Thinking about building your podcast audience but wondering how you can make it happen when you already have 68 different things to do every day?
If so, you’re not the only one.
As business owners, we all have plans and goals. But making those come to fruition isn’t always quick and easy.
One thing I’ve discussed time and time again over the years with clients is why building a strong foundation for your business is critical. And for some people, that foundation includes having trusted partners you can outsource to.
Why?
Well, having ideas is one thing. Being able to implement them — and do it WELL — is a whole other thing. The last thing you want to do when undertaking something like building a podcast audience is to have it all fall apart because the quality isn’t great or things aren’t getting done on time.
Thinking about this probably makes you wonder if outsourcing is a good move for you, or if you can do it on your own. (Hint: probably not!)
Let’s dive into what to consider when making the decision to outsource while building your podcast community.
Why Build Your Podcast Audience?
If you’re considering starting a podcast or already have one that you’re looking to build your podcast audience for, you’re likely already aware of the benefits of podcasting.
Podcasting is a convenient medium to create content (because not everyone is interested in writing long-form content) and it’s easy to get started. For those people who aren’t comfortable creating video, which is an incredibly popular medium, podcasting offers the ideal alternative.
Deciding to build your podcast audience can have several benefits for achieving your business goals, whether it’s increasing your website traffic, generating new leads, or improving your conversion rates.
But most of all, podcasting is one of the best ways to build a community with potential clients or customers. You have an opportunity to let them get to know you and your brand better. The conversations you have can be highly engaging, and invite discussion from your listeners.
As you build your brand authority and position yourself as a knowledgeable resource, your community and audience are sure to grow. Best of all, you can do this by sharing topics within your zone of genius.
If reading all that makes you want to jump headfirst into the podcasting pool, awesome! However, just because doing a podcast SOUNDS like a great idea, it’s not something you can just do on the fly.
Podcasting requires time and skill, and most importantly, a plan and system that can be repeated episode after episode.
Building Your Podcast Audience Takes Time (That You Probably Don’t Have)
For many of us, time is often in short supply. You have endless tasks to complete, so while adding a podcast repertoire to your schedule may not seem like that much additional work, it is.
Having worked with various business owners for over a decade, one exercise we often go through is figuring out how to delegate and prioritize tasks. One method for doing this is using the $10, $100, and $1000 task matrix.
If you’re not familiar with this task matrix, the idea is that the tasks you do in your business have a dollar value attached to them. So as the leader, is it a good use of your time to be spending half your day on $10 tasks? Probably not.
When we look at this matrix in terms of podcasting, you can break it down like this:
- The content strategy and creation of the episodes is the $1000 task. It’s the strategic work.
- The editing of the audio, the creation of the show notes, the writing of the social, and the design of graphics are all $100 tasks. These require a certain level of skills and possible complexity but can be delegated with some ease.
- Uploading the podcast, adding it to YouTube, or adding posts to your Instagram account are definitely $10 tasks. They are systematized, repeatable, and don’t necessarily need a highly skilled person to complete them.
The idea of the matrix is to help you parse out how to prioritize tasks so that you’re focusing your time on the highest value items.
Why?
Because spending your time on the RIGHT things is key to growing your business and your podcast. If your goal for podcasting is to find new opportunities for revenue generation, you need to have the time to do the strategic work.
If you’re bogged down with show notes, editing, or creating graphics, you don’t have the time to do the bigger picture tasks that contribute the most to your business growth.
Building Your Podcast Audience Takes Skill
Many business owners like to consider themselves a jack of all trades. (And many of us are!)
However, when building your podcast audience, there are many moving parts and skills in play. Sure, maybe you can edit pretty well, but can you also design awesome graphics? Can you write compelling social media?
Most of all, can you do all these things efficiently?
Having taken care of podcast production for many clients, my team will be the first to say that efficiency is usually the biggest hurdle to overcome. Just because you CAN do something, doesn’t mean it’s actually a good time investment — nor does it mean you can do it in a reasonable amount of time.
If you’re editing a podcast and it takes five times as long as it would take a professional, what other things are falling through the cracks? What other things could you have been doing with that time that are $100 or $1000 tasks that contribute to your revenue growth?
This is why efficiency matters. Not to mention the possible aggravation of working on something that isn’t necessarily a strong skill. Even worse, imagine spending all that time on these tasks and not ending up with the quality you want!
Quality and efficiency are two of the most compelling reasons to consider outsourcing your podcast production. With the right team working on your podcast, the entire process is easily systematizable, ensuring everything is done the way you want every single time.
As you already have more than enough to do in a day, deciding to take on a bunch of tasks that you (or your team) aren’t skilled at is most likely to result in wasted time and plenty of frustration.
Asking for Help When Building Your Podcast Audience
If the idea of outsourcing to get help with building your podcast audience is new to you, you’re not alone.
When you’re the person leading the business, asking for help can be hard. You’ve probably gotten used to handling everything — often to the point of being overloaded or overwhelmed.
The reality is bringing in some outside help can make a HUGE difference when it comes to meeting your goals.
Outsourcing, or getting outside help gives you the ability to be MORE productive and work on higher-value tasks. It also decreases the likelihood of things getting missed, which alleviates a big burden off your shoulders.
A common problem some business owners experience is being the bottleneck in their business. Because often if you have a team working with you, they end up waiting on your approval or direction.
The good news is that if you choose to outsource, you can hand off all the moving parts to a team that already has experience doing exactly what you need, and they can ensure things run like a well-oiled machine, with very little input required from you.
While deciding to hand off your podcast production may feel a bit uncomfortable, the bottom line is that doing so is an investment in your business.
Building your podcast audience will take some time, so by freeing up your time you’ll have the space to put more effort into engaging directly with your community and building those relationships.
Do you want to work on building your podcast audience — without adding a ton of extra work to your to-do list?
Our team can help!
Whether you’re new to podcasting and looking for support or a seasoned veteran ready to hand over the reins, we’ve got a variety of podcast production packages to meet your needs.
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