precursor that helped folks, especially especially folks who already had an idea. Again, you know, in the workshops I'm presenting, someone's gonna come to the topic, you know, come to the seminar topic with already, oh, I'm interested, I'm going to a seminar called Podcasting for Small Business. I'm a business owner. I'm already thinking about perhaps a show topic. And so I wanted to be able to get ahead of them in terms of those folks who came to the show, came to the seminar, that is, with the topic already in mind and kind of back them up. And then when, you know, to do some of that infrastructure stuff, and then folks who already, um, you know, wanted to launch a podcast but didn't have the show yet, then they could come. And after we got through this element, they would get to the next point, which we discuss in the next chapter and chapters after that, of the actual content, the actual, you know, topic, topical piece, the categories and topical piece of the, of the show itself. And so one thing that I wanted to just, uh, make sure we had in the chapter as well was helping folks understand that the structure really mattered to business goals. And so, for example, you don't really want to start a podcast with an ad as a business, right? You know, you want to really start with value, and we We talk about in the book the idea of kind of the cold open from SNL, you know, the way that they kind of just go right into a skit, and that provides an immediate set of laughs and an immediate set of dopamine, you know, and people really enjoy that piece. And not that you have to do that with your show, but that your business goal is to engage your audience in a way that is fun and interesting in some way, shape, or form. And if you don't hook them, then you're gonna lose them, and that's gonna be bad for your podcast. And so really what you're talking about, Steve, in that early part of programming your show in chapter 3 is the idea that that consistency, that structure really does matter for the business goals.

And one of the things we do in the chapter, you know, a lot of people think visually. In this chapter, we offer a couple of visual ways to think about that structure, and I don't wanna give too much away in the book, but I think it, it is helpful here to just mention that, um, you know, again, coming from a radio background, we have what we call a broadcast clock, and it pretty much is the clock face, and each segment— were, um, visually think of them as a pizza slice. Some segments have a larger pizza slice, some have a smaller pizza slice, but for some folks, that's really a helpful aid to see how that structure is going to go. And let's say you have 3 or 4 segments, you kind of make them look like little pizza slices, and that kind of gives you that visual and say, oh, okay, so this one's going to be a certain amount of time, that one's going to be— maybe that one's going to be 3 minutes, that's going to be 5 minutes. But just again to— and again, again, this is all fungible. So just to give you that visual sense of This is that bucket, this is that bucket, this is that bucket. So one way to think about that is through a broadcast clock, again looking like the face of a regular clock. Another way is to think of it as just a timeline and break it up. You know, you have, you have, you know, timeline like that. Each segment looks like this, different little segments. So you have a horizontal line and then you have a vertical line for those segments. And that's just, again, to help you visualize that structure, which ultimately I think makes it easier for you to think about.

Yeah, I think the visuals in the book are something that, you know, behind the scenes, you know, when we discussed it, I thought it was superfluous. I really did.

We had a lot of discussions about this. Yes.

I thought, what is Steve talking about? But because I didn't have a radio background, right? And so not having that kind of experience, really just meant that I always thought about the podcast in kind of a linear outline, written linear outline structure. And so Steve really brought the idea of bringing that kind of visual element to the table so that folks could, who are more visual in that sense, could bring that to the table. And that was really useful for folks who really want that, that kind of visualization. I'm, and I probably fit more to the timeline approach than the pie because that's kind of a clock face and, and, and that might not be as useful to me, but it might be useful to others. And, and then for some folks, they'll enjoy and appreciate kind of the timeline view. And if anyone's using the Kindle version, you can zoom in on the image, so you can tap on it and then click that little double arrow. It'll open it up and you can actually squeeze and pinch, and it'll actually expand the clock so you can actually see in there. A lot of folks don't know that you can actually do that on the, on the Kindle app, as well as inside of the Kindle devices. Can't do that in the paperback and hardcover, sorry, but, but you can do that on the digital versions. And so let's move on to choosing your format and why it matters perhaps more than people think. And so what do we do in that next segment, Steve, in terms of helping people with the chapter, with the formatting of the show, and what that really means, formatting of the show? In our context?

So in our context, formatting is really talking about, are you going to be a solo host? And that's pretty self-explanatory. You are the host, which means you're responsible for everything. You're having that one-on-one conversation with the audience, and it's just you. So that is, that is one way to think about it. Another way to think about it is having co-hosts. It's like we're, we're doing right now. We're having a discussion between the two of us. That is another way to think about it. A third way to think about it is having a host and guest or guests. That, that's pretty self-explanatory. Uh, you could have, um, oh, do you want to add to that?

Well, no, I think, I think there are folks who don't quite understand that you can have a layer of contributors and those are not necessarily ongoing co-hosts. They can do that too, sure. Yeah, and they may be in the perspective of being kind of interviewees, right? So they can kind of be interviewees, but if they come often enough, they become almost like co-hosts. And so you have to kind of mediate between that. I run a podcast called Productivity Cast, and we have two co-hosts, myself and Augusta Panoud, and then we have two contributors, Art Gelwix and Frances Wade. And they have been on the show for almost all of the shows, but they are still contributors, even though in a lot of ways they act just like co-hosts in a lot of ways as well. So there can be some, uh, mealiness, right? Some grayness to it all. And Steve and I just provide you with big buckets because, you know, you can get more creative and more gray about all of these things. But starting from these 4 core concepts Steve will go over the fourth in a moment, um, I think is really useful for folks just starting out.

