Pod Like a Pro: Episode 2

Pod like a Pro – Episode Two

Your Podcast Idea

Sparky 0:21

Right, this is Pod like a Pro. Thanks so much for joining me Sparky along with Ben, this is a Sound Rebel podcast, helping you on your way to building your podcast. Now, last week was a bit of an introduction. Today is all about your podcast idea.

Ben Anderson 0:37

We're delving into the detail. We mentioned last time Sparky that, you know, breakfast radio, you're a breakfast radio presenter, that people might think that when they listen to the radio, or they just go into a studio, throw the mic open, start talking. But actually, there's a lot of preparation that goes in behind the scenes of breakfast radio shows.

It's exactly the same thing with podcasts, of course, people who are passionate, people who've got something to say, people with opinions, are great podcast presenters. At the same time, you need to have a format to your podcast for it to be successful. You need to basically set yourself a set of rules that you always abide by when it comes to producing your podcast. And it's something that a lot of people don't think about they think, right? I want to start a podcast, what do I need to do? I need to buy a microphone, find a guest, and I'll just talk to them. Unfortunately, it's not that simple. It can be done that way. But you're not going to get the most out of your podcast, if that is the only part of the process.

Sparky 1:40

So, in this episode, you're going to learn where how you take your podcast idea. And you build the foundations of what your podcast is going to sound like.

Ben Anderson 1:50

Absolutely. And hopefully by giving you a few examples of what we've worked on already, you'll be able to hear exactly the kind of process that goes in behind something that sounds effortless, because that's the real thing, you want it to sound like it's effortless. You want it to sound natural and engaging. Like it isn't too difficult. At the same time, the amount of work that goes into achieving that sound is more than you might think.

Sparky 2:15

So, buckle up and find out how you're going to take your idea to being a top podcast with a little bit of help from Sound Rebel.

Ben Anderson 2:26

This podcast is obviously this episode is called your podcast idea. And I suppose what I'd really love to talk about is just how to approach because the idea is the most important thing, format development is the most important thing. What we do at Sound Rebel is we work with pilers from the construction industry. It's quite odd, because I'll have a recording at nine with the Federation of piling specialists. Then at 10 o'clock, I'm on with Bewitched the pop band from the 90s because we're working on a podcast for them, then it's bizarre, like the amount of people that are looking at doing podcasts and the different approaches. That's what I'd really love to talk about here. Because people think, oh, I can just get a microphone and talk into it and release it on Apple podcasts. And then that's the box ticked. It really isn't the hard graft of a podcast, the idea and the format comes at the beginning. And I think to nail what your podcast is going to be about before you've even ordered your microphone is hugely important.

And obviously, you know, with our kind of background in the radio industry, you hear a breakfast show, and it's great. It's natural. They got funny content on the presenters are chatting between themselves. It's not just let's throw the mic open and see what happens here. Sparky, you'll sit down after every show, listen back to bits and go that because really good. Actually, can we develop that for tomorrow? This is happening in the world? What's our unique angle on this that we can present on our show that no other commercial radio breakfast show is going to be doing tomorrow? It isn't just a case of throwing open the mic and hoping for the best. You've got to put thought into it. You've got to go write what makes me unique. What makes if it's if it's a podcast or a business, what makes my business unique? What value am I actually adding here to podcasting as a whole, because, again, the pandemic, there's been a lot of people starting podcasts, they've been at home, they've had time on their hands. It doesn't mean you shouldn't start one.

And if you look around and there's other podcasts in the same space, it doesn't mean that it's already too busy. It's just going hang on a sec, why should you be doing one? What is it about you that makes you interesting and you unique? I mean, so I'll give you a couple of examples of the process that we go through with a new client. We love it. When someone comes to us and goes like we really want to do a podcast, wanted to do a podcast for ages. I say to them, got any ideas what you want it to be about? And they go, not really. I know that they're great. I know that I should be doing them, but I don't know where to start. That's what we do with our clients. We work with them right from the beginning for idea development all the way through to the distribution to all of them to all the major podcast apps.

