In this lesson.
Let's talk about coming up with the idea and structure for your podcast in terms of an idea and what
your podcast should be about.
It should be about whatever your business is about.
And maybe if you don't have a business, then go back to what are your passions?
I think for any of these digital products, that is what the topic of that product is going to be.
And a podcast is something that you want to be passionate about.
I think shows where the host expresses interest and you can tell that they are curious about this topic
and are in the shoes of the listener as well.
Asking questions, diving into topics.
That's when a show show is really good.
I think a more important question for you is what is the format going to be?
Are you going to be by yourself solo as the host?
Are you going to do it interview style where you have one person or a couple of people come on and interview
with you?
Are you going to do it more documentary style where you might have different segments, might include
a lot of different interviews or people in a broadcast?
It really depends on what style you want to go for now let's talk about the pros and cons of each of
these formats.
Being solo is great because you have complete control over what the show is, what is said.
You can record whenever you want.
You don't have to deal with scheduling.
You don't have to deal with figuring out how to record someone in the interview if you're not there
in person.
A lot of people do interviews over things like Skype or Zoom nowadays, which is relatively easy to
do.
But there's a lot of things that go into interviewing that it's extra work compared to if you're doing
it by yourself.
Now, taking that to the next level and doing a more documentary style show is going to be even more
work.
You see a lot of these types of podcasts by bigger radio stations or producers.
This American Life and Radio Lab are a couple of my favorite shows that have this sort of documentary
style, but it's a lot more work, I think for most of us, starting out with a solo show or a combination
of solo and interview based is the way to go.
Interview based is great because it provides you a lot of new content and you don't have to come up
with new content yourself.
And so it really depends on what your topic is.
Maybe there it could be a more newsworthy sort of update style podcast where depending on whatever's
going on in your industry, you can update them.
Maybe it's more of a storytelling podcast where you have a long form story that you break into separate
episodes.
If you've heard of the podcast Serial, this is one of those podcasts that does that in a very good
way.
They take a story and they break it down into individual episodes, kind of like a television show.
I've had a number of podcasts that I run myself and I run with friends and I help my wife do a podcast.
So for myself, I have a podcast called Online Course Masters.
This is where I teach other people how to create online courses.
It's a combination of just me teaching on the show and also doing interviews at times.
I also had a co host, Jeremy Deegan, who was on for a couple of seasons.
He was in one season where it was just the two of us covering all of the different aspects of creating
an online course.
And that was great because we could bounce off ideas with each other.
We could kind of interview and ask each other questions, and that made the show a little bit more dynamic
than just me being by myself.
And then we also did a season where we were interviewing other online course creators, and that was
cool because we both got to talk, share our own story and ideas, but we both came up with different
questions, and just having another person with another background makes your show a little bit more,
I would say, dynamic and diverse and able to appeal to a wider audience.
That being said, there are some downsides to being a co host.
One is just not having complete control over the story or what you want to talk about too is just the
simplicity of figuring out when and how to record.
If you live in the same space, that's a little bit easier than trying to align schedules and do it
online.
Of course it's doable.
It's just an added element that you'll have to deal with rather than if you're just doing it by yourself.
The other shows that I help manage Close Focus is a show that one of my co instructor friends will does.
He interviews other photographers about their journey.
It's all interview based and so far he's done all of them in person.
So that just brings a different element.
And then lastly, my wife runs a show called.
Isabel in San Dimas.
It's more of a local news politics show, just about what's going on in our town.
And so you can see the range of different shows and ideas.
She does interviews, she does episodes just by herself.
Some are super short news based episodes.
Some are longer form, deep dives into a specific topic.
And for her show, I think what really drives the listenership is the fact that it's all about our town.
So, no, she's not going to get a global audience or really much of an audience outside of the people
in our city.
But since every episode is about some different aspect of living in San Dimas, the people that listen
are super passionate about it.
So hopefully going over these pros and cons for the different types of formats gives you an idea for
what you want to do.
Again, you can always do a combination or change it up with online course masses.
So I went from doing episodes by myself to interviews back to doing it by myself or with my co host.
And it was totally fine.
Our listeners liked it.
I think it in general, it's probably a good idea to have somewhat of a standard format or set the expectations
that there are going to be interview based episodes plus maybe solo episodes.
Whatever it is, though, if it's a topic that your listeners are interested in, they're going to probably
love whatever content you bring them.
All right.
I hope you like this lesson.
And the next lesson is we're going to dive more into the practical sides of creating your podcast.
And we'll dive into the computer and we'll talk about recording, editing, using some of the platforms
that I use to host and that kind of stuff.
We'll see you there.