0:00
Jonathan Warncke
I think anyone can monetize a podcast, but not everyone will or not everyone has maybe the tools to do it in that they believe there’s only one tool, which is advertising, which I think, as Paolo said, is just not really a very sustainable way going forward for us. I believe that as long as you build something of an audience, obviously, unless your audience is 10 CEOs of FMCG companies, then you’re fine. But you’re going to need for most other things, something in the thousand plus numbers you’re going to. Then you can look at your options and say, maybe merch is the way, maybe live events is the way, maybe the podcast is advertising something else I’m doing. So if I’m dean from Trail Chasers, I’m starting my own trail run and I’m charging tickets for that.

00:49
Hendrik Baird
Welcome to season three of Become a Podmaster, where we tackle some of the biggest questions that podcasters have. I’m Hendrik.

00:57
Ethan Baird
And I’m Ethan. Not only did we get the questions from podcasters, but with the help of the South African Podcasters Guild, or SAPG for short, and Solid Gold Podcast and Audiobooks, we got some answers.

01:09
Hendrik Baird
In our previous episode, we talked about sponsorships, but of course, that’s just one way to monetize a podcast.

01:16
Ethan Baird
Many podcasters find that alternative revenue streams work better. Think about merch, premium content, live events, or Patreon.

01:24
Hendrik Baird
So today we’re looking at creative ways to generate income beyond traditional ads.

01:34
Ethan Baird
Our goal with this podcast is to help podcasters old and new navigate the evolving landscape of podcasting with expert insights and practical advice.

01:42
Hendrik Baird
And the question today is, how can podcasters monetize their content beyond traditional sponsorships? While ad revenue and sponsorships are the most talked about methods, they’re not the only ways to make money from a podcast. In fact, many successful podcasters rely on alternative revenue streams that are often more sustainable in the long run.

02:06
Ethan Baird
And we’ve seen this play out globally. Take the Lost podcast on the left. They built a thriving business not just through sponsorships, but also by selling exclusive merchandise, live event tickets, and premium content. Their audience isn’t just listening, they’re actively supporting the show.

02:23
Hendrik Baird
Another great example is Patreon. Shows like the Minimalists Podcast have built a community of dedicated listeners who pay monthly for bonus content, early access, and behind the scenes episodes. But is Patreon a viable income model for all podcasters?

02:40
Ethan Baird
That’s a big question. Patreon works best for podcasters with strong listener loyalty. Those who create content that people find valuable enough to pay for it’s not just about asking for donations, it’s about offering exclusive perks that make listeners feel like they’re part of something special.

02:56
Hendrik Baird
And then there’s merchandise selling branded T shirts, mugs, or even custom products related to your podcast theme. If your audience is engaged, then they’ll want to support you in ways beyond just listening.

03:10
Ethan Baird
We’ve seen podcasters turn their expertise into coaching, consulting and even paid speaking engagements. If you’ve built credibility through your podcast, brands and event organisers may see you as an authority in your space, and that can lead to high paying opportunities outside of podcasting itself.

03:28
Hendrik Baird
But of course, there are pitfalls to avoid. Some podcasters rush into monetization without tasting what the audience actually wants. Selling merch that no one buys, launching a Patreon without a strong value proposition or spreading efforts too thin can all lead to frustration and wasted resources.

03:50
Ethan Baird
So today we’re breaking down the most effective non sponsorship monetization strategies, sharing success stories and helping you decide which methods are right for your podcast.

04:00
Hendrik Baird
And as always, if you want even more insights, visit our website Bed Media for the resources you need to help grow your podcast.

04:11
Ethan Baird
Before we dive deeper, a quick shout out to our Podmaster Startup programme helping new podcasters launch with confidence. Check out our website Baird Media for more details.

04:22
Hendrik Baird
And we’re still on the topic of making money with a podcast. When I sat down with Gavin and Shannon of Solid Gold Podcasts and Audiobooks, I had this question for them. Let’s talk about other ways of making money. Merchandise, workshops, premium content, Patreon, all those sort of things. I mean, it would be no use starting a podcast, printing a thousand T shirts which then hang in your garage and you it. It’s also got something to do with later on, isn’t it?

04:53
Shannon Kennedy
Yeah, hard to answer, next question.

04:58
Gavin Kennedy
So if you I don’t know how old you have to be to remember when you couldn’t Skip ads on DStv, you watched DStv and you ran to the bathroom during ad breaks. And then the PVR came out, which meant you could, at the start of an episode of Friends, pause and do your stuff and then release pause, which gave you the ability to skip ads when you got to them because you had cached it. When you’re in a world where you can skip the ads. I’m not convinced you should build a business on selling ads that people can skip. It’s working right now because there isn’t really a viable alternative, but I unashamedly Skip the first 10 minutes of every Tim Ferriss podcast because there’s 10 minutes of ads that I just don’t want to listen to. Same with Lex Friedman.

05:50
Gavin Kennedy
There’s a whole bunch of them. That can’t be a viable business model. It can’t be. You can’t be building this business on selling ads to advertisers to reach an audience who is skipping all the ads. So it’s working right now because there isn’t an alternative. So what’s the alternative? And just follow me on a train of thought. Do you have Netflix?

06:13
Hendrik Baird
Sometimes.

06:14
Gavin Kennedy
How much do you pay for Netflix a month? What’s called it? 100 rand a month. What’s the value of the content you get access to? The minute your subscription is enabled and I throw out a number, they’re like $100 billion.

06:25
Hendrik Baird
Look, yeah, I mean if you go to a movie, it’s 150 rand or whatever at Ster-Kinekor. So I get 10,000 movies. So it’s just a huge amount of value.

06:33
Gavin Kennedy
So for 100 rand, you’re getting access to billions of rands worth of content. Okay, if you asking me to pay to listen to your podcast, how much are you asking me for? One rand. Five rand. Okay. At 100 rand, I get billions of rands with the content. So if I’m going to give you one rand for your podcast, I should get millions of rands of value. And I don’t think I am getting millions of rand. And it’s very hard to process a microtransaction for one rand. The cost of the transaction, the cost of the admin and all that stuff. So if you’re asking people to pay based on value equivalence, you’re dead in the water. Netflix, all of those just kill you completely. So asking people to subscribe, really hard. Asking people to donate when they feel like it, even harder to do so.

07:22
Gavin Kennedy
Alie Ward integrates her Patreon audience. There are some clever podcasts where if you’re a Patreon supporter, you get to ask questions that he answers. There’s a particular podcast I’m thinking of.

07:38
Shannon Kennedy
Ali does it in ologies.

07:40
Gavin Kennedy
Thank you to my donors who did this, this. So it’s a reward system, but it’s voluntary. You, you know, if she suddenly said you can’t listen unless you’re a subscriber, all the people who are listening now saying, oh, let me check out. Ologies don’t get to before committing to pay. And the model doesn’t work that way. You want them to try it and then Buy it. But asking people to listen free and then ramp up and give you some money. What I’m saying is we haven’t yet solved this problem. Podcasting hasn’t solved this problem. Some of your bigger podcasts are solving it by using YouTube. And essentially then they haven’t solved it. It’s not their audience. It’s really YouTube’s audience. And you’ve asked YouTube to help you collect the revenue. So you’re not really in control of that audience. It’s not your audience.

08:22
Gavin Kennedy
You might think it is, but it’s not. They can take that audience away from you.

08:27
Hendrik Baird
Same thing we talked about earlier about social media is not your platform.

08:30
Gavin Kennedy
It’s not your platform. It’s not your. It’s not your audience.

08:32
Hendrik Baird
Twitter’s going to. And, yeah. Gone as your 5 million followers there.

08:37
Gavin Kennedy
Yeah, yeah. I mean, we saw that with Trump when he was, you know, he was a sitting president when Twitter banned him and he lost access to 55 million people. They weren’t his 55 million people. They were Twitter’s 55 million people. So you need to be building a.

08:51
Hendrik Baird
Mailing list and a website for your podcast. I mean, you need to have your own property somewhere.

08:56
Gavin Kennedy
Yes. So that you can communicate with your. So you can throw merch into it. But you need to be a mature product before people are going to pay to wear your brand.

09:05
Hendrik Baird
And then it’s all the admin of, you know, collecting orders and packaging and sending it off.

09:10
Gavin Kennedy
And then. And then how’s your time being spent? How much of it’s been spent on making the content and how much has it been posting shirts? Patreon has been working on enabling RSS feeds that are tied to a login. So you can go. If you’re a subscriber, you get an RSS feed that’s unique to you, which means you can listen when you’re logged in to Patreon. And you can’t share that RSS feed with somebody else. They’re unable to listen to it because RSS feed is, by definition open. Here’s my RSS feed. I can give it to anybody. So being able to make it log in, pay, verify, and then enable people to listen to content, that’s an incredibly complex service to offer. So you need numbers, you need some. And Patreon aren’t going to do that for.

09:53
Gavin Kennedy
For fun or, you know, they want to generate revenue out of all the work they’re doing. But how do you get people to subscribe when they haven’t heard your content? Okay, so I’M going to add value to my. I think I’m getting enough value from your free. How much more value you’re going to give. We’ve cut out the ads. It’s okay, I can skip the ads. So you really got to have a high value proposition if you want me to give you money on a microtransaction or a subscription or a pure donate. I know it sounds all negative, but it’s hard.

10:25
Hendrik Baird
I think this is a general thing. It’s hard to make a success of a podcast. It’s not just, oh, I’ve got a guest, I’ve got a microphone, I’ve got a bedroom, I want to be a millionaire and famous.

10:35
Gavin Kennedy
It’s important to realise that it’s hard to build any business. I’ve got this idea. Let’s make cakes. Yay. I’m going to charge less than the other people down the road. Did you factor in the electricity? Did you factor in your labour delivery? It’s hard to build any business in a business that doesn’t yet have clear monetization models or rails to plug into. Makes it even harder.

11:00
Hendrik Baird
The gents at SAPG also talked about Patreon.

11:03
Jonathan Warncke
I think anyone can monetize a podcast, but not everyone will or not everyone has no that maybe the tools to do it in that they believe there’s only one tool which is advertising, which I think, as Paola said, is just not really a very sustainable way going forward for us. I believe that as long as you build something of an audience, obviously, unless your audience is 10 CEOs of FMCG companies, then you’re fine. But you’re going to need for most other things something in the thousand plus numbers you’re going to. Then you can look at your options and say maybe merch is the way, maybe live events is the way. Maybe the podcast is advertising something else I’m doing.

11:46
Jonathan Warncke
So if I’m dean from Trail Chasers, I’m starting my own trail run and I’m charging tickets for that and the show is just the ad for the trail run. So I think you just have to look outside the scope of. Of selling ads because no one likes ads. I was listening to a show on Spotify, the show had baked in ads and I’m paying for Spotify, which is insane. So like why am I paying for an app? And then I listen to ads anyway? So I think there’s going to be. There’s a lot of enmity for me certainly, and I’m sure from other people too.

12:16
Paulo Dias
All I say to A podcaster that asks that I say, like, firstly, if that’s your only reason for doing it, I think you’re. You’re doing it for the wrong reason. If that’s a benefit down the line, you know, that’s great. I think people who are selling a skill outside of, like you say, if your podcast is your ad for something else I do for a service I have, for a business I have for an expertise, that’s great because then your podcast is your ad, your podcast is your business card. And I think for more and more people should think of it that way. The other thing is your podcast could be a great way for you to access things. You know, we’ve. We’ve got a member in the SAPG celebs event. He goes to every single concert and event in this Joburg for free.

12:59
Paulo Dias
He got another great sponsorship deal as well. If you look at his Instagram, you’ll see. I don’t want to say it on here, but celeb savants on Instagram, go look. He got like another crazy sponsorship anyway, but go look at that for yourself. But if you have to take into the price of VIP tickets and what he gets weekly, he’s getting thousands of rands and comps because he loves it and he loves going to events. So that’s great for him because he’s deriving some benefit out of it and he’s getting that authority that he must be the guy. So that’s great. It positions them in a certain way. Use it to sell an event, that’s an even better way.

13:34
Paulo Dias
And once you get into this thing, I don’t think we’re going to get into scale on promo codes, on discount codes, on Manscape and all that stuff. I really cannot see somebody plonking a lot of money into podcasts in South Africa. Say, go do this. We just won’t get that scale. But if you’re going to have the conversation with a sponsor, be careful what you ask for, because it might be nice in the beginning, they will want something in the end, and you’re going to compromise yourself. So just be sure if you’re going to go into that space that you’re ready because you’re selling yourself now. And that literally does come at a price. So just be ready. You’re going to do that and maybe prepare a vehicle that allows you to do it in a way that keeps yourself. Your content, your content.

14:20
Paulo Dias
I think it goes to the thing. You use the book analogy, and it’s the first time I’m putting this out in the wild, you don’t read a book, and at the end of chapter two, there’s a double page spread. Right? It’s not that sort of medium. Okay? People get upset if there’s a double page spread in the middle of the book. It’s not that medium, but you can go on a book tour. You can do something else. So I think I like the book analogy for that reason.

14:45
Jonathan Warncke
I think the danger is looking to the more developed markets like America and going, hey, let’s do that. America is hyper capitalist. They will put an ad on anything. Right. So we don’t necessarily have to go down that road when it comes to can amateurs monetize their shows? I think they can ask for feedback from other guild members, from some of the more senior people about the sellability of their show, and we’ll try and be honest about it. But I will say that if you run a good show, if you can produce a good show, then you might even have a better opportunity to look around at who you know, who’s in your network, what brands, you know, make a show for them. Everyone can create a branded show if their part of it is production and understanding. Podcasting.

15:26
Jonathan Warncke
I mean, I make branded podcasts and I don’t want a thousand competitors, but I do sometimes feel like trying to shoehorn a show that is maybe not fiscally viable is harder than just going, okay, well, what is fiscally viable? And who do I know that I can make a show for? And, you know, that is an alternative.

15:43
Hendrik Baird
That is indeed my next question. I mean, we’re talking about podcasters building up their own shows and then trying to make money off. It’s. But there is the other side of the coin, which people like ourselves, we look for clients who want to produce podcasts, but don’t want to go into the whole thing and just want to throw a lot of money at me going, please do it for me and get me an end result. Do you think existing podcasters who’ve had some measure of success should consider that kind of approach, or should they just stick with what they know?

16:10
Paulo Dias
So you’re saying making podcasts for other people and brands based on what you know. Yeah, like, you know, certainly from my experience, like, my podcast has nothing to do with the work that I do. I mean, that 80 show, but when I put up there that, oh, well, you know, the show’s been running for years. It was one of the first podcasts that ran on prime media. It was on Cliff Central for years, which was kind of like, you know, the Mark of success. He goes, oh, well, if you do that, you’ve been running for so long, you obviously know what you’re talking about. So I’d rather give the work to you than somebody else. And I think, you know, think of it that way.

16:45
Paulo Dias
There’s going to come different measures because, you know, the thing is, from my experience on most hobby podcasters, they spend a hell of a lot of time on their podcast and they have a hell of a lot of insecurities and they make their own decisions and suddenly you’re doing it for somebody else. And your time is not your time, it’s their time. You’re working on their deadline, you’re working within their parameters. So, for example, I know a lot of people want to record in a certain way in a studio. This way your clients are doing it and they’re recording on their phone and they’re doing it this way. And suddenly your, the quality of what you can do gets compromised and there’s frustration and they get frustrated with you. So I think it’s tricky. And then I find that is highly commoditized.

17:29
Paulo Dias
I see rates of people offering video podcasts, fully shot produced, three camera for dish. How do you even, how do you pay rent? Like you are just doing it to undercut people. So I think it’s just becoming a space where people are just, they’ve got this equipment, they need to use it because a partner is shouting at them, because you spend so much money on camera equipment and they go, well, let me make it for somebody else. But all the things that you enjoy about your own podcast, you’re now going to hate making it for somebody else. And guaranteed, because I have that experience.

18:00
Ethan Baird
This episode of Become a Podmaster is brought to you by Baird Media in association with the South African Podcasters Guild, a community built by podcasters for podcasting.

18:10
Hendrik Baird
Whether you’re just starting out or a seasoned creator, the SAPG connects you with industry experts, exclusive resources and a network of like minded podcasters who are passionate about growing the medium in South Africa.

18:24
Ethan Baird
Get insider tips, collaborative opportunities and access to discounted studio time. Plus, be part of shaping the future of podcasting in South Africa.

18:32
Hendrik Baird
Join the South African Podcasters Guild today at SAPG Co Za and take your podcasting journey to the next level. So what did we learn today, Ethan?

18:45
Ethan Baird
We learned that monetization isn’t just about sponsorships. There are plenty of creative ways to generate revenue from a podcast merchandise. Premium content, coaching and live events are just a few of the many options podcasters can explore.

18:58
Hendrik Baird
Patreon and other subscription models work well for podcasters who offer consistent, high value, exclusive content, but they require strong listener loyalty to succeed.

19:10
Ethan Baird
And it’s not just about direct monetization. Podcasting can be a business card. It can help you land speaking gigs, consulting work, or even brand collaborations that go beyond ad placements.

19:21
Hendrik Baird
But the key takeaway is that you need to understand your audience. Selling merch no one buys launching a Patreon without a compelling reason, or spreading yourself too thin can waste time and resources.

19:34
Ethan Baird
The most successful podcasters find a monetization method that fits their content audience and strengths, and they adapt as they grow.

19:42
Hendrik Baird
And if you want more guidance on monetization, my book the Podmaster’s Voice is packed with insights to help you level up your podcast, and it’s available on our website Bed media and on takealot.com.

19:58
Ethan Baird
Do you want to take your podcast to the next level? Join our upcoming masterclass. The details are on our website Baird Media.

20:06
Hendrik Baird
And that’s it for this episode. If you found it valuable, don’t forget to share and Tag us on LinkedIn.

20:13
Ethan Baird
In our next episode.

20:15
Shannon Kennedy
Audio quality is fairly important, I suppose, in a podcast, especially if you’re a purist and there’s no video to because in video podcasting situations a lot of the time you can kind of get away with your content, especially your audio not being as good because you’re relying on the video and the audios to kind of COVID your bases a little bit. But maybe. Maybe I’ve been in the industry for too long, but it is not hard to produce good audio. It’s really easy. Find a good quiet room that doesn’t sound hollow and empty, couple of cushions, carpets and curtains hanging in it. Nicole is a perfect example of still potentially using her cardboard box, and you don’t need a huge fancy setup to create good quality audio.

00:00
Russel Wasserfall
So I was like, yeah, okay, you’re on a retainer for this thing. So I said, sure, I’ll send you a rate card. And I made one up. I just liked some things. So I think that the flow is the biggest challenge for me at the start was understanding my audience. Once I did, I could work out what I could do this with it, you know, then also how to approach people. So I think a flash of inspiration came with me with a rate card.

00:25
Hendrik Baird
Welcome to season three of Become a Podmaster, where we tackle some of the biggest questions. Podcasters. I am Hendrik.

00:33
Ethan Baird
And I’m Ethan. Not only did we get the questions from podcasters, but with the help of the South African Podcasters Guild, or SAPG for short, and Solid Gold Podcast and Audiobooks, we got some answers.

00:44
Hendrik Baird
Today we’re discussing one of the most important topics in podcasting, how to secure a sponsorship for your podcast.

00:53
Ethan Baird
Many podcasters assume that only massive shows can get sponsorships, but that’s just not true. Sponsors care about engaged audiences, not just big numbers.

01:03
Hendrik Baird
So how do you identify the right sponsors and convince them to invest in your show? Well, that’s what we’ll be exploring today. So, Ethan, when it comes to sponsorships, the big question every podcaster asks is, how do I find the right sponsor for my show?

01:23
Ethan Baird
The right sponsor, That’s a great question. And the answer isn’t just about numbers. Sponsors don’t just want big audiences, they want the right audience. The key is identifying brands that align with your content and your listeners interests.

01:36
Hendrik Baird
So if you have a tech podcast, for instance, approaching a company that sells microphones or editing software makes sense. Oh, we should approach somebody for that. For this podcast. And if your show is about personal finance, a fintech company would be a better fit than, say, a sports brand.

01:53
Ethan Baird
But once you find the right sponsor, the next challenge is how to reach out to them effectively. Do you send a cold email? Do you pitch them a deck? What’s the best approach?

02:01
Hendrik Baird
I think it’s all about presenting yourself professionally. Brands want to see that you have an engaged audience. And having a sponsorship pitch deck or rate card that clearly shows your listener demographics, your reach and your engagement stats certainly will make a big difference.

02:17
Ethan Baird
And that ties into another big question. How do podcasters demonstrate value to advertisers? Because it’s not just about downloads. Right?

02:25
Hendrik Baird
Sponsors care about listening, engagement, things like how long people listen, whether they interact with your content, and how aligned your audience is with their brand. A smaller, highly engaged niche audience is often much more valuable than a mass of platform passive one.

02:42
Ethan Baird
And that brings us to another common myth. Is there a minimum audience size for sponsorships? A lot of podcasters think that they need thousands of listeners per episode before they can even approach a sponsor, and.

02:54
Hendrik Baird
That’S just not true. A podcast with 500 highly engaged listeners in a niche industry can be much more attractive to a sponsor than a general interest podcast with 10,000 passive listeners.

03:08
Ethan Baird
So how do niche podcasters compete with bigger shows for ad revenue?