Yes, so I'm— and I think I said, get, you know, guests, which are separate than what we were talking about, the co-host situation. But you as a host, you can have co-hosts and also have guests, which are not necessarily regular contributors. So that's another way to think about it. Another way to think about a format is, um You know, we call it a call-in live show, so that's another way to think about it. And, you know, call-in show, you think, at least again because, you know, of my background, I think of a radio show that's a call-in show, um, where literally callers are calling you. But in our context, call-in could be those who are submitting questions via social media or another method. They're not necessarily calling in. They could be, um, a live show, which is you know, taping a show in front of an audience, perhaps at— if you have a— you're a restaurant and you own— and you have your own podcast at your restaurant, or you go on the road and bring your show on the road if you're a small business and have an audience in your, um, in the taping of your show and allow them to ask questions, uh, as part of the show, and you're taping all that and that becomes an episode. So that's another way to think of how you can do your show. And there are other ways, and this I want to bring this up too because this is, you know, we have these like general main buckets, but one of the things we did not do, um, we didn't talk about a narrative podcast and we didn't put that in the book. And Ray, let's talk about that a little bit. Um, one reason for your, in your mind, why did we not have a narrative podcast? And if you, you, I'll let you explain that as well, but why we did not use that.

Sure. Most, most business owners are not going to have a strong sense of narrative around their brand. And so it's just something that most business owners are not gonna do. It also is very difficult. You know, you have to kind of flex those creative chops. And as, as any private conversation with Steve and I tends to have, I will say, Steve, you've gotta be creative. I'm not that, I'm a problem solver. So I have creative capabilities. I'm sure that I'm creative in some other senses, but when it comes to podcasting, it's just not going to be my primary vehicle for being able to do that kind of creative work. Maybe it is, I just for some reason I lean into that, I lean out, I lean away from that in that sense. But anyway, most business owners are not going to focus themselves on a narrative podcast because it does require quite a bit more work, typically scripting, typically lots of interviews with other folks. And think of any NPR piece or other kind of public radio piece where you've heard multiple people, multiple different kinds of recording environments, and those things spliced together. So there's quite a bit of post-production that is required even after that, that brings it into that space.

Yeah, it's kind of like a mini documentary. Like, think of if you're watching television and you're watching a documentary with a lot of different voices, a lot of different locations, or whatever it is think of that as pretty much a narrative podcast, or, you know, could be audio, could be video, obviously, with the changing nature of podcasts. But we are focused on audio, so think of it as an audio documentary.

Yeah, and I think most businesses just don't have the time, energy, or resources and desire really to do that kind of narrative-style podcasting. If you do, great, good on you. I fully support every kind of podcast to be done. But the, but the ultimate goal here is to be practical, affordable, and, and really useful to your audience. And I think that an ongoing serial podcast, it just tends to lend toward these other 4 formats instead of a narrative style.

And you mentioned— I was just gonna say, you mentioned practicality, and that means a lot. And that also has a lot to do with Are you going to be a solo host? Are you going to have a co-host situation? Are you going to have a host and guests? And, you know, so on, so on. The practicality matters a lot for your—

Absolutely. I was, I was going to say almost the same exact thing, Steve, and that, you know, many times choosing this format— I don't know that we get so far into the weeds here with this, and I think this is why we're doing this companion podcast— which is that the amount of energy you bring to the table really makes a difference to the podcast's quality. And so, um, how do I say this delicately? What are people— what are you thinking? I'm me. If you're boring as hell, uh, you are going to not be the best on a podcast, uh, if you have the wrong format, right? So if you're a solo host and you can't bring dynamism to the microphone, then solo hosting is not for you, right? So this is where we can really like start to think through how a format could really help you, because maybe you aren't the most dynamic dynamic speaker, and that's not you, that's like whatever, that's something you could work on with Steve. But the goal here is that you wanna be able to choose a format that is gonna have some dynamism, some interesting, there's gotta be an element of hopeful surprise, something like that that will come out of the podcast to keep people engaged. And if you're not energetic at times, I'm not always gonna be super energetic throughout an entire podcast, like I'm not on speed, but, I know how to bring dynamism to the microphone, and I'm comfortable with that. Not everybody is. And so maybe having a co-host who can kind of interject and bring up things and, you know, help play off a little bit of banter to make some, make some jokes. Those are things that help to keep the podcast lively and moving along. And that means maybe having some guests. The, the, the element of surprise with call-in guests or live show allows for that. That's why we're, we're doing this live, right? You know, there's going to be mistakes, there's going to be little technical glitches, there's going to be all that stuff. It's fine, whatever, we'll fix it in post, right? But when people join, you want them to be able to feel like they're following the stream, not struggling against it, right? You should be feel— they should feel flowing with the current, not against it. Different than reading the book, by the way. Steven, I definitely conflicted there on many occasions 'cause I believe, you know, a book like ours is something to be rigorously engaged with, right? And the more you engage with it, the more you're gonna be, you're gonna learn. And, and, and so, you know, there's a, there's a process and a place for you flowing with content, right, and kind of moving along with it. And I can, I can agree with that. But there are times when I'm, I purposefully challenge Steve to challenge you in the book, so that there is some difficulty there. Because when you, when you hit roadblocks in the content, you are then forced to have to think hard, which means that you will think longer. And, and that means you will actually kind of by osmosis, pick up the content better, right? And those are the areas where I don't want you bilked, right? When you go to hire a podcast producer or podcast editor, I want you to remember the things that Steve and I tell you in the book that are really important so that maybe you're not doing it, but when they tell you, oh, we couldn't do this or we couldn't do that, you could say, no, no, actually I know we can because maybe I edited the first couple podcast episodes and I saw it being done. Or, you know what I mean, when people will just make excuses all the time and we want to make sure you have an effective podcast. So this is why some of these choices were made in the book to be able to help in that sense. So, you know, formats are strategic. They're not just cosmetic choices. So, you know, they tend to influence the pacing of the podcast, the tone, the authority you bring, and also the amount of workload that ultimately comes up in the podcast.

