How Long Does It ACTUALLY Take To Start & Launch A Podcast? | Ep 17
Mar 07, 2024
Today's episode is all about starting a podcast. Whilst you can pick up your phone, record an episode and get it all uploaded to Buzzsprout (or any other podcast host) within a few moments, sometimes we can get in our own way. Plus, there's ways to leverage this launch and use it to your advantage.
So with "starting a podcast" being on SO many people's lists, I'm sharing how long it *actually* takes to launch - so that you can reverse engineer from your launch date how you're gonna get your podcast started and off the ground.
What You'll Learn In This Episode:
- How long it takes to start a podcast
- What's gonna get in the way of your starting and launching your podcast.
- The leverage in a podcast launch and if a soft launch or hard launch is better suited to your and your businnes.
Best Moments:
- "It's great for building your authority, getting known as an expert in your field, and, of course, it gives you endless amounts of content to be able to use and to have that omnipresence across all social media platforms." - "At the other end of the spectrum, we have what's called a soft launch... A soft launch can be useful for somebody like that, who is putting themselves out there in a new way for the first time."
- "You need to be thinking about exactly what you're doing with the intent of your podcast, everything what you're going to be talking about. What you're going to be doing and why."
Today's episode is all about starting a podcast. Whilst you can pick up your phone, record an episode and get it all uploaded to Buzzsprout (or any other podcast host) within a few moments, sometimes we can get in our own way. Plus, there's ways to leverage this launch and use it to your advantage.
So with "starting a podcast" being on SO many people's lists, I'm sharing how long it *actually* takes to launch - so that you can reverse engineer from your launch date how you're gonna get your podcast started and off the ground.
What You'll Learn In This Episode:
- How long it takes to start a podcast
- What's gonna get in the way of your starting and launching your podcast.
- The leverage in a podcast launch and if a soft launch or hard launch is better suited to your and your businnes.
Best Moments:
- "It's great for building your authority, getting known as an expert in your field, and, of course, it gives you endless amounts of content to be able to use and to have that omnipresence across all social media platforms." - "At the other end of the spectrum, we have what's called a soft launch... A soft launch can be useful for somebody like that, who is putting themselves out there in a new way for the first time."
- "You need to be thinking about exactly what you're doing with the intent of your podcast, everything what you're going to be talking about. What you're going to be doing and why."
You need to be thinking about exactly what you're doing with the intent of your podcast, everything what you're going to be talking about. What you're going to be doing and why. When it comes to launching a podcast, you have two options it's either hard launching the podcast or soft launching. If there's one thing I'm bloody good at, it is leveraging the hell out of a piece of content, using clips, getting it repurposed. It grew to over 100,000 downloads. Hello and welcome to the Big Vision Business Owners Podcast. This is the place for business owners that have a message that they want to share with the world. We'll be talking on this podcast about how to get seen online, how to raise your visibility and actually get your message out there so that you can have that impact on the world. We are all about creating a true connection with your audience, building a community around your podcast, what you do that feeds into your business. That can lead to growth leads and more sales. Finally, we're all about changing the world, changing the way the world thinks, by helping you to share your message so you could have that impact, leave that lasting legacy and be part of greater change in the future. I'm your host, sean Taldyason, who's here to do it with you. Along the way. I'll be sharing my expertise and experiences with being a Big Vision Business Owner, with being able to create content online the clever way, which means not having to spend hours on your phone. Together, we'll be looking at how we can raise your profile online to get your message seen and heard. With that, let's get on with today's episode.
Chantelle Dyson:
Welcome back to another episode. We are diving straight in today with something very practical, that is, launching a podcast. Now don't switch off if you already have a podcast, because this might still be for you. The obvious is, if you don't yet have a podcast and you want to know how long it's going to take to launch, I'm going to be talking about the process within that but really giving you a clear time scale on how long you need before you start your podcast, this might also be for you. If you had a podcast, or you have one, but you're not very consistent.