03:11
Hendrik Baird
By offering something unique. I would guess niche podcasters can charge a premium for sponsorships because their audience is targeted and more likely to convert. So instead of focusing on impressions, they focus on alignment and engagement. That’s what brands care about.

03:29
Ethan Baird
The key takeaways. Find sponsors that fit your audience, pitch them professionally, highlight engagement over size, and remember that niche shows have an advantage when it comes to sponsorship value.

03:40
Hendrik Baird
Next we’ll hear from podcasters what their specific questions are around this topic.

03:45
Lwazi Volsak
I’ve done my research on the cost of recording weekly at a studio and also getting editing done, and it’s very expensive for an individual, I would say. I’ve also tried kind of getting financial backing, which has not succeeded as yet. But I’m hoping in time, you know, that I can have a breakthrough to be able to return to podcasting. Yeah. So I think once I have all those kind of things in place, then I have a better chance at increasing my viewership and also branching over into monetization. I think that’s one of the things I’ve been. I’ve been struggling with trying to figure out how to approach a company.

04:22
Lwazi Volsak
Do I do it in a casual way to professional way, Do I come up with some sort of portfolio or do I put together a little presentation, set up a meeting, do it in that kind of manner. Like how should I go about those things? I don’t actually know how to start that process. So we had been approached, but the people who approached us wanted us to do podcasts for them. Right. So it would be the Department of Public Transport in October for Public Transport Month. They weren’t actually looking for us as a platform. They were looking for us to help them set up a platform. And as with all government agency, it’s just like a waiting game and then nothing happens. So that fell through the ground. And then personally, I don’t know how or where to start monetizing.

05:12
Lwazi Volsak
I don’t know if you have to now go to like Iona FM or if you start approaching similar people.

05:19
Ethan Baird
Before we dive deeper, let’s just give a quick Shout out to our Podmaster startup programme helping new podcasters launch with confidence. Check out our website Baird Media for more info.

05:32
Hendrik Baird
So it’s clear sponsorship is one of the biggest challenges podcasters face. The key is finding brands that fit your audience rather than chasing after the biggest advertisers.

05:44
Ethan Baird
And we’ve seen this play out internationally. In the us, podcasts like the Tim Ferriss show and My Favourite Motor have built sponsorship models that are tailored to their audience. Tim Ferriss attracts productivity tools and business brands, while My favourite Murder works with true crime related sponsors like forensic services and crime theme subscription boxes.

06:04
Hendrik Baird
The UK has great examples too. Stephen Bartlett’s Diary of a CEO found success partnering with brands that align with entrepreneurship and personal development. And instead of generic ad placements, he works with brands that his audience already is interested in, like fintech companies and leadership coaching platforms.

06:25
Ethan Baird
And that’s the lesson. Niche podcasts can be just as valuable as mass market shows. Instead of waiting for a big brand to come to you, be proactive. If you run a health and wellness podcast approach, nutrition brands, fitness coaches or wellness retreats, companies that are looking to reach an audience just like yours.

06:41
Hendrik Baird
And it’s not just about waiting for sponsors to find you. Create a sponsorship pitch, have a rate card, highlight your listener demographics and showcase why your audience is valuable. The most successful podcasters don’t just hope for sponsorships, they position themselves to attract the right brands.

07:01
Ethan Baird
So whether you’re running a business, tech, True Crime or self improvement podcast, the strategy remains the same. Find brands that align with your niche, create a compelling pitch and take action to secure your sponsors.

07:13
Hendrik Baird
So Ethan, I had a very interesting conversation with Russell Wasserfall and his experience in monetization. He saw an opportunity when a guest had a large following.

07:25
Russel Wasserfall
So yesterday I was interviewing a dude who’s like Mr. Beef, South Africa. He’s been in the game for a long time and weirdly enough, were at school together in like standard six. It’s just so strange and you know, and we never saw each other from there and we bumped into each other at the Eat out Awards in 2011. So he just said to me, oh, you know what you need to do? Because every. Everyone asks me, how do you monetize this or do you get sponsored or would you like a sponsor? Everyone I interview says that to me and then they give me suggestions. And I’m quite certain that I want anyone who sponsors me to be of the industry, but not in the industry, you know, so. So I’ve been chasing people like Dine Plan.

08:09
Russel Wasserfall
And they’re like, yeah, next year, you know, because dime plans are booking service. It’s a service to the industry. It’s a service to the restaurant industry, to the food industry, but it isn’t standing flipping burgers. Same thing with Yoko. It’s a service to the industry. It’s a financial service to the industry, but it isn’t flipping burgers. And this dude said, oh, you know who sponsored me? They gave me a beer tap, and for years and years, they sponsored my beer things is Stella Artois. Just send me a something, and I’ll send it to the marketing chick who’s a friend of mine, and we’ll see what we can do for you. So I said, what’s the something? What do I send? You know, because I know that people are chasing huge numbers in social media, like. Like Instagram followers or.

08:52
Russel Wasserfall
Or likes or whatever the case may be, you know, and so 7,000 is an impressive number of people who look at your. Your Instagram thing, but 40 a day. What does that mean? What’s the meaning? How do we educate people to look at 243 downloads a week and go, that’s a good number, or, oh, that’s a bit. No one knows. And very few people seem to understand that kind of discursive, engaging interaction where people are talking about this and go, oh, listen here. Do you want to be a. Yeah, yeah. Okay. While we’re talking, no one understands what that can do for your brand. It seems that for me to try and educate them and say, hello, do you know this will be really good for your brand? They say, yes, of course you think it will be good for your brand.

09:39
Russel Wasserfall
You want our money, you bastard. You know, so what do you give them? And how do you ensure that they look at it and go, valuable?

09:48
Ethan Baird
You know, Russell makes a great point. Finding the right sponsor isn’t just about numbers. It’s about alignment. Instead of looking for just any advertiser, he’s targeting companies that serve his industry but aren’t directly in it, like booking services or financial tools for restaurants rather than actual food brands.

10:07
Hendrik Baird
And the challenge, of course, is educating potential sponsors on why podcast engagement matters. Many brands still focus on big social media numbers, but a highly engaged podcast audience can be far more valuable than a thousand passive Instagram likes.

10:25
Ethan Baird
Still, on the topic of how to monetize a podcast, you asked Shannon and Gavin at Solid Gold Podcasts and Audiobooks how to secure a sponsorship for a niche podcast.

10:34
Shannon Kennedy
Find a brand that matches the niche.

10:37
Gavin Kennedy
Be the most effective way that a brand can reach the audience, their specific audience.

10:42
Shannon Kennedy
Yeah.

10:44
Hendrik Baird
So you’ve got to research the possible sponsor, know who their audience is, and most possibly even before you start so that you can gear your content and see if you can get to that audience. So you can eventually go to that sponsor going like, look, I have your audience.

11:01
Shannon Kennedy
Yeah, here they are.

11:03
Hendrik Baird
You clean drains. I know people with drains. We’ve been talking about drains for three years.

11:07
Gavin Kennedy
So it’s exactly that. And then just as you speaking, you can see the dynamic. Am I making this podcast because I want to talk about cars, or am I making this because I want to go to west bank and let them give me money because people buy cars, listen to my podcast and west bank should sponsor it. What’s my real motivation for making that podcast? Well, believe me, west bank make podcasts on their own. So what are you doing that would make west bank say, oh, we neglected that whole section of the audience and these people have got it, we’ll give them money. Or why is the west bank podcast not expanding to reach that audience? So expand that to, we want to talk about cars. And BMW is definitely going to love our audience. Yeah, Your audience is 500 people.

11:51
Gavin Kennedy
It’s a respectable podcast audience. But you’re asking BMW’s marketing team to stop what they’re doing and consider putting advertising into that instead of a billboard at the airport where they know their customers.

12:03
Hendrik Baird
So do you think rate cards and to pitch to sponsors or PR firms is a strategy or.

12:10
Shannon Kennedy
Absolutely. And I think for people who sort of have come from maybe a broadcasting background might have an understanding of this already on rate cards and that sort of brand partnership, engagement and all of that. I don’t think it necessarily needs to be a public facing thing, but maybe available on request, have an idea of, you know, how much work goes into creating this amount. Are you looking for a sponsor to pay for your costs or are you looking for a sponsor to pay for above and beyond?

12:43
Gavin Kennedy
There’s two ways to monetize your audience. One is an ad played before the podcast by the platform you’re on. So you put your podcast up in Iono, you enable monetization, and before anybody can listen to the podcast, they’re listening to an advert that’s inserted by the platform. That’s kind of an aggregated sales strategy. Iono injecting ads into lots of podcasts based on the data they have on the listener. You might not be able to monetize that audience yourself, but it also has.

13:15
Hendrik Baird
To do with about 5,000 listeners to start with, before they can, you need meaningful number. So it’s a numbers game.

13:20
Gavin Kennedy
Yeah. Otherwise you’re putting in a lot of work for sense return. There’s no viable model there. But let’s say I’ve got my koi fish podcast and I have this following of 500 people who love koi fish and they love my stories and they love all the advice on how to breed a fish with a star on its side. There might be somebody who makes pool filters and realises, or pond filters and realises that 500 people who breed koi is a significant percentage of the koi breeding community. And there’s a new filter out. And how do we tell them about it? Well, they might approach me and say, please talk about this filter, or can we give you money to talk about this filter? And then it’s not a cost per thousand thing. It’s not. Okay, I’ve got 500 people listening.

14:06
Gavin Kennedy
How many cents per listen? No, no, I have the 500 people you want. I want lots of money for that. I want you to be a guest. Then you’re leveraging the value of the audience as opposed to the count of the audience. One is just how many thousand? How many rand per thousand? The other is these are my people and I’m going to let you talk to my people.

14:26
Ethan Baird
If you have a story to tell, a message to share or a brand to build, Solid Gold podcasts and audiobooks can help you bring it to life.

14:32
Hendrik Baird
With state of the art studios, expert production and a team that makes podcasting effortless, Solid Gold is the go to partner for individuals, businesses and brands looking to create high quality audio content.

14:45
Ethan Baird
Whether you need a full service podcast production, an audiobook recording, or just a professional space to record, Solid Gold has you covered.

14:52
Hendrik Baird
You can take your podcast or audiobook to the next level by visiting solidgold Co za today and start sounding like a pro. What did we learn today, Ethan?

15:04
Ethan Baird
Today we learned that sponsorship isn’t just about having a big audience. It’s about having the right audience. Most successful podcasters focus on finding sponsors that align with their niche and proving their value through engagement, not just numbers.

15:18
Hendrik Baird
And we also saw that sponsorships don’t just fall into your lap. You need to be proactive. That means creating a rate card, researching potential sponsors and approaching them with a clear pitch that demonstrates why your audience matters.

15:34
Ethan Baird
And as we heard from both Russell and the team at Solid Gold, niche podcasters have a unique advantage. It’s all about positioning your podcast as the best way for a sponsor to.

15:44
Hendrik Baird
Reach their ideal customers, but it’s also about realistic expectations. If you’re aiming for big corporate sponsors, then you will need the numbers to back it up. But if you have a highly engaged niche audience, you can negotiate premium sponsorships based on direct influence rather than scale.

16:05
Ethan Baird
Know your audience, be strategic with your outreach and don’t undervalue the power of engagement. The opportunities are out there, you just have to go after them. Want to take your podcast to the next level? Join our upcoming masterclass. The details are on our website, Baird Media.

16:22
Hendrik Baird
And that’s it for this episode. If you found it valuable then please remember to share and to Tag us.

16:29
Ethan Baird
On LinkedIn in our next episode.

16:31
Jonathan Warncke
I think anyone can monetize a podcast, but not everyone will or not everyone has maybe the tool to do it in that they believe there’s only one tool which is advertising, which I think, as Paola said, is just not really a very sustainable way going forward for us. I believe that as long as you build something of an audience, obviously, unless Your audience is 10 CEOs of SM FMCG companies, then you’re fine. But you’re going to need for most other things, something in the thousand plus numbers. Then you can look at your options and say maybe merch is the way, maybe live events is the way, maybe the podcast is advertising something else. I’m doing.

00:00
Russel Wasserfall
So I was like, yeah, okay, you’re on a retainer for this thing. So I said, sure, I’ll send you a rate card. And I made one up. I just liked some things. So I think that the flow is the biggest challenge for me at the start was understanding my audience. Once I did, I could work out what I could do this with it, you know, then also how to approach people. So I think a flash of inspiration came with me with a rate card.

00:25
Hendrik Baird
Welcome to season three of Become a Podmaster, where we tackle some of the biggest questions. Podcasters. I am Hendrik.

00:33
Ethan Baird
And I’m Ethan. Not only did we get the questions from podcasters, but with the help of the South African Podcasters Guild, or SAPG for short, and Solid Gold Podcast and Audiobooks, we got some answers.

00:44
Hendrik Baird
Today we’re discussing one of the most important topics in podcasting, how to secure a sponsorship for your podcast.

00:53
Ethan Baird
Many podcasters assume that only massive shows can get sponsorships, but that’s just not true. Sponsors care about engaged audiences, not just big numbers.

01:03
Hendrik Baird
So how do you identify the right sponsors and convince them to invest in your show? Well, that’s what we’ll be exploring today. So, Ethan, when it comes to sponsorships, the big question every podcaster asks is, how do I find the right sponsor for my show?

01:23
Ethan Baird
The right sponsor, That’s a great question. And the answer isn’t just about numbers. Sponsors don’t just want big audiences, they want the right audience. The key is identifying brands that align with your content and your listeners interests.

01:36
Hendrik Baird
So if you have a tech podcast, for instance, approaching a company that sells microphones or editing software makes sense. Oh, we should approach somebody for that. For this podcast. And if your show is about personal finance, a fintech company would be a better fit than, say, a sports brand.

01:53
Ethan Baird
But once you find the right sponsor, the next challenge is how to reach out to them effectively. Do you send a cold email? Do you pitch them a deck? What’s the best approach?

02:01
Hendrik Baird
I think it’s all about presenting yourself professionally. Brands want to see that you have an engaged audience. And having a sponsorship pitch deck or rate card that clearly shows your listener demographics, your reach and your engagement stats certainly will make a big difference.

02:17
Ethan Baird
And that ties into another big question. How do podcasters demonstrate value to advertisers? Because it’s not just about downloads. Right?

02:25
Hendrik Baird
Sponsors care about listening, engagement, things like how long people listen, whether they interact with your content, and how aligned your audience is with their brand. A smaller, highly engaged niche audience is often much more valuable than a mass of platform passive one.

02:42
Ethan Baird
And that brings us to another common myth. Is there a minimum audience size for sponsorships? A lot of podcasters think that they need thousands of listeners per episode before they can even approach a sponsor, and.

02:54
Hendrik Baird
That’S just not true. A podcast with 500 highly engaged listeners in a niche industry can be much more attractive to a sponsor than a general interest podcast with 10,000 passive listeners.

03:08
Ethan Baird
So how do niche podcasters compete with bigger shows for ad revenue?

03:11
Hendrik Baird
By offering something unique. I would guess niche podcasters can charge a premium for sponsorships because their audience is targeted and more likely to convert. So instead of focusing on impressions, they focus on alignment and engagement. That’s what brands care about.

03:29
Ethan Baird
The key takeaways. Find sponsors that fit your audience, pitch them professionally, highlight engagement over size, and remember that niche shows have an advantage when it comes to sponsorship value.

03:40
Hendrik Baird
Next we’ll hear from podcasters what their specific questions are around this topic.

03:45
Lwazi Volsak
I’ve done my research on the cost of recording weekly at a studio and also getting editing done, and it’s very expensive for an individual, I would say. I’ve also tried kind of getting financial backing, which has not succeeded as yet. But I’m hoping in time, you know, that I can have a breakthrough to be able to return to podcasting. Yeah. So I think once I have all those kind of things in place, then I have a better chance at increasing my viewership and also branching over into monetization. I think that’s one of the things I’ve been. I’ve been struggling with trying to figure out how to approach a company.

04:22
Lwazi Volsak
Do I do it in a casual way to professional way, Do I come up with some sort of portfolio or do I put together a little presentation, set up a meeting, do it in that kind of manner. Like how should I go about those things? I don’t actually know how to start that process. So we had been approached, but the people who approached us wanted us to do podcasts for them. Right. So it would be the Department of Public Transport in October for Public Transport Month. They weren’t actually looking for us as a platform. They were looking for us to help them set up a platform. And as with all government agency, it’s just like a waiting game and then nothing happens. So that fell through the ground. And then personally, I don’t know how or where to start monetizing.

05:12
Lwazi Volsak
I don’t know if you have to now go to like Iona FM or if you start approaching similar people.

05:19
Ethan Baird
Before we dive deeper, let’s just give a quick Shout out to our Podmaster startup programme helping new podcasters launch with confidence. Check out our website Baird Media for more info.

05:32
Hendrik Baird
So it’s clear sponsorship is one of the biggest challenges podcasters face. The key is finding brands that fit your audience rather than chasing after the biggest advertisers.

05:44
Ethan Baird
And we’ve seen this play out internationally. In the us, podcasts like the Tim Ferriss show and My Favourite Motor have built sponsorship models that are tailored to their audience. Tim Ferriss attracts productivity tools and business brands, while My favourite Murder works with true crime related sponsors like forensic services and crime theme subscription boxes.

06:04
Hendrik Baird
The UK has great examples too. Stephen Bartlett’s Diary of a CEO found success partnering with brands that align with entrepreneurship and personal development. And instead of generic ad placements, he works with brands that his audience already is interested in, like fintech companies and leadership coaching platforms.

06:25
Ethan Baird
And that’s the lesson. Niche podcasts can be just as valuable as mass market shows. Instead of waiting for a big brand to come to you, be proactive. If you run a health and wellness podcast approach, nutrition brands, fitness coaches or wellness retreats, companies that are looking to reach an audience just like yours.

06:41
Hendrik Baird
And it’s not just about waiting for sponsors to find you. Create a sponsorship pitch, have a rate card, highlight your listener demographics and showcase why your audience is valuable. The most successful podcasters don’t just hope for sponsorships, they position themselves to attract the right brands.

07:01
Ethan Baird
So whether you’re running a business, tech, True Crime or self improvement podcast, the strategy remains the same. Find brands that align with your niche, create a compelling pitch and take action to secure your sponsors.

07:13
Hendrik Baird
So Ethan, I had a very interesting conversation with Russell Wasserfall and his experience in monetization. He saw an opportunity when a guest had a large following.

07:25
Russel Wasserfall
So yesterday I was interviewing a dude who’s like Mr. Beef, South Africa. He’s been in the game for a long time and weirdly enough, were at school together in like standard six. It’s just so strange and you know, and we never saw each other from there and we bumped into each other at the Eat out Awards in 2011. So he just said to me, oh, you know what you need to do? Because every. Everyone asks me, how do you monetize this or do you get sponsored or would you like a sponsor? Everyone I interview says that to me and then they give me suggestions. And I’m quite certain that I want anyone who sponsors me to be of the industry, but not in the industry, you know, so. So I’ve been chasing people like Dine Plan.

08:09
Russel Wasserfall
And they’re like, yeah, next year, you know, because dime plans are booking service. It’s a service to the industry. It’s a service to the restaurant industry, to the food industry, but it isn’t standing flipping burgers. Same thing with Yoko. It’s a service to the industry. It’s a financial service to the industry, but it isn’t flipping burgers. And this dude said, oh, you know who sponsored me? They gave me a beer tap, and for years and years, they sponsored my beer things is Stella Artois. Just send me a something, and I’ll send it to the marketing chick who’s a friend of mine, and we’ll see what we can do for you. So I said, what’s the something? What do I send? You know, because I know that people are chasing huge numbers in social media, like. Like Instagram followers or.

08:52
Russel Wasserfall
Or likes or whatever the case may be, you know, and so 7,000 is an impressive number of people who look at your. Your Instagram thing, but 40 a day. What does that mean? What’s the meaning? How do we educate people to look at 243 downloads a week and go, that’s a good number, or, oh, that’s a bit. No one knows. And very few people seem to understand that kind of discursive, engaging interaction where people are talking about this and go, oh, listen here. Do you want to be a. Yeah, yeah. Okay. While we’re talking, no one understands what that can do for your brand. It seems that for me to try and educate them and say, hello, do you know this will be really good for your brand? They say, yes, of course you think it will be good for your brand.

09:39
Russel Wasserfall
You want our money, you bastard. You know, so what do you give them? And how do you ensure that they look at it and go, valuable?

09:48
Ethan Baird
You know, Russell makes a great point. Finding the right sponsor isn’t just about numbers. It’s about alignment. Instead of looking for just any advertiser, he’s targeting companies that serve his industry but aren’t directly in it, like booking services or financial tools for restaurants rather than actual food brands.

10:07
Hendrik Baird
And the challenge, of course, is educating potential sponsors on why podcast engagement matters. Many brands still focus on big social media numbers, but a highly engaged podcast audience can be far more valuable than a thousand passive Instagram likes.

10:25
Ethan Baird
Still, on the topic of how to monetize a podcast, you asked Shannon and Gavin at Solid Gold Podcasts and Audiobooks how to secure a sponsorship for a niche podcast.

10:34
Shannon Kennedy
Find a brand that matches the niche.

10:37
Gavin Kennedy
Be the most effective way that a brand can reach the audience, their specific audience.

10:42
Shannon Kennedy
Yeah.

10:44
Hendrik Baird
So you’ve got to research the possible sponsor, know who their audience is, and most possibly even before you start so that you can gear your content and see if you can get to that audience. So you can eventually go to that sponsor going like, look, I have your audience.

