123: My Top Tips to Easily Brainstorm Your Podcast Content
When it comes to podcasting, sometimes we can get so caught up in the cycle of recording, producing, and promoting episodes, that the actual brainstorming and creation of content ideas takes a back seat.
So today, I’m sharing how I brainstorm content, what questions I ask myself to generate multiple ideas at once, and how to use your audience to get ideas that you know will be relevant for potential clients! Let’s dive in!
Go back to the basics
When it comes to generating content for our podcast, you’ve got to start with the basics. Remind yourself of what your business and podcast are about, what goals you have in mind, and how your podcast can help you accomplish those goals. AND, don’t lose sight of how your podcast can act at the center of your marketing. By planning your promotional schedule and collateral marketing around your podcast (instead of the other way around), you can make sure that your podcast is always aligned to your business goals and generate topics to that end.
ask yourself These questions while brainstorming
When it comes to actual topics, it’s helpful to ask yourself some questions first:
What is your core messaging?
Who is your audience?
What pain points does your audience have?
Where can you meet your customers on their journey?
How will you engage with your audience?
What does your audience want and need from you today?
If you can’t answer all of those questions, it’s best to start there. Then, once you’ve answered those questions broadly, you can start pulling them apart and getting more granular — and those ideas will often become topics for your podcast episodes.
Okay, so here’s an example. Maybe your audience is social media managers starting a freelance business, and your business focus is giving them the tools they need to get their business started smoothly. Perhaps one of their common pain points is structuring and pricing their packages for their clients when starting out. Maybe another is which platforms they should offer their services on. And since they’re just starting in business, maybe they could use a little advice on the best ways to communicate with potential clients. And if they’re trying to start tomorrow, perhaps a quick rundown of how you started your own business could give them insight on how to get started right away.
Now, go back and read that again. I see no fewer than four separate podcast episode ideas in that example alone. See how quickly that can happen? Creating episode topics doesn’t have to be complicated. You just need to focus on your audience.
And speaking of focusing on your audience…
let your audience tell you what they need!
Your listeners, clients, and potential clients can tell you exactly what they’re interested in at any given time. Pay attention to the questions they ask, the discussions they engage in, and the pain points they express. Check out their social account, read their blog posts, and take note of the questions that are coming into your business directly from them. And then answer those questions and address those concerns in your episodes! You can even take it a step further and survey your audience directly. At the end of the day, talking about what you know your audience needs from you is the key to establishing yourself as an authority and setting you up for long-term success.
And finally, when it comes to long-term success…
set up tools to stay consistent and make brainstorming and production easier
Consistency is key when it comes to podcasting and develop a robust system to keep track of your content creation process makes maintaining a consistent schedule and consistent quality that much easier. Tools like Trello, Asana, or a simple spreadsheet can help you plan, organize, and make sure your content ideas are aligned for your business and audience. And having a clear production system in place allows you to anticipate episodes, maintain a steady release schedule, and create great content week after week.
Building a successful podcast takes consistency, and consistently delivering high-quality content is the best way to attract an excited, aligned audience over time. And these brainstorming tips will get you on track to do just that! You can do it friends! We’re cheering for you!
Are you looking for a partner who can help you align your podcast content to your business? Check out our Podcast Strategy Intensive, where we help you focus your content and get the most out of your small business podcast, or sign up for a Podcast Refresh, where we help you strategize and then implement all the great ideas we come up with together!
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The Transcript for Podcast Your Business:
123: My Top Tips to Easily Brainstorm Your Podcast Content
[00:00:00] So when you're thinking about your podcast episodes and the topics that you're going to cover, you really need to go back to like what is your core messaging? What are like the pain points that your audience and clients have? Where do you want to meet these people, right, that you're trying to reach? Where do you want to meet your customers and clients? And if you've done any kind of work on like your vision or marketing themes or anything like that, you should kind of have these down. And if you haven't done that, I highly recommend you do it.
[00:00:38] 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. Today we're going to talk about brainstorming content and staying consistent. Found it very interesting. I did a little bit of a survey on Instagram before my maternity leave, and one of the things that people said they had the most trouble with was coming up with content. And so while podcasting, we work with mostly entrepreneurs who have podcasts to support the marketing for the business, and a lot of them do interviews with the solo episodes and what don't you know it? The thing that people do they struggle with the most are these solo episodes. I was really fascinated by this. I don't know why. It just kind of surprised me because I that wasn't the first thing that I would think that people would have trouble with.