Sparky 5:05

So, I walk into your office and I want to start a podcast. I'm a business owner. What things do we look at first?

Ben Anderson 5:11

So let me give you an example of a personality actually, that we worked with on the very first podcast we produced is called Dilemmas with Jess Ellis. She was on Hollyoaks for five years, her character, unfortunately got squashed to death by a tree. Very suddenly.

She was left with a bit of a dilemma. What did she do with her life next? She'd always wanted to do presenting, she'd been an actor, and, you know, loved that life. But she's completely and utterly nuts. First of all, she's bursting with personality. And she's a brilliant, brilliant presenter. But that's not enough. I suppose the obvious thing with someone like Jess is to start off and go, well, okay, you're an actor. Can we talk we do like an Inside the Actors Studio, but for kind of younger people, maybe…

Sparky 6:07

Ways of getting into the industry, that could be an angle that you could have gone.

Ben Anderson 6:10

Exactly. And those are the obvious angles. Jess really wanted it to be an entertainment show. And looking at her, so she's got about a quarter of a million followers on Instagram. Looking at her Instagram insights showed that a lot of her followers were young women, so kind of women in their 20s, early 30s. Obviously, Hollyoaks viewers, but like in your 20s, Sparky, we remember it, you know what it's like, you’re trying to work out who you are. Where you fit in the world… every day throws up a new problem, sometimes when you’re in your 20s.

But with Jess, she also said in that very first meeting, which was a throwaway line. She's like, oh, yeah, I'm the agony aunt for all my friends, they come to me with all their problems. Anyway, that ended up being the bit that we picked up on. And we created dilemmas. And the format is very simple. Her listeners send Jess their everyday problems. It could be, I've just found out that my boyfriend is cheating on me with my best friend. Or it could be my mum said something the other day on a Zoom call that I thought was really out of order. And I really want to pick up on it. But it whatever the problem is, it's those sorts of style problems. But Jess invites a guest celebrity guest onto the podcast every week. And she talks through people's real-life problems. So, she's an agony aunt for the Instagram generation, essentially.

Sparky 7:30

And that's it. She's created a format, a unique angle. And that's more than just her opening a mic with that bag of personality that she's got. Yeah. And just offering that like she's offering that. But we have an angle that we're pointing out, which is obviously dilemmas.

Ben Anderson 7:46

Exactly. And what's lovely about that as a format. Well, there's two things I love about it. First of all, we never run out of content. We can produce an episode every single week because these dilemmas are coming through to the inbox all the time. So, there's always problems coming through. Obviously, we don't say oh, this is Sparky from Nottingham. You know, we anonymize them if they asked you to be anonymized.

Sparky 8:08

She's not reading my ones. But she should check her junk out.

Ben Anderson 8:13

But I love that format. It's listener led, so we never run out of content. But also, the listeners are the stars of the podcast. The other thing that's great about it is that interview podcasts as a format are really popular you know. So many podcasts, you'll see, they use the kind of present a guest as the basis of the format, which is fine. But again, you want to look at it and you want to do something slightly different.

So, what's lovely about Dilemmas is for example, Duncan James from Blue, came on. So lovely, ‘cause rather than kind of talking to him about Blue, and what was it like being in a pop band? And what did this feel like? And oh, you then became an actor and tell us what you're doing now… We get those little bits in, but rather than it being a kind of simple question and answer, interview format, you do get to find out what they're doing, but the focus isn't what has their career been and what are they going on to do… You actually find out who they are, by Duncan from Blue saying what he would do in a situation where he found out his fella was cheating on him with someone else…

Sparky 9:27

You are finding out about them in a whole different way. Exactly. You conduct any interview indirectly which is perfect.