11:01
Shannon Kennedy
Yeah, here they are.

11:03
Hendrik Baird
You clean drains. I know people with drains. We’ve been talking about drains for three years.

11:07
Gavin Kennedy
So it’s exactly that. And then just as you speaking, you can see the dynamic. Am I making this podcast because I want to talk about cars, or am I making this because I want to go to west bank and let them give me money because people buy cars, listen to my podcast and west bank should sponsor it. What’s my real motivation for making that podcast? Well, believe me, west bank make podcasts on their own. So what are you doing that would make west bank say, oh, we neglected that whole section of the audience and these people have got it, we’ll give them money. Or why is the west bank podcast not expanding to reach that audience? So expand that to, we want to talk about cars. And BMW is definitely going to love our audience. Yeah, Your audience is 500 people.

11:51
Gavin Kennedy
It’s a respectable podcast audience. But you’re asking BMW’s marketing team to stop what they’re doing and consider putting advertising into that instead of a billboard at the airport where they know their customers.

12:03
Hendrik Baird
So do you think rate cards and to pitch to sponsors or PR firms is a strategy or.

12:10
Shannon Kennedy
Absolutely. And I think for people who sort of have come from maybe a broadcasting background might have an understanding of this already on rate cards and that sort of brand partnership, engagement and all of that. I don’t think it necessarily needs to be a public facing thing, but maybe available on request, have an idea of, you know, how much work goes into creating this amount. Are you looking for a sponsor to pay for your costs or are you looking for a sponsor to pay for above and beyond?

12:43
Gavin Kennedy
There’s two ways to monetize your audience. One is an ad played before the podcast by the platform you’re on. So you put your podcast up in Iono, you enable monetization, and before anybody can listen to the podcast, they’re listening to an advert that’s inserted by the platform. That’s kind of an aggregated sales strategy. Iono injecting ads into lots of podcasts based on the data they have on the listener. You might not be able to monetize that audience yourself, but it also has.

13:15
Hendrik Baird
To do with about 5,000 listeners to start with, before they can, you need meaningful number. So it’s a numbers game.

13:20
Gavin Kennedy
Yeah. Otherwise you’re putting in a lot of work for sense return. There’s no viable model there. But let’s say I’ve got my koi fish podcast and I have this following of 500 people who love koi fish and they love my stories and they love all the advice on how to breed a fish with a star on its side. There might be somebody who makes pool filters and realises, or pond filters and realises that 500 people who breed koi is a significant percentage of the koi breeding community. And there’s a new filter out. And how do we tell them about it? Well, they might approach me and say, please talk about this filter, or can we give you money to talk about this filter? And then it’s not a cost per thousand thing. It’s not. Okay, I’ve got 500 people listening.

14:06
Gavin Kennedy
How many cents per listen? No, no, I have the 500 people you want. I want lots of money for that. I want you to be a guest. Then you’re leveraging the value of the audience as opposed to the count of the audience. One is just how many thousand? How many rand per thousand? The other is these are my people and I’m going to let you talk to my people.

14:26
Ethan Baird
If you have a story to tell, a message to share or a brand to build, Solid Gold podcasts and audiobooks can help you bring it to life.

14:32
Hendrik Baird
With state of the art studios, expert production and a team that makes podcasting effortless, Solid Gold is the go to partner for individuals, businesses and brands looking to create high quality audio content.

14:45
Ethan Baird
Whether you need a full service podcast production, an audiobook recording, or just a professional space to record, Solid Gold has you covered.

14:52
Hendrik Baird
You can take your podcast or audiobook to the next level by visiting solidgold Co za today and start sounding like a pro. What did we learn today, Ethan?

15:04
Ethan Baird
Today we learned that sponsorship isn’t just about having a big audience. It’s about having the right audience. Most successful podcasters focus on finding sponsors that align with their niche and proving their value through engagement, not just numbers.

15:18
Hendrik Baird
And we also saw that sponsorships don’t just fall into your lap. You need to be proactive. That means creating a rate card, researching potential sponsors and approaching them with a clear pitch that demonstrates why your audience matters.

15:34
Ethan Baird
And as we heard from both Russell and the team at Solid Gold, niche podcasters have a unique advantage. It’s all about positioning your podcast as the best way for a sponsor to.

15:44
Hendrik Baird
Reach their ideal customers, but it’s also about realistic expectations. If you’re aiming for big corporate sponsors, then you will need the numbers to back it up. But if you have a highly engaged niche audience, you can negotiate premium sponsorships based on direct influence rather than scale.

16:05
Ethan Baird
Know your audience, be strategic with your outreach and don’t undervalue the power of engagement. The opportunities are out there, you just have to go after them. Want to take your podcast to the next level? Join our upcoming masterclass. The details are on our website, Baird Media.

16:22
Hendrik Baird
And that’s it for this episode. If you found it valuable then please remember to share and to Tag us.

16:29
Ethan Baird
On LinkedIn in our next episode.

16:31
Jonathan Warncke
I think anyone can monetize a podcast, but not everyone will or not everyone has maybe the tool to do it in that they believe there’s only one tool which is advertising, which I think, as Paola said, is just not really a very sustainable way going forward for us. I believe that as long as you build something of an audience, obviously, unless Your audience is 10 CEOs of SM FMCG companies, then you’re fine. But you’re going to need for most other things, something in the thousand plus numbers. Then you can look at your options and say maybe merch is the way, maybe live events is the way, maybe the podcast is advertising something else. I’m doing.

00:00
Gino Arlechino
Producing roughly, let me say three hours. And when I say three hours, half of that is just research. The actual recording is an hour so that the output is just 25 minutes to 30 minutes. So recording setup, that’ll be an hour and a half with guest and then the other hour and a half is trying to put together some narrative. Not even a narrative, just more of a running order. Yeah. So that it doesn’t feel all over the place.

00:28
Hendrik Baird
And then how long does your editor take to put this all together?

00:32
Gino Arlechino
So he would take about. If it’s just me, we are looking at hour half also because he’ll listen to it first and then he’ll go through it again and then this time he’s cutting out the arms and Rs and then you a check afterwards. So let’s say two hours with chapter marks. And then when there’s a guest it. Yeah, between three to four hours because then he’ll listen to my feed first, go through that and then their feed and then try see if it lives together.

01:01
Hendrik Baird
This is season three of the Become a Podmaster podcast. We are going to answer some of the most pressing questions that podcasters have. I’m Hendrik.

01:10
Ethan Baird
And I’m Ethan. Not only did we get the questions from podcasters, but with the help of the South African Podcasters Guild, or SAPG for short, and Solid Gold podcasted audiobooks, we got some answers.

01:23
Hendrik Baird
Today we’re talking about a key element of a successful audio quality. How can podcasters improve their production without breaking the bank?

01:34
Ethan Baird
While it is easy to start a podcast with just a phone, most South African podcasts need to level up their sound quality as it plays a big role in listener retention and overall professionalism. A great podcast with poor audio can lose listeners quickly, no matter how good the content is. Our goal with this podcast is to help podcasters old and new navigate the evolving landscape of podcasting with expert insights and practical advice.

02:00
Hendrik Baird
And our question today is, does audio quality matter?

02:05
Ethan Baird
Yes. The answer is yes. Thank you for listening to our podcast. No, seriously, this is something I feel very strongly about. Hendrik, as a three time radio award winner for audio production, I can tell you that good sound is not just a nice to have. It’s essential. People will forgive poor video quality, but they will not tolerate bad audio.

02:26
Hendrik Baird
Well, that’s a very interesting point because I think a lot of new podcasters assume that content is king. And while that’s true to a certain extent, if your audio is difficult to listen to, it doesn’t matter how good your content is. People People will switch off.

02:41
Ethan Baird
Exactly. Like, think about it. How often have you forced yourself to sit through something with muffled, distorted, or echoey audio?

02:49
Hendrik Baird
Almost never. If it’s hard to hear or distracting, I’m out.

02:53
Ethan Baird
And that’s the challenge that many podcasters face. They put so much effort into scripting, recording, and promoting their show, but if the audio is poor, none of that really matters. Listeners will simply leave and never come back.

03:06
Hendrik Baird
And improving audio doesn’t have to mean spending a fortune, right?

03:11
Ethan Baird
Not at all. There are simple, budget friendly ways to improve your sound, from using a better microphone to recording in a quieter space. The key is understanding how sound works and making a few smart adjustments that can drastically improve the quality.

03:24
Hendrik Baird
So today, we’re looking at what makes good audio, why it matters so much in podcasting, and how even podcasters on a budget can improve their sound.

03:34
Ethan Baird
Because if your audience can’t hear you clearly, they will not hear you at all. Let’s get started.

03:41
Hendrik Baird
Many new podcasters think they need expensive gear to get good sound, but that’s not true. Small tweaks can make a huge difference.

03:49
Ethan Baird
Absolutely. And this isn’t a new problem. Audio quality has been a priority since the early days of radio. Back then, engineers worked with limited technology, but their master techniques to make voices sound clear, even with primitive equipment. Those same principles still apply today.

04:06
Hendrik Baird
In the golden age of radio, studios were designed to minimise noise, and microphone technique was treated as a science. Presenters were trained to control their voice projection and maintain consistent mic distance.

04:22
Ethan Baird
And that’s something podcasters can learn from. Good sound isn’t just about the microphone you use. It’s about how you use it. Mic placement is critical. Speaking too far from the mic makes you sound distant, while being too close can create harsh plosives, those annoying popping sounds on words like podcast and power.

04:40
Hendrik Baird
And that’s where simple accessories like pop filters and foam covers help. They soften the plosives and reduce harshness in vocal recordings, making the audio much easier to listen to.

04:53
Ethan Baird
But beyond the mic room, setup plays a huge role. You don’t need a professional studio, but recording in an untreated echoey room can make even a high end microphone sound. Bad hard surfaces reflect sound, creating reverberation that makes speech muddy and unclear.

05:10
Hendrik Baird
So what’s the solution?

05:12
Ethan Baird
Soft furnishings, things like carpets, curtains, bookshelves, or even hanging blankets help absorb sound and reduce echo. Even a simple trick like recording in a closet full of clothes can dramatically improve clarity because the fabric absorbs sound waves.

05:27
Hendrik Baird
Well, that’s a great DIY Tip. And then there’s post production, the final steps in achieving great audio.

05:33
Ethan Baird
Right. Simple audio processing like using equalisation or EQ to remove muddiness, compression to balance volume levels and noise reduction to eliminate background hums or hisses, can take a raw recording from amateur to professional.

05:48
Hendrik Baird
And the good news, there are plenty of free or affordable tools out there. Software like Audacity, Adobe Podcast Enhance and Descript make it easy for podcasters to clean up the recordings without needing an audio engineering degree.

06:04
Ethan Baird
Yeah, some of those platforms are even using AI to do the whole thing for you. So the bottom line is, great audio is not about having the most expensive gear. It’s about using the right techniques. With the right mic placement, a well treated recording space and basic post production, any podcaster can sound professional.

06:21
Hendrik Baird
And of course, if you want to learn more about all of that, you can get my book, the Podmaster’s Voice, which deals extensively with some of these things that we are going to be talking about today. Check it out on our website, Baird Media.

06:34
Ethan Baird
So let’s check in with our experts at Solid Gold Podcasts and Audiobooks and ask them what role audio quality plays in podcast production.

06:41
Shannon Kennedy
Audio quality is fairly important, I suppose, in a podcast, especially if you’re a purist and there’s no video to. Because in video podcasting situations, a lot of the time you can kind of get away with your content, especially your audio not being as good because you’re relying on the video and the audios to kind of pivot, cover your bases a little bit. But yeah, maybe I’ve been in the industry for too long, but it is not hard to produce good audio. It’s really easy. Find a good quiet room that doesn’t sound hollow and empty, couple of cushions, carpets and curtains hanging in it. Nicole is a perfect example of still potentially using her cardboard box. You don’t need a huge fancy setup to create good quality audio.

07:31
Hendrik Baird
Do you need expensive equipment?

07:33
Shannon Kennedy
Absolutely not. I don’t think you do. Expensive equipment obviously has more features and more accessibility and. But no, I think an entry level microphone in a. What do we always say, A bad quality microphone in a good room is better than a good quality microphone in a bad room? Yeah, if you’re recording your podcast in your bathroom, I can probably tell it’s.

07:59
Gavin Kennedy
Quite natural for people starting out to go, just tell me what to do. The answer to tell me what to do is, well, what are you trying to. What are you trying to do? It’s like Hendrik, I’m thinking of Buying a vehicle. What should I get?

08:12
Hendrik Baird
What?

08:13
Gavin Kennedy
What do you want to do? Do you want to deliver concrete or pizzas or drive people around? I need more information before I tell you what vehicle you should buy. Same with podcast. You can be out in the field, in a studio. There’s too many variables to be prescriptive and say, do this one thing.

08:29
Shannon Kennedy
But do you have good audio?

08:32
Hendrik Baird
Yes. Even if it’s video still, it needs to be good audio.

08:36
Gavin Kennedy
If the picture goes away, I can still listen and follow what’s going on the other way around.

08:40
Hendrik Baird
I’m going to put the video off. I’m just going to listen to it. You’ve made a video. I don’t want to watch it. I’m just cooking. I can’t watch you now and we have too much screen time anyway.

08:49
Gavin Kennedy
Is this the same cooking show?

08:52
Hendrik Baird
As much as you need to produce great content, it’s the post production that’s going to set you apart.

08:59
Gavin Kennedy
Possibly.

09:00
Shannon Kennedy
Unless your live skills.

09:03
Gavin Kennedy
Some big podcasts, they pride themselves on the fact that there’s no post production. It’s part of the you can never accuse them of skewing answer or change. It’s raw, it’s got mistakes, it’s left exactly alone. Which means you have to focus your attention on setting the studio up and your skill set for capturing it so that it works. We spend a lot of time on post production with our clients. It’s part of the value we add to a corporate client.

09:29
Hendrik Baird
It goes back to the kind of podcast that you produce, I suppose, you know, because this one that we’re making is. It’s so complicated.

09:35
Gavin Kennedy
Lots and lots of post production bits.

09:37
Hendrik Baird
And pieces and scripting it after the fact and transcribing and everything and then seeing how do we build this puzzle?

09:43
Gavin Kennedy
Ethan’s got nothing but time on his hands.

09:47
Ethan Baird
If you have a story to tell, a message to share, or a brand to build, Solid Gold podcasts and audiobooks can help you bring it to life.

09:54
Hendrik Baird
With state of the art studios, expert production, and a team that makes podcasting effortless, Solid Gold is the go to partner for individuals, businesses and brands looking to create high quality audio content.

10:06
Ethan Baird
Whether you need a full service podcast production, an audiobook recording, or just a professional space to record, Solid Gold has you covered.

10:14
Hendrik Baird
You can take your podcast or audiobook to the next level by visiting solidgold Co za today and start sounding like a pro.

10:23
Ethan Baird
And now let’s check in with the guys from the SAPG and find out what they have to say about this topic.

10:28
Hendrik Baird
What is More important, your content or having good production quality content. In the end, I disagree because there was one show I listened to in the business section for the awards and the content was great, but two minutes in, my ears were bleeding. I said, I’m sorry, but I can’t listen to this anymore.

10:45
Jonathan Warncke
Yes, but that doesn’t mean it’s more important. That just means it’s a prerequisite. There needs to be a basic level of production so that it’s not annoying to listen to. And everything after that is icing. After that point, content becomes king. There are people who produce an okay show, but they’re. They’re brilliant hosts or they’re funny, or they’ve got great contents. The only thing that you really need to worry about product with production is does it make someone’s ears bleed? If no, cool, then you’re doing fine and you can improve over time. Don’t stop there. But once you’ve reached that threshold, it’s time to start focusing on your content.

11:19
Hendrik Baird
I think it’s good to create good content, but you can make it even better in post production by formatting in a different way. Or look at Diary of a CEO, how he does it. It’s not just a straight interview and he plonks it down. He takes time and effort to make it interesting to listen to and format it.

11:36
Jonathan Warncke
You’re right. You’re right. I should qualify my opinion with improving and having chatted to both Diego and also to Dean from Trail Chasers, who shoots his stuff in a stud very professionally. He is. His opinion is that quality over time, over seasons of episodes, quality is important. Absolutely. You kind of have to do both. I would still say that content is king, but the king ain’t anything without a queen. You know, like, you’ve got to have them both over time. But the thing is that you can have a good piece of content and you can start by producing it okay, and get better. I’m not saying stay mediocre forever, but you can definitely add value.

12:21
Jonathan Warncke
The trick is not to become engrossed in different kinds of mics and turning it into some kind of audio, visual, ar, VR experience unless it’s appropriate to the idea. Rather, focus on being better at what you do.

12:34
Paulo Dias
I don’t think there’s an excuse for bad audio today. You know, the most basic online recording software is going to fix your audio. Plus there’s a bunch of free tools. So I don’t think. I agree. Don’t get caught up in mics, don’t get caught up in daws don’t get caught up in sound cards and all that. But there are enough good tools around and there are enough good habits to make sure you sound good. Right. So I think when it comes to an audio only, I don’t think you have an excuse like you don’t need the world’s best mic headphones nowadays are doing phenomenal jobs and if you know how to record in a good space, you can get away with that.

13:07
Paulo Dias
I think when it comes to video specifically, and I’m taking another kick at video podcast here, is that I see a lot of video podcasts that look better than they are. So I mean for one of the audio video transition things is that when you watching them you go, they got microphones there but they’re obviously using lapels or they’re not their mic techniques terrible because they’re worried about the camera and that affects the experience once you take away the visual of it. And I think too many people are hiding behind a good looking studio, flashy effects, great camera, switches HD and that and the content stinks. So I think like before you get into that, make sure your content is structured. It takes people from one to the other. You’re doing clever things with your segments.

13:50
Paulo Dias
You’re not just plunking 20 minutes introduction and what you had for dinner last night. You know that we should still be doing that in this day and age is ridiculous. And make sure your content is sound. So I think yeah, if you’re doing audio only, I don’t think there’s an excuse for, I’m not saying have the world’s best audio, but there’s no excuse for bad audio because people like you said, people will turn off. There are people who’ve moved into video too quickly and their content stinks. And no matter what they do, you’re not going to make that back because you know you’re competing in a different thing. People are going to be on you for 30 seconds. Those people don’t know what they’re talking about. They look great. I’m going to move. Thumbnail got me in. I’m out.

14:27
Paulo Dias
And you’re going to get found out very quickly because you’re hiding behind visuals.

14:32
Hendrik Baird
What is the ideal length of a podcast?

14:34
Jonathan Warncke
Oh man, this feels like an FAQ question. The ideal length is as long as it needs to be and still be interesting enough for people to listen to.

14:44
Hendrik Baird
Yeah, that’s my answer. Always as long as it’s, I mean.

14:47
Jonathan Warncke
Tim Ferriss does two hours. Joe Rogan sometimes does three hours. I think that there’s interesting formats in the five minute update, the 30 second podcast, the five second podcast, whatever you want. But I don’t know, Paolo. The only real is don’t go too long.

15:01
Paulo Dias
So people want a number for this and I give a number because you need a number. So basically, if I go back and say I’ve probably produced close to 3,000 podcast episodes, I’d say your average ideal perfect length is 20 minutes. That’s your absolutely ideal. Now, of course, I work with branded podcasts which then drop down to 12 minutes. But just look at your stats. That is for me the only stat that people should really look at. When do people stop paying attention? And that’s the only thing you should really care about. Like Iono do it. I know Spotify do it. You can watch the drop off of your audience and where they go. And the major drop off starts dipping at 12 and your biggest drop off will dip at 20.

15:40
Paulo Dias
Okay, so if you’re looking for a number, so if you’re starting out, start looking at an episode of 25 minutes. Listen, I do episodes of two hours. I do episode, but I know my audience will stay with me. And I also know how to structure content to take them with. So that comes with time. But if you’re starting, aim at 25 minutes, see how that does. Look at your stats and adjust. So if you’re seeing people are dropping out at 12, drop your episode to 20 or become more interesting at 12 minutes. Drag them to the end, throw forward, make sure they staying. So to give you a number, 25 minutes, look at your stats and adapt from there.

16:14
Jonathan Warncke
That’s solid advice.

16:15
Hendrik Baird
So I once read there was a metre analysis, about 3 million podcasts doing the average length. It worked out about 40 minutes. And it seems that’s sort of where most people aim at. But I’ve also read recently that whereas podcasting is great for long form, people are looking at 15 minute things because it’s quick and easy and they can listen to it and be done and move on to something else.

16:35
Jonathan Warncke
There are exceptions to every rule. And also what most podcasters do is wrong, because most podcasters aren’t successful.

16:41
Paulo Dias
But it’s also behaviours like, I mean, I think if you acknowledge a lot of people are listening to podcasts on a commute and assume their commute is 30 minutes, whether they’re driving on a train or whatever, you know, so go. People want that commute. How long is it going to take you to do the washing up? So think of those things because that’s more than likely what people are doing when they’re listening to you.

17:00
Hendrik Baird
So when we work with startup clients, we always tell them, find one ideal listener, define that person as well as you possibly can so you know them better than your best friend. So you can know exactly what they are doing when they are listening. Now many people like that. And like Ethan. He needs hour long podcast because he listens to half an hour on the way to work and half an hour on the way back. If it’s an hour and 20 minutes he gets thrown because now when he’s.