And that goes with the You know, again, the practicality of it for you and your business. Now, if you as a business owner do not want to be the host and you don't feel you have the time, you don't feel you have the chops behind the mic, then what do you do? You know, we talk a little bit about that in the book as well. So, you know, Ray, how, you know, as a business owner, how should you make that decision? How do you tell yourself, you know, because there's a lot of ego involved to hosting your own podcast, but how you— how as a business owner do you make that choice? Or what can you— what advice can you give to a business owner to make the right choice to have the most effective podcast they can?

Yeah, absolutely. I've always made the delineation in terms of, is your business prepared for sale or transfer to others after you're done? Or is this a ship that's going to go down go down with its captain, or the captain's going to go down with the ship, so to speak. If you, if you plan to only have a podcast and the business as being a primary vehicle for you during your working life, then it's totally fine for you to be the host and for you to kind of captain that podcast ship. And so that's one criterion. The other criterion is, again, that, that do you feel comfortable with helping your brand with your voice and your thoughts. And that may be setting aside political opinions when you're on the mic, right? Your brand may not be helped by you spouting off about something that's completely independent of the topic of the podcast, right? It would be like, you know, me having a productivity podcast and then talking about, you know, making chicken soup. You know, it would be, it'd be kind of, although Maybe there's some productivity topics that, you know, like chopping vegetables effectively, that kind of thing. But sure, choose a topic that's completely random and off the charts in terms of things, right? You know, like it would be potentially not useful to the listening audience if you just go left field all the time to something that can be somewhat hot button. And I absolutely believe that we should have more political discourse. It shouldn't be so heated and shouldn't be, you know, so, you know, rivalry-oriented. That's not the topic of your podcast, right? So you have to, you have to be mindful of the, of the current climate of your business, of your market, of the industry or vertical you're in. And you may not be the best, you know, advocate voice, literally for the job. And, and as you said, there's ego, there's pride involved, there's a lot going on there. So I totally understand that. But try it out. See if it works. See if it doesn't work for you. Also, if you're petrified of being behind the mic and in front of people, then again, you know, I just keep pitching Steve here, but you need to talk to Steve. But the, but the other side is that you need to either lean into the discomfort or just choose to go run your business. And that means you need to delegate that, that responsibility, that role to someone else to handle. And I know Steve has hosted for other organizations, their podcasts. And so you know, Steve, what has been your experience in hosting others' podcasts? What are some of the things that you found worked well for them? What are the things that you found were maybe detrimental to the process?

Well, I think, I think what works well for, for, and I should say in all candor, what I did host was an internal podcast, which is different than what we're talking about now. So I, I believe what helped them the most with this particular situation was they had somebody with an outsider's perspective, with a— what they were looking to do as a journalist background that I have as a broadcaster, to figure out what questions made sense. So those were the kinds of things that I think was very helpful for them. I think what's detrimental for a lot of folks who may want to farm it out is this person doesn't necessarily know their brand or their company, whatever it is, as well as they do. You can get up to speed, but you don't necessarily, as, as a host, being a host for somebody else's brand, I don't have that institutional knowledge. And I think that can be a detriment in some cases when you hire an outside host.

