Have you ever thought about starting a podcast, but had trouble coming up with podcasting ideas? Maybe you have a lot of ideas but haven’t been able to choose which one to go with.
Today we are talking about how to come up with podcasting ideas, as well as how to narrow down your ideas to create sustainable content for your business, especially for those coaches and consultants out there.
Personal branding is the number one way that anyone can build a reputation in your industry. Podcasting is one of the easiest ways, bar none, to build your personal brand. You just need the right podcasting idea.
RELATED: DOWNLOAD THE PODCASTING 101 STARTER KIT TODAY!
PODCASTING IDEAS – TALK FROM EXPERIENCE
What is your podcast going to be about? Have you thought about that? Has it vexed you? Has it been something you’ve sat up and you’ve come up with multiple ideas, but never pulled the trigger?
Don’t waste time overthinking it and never getting started. Read the blog today, pick one of the ideas, and get going.
First off, the easiest way to have an unlimited supply of stories and content is to talk about something we already know a lot about.
#1 PODCAST ABOUT YOUR FAVORITE TOPICS
My first suggestion to you is to build something that is based on your favorite topic of conversation. What is the thing that you, when asked a question about, could talk about at length on and on?
That might be something that is just a passion for you. You’ve spent a lot of time reading, researching, and being involved with, in a particular industry or niche. Or it might be something that you had spent time on for work, or just is something that you do.
#2 TEACH FROM EXPERIENCE
The second idea is to teach from experience. This is related, but really it’s about something that you are really good at. You could teach someone else because you’ve learned, whether it be you’ve learned through something succeeding or you’ve learned through something failing.
In anything you’ve done, you might be one year or more ahead of someone that would love to learn from what you did that would help them skip that learning curve.
If you teach from experience, you’re always going to have relevant stories to pull from or relevant content where you can give someone else the tips and tricks along the way.
#3 DOCUMENT A SPECIFIC JOURNEY
The third one is to document a specific journey that you are on. Maybe you are on your way to becoming something else in your life and you want to share with people what that’s like.
Maybe you’ve bought a new home and you’re interested and passionate about the renovation and the trials and tribulations of that.
You want to take someone through how you went and bought a new home. You rebuilt it, you knocked some walls down, and you replaced the bathrooms. There were some design elements, and there was managing the contractors.
All those things that you’re about to go through, you want to share that journey with someone and tell them the things you’ve run into. Those people that are in the same place will relate to that.
Think about a specific journey in your life that you’re in the middle of, or you’re about to start. Ask yourself, is this something that I’m going to learn from that other people can learn from, that I can share as well? Does this align with something that I do want to end up teaching?
At the end of the day, I say that this show is for coaches and consultants because I want you to be able to teach from this and build a business behind it.
It’s great to have passion content that you can share because you’re interested, but also if you can build a business behind that, then this is a sustainable lifestyle. Podcasting is a sustainable business for you.
Think about that. Does this tie to something I actually want to teach and also connects to a journey that I’m on?
#4 QUESTION AND ANSWER SESSIONS
Number four is a question and answer session. If you’re already in the process of helping people and coaching them on something, or you’re just getting started, you are taking discovery calls. Ask people what they’re struggling with and find ways from your experience to answer some of their questions.
As you develop what your coaching methodology might be, and as you develop what your coaching program might be, if you’re recording all those calls, (with their permission of course,) you have content there that you can be using.
You can take them out of it. You can just ask the question without them there in the video and then answer it, but pull from your actual conversations. It not only demonstrates that you have the expertise, but it helps you find your voice through coaching a real person instead of just coaching in your mind, talking out loud what your concepts are. A question and answer session might be right for you.
PODCASTING IDEAS – SET UP INTERVIEWS
#5 INTERVIEW EXPERTS IN YOUR INDUSTRY
The fifth idea, in terms of building a podcast for someone who’s looking to be a coach or consultant, would be to interview experts in your field. I’ll tell you the number one thing I changed. I launched a podcast, did thirty episodes, and then I pulled it all down because I hired a coach.