17:22
Ethan Baird
Going to finish it.

17:23
Hendrik Baird
So there’s also something to be said about consistencies.

17:26
Paulo Dias
Yeah, yeah, that’s it.

17:29
Hendrik Baird
So what did we learn today Ethan?

17:31
Ethan Baird
First and foremost, audio quality is everything in podcasting. People might forgive bad video, but they will not tolerate bad sound. If your podcast is difficult to listen to, your audience will not stick around.

17:43
Hendrik Baird
And improving audio doesn’t mean spending a fortune. Simple fixes like better mic placement, using soft furnishings to absorb echo, and choosing a quiet space can make a big difference.

17:56
Ethan Baird
It’s not just about the equipment you use, but how you use it. Even a basic microphone in a well treated space can sound better than an expensive mic in a bad environment.

18:05
Hendrik Baird
We also learned that post production plays a crucial role. Tools like Audacity, Descript and Adobe Podcast enhance help clean up recordings, balance volume and remove background noise, making even home recordings sound professional.

18:21
Ethan Baird
And let’s not forget consistency. If you want to build an audience, your sound quality needs to be reliable across episodes. Listeners should know that they can listen in and enjoy a well produced show every single time.

18:32
Hendrik Baird
Good audio isn’t just for the pros. It’s accessible to anyone willing to learn the basics and apply a few simple techniques.

18:40
Ethan Baird
If you want to improve your podcast sound, check out the book the Podmaster’s Voice where we delve into various technical aspects amongst other things. You’ll find the link on our website Baird Media. Do you want to take your podcast to the next level? You can join our upcoming masterclass. The details are on our website Baird Media.

18:57
Hendrik Baird
And that’s it for this episode. If you found this valuable, don’t forget to share and Tag us on LinkedIn.

19:05
Ethan Baird
In our next episode.

19:06
Jonathan Warncke
If your show is very niche, like about a technical topic, for example, like you talk about water purifiers. That is like people want information, they want tips, tricks, hacks or whatever it might be. If you run a chat show, then your brand, your character is very important. It’s integral to the show, people there to listen to you be funny or interesting or controversial or whatever it might be. So in those shows, specifically, what I’d like to say to people is be more interesting. If you can be more knowledgeable about your topic, research your guests better. Have opinions. Make them opinions you believe in. But do try to find, like, let’s talk about something controversial. Let’s debate something.

00:00
Gavin Kennedy
Just because there’s a gap in a market doesn’t mean there’s a market in the gap. So you might look at the cake market and say, you know what, there’s a real gap in the market for life size Spider man cakes. And I’m sure every 6 year old would love a life size Spider man cake, but since that’s going to cost you 12,000 rand, there’s not many customers in that space. So yeah, there might be a gap, but doesn’t follow that there’s a market. Doesn’t matter how hard you work in that space, there just might never be a viable market.

00:28
Hendrik Baird
Welcome to season three of Become a Podmaster, where we tackle some of the biggest questions that podcasters have. I’m Hendrik.

00:37
Ethan Baird
And I’m Ethan. Not only did we get the questions from podcasters, but with the help of the South African Podcasters Guild, or SAPG for short, and Solid Gold Podcasts and Audiobooks, we got some answers.

00:49
Hendrik Baird
And today we’re examining the importance of having a niche in podcasting, or as the Americans say, niche, why it matters and how it can help grow an audience and drive deeper engagement.

01:02
Ethan Baird
My wife freaks out when people say niche. She really does. Let’s dive into the strategies that help build listener loyalty and create a strong podcasting community. Our goal with this podcast is to help podcasters old and new navigate the evolving landscape of podcasting with expert insights and practical advice.

01:23
Hendrik Baird
Our question of the day is why should you niche your podcast content? It is said that choosing the right niche is crucial for audience growth and engagement. But what makes a niche effective?

01:38
Ethan Baird
When speaking to podcasters, one of the main questions we’ve had revolves around monetization. There’s no easy answer to that question, as making money off your podcast hinges on a number of factors. For instance, how do you balance passion with profitability?

01:52
Hendrik Baird
Monetization is a complex problem, and today we have to acknowledge that there are common mistakes which podcasters make when defining their niche.

02:01
Ethan Baird
There is power in niching, as it can help a podcaster attract the right listeners.

02:05
Hendrik Baird
But there are many myths around content. For instance, that broad topics lead to bigger audiences.

02:12
Ethan Baird
Every podcaster has to find that sweet spot, taking practical steps to identify and validate a niche.

02:18
Hendrik Baird
And when you look at the most popular and successful podcasts out there, it becomes clear that successful podcasters have carved out unique spaces in the industry.

02:29
Ethan Baird
In this episode, we will examine what a niche is and how to niche as deeply as possible into your niche. And if you’re looking for more podcasting insights, visit Our website, Baird Media. I think the best place to start is by understanding exactly what we mean when we talk about a niche in podCommerce.

02:47
Hendrik Baird
You mean like those tiny little dark corners of the Internet where people obsess over their favourite topics?

02:54
Ethan Baird
Pretty much. A niche is a specific, well defined topic or audience segment that a podcast focuses on. Instead of trying to appeal to everyone, niche podcasts target a particular interest, industry or demographic.

03:07
Hendrik Baird
It’s like comparing a general talk show to a show specifically about vintage comic book collecting. The one tries to capture a wide range of listeners while the other builds a passionate, dedicated audience around a very specific topic.

03:23
Ethan Baird
Exactly. And one of the biggest advantages of having a niche is that it helps you attract the right listeners. People who care deeply about a subject are more likely to become loyal followers and even share your podcast with other like minded people.

03:35
Hendrik Baird
But some people worry that being too niche might limit their growth.

03:39
Ethan Baird
And that’s one of the biggest myths about niching. A niche doesn’t mean fewer listeners, it means more engaged listeners. A smaller dedicated audience is often better than a large uninterested one.

03:50
Hendrik Baird
Plus, having a clear niche makes it easier to position yourself as an expert. If your podcast is about, let’s say, personal finance for freelancers, then people looking for exactly that kind of advice will see you as the go to source.

04:07
Ethan Baird
And let’s not forget about monetization. Sponsors love niched audiences because they know exactly who they’re reaching. A podcast about long distance running, for example, would be a perfect fit for brands selling running shoes, nutrition supplements or sports watches.

04:21
Hendrik Baird
So in short, niching is about focusing on the right audience, not the biggest audience. It helps you to stand out, builds a strong community, and even improves your chances of making money with your podcast.

04:34
Ethan Baird
And once you’ve chosen a niche, the next step is making sure you stand out within it.

04:38
Hendrik Baird
So I spoke to Yaz the student and he had this question about niching.

04:44
Yaz the Student
So I think for me, more of the questions would be around from a South African perspective, specifically for audio only podcasts. Because I think trying to build in brands from a visual perspective, the through line becomes a lot easier to be able to sell to brands. The necessity of it. But when you’re doing a niche podcast, for example, I do two very specifically focused podcasts, one on African cinema and one on the South African entertainment industry. Navigating that space, even from a one to one where you’re the person who’s doing the actual direct sales becomes a bit harder to navigate.

05:27
Ethan Baird
You also spoke to Bob Rock. I found his podcast A good example of how to niche into a very specific topic.

05:33
Bob Rock
The premise behind the show is to expose the RC drifting hobby to not only the community, but to a wider audience as much as possible, bringing them the latest news in the drifting world, what people are doing in different countries in terms of drifting, latest products, and any other issues that are affecting the RC drifting community. Be positive or negative, we talk about it and see how we can put a positive spin on everything. And yeah, it’s been five seasons so far.

06:12
Bob Rock
And because it’s such a niche hobby and also a niche sort of podcast, focusing only on that, I think I’m in a really good position to make something really good out of it because one of the things I found is that even though this hobby has been around for many years, a lot of people still don’t know something like this exists. So I think it’s also an opportunity to climb on there and really do something good. So that’s why I’m trying to get as much help and advice as possible. Yeah. In between some self learning I’ve been doing is starting looking at trends and started looking at the analytics of each episode or try and figure out what made one episode better than the other. Was it the time that it was posted? Was it the subject matter?

07:10
Hendrik Baird
Gino Arlecchino’s question is around developing a niche audience.

07:15
Gino Arlechino
The first one is developing a niche audience, which sounds ironic because it’s kind of like smaller the better. But you do need numbers ultimately at the end of the day for you to be of some worth. So that would be the first ones, like, how do I develop enough of an audience base within this market? Right. And by market, yes, it’s largely for film practitioners and media practitioners, but there’s also people who don’t know what to do with their lives, people who might be interested in, say, for example, photography or special effects makeup, and they don’t know how to get into making Blood for Glory seen on television. So a lot of it is like haphazardous listeners who. Or just information seeking. And it’s being able to grow with that and if possible, if it cannot be used as a tool.

08:02
Gino Arlechino
So looking at maybe like a university base where in the same way you’d have a film lecturer, you now have an online tool where you can go and pick an episode to say, this is how we score music and make money from it. This is how you produce a promo, this is how you clip and edit. So I think maybe that’s largely the market I want to go for the More educational, entertainment type. And then the second question, if I were to ask around monetization. I had Nicole Engelbrecht on my previous podcast and she mentioned that she was lucky enough to get a surveillance company, which makes sense because she’s dealing with true crime. So you can sell CCTV cameras. In my instance, you’re selling an opinion. It’s very subjective. It’s not something that’s easily linked to something else.

08:55
Ethan Baird
Before we dive deeper, a quick shout out to our Podmaster startup programme helping new podcasters launch with confidence. Check out our website, Baird Media for more info.

09:06
Hendrik Baird
And while we’re still on the topic of niching your podcast content, many podcasters start with a broad idea thinking they’ll reach more people. But the truth is they the more specific you are, the easier it is to attract and retain a loyal audience.

09:22
Ethan Baird
That’s because people want content that speaks directly to them. A highly focused podcast feels more personal and valuable.

09:29
Hendrik Baird
And niching isn’t just about picking a topic. It’s about positioning yourself as the go to person in that space.

09:37
Ethan Baird
Right. And it also makes content creation easier because you know exactly who you’re speaking to.

09:42
Hendrik Baird
Ethan, I think it’s time we turn to the experts to help us find answers to some of these questions.

09:47
Jonathan Warncke
I’ve got two bugbears to talk about here, first of all. Okay, well, you’re talking about niche. Let’s start with niche. Yes, I think niching is very powerful and very important in our, let’s say economy, demography in our country as well. We just don’t have the kind of population numbers to support a national show. If you go international, if you can crack the international market, great. But if you want to do a national show about kite flying, you’re going to have 10 people on that show. You’re going to have 10 listeners. Right. If you’re making a show about a major sport like rugby or soccer, cool, you can access a much larger market. But you’re going to be competing with Supersport with some very excellent content creators. As I would say.

10:32
Jonathan Warncke
I think there’s less competition and there’s more passion and there’s more engagement down the way of niche. And I’ll point out a show like a table in the corner from Russell Wasserful, which is all about the food industry in South Africa and predominantly kind of Cape Town, and trail chases from Dean Horowitz, which is about trail running. And those are niches that are people are passionate about. And the corollary to that as well is that those are valuable Audiences because people, if you want to sell your show, people with money are interested in trail running and cuisine. So it’s. You can do anything you want. But if you’re intent on monetizing, then you need a little strategic thought behind it.

11:10
Paulo Dias
It’s probably the only way to go. Which kind of like doesn’t make you. It’s always a difficult conversation I have with big brands especially who just want scale. And then you kind of like got to ask. The question of a podcast is because you talk about like I talk from my experience. I produce two shows that are very niche, my own shows, two are very niche and one’s broad. So one is a nostalgia 1980s based show which is very niche. But my audience, I’ve actually, that show’s gone international because it’s a niche that a lot of people care about. And again, you talk about the. The profile of the people is that they’re, you know, upper income, moneyed people. So it’s not a massive audience, but it’s an audience that can matter.

11:53
Paulo Dias
I produce another radio industry podcast for radio creatives, people working in promotions departments and radio stations. Again, that we’ve also gone worldwide because it’s such a specific job title and job role, there aren’t that many people doing it. And again, it’s reached very important people and I have one one contact with the listeners of it and they’re all like pretty serious people within radio businesses. So it goes like that’s quite valuable. Then on the other hand, I produce a sports podcast which is just impossible because once you do something, no matter how good we are, I cannot compete with the podcast that has Premier League footballers on it. I can’t compete with that. And then now you’re competing with the whole world and now you’re competing visually. So it’s like the first two really drill down into a niche thing go.

12:39
Paulo Dias
These are things there’s an expertise in or a passion about and they break through so nicely and they attract the right sort of audience. Where our sports audience is so much more varied and so much more volatile and it’s difficult to manage and it’s difficult to predict where the other two you can watch the patterns in. So I’d say, look, find your niche. And we’re not even saying niche like you said cart flying. I mean, it doesn’t have to be kite flying, it just goes. It still blows my mind how few local language football podcasts there are. I don’t think there’s more than two or three Isis Zulu podcasts about Soccer, which is crazy. So it’s not even saying niche. I’m just saying like this. Every topic that you can think of that are the mainstream topics, do it in your mother tongue.

13:22
Paulo Dias
That’s niche and that’s how you’re going to break through.

13:24
Jonathan Warncke
And the advantage that we all have as South Africans, you don’t have to take the advantage. You can go international, but an American podcast is never going to be able to cover finance in South Africa as well as you can. So you can look around the world and go, what’s an incredibly successful show template or story type or whatever it is, and then cool. Do the South African version and you’ve got a chance.

13:45
Hendrik Baird
Sam W. on one of the groups of the guild said today that she had a YouTube channel forever. She was doing tech reviews behind the scenes vlogs, gaming and esports and then she decided to just focus on competitive counter strike and took a while.

14:02
Jonathan Warncke
Many years of my life.

14:03
Hendrik Baird
Yeah. So I mean hyper focusing on something like that one game, one like Magic the Gathering or you know, one of those things certainly has a much broader appeal to a very specific group of people than just generally. Let’s talk about tech and all sorts of, you know, I, I might be interested in one or two of the episodes, but the rest don’t really speak to me. So do you think that might be an example of specific tailored content and how to do it?

14:30
Jonathan Warncke
Well, that’s an empirical evidence piece you’ve got there. I think it’s a perfect example. I mean it might not be statistically representative, but my intuition is yes, going from tech reviews, literally the most competitive type of content you can make in the world, to simply speaking about a single game. And that’s what Twitch streamers do. Well, some Twitch streamers play lots and lots of games, but some of them are also just I do Starcraft and they get audiences, I believe.

14:57
Paulo Dias
And I think there’s also a degree of attracting hate bait because everyone’s going to have a better opinion than you or know more than you and just be attracted to you for that reason initially and then you can convert them. So yeah, it’s a great example of it.

15:09
Ethan Baird
Gavin from Solid Gold Podcast and Audiobooks has a warning about niching.

15:13
Gavin Kennedy
Just because there’s a gap in the market doesn’t mean there’s a market in the gap. So you might look at the cake market and say, you know what, there’s a real gap in the market for life size Spider man cakes and I’m sure every 6 year old would love a life size Spider man cake. But since that’s going to cost you 12,000 rand, there’s not many customers in that space. So yeah, there might be a gap, but doesn’t follow that there’s a market. Doesn’t matter how hard you work in that space, there just might never be a viable market. So understanding why you choosing a topic or a niche for a podcast? Am I doing it because man, I love koi fish and I just want people to know more about koi breeding?

15:51
Gavin Kennedy
Or do I want to talk about koi so that I can get people to hire me to build ponds? Or because I want EPOL to sponsor my podcast? Understanding the realities of the niche you’re choosing and why you’re choosing the niche are really important.

16:07
Ethan Baird
If you have a story to tell, a message to share, or a brand to build, Solid Gold podcasts and audiobooks can help you bring it to life.

16:14
Hendrik Baird
With state of the art studios, expert production, and a team that makes podcasting effortless, Solid Gold is the go to partner for individuals, businesses and brands looking to create high quality audio content.

16:26
Ethan Baird
Whether you need a full service podcast production, an audiobook recording, or just a professional space to record, Solid Gold has you covered.

16:34
Hendrik Baird
You can take your podcast or audiobook to the next level by visiting solidgold Co za today and start sounding like a pro. So what did we learn today?

16:44
Ethan Baird
Ethan well, we’ve established that choosing a niche is one of the most powerful decisions a podcaster can make. It helps you build a loyal audience, position yourself as an authority, and even attract the right sponsors.

16:56
Hendrik Baird
Right, but that doesn’t mean just picking a random niche and hoping for the best. There has to be a strategy to it.

17:05
Ethan Baird
Exactly. First, you need to pick a niche you’re passionate about. If you love your topic, creating content won’t feel like work. This passion will also come through in your episodes, making them a lot more engaging for your listeners.

17:17
Hendrik Baird
But passion alone isn’t enough. You also have to research the demand. Make sure there’s an actual audience for your niche. Otherwise you could be talking about something you love but with nobody listening.

17:30
Ethan Baird
And that’s where finding a unique angle comes in. You need to differentiate yourself from other podcasters in the same space. What makes your podcast stand out? Is it your format? Your expertise? Your guests?

17:41
Hendrik Baird
And then once you’ve identified your niche, the key is consistency. It takes time to build an audience, and constantly changing your focus makes it harder for listeners to know what the hell to expect from you.

17:54
Ethan Baird
And finally, test and adapt. Listen to your audience, track which episodes get the most engagement and refine your approach based on what’s working.

18:03
Hendrik Baird
So, in short, successful podcasting isn’t about appealing to everyone. It’s about appealing deeply to the right people.

18:11
Ethan Baird
And those right people will become your biggest advocates, helping your podcast grow naturally.

18:16
Hendrik Baird
And that’s it for this episode. I hope you found it valuable, and if you did, don’t forget to share and Tag us on LinkedIn. Let’s continue the conversation there.

18:27
Ethan Baird
Want to take your podcast to the next level? Join our upcoming masterclass. The details are on our website, Baird Media. In our next episode, there’s two ways.

18:36
Gavin Kennedy
To monetize your audience. One is an ad played before the podcast by the platform you’re on. So you put your podcast up on Iono, you enable monetization, and before anybody can listen to the podcast, they’re listening to an advert that’s inserted by the platform. That’s kind of an aggregated sales strategy, Iono. Injecting ads into lots of podcasts based on the data they have on the listener might not be your own. You might not be able to monetize that audience yourself.

00:00
Jonathan Warncke
I believe that for ex radio people, podcasts are very akin to radio for the listener. I think that podcasts are much more of a digital media than a radio aligned media. The similarities between podcasting and general digital content are far stronger than live always interview based in general like radio shows because we don’t really hear radio plays that often anymore and the kind of stuff that people are still experimenting with in podcasts. So I think it is a little bit of a trap you can fall into going especially for the SAPG thinking that podcasts are like digital radio because then you fall into the traps of CPMs and all the problems that radio has that we don’t necessarily have to just inherit.

00:43
Hendrik Baird
This is season three of the Become a Podmaster podcast. We are going to answer some of the most pressing questions that podcasters have. I’m Hendrik.

00:53
Ethan Baird
And I’m Ethan. Not only did we get the questions from podcasters, but with the help of the South African Podcasters Guild, or SAPG for short, as well as solid gold podcasts and audiobooks, we got some answers.

01:04
Hendrik Baird
Today we go back to basics. To get the conversation going, we’re going to attempt to answer the question, what is a podcast?

01:13
Ethan Baird
So to be honest, we’re purists in the sense that we believe a podcast is an audio medium, but we’re with so many YouTube videos calling themselves podcasts, we think it’s important to redefine what a podcast has become over the past few years. Our goal with this podcast is to help podcasters old and new navigate the evolving landscape of podcasting with expert insights as well as practical advice.

01:37
Hendrik Baird
And our question today is what is a podcast really? The definition has shifted over time, and in this episode we’ll explore how industry professionals see it.

01:47
Ethan Baird
As podcasting grows beyond its traditional audio routes, many creators and audiences have different expectations of what qualifies as a podcast.

01:54
Hendrik Baird
Understanding these definitions will help you position yourself effectively, whether you are audio first, video first, or a multi platform creator.

02:04
Ethan Baird
We’re going to look at the traditional definition of a podcast. It started as audio content delivered via an RSS feed. Does this definition still hold?

02:13
Hendrik Baird
Over the past two decades, especially recently, the lines have kind of blurred. We have to acknowledge how video, YouTube and platform agnostic distribution are changing the space.

02:24
Ethan Baird
In many respects, podcasting has become a signal of independence. We’ll examine why some creators use the word podcast as a badge of independent content rather than a technical definition.

02:34
Hendrik Baird
And then there is the radio versus podcast debate. Is podcasting just radio on demand? Or is it something fundamentally different and.

02:43
Ethan Baird
What about the practical implications for podcasters? We’ll ask how understanding these definitions can help with audience targeting, monetization and content strategy.

02:52
Hendrik Baird
So many questions, so little time. So let’s just get into it.

02:55
Ethan Baird
And remember to visit our website, Baird Media, for more insights. So I think the best place to start is to look back at a brief history of podcasting to see where it came from and how we got here.

03:09
Hendrik Baird
I remember when we first saw personal computers. My brother Jacques had one, but the only thing I could do on it was play that very early version of tennis with a little block bouncing from one side of the screen to the other and you trying to bounce it back using a little line on either side of the screen.