Ben Anderson 9:33

Exactly. Exactly. And that's, you know, Dilemmas has flown like it's done so well. It’s hundreds of 1000s of listeners who've downloaded or stream Dilemmas now. And I'm convinced that a lot of that comes down format, of course Jess is fantastic. But I think a lot of it is the format. I feel like dilemmas it does what it says on the tin. It's a nice clear line at the beginning. This is what this podcast is about. Let's get into it. And it's just really exciting. Simple and really human and really honest and open and raw and funny. And I think that comes down to a lot to the format. Now, on the completely other end of the scale, we work with a magazine called the construction index. So they are the number one source for construction news. They wanted to produce a weekly podcast, to engage their audiences, who read the magazine, the print magazine, and their daily online news, to engage them in a new way. And really kind of add personality to the brand through featuring their journalists talking, you hear the journal, you're not just reading what they write, you're hearing them you're hearing their opinion. So we created a format for them called reconstruction: RE colon construction. The format isn't overcomplicated here. But there's still a format to it. So, you've got two regular co-hosts on that. You've got David, who is the print magazine editor. And you've got Phil, who is the online editor who does all the Daily News. So, you've got two guys who are in you know, they've been in construction journalists. They're veteran construction journalists – they've been doing this for over 30 years each. But you've got those two talking to each other. That's the foundation of the format. Sure to do it every week, you want it to be newslead. Now, again, that's nice and simple. That's a really good format to have for a podcast because you're constantly producing new stuff. You're not having to scramble about and find stuff. But the format with them is just simple. We say to them, right? Let's not talk about everything that's going on in construction this week. Because it's a really busy industry. You pick what you think are the three most important defining news stories of the construction industry this week. And then we go through them. That's not much of a format; it’s two construction journalists talking about the news. But by making it three, three is a good number of stories for people to consume, it means that you can get enough depth without going on too long and losing people's attention. And just sticking to that really focuses it makes you go right actually, what are the things that we want to say. Because, again, with a podcast, it's not about what you want to produce; what the audience wants has got to drive everything. And you go right, what did the audience really want to hear more about this week, and that allows him to get guests on, for example, it allows them to just talk about between themselves, it's not an overcomplicated format. But it is a format. And it just helps the whole production process. If you get that nailed at the beginning.

Sparky 12:33

Well, a lot of the problem that you find is with people when they start podcasts, and is that you know, you want someone you want people to take something away from your podcast at the end of it. So having those three stories with reconstruction makes sense, because you could wishy washy talk about all the subjects that week in construction, and nothing really sticks with your audience. But you know, by hitting with those three points, and keeping it clear, that's the point. It's like, there is there has to be that backwards thinking – what do you want me to take away at the end of every episode?

Ben Anderson 13:05

Yeah. You know, that is exactly the line we use with our clients. So, what that first meeting is about, like we've just launched a podcast in collaboration with an actress called Sasha Parkinson. So, Sasha, she's been on Cory, she's been Mr. Selfridge – really great career, again, a huge following on Instagram, mainly of young women. She runs a blog about menstrual health and wants to transfer that to a podcast. Sure, what we said to her was because again, with that, there's so many different angles that you can go down, so many different formats that you can create. We've created The Vagina Monopod, it's called.

Sparky 13:43

A 10 out of 10, for the name of that. That’s another reason to be working with Sound Rebel – a lot of thought goes into.

Ben Anderson 13:50

But what's great about that is everything we do with that the line that we came up with was we said to Sasha, how do you want your audience to feel after they finished listening to the first episode, and the sentence we came up with was, I want young women to listen and go ‘I know so much more about my own body than I did before clicking play’. So therefore, any conversations we have about future guests that we want to bring on topics we want to cover, we go does it come back to that core centre? Will someone finish listening to that and go I know so much more about my own body than I did before. Now again, it's not overcomplicated, but that's format. That's just as you go on. It's just constantly checking everything that you do to bring it back and go ‘does this relate to that to the reason that we started this and the very core values of what this format is?’ And I suppose it's easy to veer off track if you're doing it on your own. If you've got someone like us we're going oh, great idea but let’s stick to the bloody format.

