Crafting The Best Podcast Topics That Helps Your Show Stand Out

Everybody, welcome to Feed. You'd Brand. I'm Tom Hazard, your host, and today I want to talk about a topic. Actually, I'm going to be very transparent as to why I chose this topic today. I was struggling for what to talk about today, so I think it's a common problem a lot of podcasters have, especially new podcasters, is how do you come up with a great topic? And I find oftentimes people have issues thinking about, oh, my gosh, how am I going to come up with enough topics to do one show a week for a whole year? So it's like 50 plus topics, right? And then think about, you know, even beyond that. You know, some people are podcasting more than once a week, so maybe 100 in a year. And, you know, Tracy's in my first podcast. We're pretty close to episode 600 on that podcast. So we've. We didn't think in the beginning we would have enough topics to cover 600 episodes. Now it's been, you know, a lot of years, but, boy, I mean, for a while there, we were doing five episodes a week. So how do you come up with topics for all that? Could be a daunting task, you know, at first, but what I found over the years is that actually coming up with topics is not that hard, at least in my opinion. I mean, you can disagree with me if you have different experience or different feeling about it, but coming up with topics, there are a lot of different ways you can do that.

I think oftentimes people tend to try to put too much into a single episode. They try to bite off more than they can chew in a reasonable amount of time or try to cram too many aspects of a topic. And what we say is, you always want to take a very deep, narrow dive into any topic and not try to cover a whole lot of stuff. You know, audiences really appreciate focus and, you know, setting out to cover a topic, covering it and being done, and then, hey, next episode, there'll be another topic, right? I've got a list I was actually going through. I could show you here. I've got, you know, a list of different topics front and back that I was going through before this call today, trying to find, all right, what's an appropriate topic? And, you know, for today. All these topics are the things that I've covered or I felt was not really appropriate for today for this particular session and for the people that I'm serving through this, because I'm, you know, in all transparency, I'm recording this live and broadcasting it on Facebook as I'm doing it. And it's only going out to my customers, my clients, the ones that are working with us, they get it first. And when I record episodes like this, which I do weekly, but I record additional episodes outside of that that, you know, for this group, it's people that are podcasting in service of their business and people that are, you know, either already podcasting or they're in the startup or launch process of a podcast. And, and honestly, there's a lot of topics that would be more appropriate for people that are doing it themselves that are on that list I showed you that, you know, this group really isn't going to be very interested in. So none of those topics were interesting me. There's another topic Tracy and I came up with last night that we realized she needs to be there to do that topic, and she couldn't be here today because she has another business meeting going on as I am speaking to you live. So that's gonna wait for, you know, a week or two, and then she's gonna do that topic. I'm not gonna, you know, tease you as to what that is because we can't talk about it today or at least doesn't make sense to without her. So topics, I mean, that's something I have a lot of experience with because I've. I've recorded, gosh, I've recorded well over a thousand podcast episodes myself with all the different shows that I'm a co host of or a host of. So let's talk about topics. You know, really, there's no topic too narrow, there's no topic too simple, and maybe also no topic too complex. But if they get complex, you may need to break them down. You may have a part one, a part two, or a special series of them. But I always say this, you want a topic, obviously it's in your niche, in your genre, whatever your show is about. And our podcaster shows are all over the map, subject matter wise. There's business related ones, there's, you know, real estate related ones, investing related ones. Exercise, health, wellness, marketing. I mean, so many topics I can't even think about. So. But no matter. One thing's for sure, every podcast that we've launched, whenever people say, I don't know if I can come up with enough subjects, we sit down and we talk about their genre and all the different potential subjects. And usually you, you know, they'd like to, hey, it'd be great if we could just get 12 topics for the first 12 episodes. And we Sit down and make a list, and before we know it, we have 100 or 150 different potential topics listed out. It's just some may be better at certain times than others. Some may be seasonal. Some may be more of a fundamental series, like, you know, somebody's doing something about investing. If they're targeting consumers, they may need a 101, a foundational series of episodes that maybe at first are going to be just a normal part of their initial episodes, but after they get maybe 15, 20 episodes published, there's eight or 10 or 12 that could be spun off as its own show, its own listing. It's like, hey, when you're new to the show, you know, obviously you're gonna listen to the new ones we're publishing now, but you may want to go back and listen to these 8, 10, or 12. It's a special series. They can binge through it in a day or a weekend, and then they really get the fundamentals of what your show is all about and then can jump in to what you're doing now, whether that's, you know, six