03:26
Ethan Baird
Yeah. While you were busy trying to figure out how to play Pong, people in the 1990s were already sharing audio content over the Internet, primarily through downloadable MP3s and streaming radio. Technologies such as Real Audio and Shoutcast allowed users to listen to on demand content. But there was no structured way to distribute episodic shows.

03:46
Hendrik Baird
It was in the year 2000 that software developer David Weiner introduced enclosures in RSS feeds which allowed audio files to be syndicated, a crucial innovation for podcasting.

03:59
Ethan Baird
Then in 2004, journalist Ben Hammersley coined the term podcasting, combining ipod and broadcasting, though the medium was never exclusive to Apple devices.

04:10
Hendrik Baird
I remember I had an ipod, but I used it mainly to load music on. And while I was aware of podcasts, I really didn’t listen to many of them or even any of them, I must be honest, even though I could access them on my then state of the art apple Mac.

04:26
Ethan Baird
It was the tech entrepreneurs Adam Curry and Dave Weiner who built one of the first podcasting applications, making it easier to automatically download and listen to shows.

04:35
Hendrik Baird
The people who first adopted this technology included bloggers, tech enthusiasts and radio professionals who experimented with the format.

04:44
Ethan Baird
Podcasts really grew between 2005 and 2013 when Apple added podcasts to itunes, bringing mainstream awareness to the format. Between 2006 and 2010, radio stations and media companies repurposed content into podcasts, while independent creators experimented with new storytelling formats. Then in 2012, Spotify and other streaming platforms began integrating podcasts, expanding accessibility beyond itunes.

05:09
Hendrik Baird
There was a podcast boom between 2014 and 2020. It started with the release of Serial, an investigative journalism podcast where which became a cultural phenomena in the US showcasing the power of long form storytelling in the medium. This in turn made advertisers take notice with dynamic ad insertion, allowing podcasters to monetize their content.

05:33
Ethan Baird
Once Spotify and Google entered the podcast space, it became much easier to reach wider audiences. Soon, celebrities and brands launched their own podcasts, further mainstreaming the format.

05:44
Hendrik Baird
And then came Covid and the world shut down for a while. This ushered in a new era of podcasting, as podcast consumption accelerated, as audiences sought something to listen to while in isolation.

06:00
Ethan Baird
And this is when creators increasingly turned to YouTube. With video first podcasts gaining traction, there.

06:05
Hendrik Baird
Was a flurry of corporate takeovers, with Spotify acquiring anchor Gimlet Media and the Ringer pushing for platform exclusive shows.

06:14
Ethan Baird
It was during this time that monetization and subscriptions came to the fore. Apple, Spotify and Patreon introduced paid subscriptions, premium content as well as ad networks for podcasters.

06:24
Hendrik Baird
And these days, the latest change involves AI and emerging technologies. And who knows where that will all take us because it’s providing new tools for automated editing, transcription, and even synthetic voices, which are shaping the podcasts of the future. According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, a podcast is a programme as of music or talk made available in digital format for automatic download over the Internet. What does the Oxford English Dictionary say?

06:59
Ethan Baird
A digital audio file made available on the Internet for downloading to a computer or mobile device, typically available as a series, new instalments of which can be received by subscribers automatically.

07:12
Hendrik Baird
Okay, let me see what the international podcast standards via RSS 2.0 and industry bodies say. A podcast is a series of spoken word digital audio files that a user can download or stream to listen to. Episodes are typically made available via an RSS feed, allowing users to subscribe and receive new content automatically.

07:34
Ethan Baird
This all sounds very academic. You spoke to Gavin and Shannon Kennedy at Solid Gold Podcasts and Audiobooks. How did they define a podcast?

07:42
Shannon Kennedy
A podcast, to me, I suppose I am sort of a bit of a purist still. While I engage with video content, a podcast to me is very much a story being told through the audio medium hosted on an RSS feed. So it’s kind of a mix of a very technical and personal definition, I suppose.

Hendrik Baird

And Gavin, video podcasts, YouTube channels, does that qualify as a podcast?

08:08
Gavin Kennedy
Podcast have been around for 20 odd years now, from the first time an RSS feed was repurposed to include audio. And at the time, the definition of a podcast was audio content delivered via an RSS feed to a device on the Internet that’s downloaded and listened to. So that’s the technical definition. It hasn’t really been updated. But what’s happened is the word podcast has become signal. Now, the word podcast means something other than Its technical term and what we’re finding that it means mostly for people is that it means I made this. So it’s signal that says this wasn’t made by mainstream media, this wasn’t made by cnn, this wasn’t made by sabc, this was made independently by me and you can trust it.

08:53
Gavin Kennedy
So whether it’s audio or video or one camera or multi camera or remote, that’s no longer the defining criteria. It’s I made this. So South Africa’s biggest podcast arguably is MacG’s podcast and chill. It’s not a podcast, it’s a straightforward television show. Why does he use the word podcast? Well, he left working for big radio stations, went on his own and wants his audience to know that and follow him as opposed to a company. So podcast, all signal, with or without a picture, with or without audio.

09:26
Hendrik Baird
When you say the word podcast in South Africa, people think video interview.

09:31
Gavin Kennedy
Yeah. So 100 years ago, all cars looked like horse drawn buggies with a horse missing. That’s because an engine was invented and we slapped it onto this thing and we moved around. So for a while things looked like what they grew out of. And podcasts definitely grew out of the skill set of people working in radio. So the early podcasts were definitely dominated by people who worked in radio in the us, took their blogs and their hobby and made them into podcasts. So their skills were radio production. Podcasts sounded like radio production and the easy wins for making content was always two people having a conversation as opposed to behind the scenes production and scripting and the this American Life high production value stuff.

10:15
Ethan Baird
Before we move on, I’d just like to highlight our podmaster startup programme which helps new podcasters launch with confidence. Check out our website, Baird Media for more information.

10:25
Hendrik Baird
So we’re still on the topic of what exactly is a podcast and how it is defined in this post Covid era. I also asked Paolo and Jonathan of the SAPG how they define it.

10:38
Paulo Dias

It’s changed. It used to be this thing that you played on an iPod that no one could do, but now I think the lines are so blurred that I think it’s becoming less platform specific. So a podcast can exist across multiple channels. I think we want to be purist about it and kind of go, well, if it doesn’t have an RSS feed, you know, is it a podcast? But I ultimately think it comes down to what is the person experiencing on the other side. So I think it kind of, for me it’s an audio first on demand piece of content that a person seeks out for entertainment and information.

11:13
Jonathan Warncke
My position has become more and more flexible as I’ve judged things and had people join the guild who only have a YouTube channel or you know, maybe their social media channels are more the focus than their main channels. So I think Paolo’s got it right. But I have a feeling that we’re going to get to a point where it’s. I identify as a podcaster.

11:34
Hendrik Baird
The follow up question is then, is a YouTube channel without an RSS feed with no audio component, just like a taped interview, is that still a podcast?

11:44
Paulo Dias
I am going to say no. I think you’re a YouTuber in a podcast studio because you are playing a different game. So if you produce your podcast and yes, it’s YouTube, but you got elements elsewhere, I think. Yes, but I think if you’re just on YouTube, that’s the game you’re playing. You’re a YouTuber and by all means that’s fine, produce podcast style content. But I think you are then nailing your colours to one platform and that’s cool. But then you’re just a YouTuber in a podcast studio.

12:13
Jonathan Warncke
Yeah, I kind of agree with that. I mean, I think what it says implicitly, if you say I’m a podcaster but I’m only on YouTube, you’re defining all podcasts as interview shows, essentially. Whereas podcasts, audio only, are audio fiction and monologues and all kinds of things, you know. So I think that is almost putting podcasts in a box which they shouldn’t be in.

12:35
Paulo Dias
I think that’s a great point because I think, you know, the interview style thing is the easiest way to get into the lowest barrier to entry. But I think that those sort of shows are, there’s a lot of them and I think they’re going to find it harder and harder to cut through. So I think those who are bringing in better content structure, better content types, playing around with audio or the visual or integrating more and making more of an experience are going to start really breaking through. And for you to do an interview type show, you’re really going to have to be that 1% to stand out and survive.

13:09
Hendrik Baird
If we say streaming services, you know, video streaming comes from television and from the movies, then surely podcasting comes from radio. It’s radio on demand, isn’t it?

13:20
Paulo Dias
That’s kind of the genesis of it. And I’m always going to lean that side because that’s my background and I love radio and I’m an audiophile and I love things you do with sound and I love the power that a human voice can have and the power that a pause can have, that visual just can’t create. I think the best podcasters worldwide are those who have some background in radio first, that they understand how to do a lot without very little. They’re not hiding behind glass. So they’re able to take people somewhere with words primarily and then once you start adding in the rest, that makes them very powerful and compelling. So yes, I think the genesis will be radio first and I think the best podcasters are coming from that background or that school.

14:05
Jonathan Warncke
So here’s where I might have a slightly different opinion in that I believe that for ex radio people, podcasts are very akin to radio for the listener. I think that podcasts are much more of a digital media than a radio aligned media. Like the similarities between podcasting and general digital content are far stronger than live always interview based in general, like radio shows, because we don’t really hear radio plays that often anymore and the kind of stuff that people are still experimenting with in podcasts. So I think it is a little bit of a trap you can fall into going especially for the SAPG thinking that podcasts are like digital radio, because then you fall into the traps of CPMs and all the problems that radio has that we don’t necessarily have to just inherit.

14:51
Hendrik Baird
So here’s then a question. If a radio station takes their breakfast show and puts it up as a podcast, is that a podcast?

14:59
Jonathan Warncke
I ask the hard questions here.

15:01
Paulo Dias
Well, I’ve got the answer because I used to be very militant about this and I said that’s rubbish. Because radio stations would come to me and that’s my day to day business and they’d come to me and say, oh, we got podcasts and we got a million podcast downloads a month. No you don’t. You just got people listening to the traffic report, you just got people listening to the news report an hour later. That’s not a podcast. And I was like, you’re creating a false perception because you’re chasing numbers. Because those things get big numbers. They always have. That’s where I started what I used to call podcasting. That’s what my first role in podcasting was to take that content and put it online.

15:37
Paulo Dias
But again, I go back to what does it mean for the listener if that content is the gateway for a listener, if that’s the first time they go online and seek out a piece of audio content on demand, which then leads them into, hey, this wasn’t scary or intimidating or daunting or Something I couldn’t understand, let me go find other things, then I think that’s fine. So if the end goal works for the listener and it makes them more comfortable with the medium and radio stations and radio listeners, what I’ve always seen in my career is that radio is a great way to get people to mass adopt something. So a lot of times people follow a business, it’s more likely to be a radio station. A lot of times they downloaded an app, it’s a radio station app.

16:23
Paulo Dias
And we’re not talking about us, we’re all early adopters. And anybody listening to this are probably on the edge of anything new. We’re talking about that morose of people who don’t get it right. You call it WhatsApp. So for them to be able to get into a space where they’re adopting new technologies and they trust the radio station to do it, I don’t think it’s a bad thing. And I came from a space where I thought, it’s nonsense, it’s rubbish, don’t do it to now going, hold on a second. If it enables more people into our space, it’s not the worst thing in the world.

16:52
Ethan Baird
This episode of Become a Podmaster is brought to you by Baird Media in association with the South African Podcasters Guild, a community built by podcasters for podcasters.

17:02
Hendrik Baird
Whether you’re just starting out or a seasoned creator, the SAPG connects you with industry experts, exclusive resources and a network of like-minded podcasters who are passionate about growing the medium in South Africa.

17:16
Ethan Baird
Get insider tips, collaborative opportunities and access to discounted studio time. Plus, be part of shaping the future of podcasting in South Africa.

17:24
Hendrik Baird
Join the South African Podcasters Guild today at SAPG.co.za and take your podcasting journey to the next level.

17:33
Ethan Baird
Level. I really love those insights from our guests. If you’d like to discuss this further, connect with us on LinkedIn and let’s continue the conversation there. The links are in the show notes.

17:46
Hendrik Baird
So what did we learn today, Ethan?

17:48
Ethan Baird
I think we have a more comprehensive definition of what a podcast is.

17:52
Hendrik Baird
So do you want to attempt that new definition?

17:55
Ethan Baird
Sure. A podcast is a digital on demand audio or video series traditionally distributed via an RSS feed for streaming or download. It has evolved beyond its technical roots and is now widely recognised as an independent, creator driven medium that provides storytelling, education, entertainment and conversation across multiple platforms.

18:16
Hendrik Baird
So what you’re saying is that the term podcast now extends beyond RSS based distribution to include video first content, YouTube shows and even direct uploads to streaming platforms? This all just blurs the lines between traditional and digital media.

18:33
Ethan Baird
Many creators use the word podcast as a signal of independent content creation, distinguishing it from mainstream media productions. This self-identification is becoming more important than the distribution method.

18:45
Hendrik Baird
In other words, what you’re saying is podcasting is shifting from being platform specific such as iPod to RSS feeds, to existing across multiple channels such as YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts and listeners engage with podcasts based on experience rather than format.

19:02
Ethan Baird
And while podcasting originated from radio skill sets and production techniques, it has since evolved into a broader form of digital media, often resembling social media or streaming services rather than live radio.

19:13
Hendrik Baird
This then means that a podcast is ultimately defined not just by its distribution method, but how an audience engages with it. While its roots are in audio and RSS, its future includes video, community interaction and multi-platform reach. What matters most at the end of the day is the listener’s experience and the creator’s intent.

19:37
Ethan Baird
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head, although I do still kind of think a podcast should be audio. But we also have to evolve. Would you like to take your podcast to the next level? You can join our upcoming masterclass. The details are on our website. Baird Media.

19:53
Ethan Baird
And you spell that like air.

Baird.
So B A I R D Media.

19:59
Hendrik Baird
I actually practised this at home. Bravo Alpha India, Romeo Delta Media.

20:06
Ethan Baird
That’s it for this episode. If you found this valuable, don’t forget to share and Tag us on LinkedIn.

20:10
Hendrik Baird
And in our next episode.

20:12
Jonathan Warncke
Okay, well, talk about niche. Let’s start with niche. Yes, I think niching is very powerful and very important in our, let’s say economy, demography in our country as well. We just don’t have the kind of population numbers to support a national show. If you go international, if you can crack the international market, great. But if you want to do a national show about kite flying, you’re going to have 10 people on that show. You’re going to have 10 listeners. Right? If you’re making a show about a major sport like rugby or soccer, cool. You can access a much larger market. But you’re going to be competing with SuperSport with some very excellent content creators, as I would say.

[00:00:00] Hendrik Baird: Well, Ethan, this year’s really flown past, eh? 

[00:00:03] Ethan Baird: Okay, it’s April, but, you know? 

[00:00:04] Hendrik Baird: No, but, like, the last 12 months felt like only nine. Yeah, but come to think of it, nine months really isn’t that long. To some, it can feel like a maternity.

[00:00:17] Ethan Baird: Actually, it took me a while. I was like, what are you talking about?

Dusting off the rust of season one, getting back into season two of this podcast. 

[00:00:31] Hendrik Baird: Last night I was thinking we’re going to say, we’re back, like back from way back, from the dead. 

[00:00:35] Ethan Baird: It feels like, because it was like a year ago or something that we recorded. I don’t know. It feels like a year ago that we recorded the previous season.

[00:00:41] Hendrik Baird: It’s probably. But the big difference is we’re in a professional studio today, not in the back room with a Mickey Mouse mic. 

[00:00:48] Ethan Baird: Yeah, we’ve leveled up as podcasters severely. Thank you to Ultimate Media for sponsoring or giving us a space to record here. Because yeah, we’re sitting here, Pro Tools is open. We’ve got 20, 000 rands worth of the microphone sitting in between us. It feels good. 

[00:01:02] Hendrik Baird: We are scripted this time. 

[00:01:04] Ethan Baird: We are scripted. 

[00:01:04] Hendrik Baird: There’s no busking. We actually know what we’re going to do. Yeah. And uh, yeah, a great series ahead. We might cover some of the things we’ve covered before, but I mean, you can always learn something new when you look at these things again.

And we’ve also spoken to some really interesting people. 

[00:01:18] Ethan Baird: Yeah. Yeah. And asked them some of the same questions we asked in season one as well. So there’s definitely going to be some backtracking of things we’ve already spoken about, but ultimately I think in this season we’ve got some really, really interesting insights from the podcast as we interviewed.

[00:01:32] Hendrik Baird: And today, what are we doing today? 

[00:01:34] Ethan Baird: Genres and formats. 

[00:01:35] Hendrik Baird: Genres and formats. Now I just want to know, Ethan, what is the difference between the two? What is a genre and what is a format? 

[00:01:41] Ethan Baird: So the format is the physical structure of your podcast. How is it conveyed? Is it interview, documentary, all these different ways of actually producing and putting the show together. Whereas the genre is more about the topic that you cover. So for example, a genre could be true crime. The format could be panel discussion, interview, documentary style. There’s many different ways to, you know, produce it, but the genre is typically what it’s about. And this also ties into the Apple podcasts and their platform. When ever you’re on your podcasting host, you have to choose your two genres, health and spirituality, all those there’s that long list.

[00:02:20] Hendrik Baird: Which is the most popular genre in podcasting.

[00:02:24] Ethan Baird: So in my experience, Especially from when I was doing podcast editing for all different kinds of podcasts. I was one of those lackeys that you would send a podcast to and they’d edit it for you. We had entrepreneurship and wellness slash spirituality being super, super high on the list. 80 percent of the podcasts I edited at that company with those kinds of podcasts.

But I’ll also say anecdotally, true crime seems to be very far out there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. True crime podcasts are in my mind, like one of the biggest genres for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I’d say, yeah, definitely true crime, entrepreneurship, health and spirituality seem to be the bigger genres to me. 

[00:03:03] Hendrik Baird: Okay. And, and then formats from what I can see, the format that most people think of when they think of a podcast is an interview style. 

[00:03:13] Ethan Baird: Absolutely. And I think a lot of people assume that that’s what a podcast is. As in a podcast is me sitting on Zoom, recording a video of me interviewing somebody, which is a fraction of the actual reality of the podcasting world. But a lot of people we’ve spoken to are like, I want to start a podcast. Who am I interviewing? Like those are the questions. 

[00:03:32] Hendrik Baird: It seems to be the easy way into podcasting. 

[00:03:35] Ethan Baird: I definitely would say so. Because doing a podcast solely by yourself is a huge undertaking scripting and you have no one else to rely on. You know, perhaps getting a co host on board isn’t necessarily the easiest thing either, especially if you’re the one with the concept.

So a lot of people, I think default to, I’m going to interview people as my podcast. And I think it’s also got to do with maybe the goals of their podcast. Perhaps if you want to be meeting people, then it’s a good thing, but yeah, it does seem to be people’s default. 

[00:04:03] Hendrik Baird: So what is the format that we’re using here today?

[00:04:06] Ethan Baird: It’s actually interesting. We have a combination kind of format because of the way that this is produced. What we’re recording right now is, I would say, perhaps a discussion, just a two person discussion. 

[00:04:15] Hendrik Baird: Oh, like co hosted? 

[00:04:17] Ethan Baird: Co hosted, for sure. Co-hosted. I almost want to say documentary style, but it’s not.

[00:04:22] Hendrik Baird: No, it’s not quite a documentary.

[00:04:23] Ethan Baird: But it uses some of the same techniques that a documentary would, in that we’ve got clips that we play, interview snippets specifically, interspersed between a broader kind of quote unquote narration. 

[00:04:35] Hendrik Baird: But it’s also interview style because we have interviews. We’ve interviewed quite a lot of very interesting people. 

[00:04:40] Ethan Baird: Yeah, but if I was to tell somebody that this is an interview podcast, in their mind, it’s an hour of.

[00:04:45] Hendrik Baird: Hi, how are you? I’m so and so. Welcome and tell us a little bit about yourself and all of that sort of nonsense. I must say, I’m a little bit fed up, and I’m sure this is going to be controversial.

I’m fed up with all these interviews, because it takes so long to get to the point. I’ve got to listen to their whole backstory, and like, who are you anyway? You know, if you were some famous actor, maybe I’d listen to the whole thing, because I might find you interesting. But you’re just somebody, somebody.

I’m not sure that I want to sit through a whole hour’s worth of listening to you babbling on about, you know, How great your life has been and all your challenges. I don’t know. What do you think? 

[00:05:19] Ethan Baird: So I think this comes down to interview technique and the concept of the show. I think too many people, including myself in the past, think a good interview is, okay, tell me a bit about yourself. What do you do? Tell me your life story. Whereas in my experience, all the most interesting interviews are ones that either have a theme. So today we’re going to talk about your first crush. And that’s the interview. Even if I’m talking to Tom Cruise, I’m not going to ask him his life story. 

[00:05:50] Hendrik Baird: Because everybody knows that really.

[00:05:51] Ethan Baird: Exactly. I’m not actually adding anything new. I’m not creating anything new. So I think where interviews are interesting is when you have a real clear theme to your interview and you’re going to ask questions that nobody’s ever asked before or that nobody’s done in that style before, or if you’re just a genuinely good listener and interviewer slash conversationalist, then I’ve heard incredible interviews. Like Rick Rubin, for example, famous music producer, has a show and in his podcast, he has like the most in depth, high level discussions with these musicians that he’s worked with.