I learned that there’s an advantage when you can bring in experts and it’s not just you talking and pontificating every week. When you start bringing in experts in your field, it brings knowledge that other people have acquired over time to your show because everyone learns different things at different times.
Maybe there are experts that have specifically focused on one small area of your industry that you can have them bring to the table. It helps you in two ways.
- It’s brand new content from another person’s perspective.
- You’re developing a relationship with those experts.
This gives you more social status, more proof that this is a show that has authority.
It also builds a relationship with that person that you may be able to tap into in the future. It may mean leveraging their audience, going on their show, or being introduced to someone that they know who could be another guest for your show.
Maybe they’re speaking on stages and they’re introducing you to the people that are running the conferences to get you on stages. Whatever the thing is, there is so much untapped potential if you’re not leveraging an expert coming on your show. I believe in both solo shows and interview shows being combined so that you leverage all the benefits of both.
#6 INTERVIEW INFLUENCERS IN YOUR INDUSTRY
What is the difference between an expert and an influencer? An expert can be someone that has zero following, but knows a lot about how to do something and they know how to do it well.
An influencer may also know how to do something well but has built up a following over time. Maybe they’ve written a book in your field and they are recognized as an authority. Maybe they have built some other type of show or podcast or YouTube channel or an Instagram following.
In other words, they have done the work to get out there, engage an audience, and build that audience based on something that they are talking about themselves. You learning from them and bringing them onto your show brings that influence with them to your show.
#7 INTERVIEW ENTREPRENEURS IN ANY FIELD
Number seven is to interview entrepreneurs in your field or any field. We talked about experts. We talked about influencers. Entrepreneurs in any field are going to be people that have started businesses. It could be any type of business, but in the process of building that business, they’ve learned something that applies to your niche or topic.
What’s interesting about that is they are someone who’s put into practice these things that everyone else is talking about. Maybe they built a fitness wear company, a clothing company.
THEY HAVE SPECIFIC EXPERIENCE
I have a marketing podcast. If I brought them on, even though their expertise is in building a fitness business, they still did marketing to grow that business.
I can talk about the specifics. How did you do that for your fitness clothing line specifically? What steps did you take? Did you build a website? Did you run Facebook ads? Did you grow an organic social media presence? Did you look into search engine optimization? Did you use partnerships and endorsements of celebrities? What are all the things you did?
They are going to be able to tell me exactly step by step what they did and when they did it, in what order, and what they prioritized to get them to where they are. That specific industry knowledge is really interesting. It makes for an interesting story. That’s another type of interview you can do.
TOPICAL PODCASTING IDEAS
Another idea for you coaches and consultants out there is to look at your industry. Pick the niche, the category that you’re in, and say, “Within my industry, am I interested in talking about what is new and notable?”
#8 DISCUSS INDUSTRY NEWS AND CURRENT EVENTS
That’s things that are happening, whether it’s trends or industry news and updates, things that are changing in your field, and people that are coming up with new ideas. Do you want to be the person that shares what’s new to help your audience stay up to date?
The benefit of that is number one, you stay more up to date. You become someone who’s looking forward and finding out what’s happening and where things are going. It sets the stage as you become a thought leader in your space, but also it helps you become a place for the most current information.
Sometimes that’s what people are looking for. If that’s what you’re interested in, then let’s combine the two and go for it.
#9 DISCUSS INDUSTRY TOOLS AND RESOURCES
The ninth type of show you can start is an industry tools show. This is you getting out there and talking about what are the actual resources in your business? What are the tools people use? What are the softwares, the apps, and the systems?
What are the processes and the websites? Who are the vendors? What are the tools in your industry that are going to help your audience?
You can talk about your own personal reviews of certain types of tools. You can do training on those tools, or you can actually interview the teams from those tools, whether it’s the CEO, the founder of that company, or someone from their marketing team.
You can ask them to do a walkthrough of the tool, or you can just interview them on all the benefits and features of that to make for a more interesting conversation.
Guess what? That person is an expert because all they do all day is talk about the thing that they’ve built. Now you come on and instead of you trying to explain something, you have the actual expert that built it from the ground up describing it to your audience.