Yeah, and this is really dependent upon the industry or vertical, but I really think that having an external party be the podcast host as a professional host— so for some folks who don't know, there's the Podcast Academy, which is basically the the membership organization, kind of like the Academy Awards has kind of the Actors Guild and other kinds of organizations like that. It's kind of the organization of podcasting, and I'm a member as a podcaster and as someone who's both behind the mic but also behind the scenes, you know, helping to produce my own podcasts and so on and so forth. And there's a whole, you know, group of people who you can source from that organization who could be hired to host your podcast. And what Steve said earlier about having a journalism background, while you don't have to have that in someone who hosts the podcast, there is something really valuable about having someone come tabula rasa to the business and for you to have to explain to them the business's brand message. Well, what is the consistent overarching theme for the year or for the quarter? What are you trying to sell? What service lines, what product lines are you trying to sell? And is the podcast really going to do that by virtue of what you as the business owner say to this potential podcast host. So Steve being able to ask them those questions means that he's not only learning how to present it on the podcast, but it's also, it's a forcing function for the business to clarify their message. And as I keep talking about on all of these episodes, I'm going to keep talking about it, that a rising tide lifts all ships when it comes to digital marketing. When you get some of these pieces refined, then more and more of the business's marketing becomes better because of it. And there's just a value to talking things out, and podcasting is just naturally inclined toward that perspective. And so I think having an external podcast host, while they will lack institutional knowledge, they may lack the insight into party politics inside of the organization, you know, who should be interviewed, who should not be interviewed in the organization, right? Especially if you have 50+ employees, you know, there are going to be some people you don't want to get on the mic because they're just going to go on and on about some grievance they had, you know, 10 years ago. So don't record those live. But the idea here is to be mindful of who is going to do that. And I wanted to just bring up two things that we could have talked about in the last segment, but I just, I put them here for good purpose. But, you know, the Feed podcast, which was the podcast hosted by Lipson and Elsie Escobar and, oh my gosh, his name is escaping me now.

Rob Walsh.

Rob Walsh, thank you, thank you. VP of Podcast Relations over there at Libsyn. He and Elsie, you know, host that podcast and had hosted it for a decade and a half, and they have community and audience submissions. So they take podcasters' submissions into the show. And so this is really kind of one of those things where who hosts the conversations can be really interesting because you could, you could have a mashup of a bunch of other people's voices, you could go out to your own clients, client testimonials, right? That's a natural inclination to infuse into the podcast, maybe during a promo section. So you have these natural persuasion opportunities that don't— that fit outside of the, of the value stream, but are still giving you a form of brand message by them telling you that. The other thing we didn't talk about, and we say that right up front in the in the book is talking about pod guides. So pod guides is using a particular file format, AAC format..AAC allows you to add in images into the podcast feed that are basically time signatured. So you can actually have an image with voice underneath it. It's kind of like a slideshow. And so you can actually run a show that guides people through things both visually and in text without having the video element to it, right? This is why I personally am so, you know, such an advocate for audio-first podcasts because you have this ability to push images into the feed in this format. Now the goal here is maybe you're a tour guide and you want to be able to have your tours, you know, kind of advertised or promoted through the podcast feed. You can kind of do mini tours and give people a flavor, a taste of that. And this is where your tour guides, maybe not you, are going to be the ones who are recording and putting this in there. So just think outside the, the, the typical, uh, constructs, and you start to take the, the formats that Steve and I give you, and you start to become much more creative with the ideas.

And that you mentioned, um, the, the tour guide museums do that. I mean, that, that's something that museums do, but I'm You know, to your point, a lot of businesses may not be thinking that way. And there are many ways to do that with the content that you might have. Let me give you just a, you know, quick example. You know, I think I may have been talking about lawn mowers last in, in last episode. Well, you could do that with lawn mowers. Let's say you're talking about lawn mower design in your podcast. Well, you could show different parts of the lawn mower. As part of your audio podcast, yet you have that visual and you show different lawn mowers.

Right. Absolutely. And again, you can, you could put these in the show notes as well. So you don't need to place this into the, into the podcast feed itself. So don't get overcomplicated in your thinking about this, but just remember that you have some flexibility with all of this. And this takes us really onto, I know we talked about co-hosts and contributors and producers, but there are lots of different roles that you can have to support to support the podcast show's production. And I'm curious about, like, kind of behind the scenes, you thinking about this, Steve, because you always had a team at MarketWatch and other radio stations in the sense that you had a producer, right? You know, you at least had a producer who was your boss, who was telling you what needed to be done. Maybe not. Maybe there's— you're giving me a look here.

Yes, well, we will really have to talk about this, Ray.

But what did it look like in radio and how did that translate? How does that translate, do you feel like, to podcasts? And then I'll give the contrast, which is as a podcaster, you know, there's flat organization, there's zero when you're coming from my experience, but that may be different for other folks, you know, as they move into the podcast world today.

There's several ways to think about this, and certainly from my experience for many, many, many years on the radio. So my more recent experience on the radio, I was in many ways more like a podcaster because I had decision-making— what stories, who I interviewed. Um, certainly I did not have any, any opportunity for length I mean, I had a set length where, as I was on the network, it had to be a minute. If it was a minute two, I was done, I was cut off. So there are— there were constraints that you do not have in podcasting. But in terms of who told me what to do, decision-making, I know it may sound odd, but at the, the radio network, the MarketWatch radio network, which was a business radio network I had decision-making over what stories I put into my broadcasts. I had decision-making over who I would interview for whatever stories that I was working on. I did a lot of features for the weekend. I came up with the content. I came up with who I wanted to interview. I did all the editing. I recorded the stories and when they went out to air. Now Previously, in certain incarnations, I was an anchor for all-news radio. And at times, yes, I did have a producer. Certainly there was a news director. Certainly there was a news director at MarketWatch, you know. So don't get me wrong, there wasn't somebody. But with the constraints in the business, you had few— fewer levels than you did, you know, back in like 30, 40 years ago, where you had somebody We had what we would call a board, like an all-news radio, let's say, and there were anchors. Somebody as a producer would run the control board and press all the buttons and do all that for you. By the time I was coming up, I was my own producer, so I was pressing all the buttons at the same time being on the air. So a lot of that has changed, and it looks a lot more like what it is today if you're your own podcast producer. Host just because of the nature of, you know, budgets, constraint, you know, whatever you want to say. I mean, it's, it's, it's changed a lot.