So it’s not just like any random person, someone whose album he just produced, and then they sit down and unpack everything and go into such interesting detail that the conversation by itself is just so interesting. But I don’t think most podcasters have developed that skill of being a great conversationalist, of being a great interviewer, or they haven’t niched down or narrowed down their podcast enough to make it an interesting interview.

So ultimately just comes across as one long, boring ad for somebody that you’re interviewing. 

[00:06:54] Hendrik Baird: Talking about an ad and niching and all these technical terms you’re talking about. Remember, I’ve written a book about this. It’s called Become a Podmaster: everything you need to know to master the art of podcasting.

Available on our website bear. media or on Takealot or on Amazon or wherever you buy books online. So, um, Steve Ramona, he does interview style podcasts and he delves into the personal stories of people. But I think his accent is more on their journeys of overcoming challenges and turning them into success stories.

So that’s a very specific kind of focus like you were saying. 

[00:07:28] Steve Ramona: Yeah. My name is Steve Ramona. I’m in Northern California. My podcast is Doing Business with a Servant’s Heart

[00:07:34] Ethan Baird: brilliant. So what exactly do you cover in your show? 

[00:07:37] Steve Ramona: Three things I mentioned are motivation, education, inspiration. Great stories, overcame obstacles, great comebacks from business people, and it could have been physical, mental, or something that happened to somebody else, uh, that affected their lives. And they were able to learn how to overcome them by serving. The other side of my show is learning to serve instead of sell. We’re all in business for products and services.

Our goal is to get to know somebody. Let’s serve them. Let’s bring them value. Let’s give it to them first and then ask for the sale later. 

[00:08:12] Ethan Baird: When you submit your podcast feed, you know, you have to figure out what kind of categories you’re tagged in. Like what did you kind of eventually figure out for yours?

[00:08:19] Steve Ramona: You know, I just did business because it could be business marketing. It could be business, uh, lead generation. It could be business tech. I kind of fall in different categories. So I’m really a little more general than most. But it’s, it’s really business. That’s who I want to help. And then of course, non business people may listen and go, well, I love this lady. She was awesome. She started her own business and look what she’s doing. So, but my real niche is probably business. If you want to say business strategy would be if you want to niche it out a little bit. 

[00:08:51] Ethan Baird: How is your podcast constructed? So what is the actual format of your show? 

[00:08:56] Steve Ramona: Yeah, it’s an interview. I usually do one person interviews. I’ve done two. They’ve worked out very well. Well, I may have two co-founders or two partners in a business in it. We just talk about them. I focus on, like I said, motivation, inspiration and education. I want to know their background. I have at least one story. And usually it’s a story of how they’ve overcome something.

Talk about any books they’ve written. If they’re an author, a nonprofit they’re part of, things they’re passionate about because they overcame this struggle and now they’re like, Hey, I’m focusing on these wounded warriors or, uh, cancer or whatever, whatever, maybe it’s their family or whatever. But again, to show the audience this, this hope, this, this motivation to do something like this.

[00:09:40] Ethan Baird: So another format that I don’t think a lot of people actually are doing is kind of the panel discussion format because it requires a bit more work and a lot more people than your typical show. The easiest way to imagine it is if you’ve ever been to a conference, you’ve probably seen one where there’s a moderator, some kind of host who then moderates a discussion between a group of people with various opinions ideally. It’s a format that’s honestly a little harder to do than an interview podcast or solo hosted ones. Purely because you have to get a whole bunch of people together. And then as the host, your job isn’t necessarily to have that much of an opinion, depending on how you want to do it. It’s more about facilitating a discussion.

[00:10:21] Hendrik Baird: So are you saying anything more than two people would become a panel discussion? 

[00:10:26] Ethan Baird: If you are running it like a panel discussion, you can have six people just having a conversation. Yeah, that’s it. That’s different.

[00:10:33] Hendrik Baird: That sounds like a party. 

[00:10:34] Ethan Baird: Yeah. Yeah. Um, you can have four podcasters having a chat. Which is not really a panel discussion in my mind. Panel discussion involves very carefully making sure that people have a chance to speak. This is the broad topic we’re talking about. Okay, you, what’s your opinion? You, what’s your opinion? Can we get some questions from the rest of the group? It’s a lot more structured than just a four person co hosted podcast.

[00:11:00] Hendrik Baird: So, what would the benefits be of having a panel discussion. How would that, how would that deepen the content or how would that make it more interesting to listen to? 

[00:11:10] Ethan Baird: I think the thing with the panel discussion that makes it interesting is the idea of having many diverse voices on a topic.

Instead of just two people discussing something, you could have like eight. Because you’re moderating it so you can make sure that everybody has a chance to speak. Eight different people all voicing their opinion and having their own expertise kind of shine through. So it creates a really dynamic show because you have a lot of different voices, a lot of different opinions, you get to get the kinds of insights that you wouldn’t necessarily normally have because people go so in depth on the topics. 

[00:11:43] Hendrik Baird: So you’re saying a host for a panel discussion needs a special skill and I think Kenny’s got that kind of skill because he has a way of drawing personal stories out of, um, his panel members that are experiences that they may not typically share.

And he gets it because he makes them feel safe and he creates a comfortable experience or a comfortable zone where they can then safely share these experiences. So yeah, let’s meet Kenny and let’s listen a little bit about how he runs things. 

[00:12:16] Kenny Archer: I’m Kenny Archer. We’ve got a podcast that we call Weekly Chat with Kenny. It’s been going for over three years now. It started during the first week of lockdown and it’s developed and grown since then. What happened was I got a couple of my clients together because none of us knew what to do during COVID and we got together on a Friday morning. And it was a joke as we are laughing about it now because we all said you’re on this thing called zoom because none of us ever used it. And now it’s what everybody uses. And it slowly developed and they started saying, Oh, can I bring a friend? Can I bring a friend? And eventually we had 20 to 30 people coming every Friday morning. And it became a very strong support base for business owners not knowing what to do. So there were a lot of emotions and a lot of quite a bit of life coaching got involved in that as well.

And then we started steering it back in the business direction. And then towards the end of lockdown, people started saying, well, we’re going back to the office and we can’t make the session. Can you perhaps record it for us? And we started recording and sending to different people all the time, myself and my marketing lady, Michelle, we said, we put our heads together and said, well, let’s just turn it into a podcast.

[00:13:35] Ethan Baird: So if somebody hasn’t heard the podcast before, could you describe what it sounds like? 

[00:13:39] Kenny Archer: We work on a theme per month. So for example, let’s say we were, we were looking at themes around sales. Um, so the whole month would be questions around sales. So a question would come up like, who’s your ideal client that you find sales are so easy for?

And then people will share those win-win situations where they’ve had good closures on sales, and they’ve managed to close it well. And each person shares their own experience with it. And in that process, the others learn from them too. So they’re not just getting one directional story. They’re getting stories from various different people.

And then they walk away with what resonates the most with them. I think that’s what the whole thing is. So everybody has the opportunity to answer that question. Once everybody’s gone, I’ll do a summary of what the final results are of everybody’s input. And then from there, each person then has a turn to actually share their one thing that they’re taking away from that session.

And that’s what’s powerful. And if you go and listen to the intros, Of all the different podcasts, we take one person’s takeaway, and that becomes the intro for that episode of the podcast. And then the following week, we’ll do a question that’s related to the previous week. However, if you listen to it on its own, it’s strong enough on its own.

[00:15:07] Ethan Baird: So Kenny is a coach that gets a huge amount of value and gives back to his coaching group by recording this podcast with them. But in terms of genres, again, business slash entrepreneurship, as I said, one of the most popular genres, especially the kinds of people we speak to. 

[00:15:20] Hendrik Baird: Next up, we’re going to get into a format that we don’t really see that often, and this is investigative journalism.

So this is a very specialized kind of podcast, run by a very specialized kind of person, an investigative journalist, and this one is called Cape of Cocaine. Now, this seems to be such an interesting story. It’s also a four part podcast, And it investigates, uh, the Bulgarian mafia’s presence in South Africa.

That sounds truly intriguing. 

[00:15:47] Ethan Baird: I don’t think this format is investigative journalism. I believe that the genre is investigative journalism. So the format of this is, in my mind, more around a documentary style podcast because it’s got narration, it’s got other kinds of content in it together to Put together this broader story.

I think then the genre of which would be investigative journalism, perhaps even true crime, depending on how you want to swing it, but this is also where things start to get blurry because the difference between a genre and a format with something so specialized like this, it might even be a bit of a moot point.

[00:16:21] Paige Muller: Hi everybody. I am Paige Muller and I am a podcast manager at the Founders Factory. I also do a lot of freelance podcasting work in and around South Africa and globally, just generally. 

[00:16:32] Ethan Baird: Can you talk a bit about some of the podcasts that either you’re currently working on or that you have worked on?

[00:16:37] Paige Muller: Great. So I’ll start off with one of my absolute favorite podcasts I’ve been involved in, and it was known as Cape of Cocaine. This podcast was a creative and investigative podcast done with the Times Live investigative team in South Africa, and was based on the investigations of the Bulgarian Mafia’s cocaine rings off of South Africa’s coasts.

I’ve also worked on one called Justice for Kopano, which was about a small girl who was hit by a car, as well as several others, including Sunday Times Politics Weekly, Eusebio Sontag’s Live, to today where I’m working on projects such as Founded with the Founder Factory and a whole bunch of other corporate podcasts, which unfortunately I’m not supposed to be chatting about too much, but that’s just a brief idea of what I can do from investigative all the way through to your general corporate podcasting.

[00:17:27] Ethan Baird: Let’s talk about Cap of Cocaine. What was your role in it? And, you know, let’s kind of dive into the production process. 

[00:17:33] Paige Muller: So the reason I love the Cape of Cocaine so much was because it actually took us far longer than it ever should have. It was just a four piece series based on the work of an investigative journalist, a very good investigative journalist, in my opinion, AAaron Hyman, based in Cape Town.

And he had been following the Bulgarian mafia in South Africa for a very long time, for a couple of years. And every once in a while, he’d write these groundbreaking stories on it. And they just, it wasn’t getting traction. It wasn’t getting any attention, mainly because people just don’t read anymore. So he came to me as an investigative journalist.

And at this moment, I was working in the newsroom as their podcast producer. So I was doing all of the talk shows. All of their corporate content, um, and all of that kind of thing. And he said, listen, I’ve been following the story, but I feel like more can be done with it. And from there we had to take, and you know, as it goes with print journalists, they have so much to say all of the time. And when you’re working with an audio medium, what you really want to do is simplify the story. So that you’re not missing anything, uh, when you’re listening to that spoken word the first time. So we took all of his research, and he had photos and sound clips and all of the rest of it, and we took all of that research and started to siphon through it to find main characters and main story arcs that we could turn into a story.

And from there, between Aaron and I, we began scripting. So Aaron wrote, I simplified down again. Aaron wrote and I simplified down again. We gave it through to editors, and they simplified that even further and pulled out areas that they found of concern. From there, I recruited one of our fellow journalists to be our voiceover artist.

I selected elements where we could do certain elements of sound design and get Aaron to explain some of his journalism to really bring the audience in. And what you landed up getting at the end of all of that was an interactive experience where those who listen to the story could actually feel it.

They could live it. You close your eyes and you’re in the middle of the police raid on a boat where, you know, the police are pulling cocaine out of the waves. You can feel it. Because we’ve got the sound effects from that. He also had little clips of videos which we eventually started to incorporate into the article pages to give you more of an interactive multimedia feel.

And it really just brought the journalism, the incredible journalism that Aaron was already doing into a new medium and brought it a little bit more to life to tell the story in a way that because, you know, mafias by their very nature are very complex, the links are never ending, it narrowed it down to a character that could be followed, someone relatable to the ear, you know, someone that everyone can kind of understand, okay, why are they here? What’s going on? 

Let’s say that we didn’t encounter a couple of issues along the way of that project we did. In fact, we had a lot of mafiosos calling us when they’d heard when we started promoting the project saying that, listen, we’ve heard episode one, am I going to be in episode two? And that’s when investigative podcasts become a bit more interesting when you start releasing and these characters realize they’re being portrayed in this medium. That’s when it becomes a bit more interesting. 

[00:20:50] Hendrik Baird: I think one of the big things that you need to do when you produce something like this is you’ve got to do extensive research. It’s not just Getting a guest, sitting down and having a discussion. This is, this is real digging deep and finding the facts and the stories and really making it engaging in that way.

[00:21:08] Ethan Baird: Yeah. This is one of those kinds of podcasts that requires a massive amount of production and not just technical production, although the technical requirements with these podcasts are immense. You’ve got so many moving parts, so many voices. Music, all these different things that you have to put together., But the other production is like the content production for this is a huge amount of work, because what you’re doing is you create, its new content, you’re exposing something, you’re a journalist, you’re investigating, you’re literally going out and being an investigator, compiling all this information together. And then putting something completely new out to the world or exposing something to the whole world. 

So there’s also a whole bunch of stuff around ethics, around clearance, about getting permission for people to actually let you use the content. So yeah, this is something you would not do lightly, but to be honest, you are most likely already a journalist if you’re considering doing something like this.

[00:22:02] Hendrik Baird: The other thing I find interesting is, when you say podcast, people think it’s going to be weekly for the rest of your life until you die. You know, it becomes a full time occupation. Before you know it, it’s taken over your whole life. And this is just a four part series. And like us, we’re doing a six part series here.

We, we’re doing little Netflix specials, if you want. Uh, you know, a little series and it’s, it’s done and it’s dusted and we take a break and we come back in a year’s time and do another six episodes. So I think people also fall into that trap of like, I start a podcast, every Friday it’s got to go out. Um, and they don’t think in terms of seasons or shorter kind of bursts of, of episodes.

[00:22:40] Ethan Baird: One thing that I’ve never really understood is that if you look online, you can see a whole lot of DJ mixes, like hour long mixes of music being described as a podcast. And there’s like really big producers who put out a weekly quote unquote podcast that is just the music mix. So I thought, you know, we really have to reach out to somebody who actually does this and find out Why do they call it a podcast?

Is it even technically a podcast? But if you think about it, it’s audio on demand and that’s ultimately what podcasting is. 

[00:23:11] Hendrik Baird: It’s such a broad term, isn’t it? It’s like movies on demand. Audio on demand is basically a podcast as long as it comes through an RSS feed. That’s a podcast. So, and I think this is what we were saying earlier. People want to put podcasting into an interview style. That’s what I’m doing, is an interview, especially in South Africa. I’m not sure about the rest of the world. What was the inspiration for this music podcast? Is it just to, to share music or is it from a personal thing? Is he trying to promote certain artists?

[00:23:41] Ethan Baird: Yeah, he’s building a brand. That’s a big thing. He’s a DJ. He knows other DJs. He’s putting together a bit of a community around his music. It’s got a website and everything. And yeah, we can, we can delve into Lulama’s podcast. 

[00:23:54] Lulama: My name is Lulama. I go by the alias LJ, of which I host a podcast called Deep Digger Installments, which is a house music type of podcast which is catered in three hours. I’m in the first hour. The second hour is a recited mix by DJ Colin all the way from New York city. Uh, the third hour is by any guest mix from any corner of house music. I decided to call it a podcast only because I do not have access to airplay and also because I found it easier because podcasts can be pre recorded.

So I found that it would be easier for me to get it out there at a planned approach and also at a scheduled approach. 

[00:24:47] Hendrik Baird: So that’s really interesting. Uh, and it’s again, not a format that you see very often in the genre, perhaps music, because I think when we spoke previously about, I want to play some music on my, uh, my podcast, you’ve got to get licensing rights for that. You can’t just play anything. 

[00:25:02] Ethan Baird: That’s the other big thing. There are some platforms where a lot of these like music mixes do go, where they have built in licensing for it. And you can submit the list of songs, but yeah, don’t think that just because this guy has it. DJ Mix is a podcast where you can put an Ed Sheeran song in your show. It’s not going to work that way. 

[00:25:21] Hendrik Baird: Now, Ethan, news and, and, and actuality and current affairs is, is there space for that kind of genre in podcasting or, you know, we keep on saying your content has to be evergreen and in five years time, people must still be able to, uh, to understand it when they listen to it.

But when you do current affairs, it’s obviously news of the day and You know, in a week’s time, that’s all old news. So where does that fit into our greater scheme of things? 

[00:25:48] Ethan Baird: It all comes down to the goal of the show. If you are, like us, putting together a podcast that you want to be evergreen, we need this to be evergreen because we would like prospective mentorship clients and prospective production clients to be able to listen to this and get a good understanding of podcasting, right?

So we want the content to be reasonably evergreen, but that’s not true for every show. By no means. Remember, podcasting is just radio on demand. Genuinely, that’s what it is. And radio is a medium that is literally dictated by the minute. Things are old news in an hour. So there’s definitely a space for it.

And I think there’s a lot of companies and news outlets, a lot of Newspapers and a lot of those kinds of companies who started creating these podcasts as a way to disseminate their news content in another format that people can listen to in the car, you know, on the way to work. So yeah, there’s definitely a space for it.

Not all podcasts have to be evergreen. It really just depends on what you want to do with it. 

[00:26:45] Hendrik Baird: And I think Aphiwe also has a really interesting approach to the format. 

[00:26:48] Aphiwe Mame: Hi, I am Aphiwe Mame. I am the producer and host for Digify Africa Unplugged Conversations. The platform is really about looking at the issues that are in the digital economy on the continent.

Also, not only the issues, but also the opportunities that are there for young people and different communities. We talk about issues that look at, you know, access. We talk about infrastructure on the continent and also just the emerging opportunities That young people can find in terms of their AIs, in terms of new technologies that are coming up in the digital economy space. 

[00:27:23] Ethan Baird: In terms of actual production of your podcast, what is your genre and then how is the production process for it?

[00:27:29] Aphiwe Mame: It’s a long form. We tend to borrow a lot from a more current affairs style. We obviously try to make it as casual as possible. I’ve always loved, um, hard to talk. Um, I’ve always been a current affairs person, but, uh, because My personality is not entirely current affairs, I’m able to bring in a little bit of that color to it that would not necessarily live on tradition.

Right. And so I think that long form becomes a little bit more playful, you know, a little bit of jokes here and there just to make it more relatable and to make it a little bit more casual. But yeah, so it’s long form. After we record, um, obviously there’s the editing process and taking out some parts of the conversation.

We have an intro. Sometimes I incorporate some soundbites in there. Um, so I’ll have, let’s say for instance, there was one episode where actually it was a compilation of soundbites. I just turned it into almost like a radio documentary format where there would be narratives in between the soundbites.

And so we try to use different styles to make the content more engaging. Our post production process is different for each and every, depending on what kind of field we want, we’re trying to achieve for that specific episode, but for the most part, it’s quite straightforward. It’s obviously sticking.

We try by all means to stick to the 30 minute at 20 minute conversation timeframe. And in between that, if there’s need, if I feel the need to bring in a little bit of soundbites and packages in there, I’ll gooi them in there. 

[00:29:00] Hendrik Baird: Now we’re going to talk about a format that really is close to my heart. And something that I’m very passionate about.

So I come from the theater. I was, um, trained as an actor and I worked in community arts for many, many years. I’ve been in movies and, uh, television shows and, uh, radio dramas and all those sorts of things. And, um, audio drama is, for me, One of the more interesting genres of a podcast, have I got that right?

[00:29:27] Ethan Baird: No, it is a format. 

[00:29:29] Hendrik Baird: Is a format. So what genre would it be? It would be fiction because usually it’s fiction or it’s nonfiction or it’s narrative. 

[00:29:37] Ethan Baird: Or it’s comedy or comedy. 

[00:29:39] Hendrik Baird: Or tragedy or true life, you know, based on real events. But I think it boils down to, and this is true for any podcast, is that you need to tell a story. When you do audio drama, obviously, it’s a very specific story. It’s like a radio play or like a movie. I like to think of audio dramas in the podcast field as mind movies, because it’s theater of the mind. You just hear the sounds, which are the actors performing or the sound effects or the music, and you have to build all those pictures in your own mind.

And Vijay is particularly passionate about that, as am I. So, um, he talks about the power of storytelling.

[00:30:19] Vije Vijendranath: I think there are way too many podcasts out there doing the basic minimum. They’re just talking, they’re having a conversation, which is fine. But then that’s like every other podcast. like every other person, whether it’s a business category, whether it’s an art category, etc. It doesn’t matter. 

Unless you’re very famous and have a major marketing budget behind you, like the kind of money Barbie spent on their movies, like if you’ve got that kind of budget, you can do standard podcasts and then rely on the numbers to, to get you through. But podcasts can be really powerful because one of the things I love is in the 1930s. Have you heard of mystery theater, right?

People didn’t have television. Television wasn’t really mainstream then. So if you wanted to have a story, you had to listen on the radio and there would be actors and there would be live musicians and sound effect artists putting things together doing a story. And one of the stories was things like Welcome to Nightmare in. Here Comes Mrs. Elms. You are late. Mrs. Elms. Your booking was only three hours ago. What are you doing so late? My husband. My husband, he, I found him outside. He was killed. I had to go to the police. Oh my God. Are you okay? That’s the kind of stuff that you can do with multiple actors, sound effects and music.

And I created some with my favorite genre, which is science fiction, a detective noir mix of stories where I played an Indian detective in the year 2052, or between that and 2100, and he is a cybernetic Indian detective trying to solve an ungodly murder of a robot killing another human. And I have to find out what the motives were. Were they alive? Were they conscious? Did they make the choice to kill another human? And I would talk about that while he’s investigating and uncovering conspiracies of why it happened. 

