Launch Your Podcast With One of These 3 Easy Episode Formats

Like the rest of the marketing world, we’re in full support of introducing a podcast to your content plan. The medium continues to offer great benefits to online professionals hoping to build trust and credibility with their target audience. But, just like any other form of content, content creators struggle over what topics and types of discussions are right for a podcast episode. With this obstacle in mind, we’ve gathered 4 ideas to get you started… in order of difficulty.

Expert Interview

The appeal of an interview is that it features valuable information but takes a lot of the pressure off the interviewer; a particularly appealing feature for newbie podcasters. It’s also a great way to build relationships with peers and influencers in your community.

A few things to keep in mind when producing this kind of episode:

• Choose guests and topics that make sense for your audience
• Personalize all interview requests to show you really care about your potential guest’s message
• Make it easy for your guest to share the episode once it goes live

Answer an Audience Question

The Q&A format is popular because it allows listeners to easily relate with the issue being brought up in the question. They can see themselves in the language of someone who wants an answer to a specific problem or conflict.

Even if you’re starting out and you don’t have an audience to pull questions from, you can easily find examples in online forums like Quora, Reddit, or Facebook groups. If you use one of those sites, make sure to get permission from the original inquirer to use their question. Offer to change their name for privacy’s sake; considering you’ll be offering your expert answer, they will hopefully see this as an opportunity to find a solution.

What to consider when creating a Q&A episode:

• Get as much background information on the issue as possible
• Try to offer more than one solution to make the episode more accessible for a range of people
• Remind listeners where they can submit their own questions for future episodes

List or Roundup Podcast

Much like written content, a list-based podcast episode can be very attractive for your audience. The audio format also allows you to expand more on your choices for the list than you could in a blog post, which is important for further establishing credibility and offering your audience more value. It’s also a great way to have more of a fast-paced show that easily allows listeners to stay focused and engaged.

Keep in mind when making a list or roundup episode:

• See what others are saying: don’t just regurgitate what’s already been said about this topic
• Consider a combining a written post with your podcast to maximize benefit for your audience
• Recap the list at the end of the episode and even throughout your countdown to remind listeners of what was covered

The great thing about all of these options is that you can continue to use any combination of them as you grow your podcast content. Rotating the types of podcast episodes you publish will allow your content to stay fresh and interesting to both new and old listeners.

Need help producing your podcast? We have experience in all areas of the podcast creation process. Just recently, a list of the Top 20 Marketing Podcasts featured 5 shows that we help produce!