Yeah, and I think that if you are a well-resourced business, you can certainly go into a podcast studio and have someone run the boards. You show up, you record. All you're doing is bringing your best self and your best preparation to the, the recording. For most of us, I think that but the idea of doing kind of all of the work of, you know, setting up your own studio, whatever that looks like, you know, we will talk about that in a few chapters, and straight through the idea of you directing, producing, and post-producing the show, you're everything. And I started that way, and so I'm very comfortable with that, which is why I think that the book has all of this kind of technical element to it, because I feel like it's just really important for you to know even if you don't do it. The goal is that even if you have to do it because you don't have the resourcing, then you are going to be able to do it by looking at the book and just following the instructions, right? It's gonna get you 95% of the way there, and then you can ask, you know, Google or, you know, or one of the other search engines for an answer to it from there. And even I'm sure you could go to generative AI and start asking it questions on how to overcome some of these issues, and it'll be able to help you. So the goal here is to really think through you know, how you're going to practically make sure you're getting through these pieces. One of the things, and I just want to touch on this and we'll move on, which is that as you are thinking about co-hosts, contributors, and producers, there is a, just like any other staff member, there's a hiring and firing process. There's going to be conflict involved in all of these things, and conflict is healthy. I mean, I approach conflict from a very healthy perspective. I'm, I'm, I just, I'm, I'm like let's, let's just get it out of the way.

We've had quite a bit of that over the book.

Yes, of course. Yeah. And I, again, I think it's fully healthy. You know, I respect Steve, you know, ultimately. And so all of the conflict getting to things is, I think, a healthy process. It gets it out in the air. You know, I came from a family where we're very open and honest with our disinterest and our struggles and frustration with things. And so It's just something that I feel like is very healthy to approach. Not everybody is like that. Not everybody's going to deal with conflict the same ways. And I'm not saying that I'm the most healthy dealer with conflict myself. I just, I feel like it's healthier at least to lean into it than not. And so you need to figure out how to deal with that. For example, you might get stuck with a podcast host that you don't want to be on your podcast anymore, but because you started with them, now you have them and you're stuck there. It's not something we covered in the book because it just— there's only so much we could have covered in the book. But recognize that you will need to potentially fire a podcast host at some point, you know, and say like, we're going to go our separate ways. And that also means you need to have pre-discussed what happens to the content of that podcast, who keeps the podcast if you, if you quote unquote break up, right? And all of that kind of stuff. So there's some mealy-ness and some, some details here that you you probably want to figure out. And, you know, you might have contributors, you might have a producer who's, who's helping promote the podcast and do all of those things, and, and they have a lot invested. And then if you don't want to work with them anymore, there's going to be some potentially hurt feelings. So this is something to consider in, in what's going on throughout those cases. Podcast co-hosts die. They, they themselves may go out of business. If you have, say, two affinity businesses, say you're a yoga instructor and you have another yoga instructor or a Pilates instructor, you do a health and wellness podcast in your local region, one of them passes away, one of them goes out of business. Now all of a sudden you're kind of left to do the rest by yourself and you may need to replace a podcast host because you, you just don't feel like you could do it by yourself. When I first started my, my first, I started my first business, I knew I couldn't do it by myself and so I needed a business partner in order to do that. And, and so it was a natural, you know, kind of desire to, to be able to fill that gap when you lose a business partner or you buy a business partner out or that kind of thing. So you have to know yourself and know what you're gonna want in the podcast and the goals for the podcast need to be primacy when you're making those values choices. And then you need to think about yourself and that becomes a values choice. So just kind of just wanted to let folks know that these are things we thought about. We didn't necessarily put them in the book because it's just, it's supposed to be essential blueprint, not the, vast and all-knowing tome of podcasting. But, you know, these are things you should definitely be thinking about when it comes to the start of the podcast. And this is why in the introduction we also put that Creative Commons Podcasting Legal Guide, a link to it, so that you can read through it and just get used to some of the trademark and copyright issues and that kind of thing, so that you can know what to address when it comes to these kinds of continuity issues when it comes to the podcast. Just like business continuity, we want to think about the podcast continuity as well. Let's, let's dive into the show length and frequency, Steve. We had a lot that we could say in this section, we chose not to, and so I'm really curious, your kind of high-level thoughts on length of show and the cadence of the show and its structure.

That goes back to the time you have as a business owner to devote to this. So if you are a business owner who wants to do a solo podcast, in terms of a time for that particular podcast, I would always say the shorter the better because you're just not necessarily going to have the time commitment to do a longer show. That you could with a co-host who may have some of the responsibilities, or with guests who come on and they're going to take up a lot of the conversation, which saves you from doing a lot of that. But, um, you know, we say quite often in the, in the book that there's no right answer to how long a podcast can be. It's however long it is that it remains entertaining, you know, whatever, whatever. As long as it— it should be as long as it needs to be, if that makes any sense. And I'm probably not describing it well right here, but— and I don't think there's a right answer because we know there's podcasts that go for hours. You know, you had your podcast, what was it, 2 Minutes?