Chantelle Dyson:
Realistically, what you need to do is do a relaunch. You need to take a break, or maybe you've naturally taken a break because everything's been prioritized. You know that you need to get back to podcasting for all the good reasons that having a podcast brings. It makes you hopefully committed to the process, because you need to be showing up weekly. It means that you are getting clear on your message and thinking about who you're talking to all the time. It's great for building your authority, getting known as an expert in your field and, of course, it gives you endless amounts of content to be able to use and to have that omnipresence across all social media platforms.
Chantelle Dyson:
Whilst being in one of the least competitive markets, podcasting still feels like everyone's got a podcast, but I can tell you now they're not active. That might be why you need to listen so that you can relaunch your podcast. You're probably used to the term launching. We're not talking about rockets, although the rocket emoji gets used all the time whenever there's a launch but you're probably used to launching in your business for a product or a service. When it comes to launching for a podcast, a lot of people focus on the bit where we start telling people about it and promoting it, because that's the same kind of thing for a launch in your business. But we have a little bit before to do that.
Chantelle Dyson:
Whether you're brand new to podcasting or you're thinking about a relaunch, there's all the stuff at the start that needs to go on. You need to be thinking about exactly what you're doing with the intent of your podcast. This is exactly what I spend plenty of time doing with clients during their strategy sessions. It's one of the biggest pieces of time that we spend delving in on everything what you're going to be talking about, what you're going to be doing and why. Why are we doing that podcast episode? Why is it titled that way? Why is the topic that? What's the outcome that we're looking to get from there?
Chantelle Dyson:
When you're first starting a podcast, you have to be able to judge how good you are talking, because your launch takes a rough, particular amount of time. But realistically, there is an unknown element whenever I work with someone that there's a bit where we need to look at how confident you are on camera. If you're going to do it on camera or, in general, just talking to a microphone, how confident are you at that? How good are you at coming up with content concepts? Overall, the process can take anywhere between three months you're gonna do a solid launch to it through to six months is kind of the latter end. But in some case, if you need more practice and you're not prioritizing it, one of the biggest issues is not making your podcast a priority, then it can take even longer. But the launch itself is a six week part of the process and I'll talk through that six week concept in a little bit. And prior to that it just depends on how used to being on camera you are, how well you know your topics, your audience, how much market research you need to do which is why my program is six months long for those that are launching or for those that are growing, because we kind of have to go back a step to be able to reassess, and if you do it quicker, it just means that you get more coaching on what you can do to actually grow, as opposed to getting the basics and foundations in place to make it all happen.
Chantelle Dyson:
When it comes to launching a podcast, you have two options. It's either hard launching the podcast or soft launching, a little bit like if you ever soft launch a new girlfriend or boyfriend, a new partner. Or you do a hard launch, letting people know who they are by bringing them to an event, or you just put some little teas or photos out on Instagram. They're the two kinds of things and they get different responses initially, but they also allow you to do your launch in your own way. So what a hard launch might look like is if you decide that you are going to maximize the exposure about your podcast prior to it happening, that means that you are posting about it a lot on your social media.
Chantelle Dyson:
You might be messaging people, you might even run a competition to incentivize people to get ready to follow on the release date, to get ready to listen, to make sure that they put reviews on, to incentivize it with a competition with a product from your company. And in most cases, the theories that I've heard and the strategies that I've heard are that you give something away for free that everybody gets, so some sort of freebie you've got available that you haven't yet launched or isn't actually available right now, and then you also have a bit of a prize for one person to win. That is a bit more premium, whether it's a higher tier of your product or it's an Amazon gift card, wherever it might be that suits you to incentivize the action, because as much as people love us and support us psychologically, people wanna know what's in it for them. So it makes sense to have some sort of incentive to say please mark my podcast. Other people go down more formal routes, as I would call them, which is using PR, so getting in touch with magazines online and offline and trying to get press regarding your release. Now, both of these messes are all well and good if you feel super confident about what you're doing and they suit some people Better than others. Because if you have come into podcasting with a background in content Well, you might already be doing lives quite confidently and can talk to no end about what you do without too much stuttering. You know your content, you know your market Well and you're just there to share your knowledge. Then this kind of launch is gonna be better for you because you probably already have some kind of Status in your network. You already known a little bit for what you do, so now you're just leveraging that and you have that full confidence and competence at delivering your information and Doing it in a way that comes across as personable on a podcast.