[00:01:59] So I always felt like interviews were harder. I don't know, maybe that's just me, but. So I thought today we would talk a little bit about how to come up with content consistently and then how to stay consistent once you get the ball rolling. So let's dive in. So for brainstorming content, the first thing I like to do is go back to the basics. And sometimes I feel like when I say some of this stuff, it seems like, Oh yeah, of course you should do that. But I think sometimes when we're caught in the wheel of creating content week after week, we forget some of these things. I know I do. I mean, I started this podcast with a baby still in the house that she's napping currently. So let's pray that she stays asleep while we do this. And. I mean, I definitely struggled for weeks with what content to put out to the world, to you guys. So I can understand how it can be difficult. We've got a lot going on in sometimes just coming up with that. That piece of content that we need is is really difficult. I do want to say, though, like I have been harping a lot about making sure that your podcast is at the top of your marketing, pyramid, triangle, whatever. Shape thing that you want to put your marketing into. For me, it's a spreadsheet. I have a marketing spreadsheet. Now you guys and I have my podcast episodes is kind of my main piece of content, and then everything kind of stems off from that. And I will say, if you can get to a place you have your marketing set up that way, it is going to make things a lot easier for you.
[00:03:40] And the reason being is because out of everything, the podcast is probably the most time consuming, unless of course you're doing like YouTube videos and that kind of thing. If you're going to spend all that time, energy and money on your podcast, then we want to make sure that we're using it to the fullest, right? So that means that, you know, we're using it as a bouncing off point for other things, such as social media, email newsletters, blog posts, live videos and live videos, you know, all those things. So what I do is I have a spreadsheet and I'm hope, I'm thinking, and maybe if I put this out into the world, it'll happen. But I'm thinking about actually creating a little mini course, about creating a marketing plan around your podcast, and this spreadsheet would be part of that, a template on how I do this. But let me just kind of describe to you how this works. So I have this spreadsheet and in one column I have my podcast episodes, right? And so I'm going to put the title of my podcast episode and what the call to action is. And then from there, I'm going to do my social media for the week. Any reals that I'm going to do, any IGTV videos? I mostly hang out on Instagram in case you guys were not aware. So I have it all kind of laid out. So it's really nice and really helpful for me because I can just open it and see what I'm supposed to do that week. I also like put this into Trello, which I'm still exploring what that would look like, but starting with a spreadsheet has a really big step for me. You guys, I'm not a spreadsheet person and I'm kind of in love with it.
[00:05:24] So as we're thinking about brainstorming content, I want you to also think about like making sure that it's usable across the board. So when you're thinking about your podcast episodes and the topics that you're going to cover, you really need to go back to like what is your core messaging? What are like the pain points that your audience and clients have? Where do you want to meet these people, right, that you're trying to reach? Where do you want to meet your customers and clients? And if you've done any kind of work on like your vision or marketing themes or anything like that, you should kind of have these down. And if you haven't done that, I highly recommend you do it. I've actually been working on it this past few weeks and it's been crazy enlightening. I've learned a lot about myself and my business and the direction I want to go in. And it's just it's kind of incredible. On last week's episode, I talked about how you need to have that focused time, and I definitely feel like when you're planning and brainstorming content, that's really important to have that focus time to sit down and kind of figure out these things. So once you kind of have those, you're able to look at them and kind of just pull them apart and and break them down even further. So let's take an example. So one of my topics or the main topic of this season is growth, right? Well, how do you grow when you grow? By creating better content. You grow by re reframing what growth means. You grow by you grow by meeting your listeners where they are. Okay, so there's just some rough examples. So I said, Create better content.
[00:07:11] Well, that's pretty broad, right? So what do you need to create better content while you need better sound? You need to prepare your guests better. You need to be on top of your content and have a system in place. Okay, look, I just came up with like four episode ideas. Do you see how I did that? So taking something and just breaking it down even more now for my people out there who are throwing in solo episodes, in between interviews. This is like the perfect thing to do for your solo episodes, right? So a lot of times when we have people come on for interviews, we're usually talking about kind of a bigger idea. Well, how can you take that idea and like break it down and apply it even more? Think about that too, as you're brainstorming content, is your podcast Growing Your Business? And if you don't know the answer to this question or you think the answer might be no, it's time to take an audit. Your podcast can be so much more than a hobby. It can be a way for you to attract your ideal client and establish yourself as an authority. But you need a strategy, and the best place to start is with an audit. And I have a free guide that helps you perform an audit of your podcast, gives you my top tips for having a strategically aligned podcast and a playlist of podcast episodes. For more insight, you can head to Wild Home podcasting dot com to download your free audit guide today. Okay, so we've talked about kind of knowing your main messaging points. We've talked about making sure that your content is a top piece of your marketing. We've talked about breaking down topics, but let's say you've done all these things, you've exhausted all of the resources and you're like, I still don't know what I want to talk about this week on my podcast.