Yeah, my first podcast was the Productivity Podcast in 2 Minutes or Less. Yes, even less, less. I frequently made it less than 2 minutes, but, you know, I had to edit, edit, edit down until it got to under 2 minutes, just kind of like your 1-minute podcast. But I will note here, just like a little underscore of what you're saying here, is that podcasts can be of any length. I think that as long as there's voice and value, then the podcast should be as long as possible because the more time people spend with you, the more of that parasocial relationship develops, more of that time with you becomes trust, getting to know you and that level of persuasion you have over them. So kind of like on a website, we have a concept called dwell time. Dwell time is the amount of time someone spends on a website and that increases their desire to purchase, what we call purchase intent. It increases with dwell time. And the same thing happens in the podcast environment. The longer someone's listening to you, the more likely they are to be persuaded by you. And so you want to kind of keep that in mind. But not, not with drivel, right? You're not going to—

No, it has to be compelling. And that's, that's the word that I was searching for before that I was having trouble pulling out, but it has to be compelling.

Well, good. I'm glad I filled the air so you could come up with the word.

Yeah. But you know, and that's why in many ways, you know, getting back to, you know, that what I was first saying about a podcast owner that wants to host the show. Or have a, you know, a host and it's just a solo podcast, chances of that being compelling over an hour are, in my mind, are a lot less than it being compelling for 10 minutes. And also the cadence of that too. So if you are going to be a solo host and you are going to do a podcast and they are going to be for shorter lengths, then the cadence of that can be more than if it were a longer podcast. So that's another way to build that parasocial relationship over, you know, maybe it's Monday through Friday if you're a solo host and you do 2 minutes a day, as opposed to a weekly where you're doing 20 minutes, you know. And I know, I know a lot of folks, you know, think about— we do touch upon this in the book about the daily commute and what the daily commute is and whether that is the ideal time for your podcast length. I know there are many studies or discussions about this, and, you know, it could be anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes. Some people say 15 to 60 minutes, right? So just, you know, when we talk about the structure, just don't get caught up in it has to be a certain amount of time each week, but we do like to think about being consistent. So rather than having one week it's 2 minutes and the next week 85 minutes, I mean, try to be a little bit more consistent than that, and I think that'll better serve your audience.

And you have to take into account, we gave the one statistics of the, of the national average commute time in the United States, um, just as, as a, uh, kind of a, a one anchor, you know, just one element. But think while people are walking the dog, that's gonna take differing levels of time. And that may be when they're listening to your podcast, it may be when they're getting their morning coffee, and maybe when they're just walking to work, maybe taking the subway to work or the bus to work. So these are times that are incredibly variable. And then you have to take into account that I listen to all podcasts at 2.5x, right? So your podcast that may be an hour long is now only 20-odd minutes for me. That becomes a little bit different for folks just across the board. So do not get wrapped up in the particulars of that. What Steve said is really meant to be underscored. Be consistent about the length generally. You know, if you have a really great guest and you want to make a 30-minute podcast, 40 minutes, fine. But when you go from 10 minutes to 85 minutes, you're just screwing with people.

Right?

And now their expectations are being all over the place. Why do people go to Target? Why do people go to McDonald's? Why do people go to Wendy's? It's about the consistency of what their experience is, right? They go to those big box retailers, they go to those large, you know, places because they're going to get discounted prices. But most importantly, they're going to get familiarity. And they can go to a Target in Tuscaloosa, Oklahoma, or one in New York City, they're going to see the same branding, same return policies, they're going to see all of those things are very similar. And your podcast needs to be the same thing. Your business needs to be the same thing, right? It needs to have that same brand message. It needs to have that same sense of consistency. It makes people comfortable, right? And psychological safety is what we're trying to create here. So they let their guard down, not so you can scam them, but so that you can persuade them about your business being the right solution to the felt need or want that they have that you can provide.

I was just gonna say you meant Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

Sure, whatever. There's Tuscaloosas everywhere. Just teasing.

So next, I know you have something lined up that you want to talk about next, so I'll let you in the time we have.

We can move along to really then beyond just the sustainable rhythm concept onto what also allows something to be sustainable, which is the time commitment. A lot of business owners immediately hear podcast and they will think, this is going to take a lot more time than I think it's going to take. But it's kind of like when you get a bill in the mail and you don't open the envelope because you're afraid of what the amount of the bill is going to be. So you set it aside on the counter and then a month goes by and then 2 months go by. Don't do that. Open it up, know what you're dealing with, right? You're much more likely to address something and deal with it when you know your enemy. And podcasting isn't the enemy, maybe time is, but the goal here is that you want to address this knowing how much you are going to take in terms of getting the podcast out the door. And that depends on whether you're doing everything, you're gonna do everything from sourcing the content, setting it up, hosting, recording and post-production, or whether you're gonna be delegating some of those pieces. In the early part of a podcast, you're gonna be doing a lot more, and then as you get the podcast into maintenance mode, as I like to call it, where you're just generally producing content and everything is going smoothly, then you're gonna spend less time on that content. And so your goal here is to figure out what you are going to do. And so we provide some estimates in terms of how people can just calculate how much time each podcast is gonna take to publish.