months later, a year later, whatever it is from when you originally published those episodes. And then they can get more out of your topics then. So sometimes creating sort of this 101 series, foundational series of episodes can be very helpful. Depends again, on your subject matter. But, you know, I just break things down into small niche subjects, and then a niche subject that usually I can come up with three, maybe bullet points, no more than five. I tend to think three is perfect. Certainly an odd number, I think works better. Just in my experience. Tracy would say the same thing. We learned a lot of business lessons from her father, who's now retired, but he was in big international business. And one of his main lessons to us that we have, I would say, adopted because we agree we've experienced it enough, is that when you go into a meeting or you're going to have a phone call with somebody, a business meeting that way, or you're going to prepare a talk. And I think a podcast topic, something to record on, is very similar in that regard as a talk. And that is you want three things. You want three things that you're going to talk about about any subject. Now, like I said, I've stretched it to five. I think an odd number is best. But regardless, have three things. So if I'm going to talk about, you know, podcast, you know, for one of my shows about podcasting, if I'm going to talk about podcast advertising or monetizing your Podcast I'm probably going to have three, three main topics that I'm going to talk about. Now, certainly there are exceptions to this, but I think three is something, you know, you can have it bullet points on a. Post it on your desk as you're recording so you can remember to cover each one of them. Don't script it, just speak on each of those little bullet subtopics of your main topic until it feels like you've covered them and feels like you're complete and the episode. And you know that if you're doing a solo cast in particular now. So there's many different types of subjects. Let me rephrase that. Many different types of podcast episodes, they could be solo casts where you're just speaking on, you know, your subject matter, you're an expert in your field and you're going to share some nuggets of wisdom regarding your experience with your audience. It's something hopefully that'll be value to them, something they can learn from, take some action on. And it'd be great if there was a story associated with it. So you'd have a little bit of entertainment as well. But definitely breaking it into, you know, three or five key things. Now, there are exceptions to that. You know, Tracy and I think did a couple months ago we did the 21 key factors in 21 key factors in doing something. I don't remember exactly what it was, but there were. We went through actually 21 key factors in doing something, writing, podcasting. And then I'm gonna have to go look that up because I don't even remember now. But you can have things when that was like an hour long kind of a masterclass type of a thing. It was a hyperloaded session. It was done as a live and it, I think it went out as a podcast also that we broke down all the, those these top 21 factors. And people like things like that. If you give them the top 10, top 7, top 3, whatever. I think a couple weeks ago I did, you know, three things every podcaster should be doing. Those kinds of things, catch attention. Actually, that reminds me now what Tracy's subject is going to be coming up that she needs to be a part of. And it's about writing the best podcast titles or headlines that are going to grab people's attention and get them to want to click and listen. She's more the writer than I am. I'm terrible at naming things, so that's why I'm not talking about that one. But she will talk about that one coming up. So there's your little, little foreshadow at an upcoming topic for future episode and coaching call here at Politize. But still back to topics. Look, you've, there are so many topics I'll give you an example of now. I need to pick a field. So let's pick, let's pick a real estate related podcast because there's ton of them. I mean, we've got like dozens and dozens of real estate related podcasts. There are so many niche subjects around real estate. And especially if you're in real estate investing and you're wanting to teach others how to do it, you're also wanting to build rapport with the audience and become the authority in your niche. So you've got to give, you know, you use your podcast to give away value for free to your audience, a certain amount of value. Now you don't tell them everything necessarily, but you also don't want to hold back. I mean, my opinion about podcasting and what we do is I really don't hold anything back. There's nothing I say, hey, you have to pay me in order to get it. Only because the reality is my ideal customer is somebody that wants to pay to save time. And if you want to do it yourself, if you've got the time and the interest to do that, more power to you, go for it. I'm going to share all my knowledge and everything that we do. It's just that most people are not really going to do all those things themselves. So it doesn't really, you know, if people try, then they usually end up coming back and becoming customers later. So I do believe in that law of reciprocity. So I'm going to tend to give away all the information in little bits and pieces, though not all in one episode. So we're going to, you know, all the details about, you know, best practices for podcasting, how to foster listener engagement, how to promote your podcast episodes, you know, all the different things you should be doing, multicasting the content everywhere, how that's gonna lead generate for you, how you're gonna monetize it, all this sort of stuff. There's just tons and tons of topic.

