Starting a podcast in 2024? Here are 7 common mistakes to avoid

When starting a podcast, it's super important to be clear on your topic and your audience, rather than trying to emulate what other podcasters are doing. In today's episode, I'm sharing 7 common mistakes that are easy to make and what you can do to avoid them.

– Why looking for the latest trends means you're missing the mark with your podcasting vision.
– How understanding your “why” (and your audience's why) will help you stand out from the podcasting crowd.
– The importance of niching in podcasting.
– How using your podcast as a growth tool can boost your business—if you have a strategy.
– Why worrying about your mic (and other tech) is such a teeny piece of the bigger podcasting puzzle.

 

 

Starting a podcast in 2024? Here are 7 common mistakes to avoid

Today, I'm sharing 7 of the big mistakes to avoid if you are thinking about starting a podcast coming into 2024. 

A lot of people ask me, Am I too late to start a podcast? Is it already oversaturated? My response is no, it is absolutely not oversaturated.

There is still so much space for new podcasts out there. The difference now is that you have to be really intentional with what you are creating, and what you are putting out there.

And if you can avoid these seven mistakes that I'm going to share in this blog, this is going to set you up for a lot more success with your new show when you get it out there into the world. 

Mistake 1. Looking for the things that are working well when you are creating the strategy for your show. 

I get this question a lot – Steph, what's working well for podcasts at the moment? And if you are asking this, You are missing the point because podcasting is a long game.

It's not about just jumping on a trend that's working well right now. Because if you do that, you might find that when that trend stops working, or everybody's jumped on the bandwagon and it's become pretty popular, when that trend stops working, then you have to pivot. 

So your strategy isn't about jumping on what's working really well right now. It should instead be thinking about what can you do that is going to bring you so much joy, that you are going to want to keep podcasting forever. What do you love to talk about? What would you love to have your show be about? Who would you love to interview? What format would you love to create your show in? For example with my show, there's a reason why I do most of my episodes solo, because I like doing solo episodes. I find them much easier for me to create than for me to do interview episodes. Yes, the show might've grown a lot faster if I'd had more guests on the show who could then share their episodes with their audiences. But the solo episodes for me are so much easier and they allow me to impact my audience in a different way.

So that's why I chose my strategy. I didn't jump on it because it was working well. 

Mistake 2. Emulating a competitor's podcast format or topic.

Just because it's working well for somebody else doesn't mean it's going to work well for you. And if someone is already listening to your competitor's show, why should they then switch and listen to yours, that is basically the same.

Instead, what I would be looking for is where are the gaps in your particular niche or your particular subject area. For example, when I started this show, most business podcasts were 45-minute-long interview episodes where you had to listen for the whole 45 minutes to get two actionable takeaways.

So instead I thought, well, here's an opportunity for me to create these shorter episodes that are much more actionable. Listeners can take what I'm teaching and go and implement it straight away without having to listen for 45 minutes. 

Mistake 3. Picking a super broad topic because you think that's what's going to attract more listeners.

I've talked about this in regards to niching your business as well. Typically, the bigger your niche, the bigger your market, the broader you want to go, the more competition you're going to be against. The more people you are competing against. Seth Godin has this beautiful analogy. It is much easier to make waves in a swimming pool than it is to make waves in an ocean.

And it's the same when you are picking your business niche, when you are picking your podcast topic or your podcast audience. If you pick a narrower audience, it's going to be so much easier to make those waves, to become known in that area rather than competing against audiences. All of the other broader topics that are reaching a larger, broader audience.

There are super niche podcasts out there that are very successful because they chose a really specific niche. And if you are thinking of taking on sponsors as a way to grow your revenue, then some sponsors will pay more for niche audiences because they want to reach that particular niche audience. So keep that in mind as well. 

Mistake 4. Thinking that your podcast will grow itself. 

Now, podcasting isn't an audience growth activity on its own. It is a nurturing activity. It is a way to build a connection with your audience and to share content with them that utimately delivers value and moves them closer to buying from you, but your episodes won't just magically reach new people because discoverability on the podcast apps, it kind of sucks.

And unless your show is in New and Noteworthy or the top charts, or it gets featured by Apple podcasts or Spotify podcast, isn't just going to reach people magically. So that means that you need to get your show in front of the right people. And that might look like being a guest on other podcasts and doing interviews there, or optimizing your transcripts into blog posts and publishing those on your website and optimizing them for SEO so that somebody can land on your website and find that content when they search for that topic. That's how you intentionally get your show in front of the right people. But it won't just attract the right people magically on its own. 

Mistake 5. Doing your podcast without a strategy for how it will grow your business. 

I wrote about this in my previous blog – 10 ways you can use your show to grow your business. And I would really encourage you to think about how you can use your show and what your strategy will be.

Otherwise you run the risk of it just becoming another thing that's on your to do list, but that isn't actually driving any growth or isn't actually moving the needle in your business, but it's taking up your time. And there are so many ways that you can leverage it outside of just using it to get clients or grow your audience.

There are so many other ways you can leverage your show. So go back and read my previous blog, because that will get you thinking about the strategy behind your episodes. And if you are starting one, always come back to this question. How is this driving my business? How is this growing my business?

And then that way, when you create the show, you can create it with that strategy in mind. Because that's what you decide to use the show as, or how you decide to use the show to grow your business. That's going to determine your topic that you talk about. That's going to determine your format. It's going to determine pretty much everything. 

Mistake 6. Worrying about what microphone you will use, where you will host it, or how you will edit it before you even know what your show is going to be about. 

Everyone thinks that the hardest part of starting a podcast is the techie stuff, the microphone, uploading it, editing it perfectly, and publishing it to the podcasting apps.

That is actually the easiest part. The hardest part about creating a podcast is creating a show that the right people want to listen to, growing it and using that content strategically to grow your business. That is the hardest part. The strategy behind the show is much harder than any of the techie things.

Because you actually have to think about it. Whereas the techie things, you can tick your way through the checklist of it. You can find how to do that online. I teach it inside the podcast launch plan as well, but the strategy, you have to be the person who is thinking critically about how this is going to grow your business.

Mistake 7. Not being able to clearly and succinctly tell me what your podcast is about. 

For my podcast, I can tell you really quickly who it’s for and what it is. This is a bite-sized online business strategy podcast for online business owners with new episodes every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

That tells you what it is, who it's for, when you can expect new episodes. Your podcast topic is so important and knowing who your listener is, is also so important. These can be the difference between a show that skyrockets and one that gets no listeners and you do 10 episodes and then give up because you haven't seen any traction.

 

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