How can you make your podcast successful? Mexican-German Sabrina Scholkowski shares key pieces of advice
By Jim James, Founder EASTWEST PR and Host of The UnNoticed Podcast.
Sabrina Scholkowski is half-Mexican, half-German, and a full-time podcast coach, and speaker living in Paris. Her journey as a podcast coach started when more and more people started asking her for advice on how to do a podcast. As having her own successful podcast gave more credibility to what she advises, she decided to make a living out of it. In one The UnNoticed Podcast episode, she shared key pieces of advice on how you can make your podcast successful.
Image from https://sabrinasc.com.
Be Confident and Passionate
Although podcasting has been around for over 10 years now, it was only two or three years ago that it became mainstream.
One of the things that hinder aspiring podcasters to start their own is a lack of confidence. Sabrina shares that people think of themselves as a nobody: Why would people listen to me? I don’t have this fantastic business idea. I am not an influencer.
The statistics may also sound intimidating. There are about 1.5 million podcasts out there. But compared to blogs (there are around 500 million blogs online, yet people still continue to launch their own), it is a relatively small figure. Furthermore, of the 1.5 million podcasts, only half are active. Many stop producing content after about five or 10 episodes. In reality, you don’t have that much competition.
Sabrina points out that it’s because people don’t start podcasts for the right reasons
The most successful podcast hosts are those that have a passion for them to keep their podcasts going.
When someone consults with Sabrina, she always asks about her clients’ passion — the topics that they can talk about for 20 minutes without getting bored. From the list of possible topics, she helps select the best one.
Topic selection is important because people can tell if you’re passionate about what you’re talking about. For instance, if you’re a marketing person but you’re passionate about sports, launching a podcast about your main job — which is marketing — might make you less driven to produce content. As you put less effort, it will reflect on your content and people can tell.
What Sabrina advises you to do is to actually merge marketing and sports on your podcast. You can talk about sports marketing or interview people that work in the sports industry. This will allow you to get ahead in business while being able to discuss what you’re passionate about.
Image from Unsplash
Don’t just start a podcast about a topic that you’re good at. For Sabrina, it’s one reason why many companies fail to sustain a podcast. They typically talk about corporate-related things (like how they run their business). If companies would feature their own people and let them talk about their products or humanise their CEO, that podcast will be more successful.
Choose a Production Schedule that Works for You
Podcasting has a wide range of production schedules. There are successful podcasts that run for five minutes daily. There are those that run for around three hours. Whether it will be a monthly, bi-monthly, or weekly podcast, Sabrina says that it boils down to choosing a schedule that is manageable for you — something that you can sustain.
When Sabrina was only starting last year, she aired one episode per week. She would only do twice-per-week podcasts during special events such as Social Media Week or Mental Health Week. When she did the twice-per-week schedule, it opened the opportunity for her to have more guests wanting to be on her show. This prompted her to consistently do two or three episodes per week.
If you are to do your podcast more frequently, you have to consider several factors, including bandwidth, the energy to release more episodes, the capacity to hire a team member, or outsource production or guest-booking. You also have to consider your goals and the speed at which you want to grow at. Again, it’s all about having that deeper why.
Find Your Level of Comfort
Unlike Instagram or other social media platforms, listenership statistics in podcasts are not publicly available. Sabrina mentions an article that she read and it talked about how some people fake their figures. While it’s certainly unethical, the point is that podcasting metrics are not really regulated and not yet well-established.
To a degree, it’s advantageous for people because it lessens the pressure.
Image from Unsplash
There are podcast hosts who don’t like talking to themselves and get a co-host. There are those who are comfortable talking about themselves and do solo episodes about their lives. There are also people who only do interviews. In the case of The UnNoticed Podcast, interviews are being done to feature guests who can use our five-stage methodology to grow their brand.
Then there are those who do a mix, including Sabrina. Recently, she found herself receiving requests from listeners to talk more about herself. She realized that the audience can have that desire to hear more about you as much as they want to hear about your guests.
The format really depends on the level of comfort that you have and the number of things that you want to talk about.
Get Feedback from Listeners
When getting feedback from her listeners, Sabrina heavily relies on Instagram and other platforms.
On Instagram, she has one account for her business and another for her podcast. She uses her podcast Instagram account to constantly do stories and live interviews. Every Thursday, she goes live and encourages people to give their comments and forward any questions. She also assures her audience that they’re free to message her on Instagram because she always responds.
Another way she gets feedback is through her friends and acquaintances, who send her text messages sharing their thoughts on her podcast episodes.
The key is letting your audience know that you’re open to having communication and getting feedback.
Set Aside Enough Time for Production Work
The basic rule in podcasting is to allocate editing time that’s twice the duration of your podcast episode. For instance, if you have a 20-minute episode, you’d need 40 minutes up to an hour to edit that episode.
