 I want to share with you the reasons why your podcast is not going to make it to next year. Welcome to the We Are Slam Show where we share marketing agency insights, best practices and ideas to help your business grow. My name is Tyler Kelly and I am the co-founder of Slam Agency, a boutique marketing agency designed to help you captivate, motivate, and inspire people to action through marketing and advertising. Now I'm really excited because this week I want to talk to you about podcasting. You know I've seen a lot of podcast launch recently. As a matter of fact my Facebook feed like every other day I'm seeing somebody launch a podcast. Now out of all the thousands of podcasts that have launched this year less than 20% of those podcasts are going to make it to next year. As a matter of fact most podcasts fail and in this episode I want to share with you the reasons why your podcast is not going to make it to next year. Now if you're a podcaster or you are going to become a podcaster then I want you to write down these four reasons why podcasts fail so that you can avoid them. If you if you do the opposite of these things what I can guarantee you is that your podcast is going to do amazing things for your brand for your personal brand for your business. Podcasts are amazing. Trust me I do too podcast. We are Slam. Every Monday morning we release this show anywhere from 10 to 15 minutes or so where we share as you know marketing agency insights, best practices, and ideas to help your business grow. And the other podcast I do is Innovation City. Innovation City was cited by Bloomberg Cities as one of the top innovation podcasts in the nation for urban innovators. On the show we speak with entrepreneurs, innovators, creators, disruptors, people that are breaking through the status quo of business as usual. And in those conversations my co-host Leanne and I we really you know we dig in and learn what it is that inspires people. What is their vision? What is their purpose? And how are they trying to make a difference in the world? And I can tell you from personal experience that having a successful podcast will do wonders for your personal brand. It will do wonders for your company. As a matter of fact it allows you to be discovered in more places than just Google. But Google is one of the big benefits. The more content you have, the more relevant content you have, the more dynamic content you have, the more opportunities you will have to be discovered by way of search. Now if you do a video component then you also have the ability to be discovered in places like YouTube. YouTube being the second largest search engine in the world right behind Google. Having a successful podcast also allows you to build authority in your niche. And if you monetize it then having a successful podcast allows you to grow your revenue in a way that you aren't doing right now. So these are the things that you can look forward to if you don't make one of these four fatal mistakes. Like I said less than 20% of all podcasts that launch this year will not be around next year. And the reason why is because they're going to do one of these four things. So are you ready? Do you have your notebook ready? Let's dig in. Your first fatal mistake is that you have a lack of focus. And what this means is that you're going to be behind a mic and you're just talking. Well here's the thing, nobody just wants to hear you talk. And you're probably not that good yet. You're not Joe Rogan yet. You can't just sit around for three hours and have a conversation. And that's okay. What this means is that you have to focus. If you want to do this right you have to focus. And as a business owner, as a marketing director, somebody that is promoting and communicating the value proposition of a product or service, then what that means is that you have to understand who your customer is and how to connect with them. Now, if you watched last week or listened last week, then we talked about how do we inspire people to action through marketing and advertising. Part of that was understanding how to connect your brand's purpose to your customer's purpose. How to make that connection. And as a podcast host, you have to be focused. You have to be dead eye focused on that connection. You have to understand who is my customer and what are they motivated by. Whatever it is they're motivated by, this is where you need to dig in. This is where you need to focus. For instance, the We Are Slam Show, it's all about sharing marketing agency insights, best practices and ideas. If you're not in the marketing world, then you're not going to get any value out of this show. If you're not trying to promote a product or service, then you're not going to get any value out of listening to this podcast. And that's okay. This podcast is not for anyone and everyone. This podcast is specifically for marketing professionals like you. As a podcaster, you create value by staying focused on your topic. So whatever that is, make sure that your number one, your customers are interested in it. Make sure that you're discussing things that are interesting to them that are going to solve their problems. And then you go all in, you focus on that, you double down and you do it. Now the second fatal mistake that you're probably going to make this year is a lack of quality. This is a big one. Poor audio quality will distract your listeners and it will eventually turn them off and they'll tune into something else. No matter how good the topic is, no matter how focused this host is, poor quality is always going to result in me unfollowing your podcast. Okay. So you have to really, if you're going to do podcasting and you're going to stick around in the next year and you're going to make a successful podcast out of this, you have to be focused on quality. So make sure that you have a high audio quality, get yourself a mic like this or something similar to it. Make sure that people can understand what you're saying and what your guests are saying. If you're interviewing guests, make sure that they have a good quality mic as well. And