103: Is a Podcast Manager Worth It?
A common thread that comes up in podcast spaces online is “Are podcast managers actually worth it?” or “Do I really need a podcast manager?”or perhaps, “Why do I need a podcast manager instead of just an editor or a VA?”
The honest answer is, if your podcast is mostly just a hobby project, you probably don’t. But if you’ve been working on your podcast for while and you want to take it to the next level, having an industry expert to partner with can make all the difference.
So without further ado, let’s break down all the ways having a podcast manager can help you free up mental energy and allow you to focus your creative CEO energy on the things that’ll help grow your business.
Hiring a podcast manager will save you time and help you create a better product.
Let’s get real for a sec: producing a podcast takes a lot of time. There’s the planning, the recording, the editing, writing show notes, creating graphics, promoting and marketing the episodes, and maybe even more depending on your episode workflow. And that’s even before you add in a layer of strategic planning – which you definitely need to grow your podcast and business.
And the problem of time is two-fold 1) if you’re a CEO and you’re doing all of that yourself, that’s a lot of hours that you aren’t spending in other parts of your business, and 2) if you’re doing all of that each week and then running a business as well, even if they work in tandem, there are probably parts of podcast production that aren’t as well executed as they could be. A good podcast manager can solve both of those problems for you, by doing most of the production work, and doing it with a level of skill and expertise so that you have a higher quality podcast at the end of the day.
A podcast manager will help you to stay up to date with industry changes and best practices as a partner – not just a hired hand.
At Wild Home Podcasting, we spend a lot of time keeping up with podcast news through various groups, industry connections, media outlets, and newsletters. We spend hours each month looking at trends and strategies that might be relevant to our clients. We do it because we love podcasting, but we also do it so you don’t have to, and it will be the same with any podcast manager worth their salt. Hiring a podcast manager isn’t just about outsourcing tasks, it’s about hiring someone with expertise who can partner with you and help share the strategic load for your podcast.
A podcast manager will help you stay consistent.
As a partner in your podcast, a podcast manager will help you stay consistent which is so important for growing and building trust with your audience. At WHP, we promote consistency by helping you plan ahead, manage your content, and sending you reminders and gentle nudges if you’re running late on episodes. And that’s on top of all the production work we do to keep your podcast on schedule. Any experienced podcast manager should be able to offer you a similar level of partnership, because again, we’re working with you, not just for you.
A good podcast manager will help you get and stay organized through systems and organization.
In addition to helping you stay organized, a good podcast manager can help you get –and stay– organized. A podcast manager that’s been in the business for a while is going to have a top-notch organizational system and hopefully one they can share with you. It’s another level of mental energy you can pass off while also improving the way you create your podcast.
A good podcast manager will be a partner – another member of your team who is just as invested in your podcast as you are.
And finally –we’ve mentioned this concept a few times now– but hiring a podcast manager is entering into a partnership. At WHP, when you work with us, we’re not just creating episodes each week, we’re invested in the long-term success of your podcast and business, and we’re constantly working on new ideas and strategies to achieve that. It’s a level of investment that you won’t be able to get just with a VA or freelance editor. And again, you might not need that!
But if you’re looking for the next breakthrough on your podcasting journey, hiring a top-notch podcast manager might just be the thing to get you there.
If you are looking for a partner who can help you manage your podcast, stay on top of industry trends, and give you more energy and space to create the content that’ll really move the needle for your business, consider applying for our monthly production service. If we’re a good fit, we’ll partner with you to create the best, most aligned podcast episodes week after week to help you reach your ideal clients and share your unique voice with your audience.
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Ready to gain back some of your time, uplevel your podcast and focus on creating content?
Apply for our monthly management service and see if we’re a good fit! Click here to learn more!
The Transcript for Podcast Your Business:
103: Is a Podcast Manager Worth It?
[00:00:00] Caroline Hull We're talking about how a podcast manager really becomes a partner in your podcasts, not just an editor, not just somebody who is wanting to get something done and throw it out, like at the last minute. Really, someone who wants to partner to create an amazing product and to create something that is really, really, really going to make an impact for your business.
[00:00:28] Are you ready to start a strategic podcast for your business and share your message in a way that feels wildly authentic? This is the place. Welcome to Podcast Your Business, where each week I share the strategy behind having a podcast that helps grow your business. I'm Caroline Hull, podcast manager, strategist and consultant, and I've seen the power of podcasts can have for your business. Let's get started.
[00:00:58] A really common question or thought about podcast managers that I hear online business owners have is are they worth it? And you may say, Well, I can do it myself, or I can just hire of you to do some podcast task. But what most people don't understand is that we are not just editing podcasts. We're doing so much more. We're actually partnering with you to help you produce and grow a podcast that will help you also grow your business. And so today I wanted to really talk about this and talk about why a podcast manager can be so valuable for your business. And yeah, we're just going to break it down.