As a benefit, that might become a relationship for you that can generate income. That might become a business that is an affiliate of yours that you can refer business to. It could be a partnership that gets you some free access to their tool or some freebies.
Maybe they’ll give you a resource of theirs for free because you’ve been talking about them on the show. There are partnerships there that could develop over time. Maybe later on, when you’re big enough to have a sponsor, that relationship is there and they might consider it.
#10 LET US LEARN WITH YOU
The last one on the list is what I would like to call a “Learn With You Show.” It’s similar to the “On a Journey,” except this is all about something that you are wanting to learn and grow in.
It could be all in your mind and educational. It doesn’t have to be physical. Whereas the journey can be on building a house, this is going to be, “I am learning how to become a real estate investor.” It is something very specific that’s educationally based.
You’re using the show as a way to educate yourself. You are interviewing people to ask them the questions you’re actually curious about. You want to learn as much about that topic as possible, and to be the go-to resource for your audience. You want to say, “I’m as curious as you are, audience. Here’s what we’re talking about.”
The benefit of that is your innate curiosity is speaking the exact voice of your audience to get out there and get those resources. You’re doing the work for them. Because you are your audience, you’re in their exact mindset to give them what they’re looking for in the show.
Anything you want to learn, if you can share that journey, it’s awesome because you are now investing in yourself. You are growing your own knowledge while building a following that wants to learn with you.
As that grows, you might be able to turn that into something. You’re learning this now, but in a year you can look backward to the people who hadn’t started. They hadn’t come with you on the journey. You can coach them and teach these things now looking backward instead of looking forward.
BONUS ROUND: QUESTIONS TO ASK
Before we wrap this up, I do want to add a couple of extra little bonus tidbits for you.
QUESTION 1 – WHY DO YOU CARE?
For any of these shows to be good, there are a couple of questions you want to ask yourself. Number one is why do you care? Why do you personally, as a host, care about this show? What is something that is motivating you to want to create this?
If you have passion for it and you can explain that and articulate it, you might find out what makes this show unique, and what makes this show interesting and different from other people’s shows.
QUESTION 2 – WHO IS THIS SHOW FOR?
Number two, ask who is this show for? You do have to think about your audience. At the end of the day, if you’re not building the show for someone, you might accidentally go off course. Always thinking about who exactly this show is for will help you find your niche.
QUESTION 3 – WHY WILL THEY LISTEN?
Then the last piece is why will they listen? There are a lot of places to consume content. People’s time is very limited.
You have to ask, “What am I bringing to the table, whether it’s my background, my skills, or the guests I’m bringing, and the focus on this particular type of topic or my own mindset of what it is that this show is for?”
Why will they listen? What is going to make this show important for them to catch every week? If you can answer that question, then you will have a consistent theme that you can apply to every show you do.
KNOW WHERE TO GO FOR HELP
Hopefully, those ideas have given you some things to process in terms of how you can build your show, or if you already have a show like I did, how you could make your show a little more interesting or engaging, maybe draw some more audience in.
You don’t have to do what I did, which was to completely start over. You could start to add some of these things in from the beginning of where you are right now. Add some variety to your show so that these ideas that might help your show become more engaging can happen for you.
If you’d like to go through these ten types of shows together because you’re still not there and you’re still not sure how to focus, I help people with this all the time.
If you want to come up with your podcast idea together that would be perfect for you specifically, that is ownable for you specifically, let’s chat.
Go to www.brandsonbrands.com/coach.
It’s free. It’s easy. We just jump on a call and we chat. We go through this list. If I can help you answer some of those questions, great.
CONNECT WITH BRANDON
Repurposing Content: www.brandsonbrands.com/resources
Coaching Call: www.brandsonbrands.com/coach
Instagram: @brandonbirkmeyer
MORE ADVICE AND INTERVIEWS
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Talk soon!
4 Ways To Build Your Podcast Brand
Start Building Your Reputation Today. Take your knowledge out of your head and turn it into an influential podcast brand. Dramatically increase your industry reputation, reach a global audience, gain a passive income and impact people’s lives all over the world. Let me help you create and launch your podcast, grow your audience, and build a highly influential personal brand – the easy way!
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