[00:09:05] I want you to go back to your listeners, your clients, even potential clients. And what is your audience talking about right now when you're on social media and you're interacting? What are the things that keep coming up or people keep asking you or they're talking about with their people? And what questions are your clients coming to you with? This is a really great place to start because, A, it's timely and B, it's literally from their mouths to your ear, right? It's exactly what they're asking for help with. And you can't get any clearer than that. And what's so great about doing podcast episodes, about things that your clients are coming to you with, that your audience is coming to you with is when they come to you with that question again. You can direct them to the podcast episode. So now. Well, now we've got marketing rants and questions. Oh, my goodness. Really useful stuff here. And that's why I love podcasting, right? Because if I were sitting down trying to type this out into a blog post, it would not be happening for you people. And you probably really wouldn't want to sit down and read through three pages of this nonsense. But it's so much easier to get the point across and to get a feel for my personality through audio. So I love that and I love having that resource available to share with my clients and things like that. I mean, I have a couple episodes from last season that I've emailed to people so many times I can't even tell you. So it is really, really useful. You can even survey your audience, and I think sometimes serving your audience can be really, really helpful. I think sometimes it can be more information than maybe you need it, but it's always good to kind of check in, especially if you've had your podcast for a while or you're thinking about making a pivot and see where your listeners are at and what they're wanting more of from you.
[00:11:10] So that is how I brainstorm content. A lot of what is happening in this season in my podcast came directly from things that people told me that I asked in my Facebook group and on Instagram, and they are even things that came up in conversation with people talking about podcasting who aren't necessarily my clients. And so it was really great to have that and to keep track of all of that. So that way, when I did sit down to brainstorm about the season, I had a bank of topic ideas. And so now we're going to get into creating a system which is going to help you stay consistent. One of the most important things with podcasting, especially if you're using it as a piece of your marketing, especially if you're using it to be more visible and to reach more clients, customers, that kind of thing is to stay consistent. And I've probably said that about 100 million times, but you know, good things for repeating. So we're going to say it again. Consistency is key. So the way that you're going to do that is by creating a system. And when I am talking about a system, I want something pretty robust for you. I want something that you can drop topics into. I want something that you can create the steps that it takes to get your podcast out. That way you always know where you are in the process. Something that's going to be really useful for you that's going to be easy to access and that you're going to be able to just run with it, right? It's also good to have record of what you've done. I think that's really key as well. So of course, you all know where this is going.
[00:12:55] I love Trello, that's what I use. And I do have a free Trello board that you guys can play around with. It's at Wild Home podcasting, dot com slash Trello. And the reason I love Trello is because I'm a very visual person, but you don't have to use Trello. We have a lot of clients who also will just use a spreadsheet. We work in Asana, we work and click up. There's so many out there and it really, honestly, it doesn't matter which one you use. What matters is that you use it. And what's really great about these kinds of tools, especially ones where you can visually see them on the calendar, is that you're able to plan that way. And so that's what I love about Trello. I will put everything in with due dates and kind of look at it on the calendar and see how things kind of line up. Do they make sense? Do the topics in the order that were going make sense and you can rearrange them? And I really do love that because I feel like it helps me get in a sense of how everything is working together cohesively. This also goes back to that spreadsheet I was talking about at the beginning. So having like a marketing spreadsheet and seeing how the podcast works with all of my other marketing has been super, super helpful as well, especially in creating episodes and coming up with content. But here's the thing. You can do all of this. And and if you're not putting out episodes consistently where your listeners are, they know that an episode is coming. They're excited to hear it. It's really not going to make that much of a difference. It really does take consistency and it does take time to get the ball rolling on a podcast.
[00:14:34] At least in my experience, I have seen some people just come out of the gate going, but they usually have a community already built up before they started their podcast. And so my encouragement to you is to really pay attention to what people are saying in your sphere. Really pay attention to what your clients are saying, because if you're getting giving them content that they are wanting and needing consistently, they are going to keep coming back for more. And that's what we want, right? We want them to keep coming back for more. We want to be able to have a reason to sit down and record 50 more episodes. And doing those things is really going to help you achieve that. So my action item for you today is to create a system and use it to help you stay consistent. However, that works in whatever form makes sense for you. I want you today. If you don't have a system already, to go create it. And if you do already have a system, how can you refine it so that way you're able to come in, sit down, record and feel really confident about what you're putting out there. Thank you for listening to podcast Your business. For more podcasting tips, follow us on Instagram @WildHomePodcasting. If you're ready to launch up level or grow your podcast, head to WildHomePodcasting.com To get started today.
