Surprise! The good kind…because we’re talking about podcasting again. Susan has put together a framework for how to come up with endless amounts of episodes and formats to keep things interesting. 12 formats that will help you hook your audience, cut the clutter, and may even make your work a little easier.
We’re going to talk about a few and hopefully, get you so curious and eager to hear the rest that you’ll feel like you have no choice but to listen to the podcast!
- First up is strategic teaching. This revamps the tired and bored podcasting format of interviewing a guest or just sharing your thoughts, because you get to showcase your expertise. For example, on The 4AM Report we might share a particular way of operating or a system we use, or even something we know, like audio and how it’s going to impact people’s business.
- Then there’s tactical teaching, which is another format that mixes things up a bit because you can provide a bunch of tools or tactics for your listeners to use or download. “I think people really love that, they’re like tell me what to do. Give me the blueprint, and I’ll run with that.”
- Another cool way to change up your podcast format is to create an episode arc. This can really make your production more efficient. We could record a 30-minute episode for The 4Am Report, but why not break it up into three parts and create a three-series arc? It’s more digestible, goes deeper over a shorter time span, and gives you a bit of breathing room if you are tight on time and bandwidth. Instead of drowning your audience with information and scaring the sh!t out of them, you’re giving them one piece of info. at a time and letting them run with it.
This very podcast is a great example of a potential episode arc. We could do a separate podcast on every one of these points. So that’d be a 12-parter! Long live long-winded content✨!
5 and 4. Another way to really turn the traditional podcast upside down is the podcast cohort, basically getting a panel of experts together to weigh in on something and how this amplifies your audience (we spoke about this here). There’s show & tell which is profiling a case study or use case on your show. This can also feature two or three people talking about something you’ve achieved and how you did it.
- This one is fun because you can draw from your internal team and tactical processes. It’s a way to showcase your team on the inside or a process you use again and again. You could have a team member come on or a client who uses that process and just beak it up and bring in different perspectives. For example, we did an episode on The 4AM Report where our writers came on to chat about their process and share some tips on how they approach different tasks, like social media or researching long-form copy.
- You’re in touch right? Maybe your business wants to be inclusive or get known as a thought leader. To establish credibility, you can bring together industry analysts or workplace commentators to talk about things that are impacting our times and start making wider social commentary on more than just your business.
- Every week, we newsjack with pride. If you don’t know what this is, read more here. We have Thirsty Thursday, which is a roundup of the hits and misses in the world of marketing, pop culture, entertainment, social injustice and more. We pick our top five to seven favourite stories, and we chat them out on video. But then we also release this as a podcast episode.
So, that’s a sneak peek into newsjacking. For more on why newsjacking needs to be agile and quick, you need to listen to the episode. And you’ll also find out why this helps you jump on the topics that people are searching for (aka more traffic) and can even show you care🤗🤗🤗.
9-12
Let us summarize points 9-12. Repurpose, repurpose, repurpose, and repurpose again! From combining podcast episodes or repurposing and clustering them together, to rolling out episode highlights or bringing together themes, repurposing can be as easy or involved as you want it to be. You can also repurpose events, like your mastermind / live event or zoom recordings and make these into podcast episodes… And guess what? This is when the podcast flywheel starts to work for you because it just gets easier and easier to get that volume and promote the hell out of yourself👏👏👏. Plus, nobody gets bored with it because they haven’t heard it yet.
We ♥ that so many people love podcasting. So, let’s all pick it up a notch by 🎧listening to this episode🎧 and learning how to entertain and engage your audience with a bunch of great formats.
Want to chat more about your marketing concerns (or any of your content!)? Give us a shout at C+P Digital – we would love to help!
Plus, if you’re losing sleep over a particular marketing/business related problem or if you would like to suggest a guest on the 4AM Report, let us know.
You can find us on Apple Podcasts – subscribe to us – you won’t regret it!
And as always, sweet dreams😴…well, hopefully!
