We are truly honored to have been selected to speak at this year’s Podfest Global Summit. This is more than just a conference. It is a gathering of the massively diverse and passionate podcasting community. It is in this virtual space (on Whova) that we get to learn, get inspired, and grow together.
For our part, we prepared a case study, “From Tuning Out To Tuning In. The making of a smash hit podcast.” In the presentation, we share just 4 critical tips for creating a successful podcast. All of which we learned from our work on Hackable?
For those of you that weren’t able to attend, I wanted to share our tips with you.
- Own a unique space in the podcast universe. When we launched Hackable? there were roughly 500,000 podcasts to choose from. Today there are over 1.8 million. Even with this massive explosion of content, there still isn’t another podcast that makes cybersecurity as entertaining as Hackable? does.
- Don’t be afraid to get help if you need it. We wanted the quality of the show to be extremely high. So we realized very early on that we needed a partner on the production side. We found the best of the best in Pacific Content. They brought the skill of audio storytelling, recording, engineering, editing, music and more to us. There is no way that Hackable? would be the success it is today without them.
- Continually exercise creative bravery. This is something we talk about a great deal with our entire podcasting team. What we mean by this is ask yourself if you’d honestly listen to this podcast, this episode if you weren’t a part of it. If the answer is no, you’ve got to go back and rework it. For me, this also means thinking hard about the show format, and making sure it is unique and contains a listener arch. Our format is the recreation of hacks in pop culture (in audio format), putting those hacks to the test MythBusters style, then a touch of education to keep listeners safe.
- Commit everything you have to building listenership. Great content is massively important, but if no one knows it exists, then it’s all for nothing. We launched Hackable? with a plan that included paid (mostly in-podcast advertising), earned (public relations and social sharing), owned (the podcast itself– ask your listeners to rate, review and share) and internal (your guests, your teammates, partners friends and family). We pulled hard on every lever that was available to us to make sure as many people as possible had a chance to learn about the podcast and listen.
We have more experience than most in both developing a winning podcast concept and successfully marketing podcasts. To tap into our experience, we invite you to our podcasting page to learn more.