I think we should probably give an honourable mention here to Men Lose Weight as well – the podcast that we work on together. You're the host of Men Lose Weight and I pipe up occasionally.

Sparky 15:10

Yeah, Ben's magnificently in there always. He’s a stat man, you know. But with Men Lose Weight, the point of that podcast, it's very easy to describe is, I feel or we felt as a group of mates, who are, you know, very straight talking mates, felt that we needed to do better with our lives, like basically our eating our wellbeing, we partied a lot in the 20s. And thought, now we're becoming like, you know, into the mid stage of our life, like when do you start paying a bit more attention to your health. So that's why we started this. And a key goal of that podcast every time we want our listener to walk away feeling motivated, but also feeling that they're in a battle that a lot of other blokes are in too, but you just might not often hear them talk about it often, you know, weight loss is often spoken about by women. And I feel like that's, again, another unique angle that we try and throw in that podcast.

Ben Anderson 16:01

With that one, we looked at it and you know, I wanted to after the first lockdown where I'd put on a few pounds, but I personally wanted to lose a bit of weight, and try to find a podcast about it. And it is either, as you said, women producing these kind of shows this kind of content, or you get the very kind of the serious gym go yeah, come on, get in the gym, pump some iron, you can do it. And what we try and do is we basically wanted to create a podcast for people like us blokes who want to give it a go. We're now in our 30s and we should probably be dropping a few pounds here or there. But we were just honest and real with it. And we talk about the you know, it's not just about oh yeah, I've lost two pounds this week. I did this and I worked out and drank six protein shakes. No, it's not it's we talk about our failures when it's that makes it relatable. Like, you know, when Charlie came on, and Charlie, who's an another one that presents on the podcast, he did a juice diet for five days to try it out, lost a load of weight, but then he had to come on and say, I did well, but I couldn't help but order a large pizza with McDonald's fries on the side as my meal after the juice diet.

Sparky 17:12

And as much as we love Joe wicks and his lean fifteens, he's not going to show you him eating a pizza on a Friday night. Not a big dirty Domino's anyway.

Ben Anderson 17:21

Yeah, it's real. And another very real podcast we produce is called Over the Influence. So that's about giving up alcohol living, living life, alcohol free, not because you've had a problem with alcohol, but just because you want to try it. The two main presenters on it. One's a BBC radio presenter, she gave up over 900 days ago. Now. The other is Freddy, who's a Guinness world record breaker does all sorts of like nuts, ultra-marathons and stuff. He's just done two years, but he so you've got Sharon who gave up because she realised that she was getting into a bit of a habit being a busy mum, you know, putting away a few bottles in the week. And going, actually this isn't normal. So, she gave up to just see what effect it would have on her life. And so much has changed for her and she just decided to give up booze. Freddy decided to do it cuz he wants to achieve these things like running across the Sahara desert and the marathon des Sables and whatever. Again, it's that kind of there was so many (forgive the pun), but very dry podcasts out there. Like, so tell me, why did you give up alcohol? Isn't that interesting? And isn't that Freddie and Sharon, you know, Sharon's from Lancashire, big northern booming voice big laugh. It's funny. It's talking about something that's really quite serious, giving up alcohol and the effect that alcohol can have on your health and your mind, etc. But they just bring these lovely real-life stories to it. And the feedback we get on that podcast is unbelievable. It's always this podcast is so honest, this podcast is so real. That that isn't a mistake. We set out to do that before we even recorded the first episode. I said to the guys, if we're going to do this, sometimes it's going to be uncomfortable. I'm going to push you into places that you might not want to speak about. But we've got to agree. Now, if you want to do this, and you want me to produce this and you want this to grow, then you need to almost sign this contract, we promised to be real and honest. So, it's not a mistake. That's part of the development process. In terms of what should I do my podcast about, what is your podcast idea? These are things you got to think about right at the very beginning.