[00:01:47] I'm actually recording this the week before. I am having hip surgery and we are not going to be taking a break and content while I am out recovering. I am going to be batch recording a whole bunch of episodes, which I'm really excited about and just wanted to reemphasize how important having a system is. And I'm so, so grateful for my team who is going to handle all the production of my episodes once I record them. But I have all of my episodes scheduled out through March and into April. And so it's making it really easy for me to sit down and record this episode, which I'm really excited to talk about because I think there is this misconception or this confusion about what podcasting management looks like against just hiring an editor or what the added value can be for you if you do hire a podcast manager.
[00:02:43] And of course, all of this really depends on who you end up hiring and who you end up working with and what their skillset is and what they like to specialize in. But I'm going to kind of do some like overarching things that are valuable for any podcast manager and then some things that really do apply to us here at Wild Home Podcast and probably other podcast managers out there. Okay, so let's break this down. You decide to start a podcast for your business, but now you have to actually record and plan the episodes, write, edit them, write Shownotes, publish it on your feed and on your blog, create social media graphics, and then share it right, market it, have a marketing plan for it. And then on top of that, you also need to develop a strategy so will attract your ideal client and send people to your offerings. That's a lot. And in that last one about strategy is really important too, because as we've talked a lot about on this podcast, you want to make sure that your podcast is going to work for your business, right? And not just be a hobby project, although a hobby podcast, there's nothing wrong with that. But we do want to make sure that our time is being spent well. And so that strategy piece is really important to all the other pieces.
[00:03:57] So one of the advantages of hiring a company like ours is that we save you time, right? Time is a huge one because at this stage of your business, you should be focusing on other days, right? So you're a CEO, you've got a lot going on. You've got clients that take care of you. Maybe you have a team to take care of. I mean, I know for me personally, my days are filled with SEO tasks, managing my team client calls, doing all the strategy work for our clients. You know, I really just don't have a lot of time to be focusing on podcast tasks, even like I would say in the last few weeks, because I have been gearing up for some big stuff happening in my personal life. It's been really hard to even just sit down and record a podcast. I cannot imagine if I had to do all the other things that go with it. Yes, editing is definitely one of the biggest times sucks, but all of those other. Pieces have become really important to my business and my business growth. And I know that, like if I was doing them right, because they all of those things take hours. It takes hours to edit a podcast. It can take a while, possibly an hour or more to write really good quality show notes and not to mention creating all the graphics that I share on social media and Pinterest and and writing the email that I send out each week. I mean, the list just goes on and on, and that's hours that I don't have. And I know that you probably as a CEO of your business don't have either. And so the great thing is like, I know that care is going to be taken with my episodes and that's going to be so much greater if my team did it than if I was doing it and hurrying the night before. Like the quality is just going to be so different and and quality is important. And it's important to me because I want to put out a really great podcast. And so that aspect of saving the hours, it has created so much more space for me to focus on the things that I need to be focusing on, not only in my business but just in my life in general. Right?
[00:06:13] The other advantage to having a podcast manager is that they are keyed into the podcast industry and they really want to touch on this for a minute because I literally opened an email this morning. They are about to update Apple Podcasts again with some changes and you know, it may affect my podcast may affect our clients podcast, but it's so important that I stay on top of these things so I can make sure that our clients are staying on top of these things. And so what I'm talking about is best practices, latest app updates and changes. All of that is constantly on our radar. In addition, like finding a podcast manager who gets who you are and what you're doing and what industry you're in, I think is also really, really important because they need to understand the kind of content that you're putting out, why you're doing it, how to tie it to your services, all of those things. It's really great for my clients to for me to be able to make a recommendation on something based on what they're doing and what they're trying to achieve with their podcast, right? And so when we start talking about that kind of thing, then we're talking about how a podcast manager really becomes a partner in your podcast, not just an editor, not just somebody who is wanting to get something done and throw it out, like at the last minute. Really someone who wants to partner to create an amazing product and to create something that is really, really, really going to make an impact for your business. And I think this is one of those things, you know, you really have to decide when you start looking for a podcast manager and asking yourself, you know, what do I need? Do I just need someone who stays on top of the schedule, gets things out? Or do I really want someone who's going to help me push this to the next level? Who's going to make suggestions?