That’s the power of podcasting. You can do stories like this and you can really expand it instead of simply talking into a camera or just having a conversation, which is fine, but then that’s 99 percent of podcasts.

But if you bring in actors, sound effects, people, themes and music, of course, doesn’t have to be live. You can, you can pre record it. You can actually create something that people can enjoy. Because for me, part of serendipity is a joyous experience. Is it a joyful experience to listen to this? And if it’s joyful and if it’s humorous, in my opinion, that is the highest form of retention.

For people to actually absorb what you’re saying .To get people’s attention to get them to actually absorb what you’re saying is having those two elements in place. So I use that to get people to understand what I’m saying and that’s why storytelling podcasting is powerful. There is a place for it. I think there are so many voice actors out there who can play roles and it could be a lot of fun. I’m doing it right now and it’s had great feedback.

[00:33:19] Hendrik Baird: And of course, uh, here at Baird Media, we are, as we are recording this, busy producing South Africa’s very first full length, feature length, audio drama. It’s a 90 minute audio drama based on real events that happened in 1971. The play is called Stripped, and it deals with the story of a friend of mine, or friend of ours, really, Thomas Budge, who in 1971, as a Jehovah’s Witness, was a conscientious objector, who refused to be conscripted in the apartheid military and uh, they put him in jail. So our story involves 17 actors, sound design, which Ethan is doing, loads of sound effects, and music. It’s going to be quite spectacular. So keep your ear out for that. Go to our website Baird.Media and you’ll find it there.

There’s also storytelling in business and again, VJ is at the forefront of that. His advice for business podcasters is to move away from conventional corporate presentations and rather get into the storytelling and Ethan, we are also changing our company logo. We used to call ourselves the podcast people, but we’re moving away from that.

And uh, the new, what do we call it? What do I, what do you call that? The slogan. Okay. Slogan. Skip the ads. Tell the story. So let’s skip the ads for my book, Become a Podmaster and get straight into the story from Vijay. 

So how can a business podcaster, somebody who runs a business and is doing a podcast to get content and to get sort of authority and to stand out from the crowd.

How does that sort of person use what we’re talking about, this kind of storytelling theater kind of podcasting, to perhaps illustrate points of, or, you know, show aspects of their business, or I don’t know, integrate storytelling into their podcast structure. So there’s not just another boring presentation of here’s my business, but it’s engaging.

[00:35:14] Vije Vijendranath: That is so essential. The problem is a lot of companies who are using Podcasting or social media as a marketing tool are just taking their presentations, their corporate language and just putting it online. We don’t want to see your corporate boring ass presentation. Your presentations are there, even your employees and your investors and your stakeholders find it boring and they are part of your business.

So imagine an external customer. It’s even worse. If you’re going to tell a story, it doesn’t have to be fiction, of course. Fictitious stories are beautiful. But if you’re running an ad, an ad is a fiction because you have a hypothetical actor doing a hypothetical action, showing them they have a hypothetical problem and your product solves that problem.

So instead of saying we are the features and we are number one, don’t. Say, show it through an action of what your product does. Through audio that says, you know what, these guys can solve my problem too, you know, let me connect with that character, use a real character that would, that would have a problem that you’re trying to solve.

So storytelling again is very important. What can they do? Number one, no presentations, no boring bullet points. Don’t just read out your list of features and functions and why you are number one at what you do. Play the character, tell us why it’s great. through action. For example, what’s a good one? I think Nike had some good ads, even though it was visual, but I can picture it as an audio form where they weren’t just showing you that they were using the latest and greatest sole technology where the rubber gives you the smoothest running speed or whatever.

No, they didn’t do any of that. They didn’t say it is structured in such a way that you can run 50, 000 miles. They weren’t even saying that. All they said was, We gave these shoes to that guy and he won that marathon. You know, they showed the picture of a Kenyan super strength runner who used to run barefoot, but for some reason, these shoes are so good, he wore it and he broke the record.

In fact, it was so good, it was illegal. They had to disqualify him because the shoes were that good. That is the story. That gets people to say, I want those shoes. I don’t care if it’s illegal. I want those shoes. That’s the whole point. And you can do it that way. And that’s why it’s great. 

[00:37:26] Hendrik Baird: Right.

That brings us to the end of this. Let’s do a quick wrap up, Ethan. Um, interviews, very popular. 

[00:37:32] Ethan Baird: Yeah. 

[00:37:32] Hendrik Baird: Are they overcrowded? Are there too many of them? 

[00:37:35] Ethan Baird: Yeah, probably. Or at the very least, if you want to do an interview podcast, really take some time to think about what’s going to make your interview podcast stand out.

There’s ways to do it. No one’s saying don’t make an interview podcast, but don’t just interview people and ask them about their lives. We’ve done that. 

[00:37:53] Hendrik Baird: Yeah. And of course you’ve got to play to your strengths. You know, what are you really good at? If you are really good at facilitating a group discussion, then panel discussions might be the thing for you.

Or if you’re really good at telling a, uh, ripping yarn. You might want to do an audio drama. 

[00:38:07] Ethan Baird: Ultimately, I think the point here is that there’s a lot more to podcasting than a lot of people think. It’s not just, I’m going to record into a microphone by myself, or I’m going to do an interview, or I’m going to talk nonsense with my friend.

Those are all completely valid. It’s just a medium. And it’s ultimately a canvas for your art. So, What is it that you want to do? What excites you the most? Do that. 

[00:38:30] Hendrik Baird: And explore, try different things, uh, test things and see what works. And then ultimately it’s about having fun. If you’re sitting here and it’s boring as hell, then you’re not doing it the right way.

Find another way of doing it. That brings us to the end of this episode about formats and genres. If you want to find out more, please go to our website, Baird.Media. Or you can get the book, Become a Podmaster: Everything You Need to Know to Master the Art of Podcasting, available on our website, Takealot. com, on Amazon. com, on Barnes & Noble, uh, you name it, if there’s an online bookshop, it’s there.

[00:00:00] Ethan Baird: Hendrik, father, son, what’s your favorite month? 

[00:00:04] Hendrik Baird: July. 

[00:00:04] Ethan Baird: Why July? 

[00:00:06] Hendrik Baird: No, I’m telling you the truth.

Welcome to this episode on, um, marketing and finding an audience for your podcast and using a podcast as marketing. 

[00:00:27] Ethan Baird: Yeah. So when we speak to our podmaster program clients, this is always one of the big things that comes up. How do you build a podcast audience? And it is an incredibly important and super fair question because you see some shows out there with literally hundreds of thousands of listeners and you wonder , yourself, how do you get there?

[00:00:47] Hendrik Baird: Yeah. I mean, podcasting has become such a powerful medium and we share stories, ideas, expertise, and, um, how do we reach the audiences globally? And when I speak of an audience, I speak of a number of individual listeners, very specific people, just like you are a very specific person listening to this, you’re not many people, you’re just one, and a podcast really has an audience of one of many ones, hopefully, who all add up to those hundreds of thousands in the end.

But I think podcasting is also changing the way that we consume content. The way that we connect with our audience, it’s an interesting development in the broadcasting field, or we call it narrow casting, in fact, because it is such a narrow audience that we reach. And we were speaking in a previous episode as well, it’s not just about the numbers. It is about engagement. It is about community. It is about feedback.

[00:01:43] Ethan Baird: But ultimately people are going to want to know how do I get those numbers up? Because one follows the other, right? 

[00:01:48] Hendrik Baird: Sure. And social media obviously is a big component of this. And how do you use social media and the communities that you already have on those platforms? And, um, how do you repurpose your content also to disseminate the information that you created on your podcast in other ways, so that you can get to people where they are and hopefully draw them back to listen to your podcast?

[00:02:12] Ethan Baird: And that’s also an interesting point about what is your audience even in the first place?

Is it just the people who listen to the physical feed of your podcast? Is it the people who read the blogs? Engage with you on social media? How do you quantify all of that together? You know, what is actually the, the total audience of your brand? I think really is the broader term. 

[00:02:30] Hendrik Baird: Yeah. So I think you need to think of your podcast in terms of a multimedia production, because if you do a video podcast, it’s also an audio podcast; it’s also an article, it’s also a picture; it’s also, uh, so many things that could be. You must really think out of the box. I think this medium is really challenging us. And unfortunately, too many people are too narrow in their thinking when it comes to podcasting. They think I’m doing a podcast, that means I’m going to interview somebody. I’m going to produce an episode. It’s done. Where’s the next one? And they forget about all the other things they can do with it to reach that wide audience we’re talking about. We talk social media and we know there are lots of different social media platforms. We know the big ones. There are many others.

 If you look at my book, Become a Podmaster: Everything You Need to Know to Master the Art of Podcasting, which is available on our website, and everywhere online where you buy books,: there’s a list, two pages of lists and lists and lists of social media platforms. Most of them you’ve never heard of before, but they still exist.

And, uh, speaking to Walter, we discussed the importance of understanding why someone is on a specific platform. Why is somebody on TikTok and not on Facebook? Why is somebody on LinkedIn and not on, um, Telegram and How them being on a specific platform influences their behavior and their engagement. 

[00:03:49] Walter Gainer II: Hi, my name is Walter Gainer II.

I’m a digital marketing podcaster. I’m heading to the digital marketing side of podcasts and audience growth. There’s a lot of similarities with each of the platforms, with the way people use each of them is different, right? Like, Instagram, for example, or actually, we’ll use a Facebook 1 because that’s a really good example.

People don’t talk about Facebook as much anymore, but it’s still a really great platform to use to grow your audience on Facebook, you know, younger generation. A lot of them, like, I’ve actually had people ask me, like. Wait, what’s Facebook like they might know what it is, but they don’t have an account.

And I was like, crazy to me because growing up for me, everyone had a Facebook account. And what’s interesting about, like, everyone having a Facebook account versus like a tick tock account. So a lot more people have tick tock on Facebook. People will post they’ll talk with their friends on tick tock.

They don’t really post as much, but it’ll be in the comments. They’ll look for new shows. So the behavior is different. Like on Facebook, people are naturally there to share their thoughts on things similar to Twitter, but on Tik TOK, they’re just there to hear other people’s thoughts to watch. So it’s like really understanding why someone’s on that platform to begin with.

[00:05:00] Ethan Baird: A major point is to really make sure that you have the right social media platform for the right audience. It’s no point putting yourself on every single social media platform in the world when you know that your audience is mainly on TikTok. Now you’re spending all this time and all this effort producing all this content for all these platforms when you know, I could just publish the podcast, put something up on TikTok and I’ll get the same results.

So you’ve got to really make sure that you know who your audience is and figure out those demographics and then pick the right platforms for that audience. 

[00:05:31] Hendrik Baird: For sure. Look, uh, for us, we are looking for people who are interested in business and the one big platform for that is LinkedIn. So that’s where most of our efforts go.

We are also on Facebook and on Instagram because you kind of have to be there, but it’s not as important for us specifically as LinkedIn is. That’s where most of our attention is focused because we’re looking for business people, specifically coaches, to come and do our Podmaster startup program if they are interested in starting up a podcast.

So for us, TikTok is never going to work. It’s not something we’re even considering at this point. And then you also have to consider how people use these platforms. On LinkedIn, I know there’s a lot of people looking for work, for instance, and that’s not the kind of people we want to target. We’re looking for existing entrepreneurs and what are their behaviors and how do they interact with that platform?

And I think that, uh, Walter contrasted Facebook and TikTok quite well, highlighting how people use it quite differently. 

[00:06:30] Walter Gainer II: It’s funny. It shouldn’t be as challenging as it is sometimes, but it really just goes down to understanding what your show is, why your show exists and who your show is really meant for, um, sometimes.

People kind of, um, assume that everyone’s going to love this podcast or this show. And when in reality, it’s like, it’s a certain type of person, certain type of individual who’s going to go and look for that show. So once you understand what your show is, you can understand, okay, so this is my show, what exactly am I looking for on social media?

Am I looking to kind of. Entertain the masses or for this specific group of people. And then once you understand that, once you understand who that person is, it’s going to listen to your show. Then you also have to understand the different social platforms and which features are going to help you to reach that audience.

So each platform has their own special features and tools that make it unique. And it’s really understanding, um, Um, What you could use to leverage your show, what you can use to help you reach that audience. So, like, with Facebook groups, you could create a whole group around the identity of your podcast and kind of use that to meet people in the middle for say, um, Twitter launched their version that was.

Communities linked in have groups. Um, tick tock doesn’t really have a group function, but they have other features that help you to reach your audience. So you really understand 3 things. What your show is; that identity, that premise, who your audiences are and then also which features are available on these platforms and which ones you really, really.

Um, feel comfortable using it’s like those 3, that 3 kind of trifecta. They’re going to help you to identify which, um, platforms are the best. Um, as an example for a lot of B2B shows, they, um, understand that their shows exist to help people in their business, whether it’s, um, Sales, technology, healthcare, it’s all around these like business professionals.

So they typically want to leverage LinkedIn because LinkedIn is where a lot of their ideal audiences, um, quick secret hack, you know, people are people. So everyone is on every platform, but LinkedIn, if you go there, people already are kind of expecting that type of content. So you’re kind of meeting people.

Where they are and what they’re looking for. 

[00:09:05] Hendrik Baird: So some of these social media platforms are also very sticky. I know my friend Tom, he’s big into TikTok and hours will fly by when he just scrolls from one thing to the next. He goes like where did the time go? I spend three hours wasting my precious time here on uh, this platform and TikTok is very sticky. I think one of the things I read somewhere was that If people are on TikTok, they won’t click a link to go out of TikTok to your thing. They’re going to stay on TikTok. 

[00:09:34] Ethan Baird: And in fact, the platforms don’t want you to make people leave either. 

[00:09:38] Hendrik Baird: The same with LinkedIn. You know, it doesn’t want you to go out of there. 

[00:09:41] Ethan Baird: And in fact, even when we send links on DM to people, it’ll be like, are you sure you want to click this link?

Please make sure it’s a trusted source. Like they’re doing kind of everything in their power to really make you locked into that one platform and you will not leave. 

[00:09:55] Hendrik Baird: And Walter has some strategies for engaging people on these sticky platforms. 

[00:09:59] Walter Gainer II: You can’t simply be like do this and everyone’s going to go. So that, uh, part we said about convincing is really interesting.

Cause that’s like the question. How do we get people to go from Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook over to my podcast to listen? And, um, it’s different for every show, but there’s kind of three different things I would kind of suggest. One is to kind of let go of the need for people to go listen, because part of understanding your audience is understanding that not everybody is your audience.

And what I mean by that is like, uh, your content is content. You could create it and deliver it in so many different ways. A podcast is just one of those ways. And not everybody is a podcast listener. They may become one, but as of today, if they’re on, uh, Um, TikTok watching a clip from your podcast episode, they’re probably on TikTok because they want to be on TikTok.

So ask them to go to listen to your podcast as a whole, completely different, um, activity for them. So, uh, to convince them that’s going to take a lot of work, it’s going to take some time because someone who’s going to TikTok, they’re there for a particular reason. When I go there, I’m there to laugh.

Um, occasionally I’m there to learn as well. I’ve gotten a lot of like house tips, um, from how to, um, fix things. Not all of them work right away. They’re not all quick. They don’t take 10 minutes. They take 10 hours sometimes, but I go there for a particular purpose, not always to find a podcast that I want to listen to. Um, so one thing is kind of letting go of trying to get everyone to listen. Another thing you could do is what I mentioned earlier with Lincoln bios and basically what that is like in the URL you have in your profile. You have a link that goes directly to your podcast and. That’s part of making it easier for people who choose to go listen , but all you have to do is get a LinkedIn bio link and people will go there.

Now LinkedIn bio is something that it still works. It’s still good to do, but it’s not as effective as it once was because everyone says it and it’s easy to tune that out, especially if I don’t really want to go anywhere. I just want to be where I am in the comments, blah, blah, blah, blah. Um, but this kind of newer strategy is to ask people to not go anywhere, but just literally to engage, you know, comment, share, and story, and you can have people comment a specific word, and when they do that, It’s in your job to give them everything they need to go listen to your show, whether that’s DMing them and sending them a link.

That’s a lot easier, less clicks than clicking to your profile, clicking to the LinkedIn bio, and from there trying to figure out, okay, where do I go from all this? And now you give them exactly what they want, what they came for, making it super, super easy for them. So those

three kinds of things. One is kind of letting go of trying to get everyone to move over to is making it easier for people to get to your profile if they choose to. And then the third one is like taking a whole step further by giving it to them. So it’s almost like a customer service act in a way, kind of like if I’m engaging with a platform that’s about marketing. Personally, I don’t need as much information on things like, uh, social media marketing. I know that. So I might engage with your post, but I don’t really need to listen to a whole podcast about social media marketing. I do this all the time and already have my resources to learn more than I trust and I’m loyal to. But let’s say you do an episode on paid social ads. And that’s something I don’t do as often. So I might want to learn a little bit more, and understand the theories behind it. Um, but then again, I don’t really want to go searching for that. I don’t want to click the link and start listing and maybe I’m too busy. But if you send it to my inbox, I’m more than happy to check it out when it’s convenient to me, so, um, just off the top of my head, those kind of some 3 ways you can kind of get around that and it’s kind of accepting having some clear measurable goals and a specific strategy on how to not convince people, but just provide value to the right potential listener.

[00:14:18] Hendrik Baird: One point I want to take away from this is not everybody who was on a social media platform that might engage with you will necessarily listen to your podcast and you’ve got to adjust your expectations accordingly. Maybe you need to give them the content in another way so that they can still get the value out of it on the social media platform, knowing that they’ll never listen to you. 

[00:14:40] Ethan Baird: There’s actually a couple podcasts that I quote unquote follow purely because I see their clips pop up on my Instagram reels. And then I’ll watch them pretty religiously when they pop up, but I’ve not subscribed to their platforms. I’ve never listened to their actual podcast. I haven’t even looked at their main Instagram page, but their content does come up and I am engaged with it. So it is a really interesting point. You know, you can bring a horse to water. You can’t make them drink. You can’t force somebody to go listen to your podcast. So yeah, there is something to be said about giving people some options at least to experience your content.

[00:15:13] Hendrik Baird: Steve Ramona also uses social media platforms but he also leverages his email lists. 

[00:15:20] Steve Ramona: Yeah, my name is Steve Ramona. I’m in Northern California. My podcast is Doing Business with a Servant’s Heart. Through the Pantheon, there’s a couple things that I learned. One was when I started, of course, I didn’t have a link. I, you know, when I started in October, I was just recording.

I hadn’t launched my podcast. I wouldn’t launch until January. Because I just wasn’t ready. I want to get shows in, figure this thing out. So what I did between October and January, and this is the greatest tip I’ve ever learned, is I built a form that people could be on a waiting list to subscribe to my podcast.

Well, guess what? When my podcast started, I emailed 250 people. I have 250 downloads in one week because they’re like, yeah, I’m ready. Click, click, click, click, click, click. Cause I built this email list of potential people that want to subscribe to my podcast. That’s one way of market. Pantheon is another way. We have people in Pantheon, people we work with that help market it with email lists, social looping, which I won’t get into, but in a different way, that’s why my podcast grew so high is because Pantheon helped me market it. So you need some good company to market your company. As Josh Tapp, who’s the owner of Pantheon says, if you want to grow your podcast, you’ve got to spend money on it, whether it’s YouTube or whatever. So it’s important that if you’re going to want to make money with this, you have to spend money.

[00:16:39] Hendrik Baird: Ethan, I think when you start a podcast, it’s really important to understand who your target listener is. That one listener who you can make many listeners who are kind of the same, who ends up being your target audience. And what are their characteristics? That’s something I think that’s truly important.

And you’ve also got to look at your social media platforms and see what tools they have and what features they have, and then use those ones that, um, align with your podcast goal and your audience preferences. 

[00:17:07] Ethan Baird: I think this also speaks to just the broader point of a lot of this stuff is marketing fundamentals.

People want to ask us, how do you get your podcast to have a lot of listeners? And the unfortunate answer or the fortunate answer is how do you market your business? How do you market anything else? You put stuff out there, you test, you get metrics. And you adjust. So same thing with your audience. You need to find out and learn about this audience of yours.

This one listener, what do they do? What ways do they want you to promote the podcast to them? What platforms are they on? All of these fundamentals that you would already be doing if you’re doing a podcast for your business, you should do for the podcast as well. 

And I think Walter’s example of creating Facebook groups or Twitter communities, that’s really an important point we spoke about in one of the other episodes is, you’ve got to create a community here.

And once you have a community, you need to engage with them and they must engage with you so that it becomes more than just listening numbers. It becomes a two way conversation. And so it seems email lists are quite important hey? I read somewhere that, you know, emails are slowly dying, but then you also read like, but people are still opening the emails and still I use my email every day.

So I don’t always necessarily open the things I’ve subscribed to, most often unsubscribe, but there still is value in using an email list, especially when you launch a podcast and you want to get initial traction and downloads. For instance, we are launching a podcast, which is an audio drama, which will be launching in September, October of 2024.

And, uh, as part of our launch, we are sponsoring an event and we are getting their email list, which means we can email five, six thousand people, and let them know where to listen to our drama and, uh, that will certainly help us with the numbers. 

Every podcaster ultimately then figures out their own approach for growing their audience.