Do you want to divulge those numbers, or do you want to say, hey, just read the book, it's in there? I, I, you know, and things have changed, you know, when we were first discussing this and we had some, some discussions about how long it really takes to produce this podcast. And since we first started having those discussions, then came AI, along came AI. Which streamlines a lot of the time commitment on the back end in terms of how you edit things, especially how you edit things, um, perhaps in your preparation, um, for your questions or whatever it is, depending on what you're going to do, um, for whatever format you choose. But that has skewed things, and in many ways, once you get up and running, I think it's going to take less than I initially thought it really should be taking now in today's world than when we were first having the discussions.

Yeah, that's interesting. I still find it takes the same amount of time. Higher quality work is being done because of the automation and the use of generative AI. You know, like, I can now take a lot of content and now format that content. I'm usually using— I'm really using, like, I'll take it into Google Gemini to help format the content, right? So I'm, I'm a fairly fast typist. So, you know, I typically am just kind of trying to keep my fingers, you know, to keep up with my thoughts. And, and so if I'm typing out my thoughts, now I can just take that and throw that into a ChatGPT or Google Gemini or an Anthropic Claude type tool. And now it's going to help format that for me, which is really helpful. So I'm keeping my own words, I'm keeping my own thoughts. I don't want it I can think my own thoughts. I don't need generative AI to do that. But the goal here is for it to put it in a nice format so that it's logically flowing. I may rearrange things, put headings in. That's really sped up my— I could spend a little perfectionism time doing that stuff. Now I can spend more of that time researching my interviewees. I can spend more time researching my topic. That time is still spent in that. I've typically said to folks, I've said this for years and years, if you take your podcast and just take double the length, add it to the length of the podcast, and that's going to be about the amount of time it's going to take to get that podcast out the door. So if you have a 30-minute podcast, that's an hour and a half, right? So double the podcast, 30 minutes times 2 is an hour. Add the actual length of the podcast, which is typically about the amount of time you recorded, you're going to take an hour and a half worth of time to record, edit, you know, prepare, record, edit, and publish that particular podcast. And again, with, with a lot of the tools that are out there, folks are using Descript for editing now, which has all kinds of tools to speed up the editing process, you're just gonna get the podcast out faster. And, and once you— again, we do this, we give you a full checklist, Steve and I work, you know, through building out that kind of workflow. So you can kind of, you know, get it all together. And again, it's a template, you start with what we've given you. It's not like it's not an edict for exactly what you need to do, but at least you're starting off with a good start starting point. You can download it from the resources library once I upload it, and then once you download it from the resources library, you'll then be able to go ahead and just copy it and then start making edits, right? You can say, OK, well, now this is, this is useless. I don't use this tool, or I don't actually want to put ID3 tags in it because you maybe don't think— I think ID3 tags are still absolutely important. I think you should ignore all of the gurus out there telling you not to ID3 tag your data. If you have a podcast feed and you're putting that out into a podcast, you know, directory that does not have all of this fancy technology, your podcast is not going to look good when it downloads into those apps. So you should be very mindful of your ID3 tags. So I know a lot of people out there are like, oh, we automatically do it because we're a fancy podcast host. Screw them. You need to, you need to do the work so that you effectively show up consistently everywhere, right? It takes, it takes a minute to do your ID3 tags with the right tool. Do not miss these little tiny things. And I know that I go through the book in certain parts and kind of override the, the, the, the suggestions with like, this is really important that you need to do that. And Steve and I are doing that because We want to make sure that these little particular things, they make a big difference, especially to Google and the search engines, right? And for really trying to be seen well on, in the search engines, we want to make sure that you're seen well.

And I, I, I wasn't sure if you were going to save ID3 tags for a later chapter when we talk.

We'll talk about it again. I'm, it's my soapbox.

Yes, I know. It's, I know you, you, you like your soapboxes, but, and, and, you know, you mentioned the script. I actually used it it to help my wife on a video project recently, and boy, did it speed things up. Yeah, because you can edit. One thing, if people don't know— well, we're going to talk about this later too, but just real quickly— you can edit using text because you upload your audio or video, gives you the transcription, you can edit right off of the text.