Sparky 19:27

Yeah, like think about the communities that you're talking to you. Like for me, as well as a radio breakfast presenter. You know, we're speaking to a region or a section of regions – I've got Leicestershire, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire. So that's quite a broad mix in there. You've got tradesmen listening on the way to work whilst mums listen with the kids. So that's a broad audience and I've got to think about all of those people that I'm speaking to want to do that on breakfast radio, but this is a difference with podcasting is you are now getting down to the next level of the communities that you want to speak to. So our weight loss when we're talking to blokes and men who are potentially trying to lose weight. It's all in your thinking, Who are we talking to? Who is the person with the headphones on at the other end of that podcast?

Ben Anderson 20:12

Absolutely. You know, 92% of people listen to their podcasts on their own, with their headphones in. You know, radio is, you know, you can have it on the warehouse, as you said, radio is broadcasting. And I suppose that was for me the hardest shift when going from radio into the world of podcasts.

With all podcasts, you're right, Sparky is not about broadcasting. It's about building within the niches, there are enough people out there who listen to podcasts, who will be interested in your niche. One thing I always say to our clients as well, is everyone obviously wants to produce a product. And it happens, we've seen it happen with loads of our formats, hundreds of 1000s of downloads. But that's not success with the podcast. It's not about how many people are listening. It's about how many important people are listening, the people who are important to you and your personal brand, the people who are important to your business, Over the Influence has not had hundreds of thousands of downloads – it has had tens of thousands of downloads, but not hundreds of thousands, and yet the community has already started to build around that podcast. It is unbelievable to the point where we've generated a business model off the back of it where basically every night of the week, we've got these zoom motivation calls, where one of the presenters of the podcast is joined by listeners, and they just talk to their alcohol-free journeys. The conversion rate, we put one ad, in an episode of Over the Influence thinking, let’s give this a try. See what happens. The inbox went bonkers to the point where we're doing these every night of the week. That's because people have built this relationship with Freddie and Shaz, they haven't face to face. But by listening to Freddie and Sharon, the presenters over the influence talk about their stories. By the time they email, they’re not asking, and I don’t have to sell anything to these guys. They just want to know – when is it? They know that they want to join and want to know how much it is and when is it? And it's like that they built up that relationship with Freddie and Shaz just by listening to hours of them talking about going alcohol-free, they feel like they know them.

Sparky 22:34

And that's like the new type of community group. But like, I definitely think of podcasts like this, like what you've formed, there is something that people might go to, and I'm not talking about Alcoholics Anonymous here. Like I'm definitely not talking about this. But like any, you know, like a club that you might go to, and you might spend four pound to go to that. This is really how podcasting works. It's like you've created a community and the loyalty that you get behind that community that you create, I think is what you mentioning here, is what brings people back to your business and brings back people to what you're trying to showcase to them.

Ben Anderson 23:07

What I'd love for you to take away from this. First of all, yes, you can and should do a podcast. As long as you're passionate working with a producer, we can get the best out of you, we can make it sound great. If you are umm and err in the recording, it doesn't matter. Because we can just take it out, make it slick, make it sound great. All you need to do is bring the passion and we can work and develop the idea. We've been working in the radio industry for years. Breakfast radio is a content monster. We've been coming up with stupid ideas for them for years. And now we're coming up with stupid ideas for you. If you are going to embark on producing a podcast, really sit down and really think who do I want to listen? How do I want them to feel? If you nail that before you even get yourself a microphone and before you book a studio, then you're doing a lot better than a lot of amateur podcasters who come in, do four episodes realise they've run out of content and then what could have been a really promising project ends. So really spend the time in that initial development stage.

Sparky 24:25

So that's your podcast ID hopefully you've scribbled down some notes during that and you've got a now a better idea of how you are going to take your podcast to the next level.

Ben Anderson 24:35

And of course, if you've heard it all that I think that sounds really good but quite difficult. Get in touch Hello@soundrebel.co.uk. We can help.

Sparky 24:45

Ben's the man – he's got the knowledge and look next time we're joined by a radio presenter. Now he's going to talk us through the basics of presenting. If you believe you're the anchor of your podcast, you need to hear what this man's got to say.