Chantelle Dyson:
At the other end of the spectrum, we have what's called a soft launch, and I Accidentally did a soft launch or I didn't even know there was such a thing back at the day because why would I know about incentivizing people through competitions? Why would I think about PR. I just posted it a couple of times on social media, so by default, I did a soft launch. Now, a Soft launch is nicer If you're kind of tiptoeing into the game.
Chantelle Dyson:
Now, most people, when they decide they want a podcast, I'm quite certain about it. They know they want to do it and they know they want to grow it. But at the same time, there's the element of feeling confident. I know that even if you have already developed the Decision to do a podcast inside, you might be thinking oh my god, like people are gonna hear me even more and I'm gonna have to speak More eloquently or in a longer form. This is not like Instagram or tick to where I get to like cut it and do little bits here and there. I've got to talk for a long time and if you're working with me, then you're probably talking on your own most of the time. So how do I do that and what will people think of me? You've got all of these thoughts. So a soft launch can be useful for somebody like that, who is putting themselves out there in a new way For the first time. Now there is a way that we can bridge that instead of actually going. Oh, I'm really nervous about this and I'm gonna make my podcast the first nervous thing I do. Actually, we can do a long form video that goes out on Instagram, or we can do a live on Instagram and build your confidence up that way, because the way to build confidence with anything in life bearing in mind, I used to do confidence work with single women on dating, doing things alone, and I teach maths to teenagers.
Chantelle Dyson:
It's the same thing. Confidence is built by you taking that one step outside of the comfort zone at the thing that you're scared of doing, and Then you take your second step outside and then you take another step and another step and you're suddenly that, oh my god, that literally wasn't as hard as I thought and you're walking along like nothing was ever a problem and you're like I can't even believe I was even worried about this. It's always the comment and you feel really excited about it. In my case, I hadn't done that many long-form videos. I had dabbled during lockdown. I've done lessons. I think that was my confidence.
Chantelle Dyson:
But my tone is a little bit softer if you go back and listen to the very first videos and it was very much scripted that first episode as well, which, even on a hard launch, people will have had Scripts and supportive notes to help them through. That actually doesn't change necessarily, unless you're super confident, such as me, or I have a page of vague notes nowadays of things I know I want to say, and otherwise you're hearing me just talking about launches. So in that sense it might be your preferred way and you're like you know what. Yes, I do want to grow the podcast, but when it comes to it at the start, I just want to get it done. I want to get a few episodes out there and I want to feel how it's going, and that's what we call a soft launch and you post it on your socials and it might just be by default that you decide to do that now.
Chantelle Dyson:
The difference in the result of the two Will be that the people that have run the competition and if they have managed to get any press on it, I'm going to get more downloads quicker. That is what's gonna happen if you do what's called a hard launch, because you're bringing immediate attention to your podcast straight away and the quality won't actually matter at that point because you've done it on incentivization, you've done it on press. It's just gonna get some momentum and then your job is to keep it up there. On the soft launch, your downloads are gonna be less Because you aren't utilizing and leveraging your audience. You might not even have much of an audience right now, and that Content that you're creating is going to create the content that's gonna go out there to get your audience, and that's okay because they both work. They are both suitable. It depends on what you're trying to do. Now. The teams of hard launches that are out there that say that that's maybe the only way, or is the best way. We'll say that because, yes, you get the downloads there quickly and what that means as a result is that you can chart quicker. You can get into the Apple podcast charts, and Even that in itself then feeds its own content, because once you've got a little screenshot of you in the top 100, the top 50, the top 10, etc. Even just momentarily, wherever you've made it Into the chart is a great little picture to show and it's gonna get attention in itself. And then people are gonna look and go oh, it's already made it into the chart. She only just released it, exciting. So that is how you decide which kind of chart you want to do. The slower version doesn't mean that you're not gonna get seen, though.