You know, there's tons of different things about investing in real estate and then there's tons of different things state by state that change, you know, whether you're, you're residing in one state or you're investing in another state. I know from just listening to some of our podcasters episodes this things vary tremendously state by state. And someone would say, oh my Gosh, do not invest in real estate in California for A, B and C reasons, or at least don't have that be the first place you invest. There's so many other states that the laws are more favorable to an investor and dealing with certain aspects of real estate that it's much less risky to work in other states. So, I mean, just breaking down a subject like even that, right? Is investing in real estate the same in every state? Boom, there's a topic, or maybe the topics, maybe that's still too much. Well, you could talk about that a bit, but then you could break it down more. Investing in real estate in Texas, that could be a topic for an episode. Investing in real estate in Arkansas, investing in real estate in Massachusetts, whatever. You know, so many different topics. When you really start breaking it down into what is your genre, what are the big topics, and then breaking them down into micro topics. And I'm telling you, podcasting is about the niches, not only the niches of a whole show subject matter. Like, you know, my first show was on 3D printing, right? And that's a huge field, but there's, there's tons of topics within that. But, you know, breaking down the big topics and then into little topics and then niche topics, you'd be surprised. Especially when you're very knowledgeable about what you do and passionate about what you do, you can break it down into very, very small niche topics. So we have a podcaster whose niche he's in the cannabis industry. And there are tons, I'm sure, of different topics, things to be learned about that whole industry. And there are different things state by state, and there's differences when you're dealing with consumers or you're doing business to business, you know, business, and so many different topics that you could come up with. So that's why usually, like I said, when we sit down and come up with topics just for solo casts, I'm shocked we don't have pages like, you know, pads of paper, like legal size pages filled with topics to consider. Now let's go beyond solo cast. Talk about interview topics, right? You want to think about why if you're going to interview somebody, why you're going to interview them and what kind of value they're going to bring to your audience. Because, you know, you're having them on your show and there needs to be a reason for that. What kind of information are they going to provide? What kind of value are they going to provide your audience? You want to give them some value and something new, something that maybe you wouldn't be able to bring to them yourself something that complements your expertise or reinforces it. You know, lots of different reasons why you might have a guest. Selfishly for you, as a podcaster, most of you probably know this, but some of you may not. Having a guest on your show, it really needs to serve two main purposes. One, providing value that will be of interest to your audience because you want to continue to provide content that your listeners appreciate and they want to keep coming back to you for more next week, keep going back for more episodes. You don't want to bore them, providing them some good content, but you also need to be selfishly thinking about yourself and what is that guest going to do for you? Are they really doing the same thing as you and it's going to maybe confuse your audience? Why are you having them on? Or do they compliment you in some way? And more importantly, do they have a large following? Are they going to share their guest appearance on your show and give you more exposure to more people? So selfishly for you, when you have guests, you got to think about that, because if they really do share it, and we always incentivize people to share the episode, provide them graphics that make them look good, all sorts of things, and make it easy for them to share it, providing all the links and everything, making it super easy for them to share it. But that's where selfishly for you, having guests periodically, if not every episode, some people do nothing but interview episodes and other people do nothing but solo casts. And some people do some combination probably. Personally, I think combination is really good. It changes things up a little bit, keeps it interesting for your audience and at the same time provides different kinds of value. And even their expertise can rub off on you because you're the conduit to bringing these experts to your audience. And so then their expertise rubs off on you. You become more valuable because of giving access to that guest. But again, selflessly for you, how much exposure are you gonna get? How many new listeners are you gonna get because you have this guest? You know, the. That's one of the huge benefits for you as a podcaster. But again, topics, you know, what are you going to talk about with that guest? You know, and hopefully there's something unique about them that's obvious and clear and that you're going to be able to help share with your audience. It shouldn't be too hard, you know, if somebody pitches as them to be pitches themselves to be a guest on your show, there's got to be a reason why they're pitching that. Right. And if they don't have a reason why, then don't have that guest on because they're wanting you to do all the work. They should have a reason and some suggestions. Topics they speak well on that are unique to them. They should be making it relatively easy for you. And then you decide, all right, what part of that do you want to focus on and provide value to your audience? So when it comes to interview episodes, I think coming up