[00:08:14] You know, one thing that we've really incorporated our quarterly strategy calls with our clients. And I love that because it gives us all an opportunity to look at the podcast to see if there's any tweaks we need to make. Talk about their goals and that right there. Right. That's really the value. A podcast manager isn't just here to add it. They are here to support your growth, to help you develop strategies and help you produce a really amazing product that is going to do more than just sit in Internet space, right? Like actually keep bringing people back to you over and over and over again. And so I definitely like do not want this episode to be a dig or saying that like a VA can't handle it or a just hiring an editor is not the way to go. That's absolutely not what I'm saying. I think it really is just asking what type of support do I need, What are my goals for my podcast, what are my goals for my business? How does that weave together? And then how can getting support facilitate that? Right.
[00:09:23] And I really want to emphasize to, you know, the time I know I've talked about time a lot and how we do save you a lot of time. And I don't take that lightly because I have done it all myself and I've done it with support. And it has made such a huge impact in my business and in my life to have that support just for time, you know? And you don't think it's going to you're like, Oh, no, I've totally got this. But it really does start to shift things for you. And I think for me, just having that space so I can focus on my zone of genius and focus more on creating online content is absolutely amazing.
[00:10:12] The other thing too, is that, you know, when you have someone behind you supporting you, you're going to be more consistent, which is huge for growing listeners. And you're also going to be more confident in your content and again, feel supported, right? So you can focus on creating that content. The other value is most podcast managers are going to come to you with their own set of systems and strategies, and I didn't really realize how big and important this was until I let my team in on the systems. I'm sure you've heard me talk a lot about how we switched from Trello to Asana, and that was life changing. But I think what's been even more of a game changer is creating amazing systems for myself and for my team to run the podcast. And you know, now we have an entire system that we use for our clients, and that's so helpful when people come in and they are in need of help, maybe they are doing episodes last minute and they're wanting to get more consistent, they're wanting to feel more confident and we're able to set up systems for them so that way they don't have to think about it anymore. And again, it's like going back to that brain space element. Of the less I have to think about this better it's going to be right. You know, and again, the goal for us, like we want you to be successful as well. It's not just about editing the podcast. Like we want to actually see you successful and see that it's working for you. And so we are just as invested and you know, we want to be that partner on your team. And so that is why our podcast managers are so valuable and that's why hiring someone can make an impact on your podcast and your business and it really can help you go to the next level with it.
[00:12:18] And so what I would do if you are thinking about hiring a podcast manager, you know, think about, like I said, those tasks that you really need off your plate. What are the ones that you cringe when you sit down to do them, or what are the ones that you feel like you're not doing the best way? And I think for me that was kind of the big thing. I used to write all my own show notes and I realized, you know, I don't know that I'm doing this in the best way possible. I don't know that these are working in the way that I want them to and having my team take them. Over was amazing. You know, what is that saying? Like, you can only see, like, what's right in front of your nose. But sometimes, like, we look at our own stuff and we can look at it all day. But even though I do strategy and show notes all the time when it's mine, when I'm so close to it, there's like a different way I approach it. And so having my team, who I've trained, who know what we're supposed to do with them, do them, has made such a huge difference. They're so much better and I love them so much. And that's been a huge weight off of my shoulders because again, like I was writing those the night before the episodes, we go out like at midnight, which is just no good at all.
[00:13:32] And so that to me was one of those tipping points where I knew I needed help. And I think also too if you are at a place in your podcast journey where you've already started your podcast and now you're sitting and wondering what it can do for you or how you can take it to the next level, that's when you need somebody in the industry, as I said, who can look at it with a lens from the podcasting industry and from the online business perspective and really help you figure out what tweaks and changes need to be made. And I think to like this is really huge for someone who may be DIY, their podcast on the onset, and then being able to have somebody come in and make suggestions and help you curate things and and take it to the next level can really be a game changer.
[00:14:19] And so that's what I have about the value of a podcast manager. And I really hope that I've communicated the amazing work that my team does and the hours they pour into our client's podcast. So you can truly understand how much is put into them, how much you love, how much care, how much we just really want them to do well and to go out into the world and sound amazing or look amazing and do what they need to do for our clients. And if you are looking for a podcast manager and you are thinking about us, we would love to have you. We do have openings for March and April and you can feel free to head to our website, Wild Home Podcast Kinchen to take a look at what we do. And if you are looking for podcast managers or so many amazing ones, and if we are not a good fit, there are I just have a list of amazing podcast managers I can send your way, so I hope you have a wonderful day if you want to follow me on my journey while I'm going to be stepping away for a few weeks, you can follow me on Instagram and I will be trying to keep everybody updated and the stories there and what's happening with me and here. I will be back next week with another episode. Thank you for listening to podcast your business. For more podcasting tips, follow us on Instagram at Wild Home Podcast. If you are ready to launch up level or grow your podcast, head to Wild Home Podcast Intercom to get started today.