Right, right. And so just to close out this segment, we'll get on to our last before we close out, but the goal here is to really think about the fact We might give you these estimates, but remember that there are all kinds of things that are going to expand the length of editing. You know, you might have missed interview scheduling where, you know, you schedule an interview, that person doesn't show up, and then they have to reschedule and reschedule. So those things might delay a podcast. You may have to move a podcast episode around to accommodate those kinds of schedules, especially if you have a big name that you're bringing onto the podcast. You want to schedule those as early as possible because there may be multiple missteps along the way and you want to still hit your scheduling. And There's also kind of the emotional tax. For some people, there is an emotional labor associated with birthing the podcast, and every single one of those just leads to a little bit of burnout. So it needs to be a sense of getting yourself, you know, rejuvenated, right? You know, so you can kind of rebuild that emotional, spiritual energy to bring back to the podcast at some point. So maybe taking some time off, record episodes up front, take a little time off, record more episodes, take a little time off. You got to figure those things out. This should be thought about now in the podcasting process so you don't pod fade as much as I have, uh, in, in, in all of it, right? Uh, you know, I, I, I'm very, um, I'm very, uh, open about the fact that I was producing ProdPod for many years, uh, 118 episodes of the podcast, and I stopped because I'd spent, I don't know how, I mean, countless hours, not countless, I think I pretty much track all of my time so I can, I can go back and tell you exactly how much time I spent on preparing, um, for those last couple of episodes, and it was not worth the production. You know, I put out a 2-minute episode on something that I had spent, you know, dozens of hours. I probably spent 20+ hours, uh, watching documentaries and reading books and so on and so forth, put out a 2-minute episode and I was done. And I was like, oh, this is not worth it. You know, I don't care if there are 4,000, 5,000 people listening to me a day. It is just not worth my time. And so I quit. I quit completely, right? And you don't want that to happen. I don't want that to happen to you. You know, and so, you know, I have endeavored to step back into prod pod. But, you know, not everybody will, right? And not everybody's gonna get back on that horse. So learn from, from our mistakes, learn from specifically my mistakes, you know, in, in not wanting to do that, you know, there's going to be momentum loss, you know, you're going to have all kinds of batching challenges, right? There's going to be technological challenges, this technology is constantly changing, right? So you might get a really good workflow going with one generative AI tool, and then it's going to It's going to change models, and then all of a sudden your work product is going to be different. Now you have to change. So be mindful that these things are not elements that we kind of go into in the book, but they're definitely things you need to consider up front.

And you mentioned batching. That's one thing we didn't really talk a lot about, but in terms of batching, have a bunch of podcasts done before you actually start releasing. If you go week to week, you're going to run into trouble. There's no doubt you're going to run into trouble. So always be working ahead. I think maybe in the book we say maybe have 8 in the can. I don't quite remember how many, and that can vary also depending on your release schedule. But don't try to do it week by week or every 2 weeks and say, oh, this, this is now I'm going to do devote my time to this now, you're going to run into trouble.

Yeah, so I think I, I don't know that we say anything in the book about it, only because I used to give very, very clear numbers. And I would tell people, you know, do not release until you have X number of episodes released, you know, in the can, you know, kind of set up to release. And then I started getting feedback so widely across the spectrum of podcasters. You know, some people would record 26 episodes ahead, some people would record 2. And what I've generally recommended is that if you are a seasonal podcast, you wanna record at least half the season before releasing your first. If you are doing 10 episodes at a time, just being 2.5 months ahead of schedule if you're releasing a weekly episode, that does not allow you to be nimble enough in the face of changing trends. And so just be mindful of the fact that if you record an episode, 8 weeks is a long time that something really big could happen. And if you schedule something, right, we just had an unfortunate attack in Australia and our thoughts go out to those folks, obviously. But if you all of a sudden had something that mentioned that location and it was really happy-go-lucky and that kind of thing, and all of a sudden you've scheduled it, it's out of, out of, out of mind because you did that. Now that episode goes out and really looks bad on you as a business because it sounds and looks insensitive. And, and so I'm, I'm very mindful of the fact that you need that kind of recency of, of your publishing so that you keep, keep that in mind. So roughly about 8 to 10 weeks I think is a good amount of time for you to be ahead of schedule in terms of having recorded, edited, and ready to produce, but just Pay attention to what is going on out there. You know, there's a lot of minefields, landmines, whatever, that you can step on, enter into, and you wanna make sure that you are staying, you know, aware of those things so you don't step in it when the time comes. So, you know, be ahead, as Steve said. I think that's absolutely true. You wanna be at least a few episodes ahead of the recording. I think a month to a little bit more than a month is a nice buffer 'cause then, you know, Kids can get sick, you can take a vacation, all of those things are going to be fine. Have the plan, right? You can have a year plan ahead, right? But the recording and the editing and ready to publish, you know, that timeframe is a really good amount of buffer so that life can happen and you don't have to be crazed about it all. All right, Steve, let's bring it all together. What are your final thoughts? About Chapter 3?

I'm gonna say it in just a few words. Structure does not limit creativity, it gives it shape. And I'll add one other word or two words. Be flexible.

Couldn't have said it better. Well, this is the end of our companion to our book, Podcasting for Small Business: The Essential Blueprint. To launch your podcast. I'm Ray Sidney-Smith with my co-author and co-host to this show, Steve Orr. And next week we're going to be talking about how to actually host a podcast. So if you are going to be the host, how do you actually do that? And so in episode 4, we're going to go into that topic and talk about some of the particulars. This is going to be Steve's stage. I'm going to, I'm going to turn most of this over to Steve because he's the expert in this space. I've just been doing it, and so I'm not necessarily the expert more than I just have the experience of being behind the mic for all of these podcast episodes over the years. But we're looking forward to being able to do that. So with that, take care, everybody, and we'll see you next time.