with topics can be a little easier. But I do think you should be intentional and specific about it and not ask the same questions of every guest. Have some questions that are a little bit unique to them. Their subject, their expertise, their market. And, you know, Tracy's written a whole blog post, and I believe it might be even an old feature band episode, but still very relevant today about structuring the best interview questions. So if you haven't read that or listened to, I think there's an audio to listen to as well. Good. Go to feedyourbrand.co and make sure you check out that episode, because there's a lot of great value there. And Tracy's done way more, way, way more interviews than I have. I mean, she's done like 2500 or more interviews between podcast interviews and ink article interviews and things like that. So asking interview questions is one of her areas of expertise. Definitely want to check that out. But again, topics. I want to give you a little window into one of my podcasts and topics. How we, me and my. I guess I'm a co host, but I'm actually more like the sidekick. The other person's really the host. I enjoy participating in it because I just have an interest in this sort of field, and so I am a part of it. And we do two episodes a week. It's called Purchasing Truth, and it's about language and communication. And there's all sorts of use, uses of language and communication in our daily media in this country to talk about and talk about which ones were successful, which ones were not, why they weren't, and how they could be. Anyway, I like that language and communication. I get into that very niche subject. Right. So the host and I have two sessions scheduled a week where we're gonna sit, and it's just the two of us. There's no guest interview. This is a dialogue between us, a discussion between us is every episode. That's another format you can do. But we have a running Google Doc that we keep, and when each of us comes up with an idea for a subject, we'll just put it in the Google Doc and then we prioritize them. And I think we're like 126 or seven episodes in now on this podcast. And we've never starved for topics and oftentimes we actually would just. We have our session in the first 10 or 15 minutes. We talk about current events, used other uses of language and communication that were either very successful or were just tragic failures. And we had said, all right, that's a good one, let's talk about that. Let's use that as an example. And then, you know, we not only talk about it, but we actually will role play how the person could have used language differently and more successfully in whatever their goal was for their communication. So anyway, we will just sit down and come up with the topic together, first 10 or 15 minutes and record an episode for the balance of an hour. And sometimes we talk so much it ends up only being a 30 minute or 25 minute episode of the Times. It's like a 45 minute or 50 minute episode. It just depends, it varies. We speak on a subject till it feels complete. So that's a little more of a sort of off the, off the cuff. I mean, there is preparation, but some topics just scream out at us and are so obvious depending on the current events of the previous few days. And there's lots of opportunities, and especially in a political season, there's all kinds of language and messaging and communication going on. It's pretty easy to pick off some of that as successful or not, you know, or tragic or not, you know, all sorts of things. So not trying to be political, but just the language is. There's a lot of material there.

I just. If any of you are struggling for topics, reach out to us and reach out to us and let's at least have an email discussion about it. Or, you know, we can schedule some other kind of session. Because if you're struggling for topics, maybe you're just not thinking about it in the right way and you just need to look at it from a different perspective. I personally take it for granted that anybody who has thought they want to launch a podcast has something to talk about. And they usually have some experience, life experience, business experience, something that they're drawing from that they either want to give back on or that they believe that others are in need, that there's a market of people that would like to know that information or would like to get support in that area. And so many different potential things that, you know, like I said, if you are thinking you want a podcast, you must have something to say. If you don't, maybe you shouldn't be podcasting. But I really haven't come across anybody like that in all my experience of talking with people about podcasting, so that would kind of surprise me. Anyway, topics, you know, everybody sometimes gets a little writer's block and might struggle with topics. Today I was struggling a little bit, and I said, all right, I'm gonna have a topic about talking about coming up with topics. There you go. So for what it's worth, I hope that's helpful. Thanks for listening, everybody. Like I said, stay tuned. Coming up, Tracy will be doing an episode in the short term on in terms of titling episodes and coming up with engaging titles, headlines that are going to grab attention and, you know, build anticipation and encourage people to click to listen to try it out. Because you know what? That's the first thing they read or see if they're not already a subscriber. You got to grab their attention. I look forward to that. I hope I can be a part of that one, because I want to learn something, too. Have a little discussion with Tracy. Maybe he'll her devil's advocate a little bit, like I like to do sometimes. But, you know, she may end up doing it solo if it's a day when I'm not available here. But regardless, look forward to that one because it's coming soon. We were just talking about it. All right, thanks, everybody. Till next time, it's been Tom Hazard on feed your brand.