Chantelle Dyson:
I started the single girls guide to life over in that corner at a table. No one had a video and I posted it and I don't know how many listens I got on the first episode not many and Through the promotion of the podcast organically. I've never paid for an ad Using clips, getting it repurposed. It grew to over a hundred thousand downloads. It was in. Was it quite in the top 10 of the charts? At one point it was quite high up. It was definitely top 20. I've got the screenshot of it because I was up by Michelle Obama and Matthew Hussie, which in my realm is very good, so it was fun to be there and it often goes into the top 200 of various different Podcast charts, mostly Great Britain, but you get some interesting countries. Sometimes it suddenly there's a weird peak in something like Kenya and you're like, wow, okay, we're properly international. The Spotify for podcasters wrapped, because you get one of those extra, because you're a podcaster, you get an extra wrapped. We'll tell you about the countries it's been in, tell you about the downloads, it'll tell you about the percentages. So that's the idea Now, that kind of launch, especially if you are going to do a hard launch, especially if you're going to get press involved.
Chantelle Dyson:
That goes back quite far. Press work in advance. They want to know your dates and it needs to fit with them when they're doing stuff for like Christmas. It was planned months ago and I mean months, and you'll sometimes see little requests for some PR things as things warm up towards Christmas, but the big people they're planning it months in advance. So when it comes to thinking about launching a podcast and you want to get that kind of media attention on it, then you've got to think how can I get in touch with those people? Now, pr agencies potentially can get to these people quicker that's the whole point of them. But if you're doing it on your own, you've got to try and reach out a number of times and at the right time when they're planning. There are also podcast websites that want to share with their community new podcast, so that one's not so time sensitive but it's worth thinking about. Does it make sense for me to get promoted in these things In terms of launching to the people around you, telling people you're doing it, creating the buzz on social media you're looking at, creating the energy around the release of this podcast, so teasing little elements of the podcast.
Chantelle Dyson:
It doesn't even have to be the content, it can be the cover art, it can be the name and it starts to build this and you'll want to do that for a few weeks. It's about six weeks before that you start that process and then, at two weeks before, is when you really lean into teaser trailers and really warming people up to going oh I want to listen to this, what is this? And finding out more about it up until the very day of launch, where you're then releasing it, getting people to interact with the content on the day on Spotify and Apple podcasts. So it's all about that. So that bit has a six week, but prior to that, you need to have everything ready, or at least in the pipeline to be ready. So if you take another six weeks back hence why we're at three months you've got your three months of planning and you're starting to record, whether that's the intros, the outros and then the podcast episodes themselves. Again, if you're starting out new, you might have to do a few recordings of the first ones. If you're a veteran, you won't need that so much, so you can probably whack those out quicker. That said, on a launch, you're going to want at least four episodes to release with. And again, this is because whoever you do get to listen to the podcast has something to listen to, more than just one episode. That way you get more downloads on the first day and it will get you up in the charts.
Chantelle Dyson:
This depends how much the charting is of importance to you, and I have a disconnect with it personally myself because it feels like playing the system. But I have to tell you the strategy because it works. It's not that it doesn't work, it's just that to me it feels inauthentic and gimmicky. It feels like I'm being given a reward for gaming the system and I don't like that. And I also stand proud of the fact that I don't feel like I ever did that with the single girls guide to life. But you could argue that the way that I cut clips up and I was doing that manually back then I would sit and listen to my own podcast and choose which clips I thought were going to get the most attention online. You could argue that that is as much of playing a system as it is trying to get people to get you in the charts. So I stand down at that approach and that's why I share it with you. I don't think either one is better or worse.