when you have that figured out, when you have that lockdown, then I want you to shift gears and focus on the quality of topics. Like I said, podcasters with a lack of focus are going to really struggle. They're not going to make it. And a lack of quality when it comes to topics is just as damaging. You want to make sure that your topics are on point and that they're interesting and relevant to your listeners. Now, the number three fatal mistake that you're going to make if you launch a podcast or if you've launched a podcast is a lack of execution. Here at SLAM, we sell podcast packages. It's kind of like this turnkey, we'll do 12, 24, 52 episodes a year for a company, for a brand. And what that does is it takes the execution off our customer's plates. But here's the thing. If you're doing this in-house, if you're doing this on your own, you have to be committed to executing week in and week out. Part of having a successful podcast is being consistent, making sure that you're in all the right places, all the right times, and that you're there week in and week out. If it's a weekly show, every week, same time, same place, that's how you grow an audience. Well, if you decide to just take a few weeks off and you disappear, then in that time period, you're going to lose listeners. Because people expect you to honor your commitment when it comes to publishing and executing on your podcast vision. So if you're going to do this in-house, then here's what I want you to do. I want you to try it for 90 days. Tell your team, we're going to do this for 90 days, and we're going to see how it works. We're going to put the systems in place, processes in place. It's not only film or record the audio, but to edit it, produce it, break out the teaser clips for social media, distribute it into podcast networks, build a website around. We're going to do all of these things that we need to do, social media. We're going to do all of these things that we need to do to make a successful podcast, but we're just going to do it for 90 days. And at the end of 90 days, we're going to come back together as a team, as a leadership team, as a production team, and we're going to say, okay, what have we learned? What can we do better? And should we continue down this path? Because like I said, a podcast is an ongoing commitment. You want to have a successful podcast? You want to have thousands of listeners or hundreds of very focused, potential customers listening, weekend and week out. If you want to do these things and you want to say, hey, I have a successful podcast and I reap the benefits of this podcast, then you have to execute. And in order to execute, a podcast is not something that you can do on your own. In order to execute, you have to have a team that stands behind your vision and executes weekend and week out. And finally, the fourth fatal mistake that you're probably going to make is a lack of distribution. Distribution is key when it comes to digital marketing. When it comes to producing content and making sure that it gets into the right places so that people can find it, subscribe to it and come back to it. And when it comes to podcasting, there are more places today, now more than ever, where people are subscribing to and listening to podcasts. Here's the thing. It used to just be, how can I get to the front page of iTunes? How can I be one of those 20 to 30 thumbnails that are on that front page? What can I do to get there? And there used to be a lot of techniques. You can go to Google and you can search how can I get a podcast that can rank in the top 100 on iTunes. And back in the day, that was the thing. That's where you wanted to be because we all have iPhones or most of us have iPhones and iPods and just podcasts were an iTunes thing. But here's the reality. There are so many more places where people can discover and listen to your podcast today. These include Spotify, Luminary, SoundCloud, maybe YouTube. There's lots of places. There's Android phones. There's iPhones. There's lots of different devices. And so as a podcaster, if you want to have a successful podcast, you have to make sure that you are in all of those places because you never know where your customer is going to discover you. So make sure you are in all of those places. And here's what I'm going to do. The show notes for this show at slamagency.com. In those show notes, I'm going to put a checklist of the top places for you to distribute your audio podcast. That way you can print it out and you can check each place off as you add your podcast to that place so that you know that you're in all the right places to be discovered. So go to slamagency.com. Look for the show notes for this episode and download that checklist. It'd be a big help for you. Another way I'd like to help is if you are thinking about launching a podcast or you know you've tried to launch a podcast on your own and you just you know you don't have the team to execute on it or you just don't have the bandwidth as a marketing team to focus on a podcast. Then go to slamagency.com. Click the free consultation button and let's chat. In the comments there just say you know I want to chat about you know how I can execute more efficiently more effectively on my podcast and you know I tuned into your show and I want to I want to chat. I'd be more than happy to chat with you about that. This is something that we do on a regular basis not only for ourselves but for several clients and you know there's a formula that if you work it it will work for you. Now if you haven't already be sure to subscribe rate and review this podcast and if you know somebody that is thinking about starting a podcast or wants to start a podcast then send them this episode so you can help them avoid these four fatal mistakes and they're gonna thank you for that and I thank you for tuning in. I will see you next week. Thanks for watching. If you like what you saw subscribe and hit that bell. You'll be the first to be notified when new content goes live. After that you can watch more videos from slamagency. We picked something we think you'll love.