Chantelle Dyson:
Actually, from the success I've seen, going with a hard launch is a very strong way to do it. But I just I just don't know. Maybe it's because I managed to do it without and maybe I just feel like that's a lovely, nice, natural, organic way, a little bit more of growing a podcast, and some people are going to sit in that camp with me and some of you are going to sit in the other camp, and no matter what, whoever I work with, it's your choice. We will base it on your current audience, we'll base it on your network. We'll base it on your strength of the content and how well you know what you're talking about and the people that you're serving and how specific we can be and get it out there. And it doesn't matter which way. Either way, we'll have a podcast to start working with, because the first three months are all about planning and launching and then the second three months is about being consistent, and you consistently deliver your content. You show people what you're about. You're there. The launch will have got you somewhere, potentially got you some attention, got you some initial followers, people to talk to and interact with, and then after that is where it really matters, because it's all well and good getting in the top charts, but you've got to keep going with this. Now you might season it up. You might say I'm only going to do 13 and you record all 13 before you've even released and it gives you a point to relaunch again for season two.
Chantelle Dyson:
I have a little tactic that you can do to keep excitement around your podcast. I'd never had a break, not until right at the end with the single girls guide to life. It just kept ongoing and sticking with that. Getting into the routine of content creation, leveraging it. If there's one thing I'm bloody good at, it is leveraging the hell out of a piece of content. Hence why we call me the clever content creator. Even if it is self-proclaimed, there's no way I'm not getting loads out of content and getting it on plenty of platforms to get me attention online. It takes longer, it's organic, but I get to grow with the podcast in that way. I get to learn as I go.
Chantelle Dyson:
I'm thinking about changing the name of the podcast inside a secret and exclusive right there. I'm thinking of changing the name of this podcast. What if I had done all of this PR around the name of the other one? It wouldn't be the end of the world. I'd have the followers and I've got to do a whole load of work with those followers to get them to know a new one. Sometimes we have these ideas, sometimes we are fluid with it and I'm a very fluid creator. Especially at this stage I'm at start up I can't commit to all of these things and expect them never to change. But hey, maybe in a few months time, once I've really got it nailed, I can decide okay, now I know the new name, I'm going to take a pause, going to do a relaunch, going to get attention on it. Kapow, let's try that method. There's no harm in that. People have rebranded, people have renamed their podcast and they're still here and they're still out there.
Chantelle Dyson:
So, in terms of the length of time it takes to launch six weeks, no matter what hard or soft, because you've got to Plan that section of promotion beforehand. In terms of getting the podcast actually regi and strategized unless you're coming into that with that already planned you need three, four to six weeks before that, depending on how much you know that already. Depending on how your skills are I mean, if you're editing it and you're learning to edit it yourself for the first time that can be a bit of an uphill journey to learn how to do it. It's not super hard, but it's a new platform, it's a new piece of software. You've got to learn how to upload it to Buzzsprout. There's all these little things that, if you're doing it yourself, are going to take your time. But how you launch is entirely up to you with how you feel.
Chantelle Dyson:
You can take my advice and you can hear what I said there in terms of who it would suit, who it wouldn't suit, what the benefits are and what the negatives can be. There's not too many to them. Come see, come sell. But either way, make sure that you give yourself enough time to start your podcast, to get people involved, to be ready with a few episodes. Oh, and last tip before I go, you do need four episodes to launch with, but you also would like to have at least at least another three or four to give you three or four weeks worth before you have to release another new episode and get it recorded. So have seven or eight ready to go before you launch, and that is why it can take that little bit longer to be ready to get launched.
Chantelle Dyson:
Let me know if you have any questions at all my DMs on Instagram are always open or connect with me on LinkedIn and ask me questions there. If you've got a launch coming up, tell me about it, because I do listen to your podcast. I listen to your podcast to get ideas from my podcast, to get ideas for how I work with people. I think about what strategies I would put in place if I were to ever work with you. It's exciting to listen and hear what people are doing. So do drop me a message. It's heavily encouraged and until next time, keep changing the way the world thinks. One podcast at a time.