And, uh, I think Steve has a really interesting one where he has a very consistent recording schedule. He records a lot and he really makes sure that the people in his network and the people that he has recorded with share the post. It seems so obvious, but he really makes a fine point of making sure that people actually share it.

And that’s done wonders for him growing his audience. 

[00:19:19] Hendrik Baird: Then of course, you also have to take into consideration which social media platform you are on and how do you adapt your podcast contents to suit that audience, um, as part of the wider audience. It’s not just a case of, I do one thing and it’s going to go on everything.

You know, the audience on TikTok is vastly different to the one on Facebook. We always say, you know, it’s all these like me who’s on Facebook and TikTok and Telegram and WhatsApp, you know, and even WhatsApp. Um, it’s such an important tool, specifically in South Africa, it’s the most used sort of app for communication.

And now they’ve got those updates on the business thing. And, you know, you can use that for advertising, for speaking to the people that you are in contact with, and then people share that as well. But that content is different to the ones you would post on LinkedIn, for instance. 

[00:20:04] Ethan Baird: Yeah. So I think the main takeaway here is to figure out your platforms and figure out how people expect content to be given to them on those platforms.

[00:20:13] Hendrik Baird: And to pick up another point you made earlier is to leverage your guests and the people that you collaborate with and use those networks. We just think like, I’m here doing my little podcast. Nobody’s listening to it. But I’ve got 10 people I’ve already interviewed, and if I just look at their LinkedIn, they probably have 5, 000 people collectively between them.

How do I leverage those networks and get my content over there? So you’ve got to think a little bit broader. 

[00:20:37] Ethan Baird: Do you make it easy for them? 

I think that’s really important is to make it very shareable, make it very simple for them to do so. So it is not a huge amount of work for them either. Here’s the clip. Do you want to share it? 

[00:20:48] Hendrik Baird: And something we’ll talk about in much more detail in another episode is how to monetize your podcast. That’s one of the first questions you always get. How do I make money off podcasting? And Steve talks about consistently creating content. 

[00:21:00] Steve Ramona: Growing my audience was the key. That’s why I just started recording, Ethan. I just record, record. That’s why I have 142 since October. Most people don’t have a hundred in their lifetime and that’s okay. My goal was right. You know, my goal is, I want to get as many out there to grow my audience. So when I go to somebody, they can be a sponsor and I have a sponsor and what they were excited about was not only the fact that I had a hundred thousand views and 3, 700 downloads, was the fact with a sponsor, it’s evergreen that their podcasts that I’ve done, I’ve done 10 now, something go back to a year later and listen to this show and go eight, seven network, wow. And they click the link and maybe join or maybe inquire. So sponsors get an ongoing promotion all the time. It’s what I tell my people that are potential sponsors. This is the greatest thing. For minimal cost you can have yourself out there forever. You do a social media ad. Goes through the timeline, disappears. They’re great. Nothing against them, but this is so valuable in the sense of the cost and the ROI on that. And it might be 3 or 4 months till they do. But again, it’s going to sit there if that platform is around for 10 years, like, I don’t know, the Apple podcast has been, if I started the first day, well, I’d still have a show on there. Somebody goes back and listens. 10 years ago, if the company is still in business, man, we’re good to go. 

[00:22:30] Hendrik Baird: Yeah, being consistent is probably one of the most important things, isn’t it? Even if you’re doing seasons and you know, once a year, you’re putting out six episodes, do it once a year.

And people will get used to that. If you’re putting out an episode every Thursday, then don’t skip a Thursday. And I think one of the mistakes people make is they wait until the last minute to produce the episode and then before you know it, Thursday has come and gone and you haven’t put out a new episode.

You’ve also got to think about working in advance, having a bit of a buffer, banking six episodes. 

[00:22:59] Ethan Baird: There was a stage where I was editing for a certain company and on a Friday I’d receive the episode that was supposed to go out on a Monday. And that is the worst case scenario. The entire team is flailing because we had a whole bunch of content we had to put together the show notes to be written, there was marketing material to be generated. And ultimately, because that podcast was not properly planned, the execution was not as good as I wanted it to be. And the results just weren’t as good. Uh, we kept trying to get them to record two weeks in ahead and we never got to that point. But if they did, the quality of that show would have gone up by 10 times. 

[00:23:33] Hendrik Baird: I think you should at least have three months in advance in the bank. 

[00:23:38] Ethan Baird: Depending on the kind of show you want to do. 

[00:23:39] Hendrik Baird: Well, not true. If it’s current affairs it won’t work, but if it’s evergreen content, go for it. Sam Mitchell also uses social media quite a bit. Let’s find out how he does it. 

[00:23:49] Sam Mitchell: Hello, everyone. My name is Sam Mitchell and I run the podcast Autism Rocks and Rolls. We have all the social media, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok. I, we do it, our biggest stuff on Facebook, but I have a big Instagram post as well, but a big Facebook group called Sam Stories and other resources.

So we use that a lot too. And you can basically hear all the news, all the resources go there because it’s A, easier, and B, it’s grown so much I can’t change it now. I got 1.0k members. So it’s definitely not going anywhere. 

[00:24:25] Ethan Baird: What I really love is that he’s building his own community. He’s got his Facebook group where his people can join and he can start owning that.

It’s not vague at all. You know exactly where to go. If you want to be part of Sam’s community, you join that Facebook group. And I think all the social media marketing needs to work towards that direction of creating this community. 

[00:24:45] Hendrik Baird: The other point about Sam is that, and I think it’s a general point, you know, who was this one client we worked with and they wanted to start a podcast and after episode one, they wanted to be world famous.

It’s not gonna work like that. It’s gonna take a while. And, uh, Sam has this interesting story of, uh, how his podcast, um, unexpectedly grew. 

[00:25:06] Sam Mitchell: It kind of picked up very unexpectedly. I mean, the first few, I would say, 10 is when it started to dwindle, but then after 10, I would say it grew very unexpectedly. And the way I’ve grown the audience is literally never shut up about it.

So anytime I get a chance to do a vendor that’s free, you can bet your bottom, I’m going to do it. I mean, I’ve gotten to do a lot of wrestling commentating through local shows, and we always get to spread the word out there. So anytime we get a chance to spread, spread the word, whether that be through an event, other people’s events, networking events, podcasts like this, I’m all in and that’s the way it’s worked for me. And there are points I won’t lie, it’s very frustrating because you can only, because of that day, you can only talk to one person and that’s it. But then there are lots of days where you’re talking to millions of listeners. Or future listeners to say the least.

This is how I knew the podcast was going decent when I got this review. Back in, let’s see when this review was: 2022. I’ll read it to you and it’s from the Bustinator from Apple Podcast. It says I’m going to be honest I didn’t know a lot about autism before this podcast. Sam has done a great job of explaining and providing insight into this world from the eyes of someone who is on the spectrum. From what I understand, that explanation can be very hard for someone with autism, but Sam does a fantastic job of maintaining conversations and keeping the podcast interesting and fun to listen to. Very impressed, excited to see what comes from him in the future. Once I got that one, that just proves I know I’m doing my job correctly. 

[00:26:44] Ethan Baird: So now this is a difficult thing to quantify because it’s organic growth, right? It’s really hard to explain exactly how that happened or what caused that to happen. Or more importantly, it’s very difficult to recreate that for somebody else because the circumstances are so random or uncontrollable.

[00:27:01] Hendrik Baird: But it does prove the point that consistency and holding on and continuing to create and create and create can lead to some real success.

And also about engagement, isn’t it? About engaging your audience and chatting with them and being a person at the other end of it is there are people, real people who are podcasters and real people who are listeners and if you can get them into a community, what is the most valuable thing they can do for you? Talk about your podcast. Word of mouth is still the most effective way of marketing and it’s worth more than anything else. ,We 

definitely had to pick the brain of Nicole Engelbrecht when it comes to podcast growth and audience growth. Being in my mind, one of the most successful podcasters in South Africa, with one of the largest audiences, I think she has some really interesting insights on how she creates the post and how she markets her show. 

[00:27:54] Nicole Engelbrecht: Hi, I’m Nicole Engelbrecht. I am the creator and host of the True Crime South Africa podcast. Whenever I post a new episode, there’s a good amount of engagement. What’s really heartwarming to see is, and I think that is a reflection of how deep the community ties have been built around the podcast is, whenever I post something, a sort of like a success story that’s happened around the podcast, whether it may be an award or even something that I’ve done personally, maybe, you know, a book or whatever the case may be, that gets a lot of engagements, people are really excited.

Um, you know, there’s always tons of comments and likes and shares. And I think that that really does speak to the level of how engaged the audience is and how they really feel like they’re a part of the journey. 

[00:28:48] Hendrik Baird: Yeah, it really takes an investment to actively engage with your audience. It’s a time investment, hey? It’s one thing producing the show. It’s another thing going and sitting there and reading all the posts and commenting on them and answering them and answering DMs and all that sort of stuff. And you might even need a virtual assistant to help you with that. It can become overwhelming for the single podcaster.

Absolutely. If you think of just how difficult it is to manage your own email inbox sometimes, imagine having that with a thousand people constantly trying to speak to you. 

Yeah. And if somebody sends you an email and you only answer them two weeks later, that’s not really being consistent, is it? You’ve got to have a regular time set aside every day or every week where you attend to these things and where you, where you work on building your community, but in the same breath, you’ve also got to have boundaries because people will over share.

[00:29:41] Ethan Baird: It’s because you’re building a parasocial relationship. If you’re building a community and people start to view you as a trusted source or just that person that’s in their ear every single week for an hour on their podcast, they start to think that they know you. They start to think that they’re your friend. And I think that’s where those boundaries also really have to come into play where you have to carefully navigate the world of people having a relationship with you where you honestly have no relationship with them.

[00:30:09] Hendrik Baird: So let’s find out from Nicole how she engages with her audience. 

[00:30:13] Nicole Engelbrecht: Um, so I think social media has been probably the most important way to build a community around this podcast, which has happened. It’s actually been quite an incredible experience to see how the community has grown and how people have become deeply engaged with the podcast.

I personally selected three social media platforms to focus on, uh, which for me was Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. And the reason I did that was because I was and still am doing all my social media myself. And I think I sort of felt from the beginning that it was important for me to be engaged personally with listeners.

Um, and I found that to be quite helpful. Um, you know, I think that’s one of the reasons that I have such an engaged audience is because they do see me as a human being, um, although I was accused of being AI the other day, but that’s a story for another day. Um, so I really think that that’s been very helpful.

Um, but I would advise podcasters to pick their platforms. Firstly, start small and build out, don’t say I’m going to be on every single social media platform that exists because firstly, that’s not necessary and it’s also counterproductive. Choose your platforms that you focus on based on the niche that you’re, the sort of section of audience that you’re looking to focus on.

You’ll figure that out once you start on these platforms. Um, you know, but generally older people, so people maybe 35, 40 and upwards prefer Facebook. Um, you know, our younger generations prefer Instagram and then Twitter is often the mix between the two. 

[00:32:09] Hendrik Baird: Something we don’t really talk about much is the podcast launch.

[00:32:13] Ethan Baird: It’s not something we’ve honestly really done yet. 

[00:32:17] Hendrik Baird: But it is something we’re going to do with Stripped: An Audio Drama Podcast, which is South Africa’s first feature length audio drama podcast. Uh, we are planning a big launch for that. 

[00:32:28] Ethan Baird: Exactly. And what does a podcast launch even entail, you know, because we know what a product launch could look like, and we have some very strong ideas of how we want to launch it.

But yeah, we did speak to Diogen about his experiences with podcast launching and specifically, a course he took going into detail about how to launch a podcast. 

[00:32:46] Diogen Ntirandekura: My name is Diogen Ntirandekura. I am the host of, uh, the podcast called Consulting Lifestyle. So it was done by, uh, Pat Flynn. I don’t remember exactly the course, but it was about the name of the course, but it was really about launching your first podcast or launching a new, uh, a new podcast.

Uh, and it was very good because, uh, it gives you all the basics, whether it’s about the, uh, equipment, how to write properly or a podcast bio, having a bit of the, the question that you ask, like the ideal, uh, listener, the ideal guest in case you have a, you have a guest, uh, exactly listing resources where you could, uh, where and how you could find a guest.

Uh, making a choice of platform, choice of podcasting platform. And, uh, what does the podcasting platform do to you? The tools. I think it was Audacity and I don’t know what other tools that were explained. So, uh, it really gives you everything for you to launch your, uh, uh, your podcast. I have explored, I have not used much, but yes, my, uh, podcast platform also has a, now some kind of AI tool.

I think that it can be great for, um, show notes, can be great for, uh, someone that is, uh, less comfortable babbling, uh, behind the microphone for minutes, uh, they could get a tool to do it for them. They record their voice and, uh, they write the text and they get it done for them. That’s technology. I think we just have to, to, to evolve with that, but I think there will always be a space for, uh, everything that is natural in terms of voice, but otherwise in terms of editing all the time consuming tasks that can be, uh, where we can leverage AI, I think it’s great.

[00:34:34] Ethan Baird: I’d be very interested to see what the stats are on podcast launches and how much of an impact they make because we’ve spoken about podcasts being a long term thing, you know, you’ll get audience in a year, perhaps over time, but I also see the value of making a big splash to try to get a huge amount of people in when the show launches, so that you can start building that audience immediately. So I’d be really interested to see if anybody has stats on what a podcast launch can actually do and what a successful launch could look like. 

I have to tell you something embarrassing that happened during the course of recording the interviews for this podcast.

So peek behind the curtain. Both Hendrik and I went our separate ways and interviewed a whole bunch of people for the show. So two people that I ended up interviewing, uh, Steve and Christian. And the reason I got to Christian was because Steve spoke about a company called Pantheon, which helped him launch his podcast and is supporting his podcast.

So I went on LinkedIn, looked up Pantheon and I saw, Oh, Pantheon’s a podcast company. Christian Swain, he works there. Let me go interview him. Turns out it’s two completely different companies that had nothing to do with each other. 

[00:35:43] Hendrik Baird: But they had the same name. 

[00:35:45] Ethan Baird: Both have the same name. Both are in the world of podcasting, but they do very different things.

So then I actually had a bit of an awkward moment during the one interview when I was like, Oh yeah, I found out about you from Steve. And he’s like, I don’t know who you’re talking about. Anyway, let’s talk about your podcast network. So I had a very interesting discussion with Christian about, uh, his Pantheon, the, the company that he works at, and they’re actually a podcast network, which is a group of podcasts that come together under a larger umbrella, like Gimlet would be an example of the, one of those.

There’s quite a few of them. The audiences across the various shows might be smaller, but now you’ve got the power of having multiple shows and lots of room for collaboration. So in this clip, uh, you’ll hear Christian talking a bit about Pantheon and how they grow the podcasts in their stable. 

[00:36:29] Christian Swain: Yeah, I’m Christian Swain.

I am the CEO, I’m president of Pantheon Media. Uh, we are a podcast, uh, company that focuses on music related, uh, podcast, uh, shows. A big advantage to, uh, our network is, uh, for somebody who joins us, is a, a like-minded audience. I think a big problem in, uh, in, uh, podcasting and most people would agree is discovery.

And, uh, you know, when you have a c of 2.5 to 5 million podcasts, depending how you listen to it, it’s hard to find what you’re looking for, uh, from a, uh, a listener standpoint. Uh, and so by coupling, uh, all of these podcasts of like minded subjects, uh, an audience can easily move from one to another. So we have a fair amount of anecdotal data of people telling us that if you want a good music podcast, just go to Pantheon. So that’s an advantage to the podcasters themselves by swimming in a small sea of like minded individuals. Uh, there’s a lot of cross pollination that, uh, occurs, uh, within the network itself. A lot of our podcasters end up as guests and hosts on other shows, a lot of producing engineering flips around.

So it’s a little bit of a little ecosystem, uh, if you will. Uh, within the Pantheon side of things. So that’s, that’s from the podcasters side and why they would want to be a part of the network. Why they’d want to be a part of Pantheon, uh, specifically.

From our standpoint, what we look for, uh, and especially today, uh, you know, early on, uh, you know, there weren’t a lot of music podcasts. In fact, part of the reason why I started Rocker Archaeology is because there weren’t very many, if any. Podcasts that were really music focused and trying to tell these stories. And, uh, since then, a lot have popped up. You know, subject matter is, uh, is, is important, uh, for us, uh, you know, we know what our zebra stripes are. And so we’re looking for other zebras that could fit into the pack or herd, excuse me. 

The next is, um, the passion of the creators. Uh, without passion in podcasting, uh, you’re sunk. I think what we’ve seen, uh, in the podcast business in the last six months or so, um, you know, around the first of the year, there was a lot of dire talk about podcasting.

Geez, you know, uh, the, the, the great gold rush was over and, and some of that may be true, but if you really look at the analysis of, of what, what, what was going on and why, Is it seemed that on the, on one end, on the high end, the big platforms, uh, you know, the Amazons, the Apples, the, the Spotify’s, uh, you know, aren’t handing free money out like candy to every celebrity who wakes up one day and says, uh, I need a podcaster. My management says I need a 360 degree marketing campaign and podcasting needs to be a part of that. Um, Hey, can you give me some money? That sort of thing. I think a lot of that’s gone. Yeah. Uh, I think a lot of the ROI did not work from that perspective of just throwing money at celebrities and, uh, hoping that, uh, something sticks and, uh, it makes a hit.

Um, very few of them have been, uh, been a hit, um, you know, with the exception of something like Smart List. On the other side, and this is really huge is, you know, during the pandemic, every mom and pop woke up and said, Hey, let’s make a podcast. Um, and they did about three and realized that, uh, it’s not as easy as it seems.

Uh, sure, you can get the equipment and you can record yourself. Uh, but the success of a podcast is really built on a couple of things. First is content, the quality and consistency of that content. Uh, if you’re not out continually adding to, uh, to your show, uh, and engaging, uh, your listeners, uh, with new content, uh, social media, uh, um, you know, everything that goes along with that, um, you’re probably not going to be a successful podcaster.

So, uh, we, we look for people who are engaged, uh, in that, that have a track record that we can look at and say, wow, these people are passionate. They put quality content together. Um, and they do this consistently. And what I mean is the editorial content, the, uh, the, the audio side of things, um, we’re not so, uh, specific about that because we know we can fix that if that’s an issue. Uh, we’ve, we’ve taken many podcasters, uh, on with some, uh, audio issues and worked with them to elevate their audio game. We can fix that. What we can’t invent or fix is the content itself. And so as we’ve gone on, we’ve gotten a little more choosy, a little more particular in, in what we’re looking for.

We don’t cannibalize. We don’t want, uh, you know, 15 Kiss shows, uh, on our network. Uh, we have one, uh, that’s good enough. We have the best one. So, uh, there you go. Uh, and so things like that are what we look for, uh, from a, from a podcaster standpoint. 

[00:41:46] Hendrik Baird: So it seems to me there’s a lot of benefits if podcasters join such a network.

[00:41:51] Ethan Baird: Yeah. And I think a lot of the existing really big podcasts, actually most of the really big podcasts on some kind of network. You’ll see they’ll typically have some kind of a little banner on their show or a little introduction. Uh, there’s so many of them out there and yeah, you typically get access to support because there’s experienced podcasters all are part of this network who can help each other out, typically pay for some kind of infrastructure.

And also typically have some kind of way to monetize across all the shows. So instead of someone buying ads on one show, like who doesn’t have enough audience to actually sell the ads, let’s take 50 podcasts that will have a thousand listeners apiece. Now, all of a sudden you have a big enough audience to sell.

[00:42:31] Hendrik Baird: Right. Let’s sum up, um, getting an audience and marketing to that audience is not easy. 

[00:42:39] Ethan Baird: It’s big. It’s complicated. It depends. It’s a very unfortunate answer. 

[00:42:43] Hendrik Baird: I think something we haven’t touched on, which I think is, is really important is it starts with quality content. If you have a shitty show, you’re not going to have an audience. 

[00:42:52] Ethan Baird: That is so incredibly important. I think sometimes people put the cart before the horse, you know? They want to start thinking about Facebook groups and Patreon pages, and how do I get people to pay me for my podcast when they have barely even conceptualized how they’re going to actually record this thing and what’s going to make their show interesting in the first place.

[00:43:11] Hendrik Baird: The second point is it’s got to be entertaining. Nobody’s going to listen to a boring show. You’ll have two seconds ago. Oh no, this is not for me. It’s got to be entertaining. This is entertainment. Even if you are educating somebody, even if you are promoting your business or something off key, it’s still got to be entertaining.

Nicole’s show is very entertaining. It’s gripping. It’s intriguing. And that’s why she’s one of the biggest podcasters in this country. And then, you’ve got to leverage social media. That’s truly important. And the other thing we’ve also learned is networks. You’ve got to leverage your networks. You’ve got to group together. You know, there’s strength in numbers, isn’t there? 

[00:43:52] Ethan Baird: Yeah. Ultimately, as I said previously, all got to do with marketing fundamentals. If you wanted to grow a community, if you wanted to grow a business, if you wanted to grow an art page, how would you do so? A lot of those same answers apply to this, growing a community and keeping them together in a place that you can access them, building up databases of email addresses.

Building up social media pages, getting up the following, putting out interesting content, sending people with calls to action to your show, collaborating with other people in your niche who could then recommend their audience to your show and vice versa. It’s a large sticky challenge that you have to figure out for your own show.

But ultimately, if you are a business owner, you already have some idea of how you should be doing this. 

[00:44:40] Hendrik Baird: And if you want to start a podcast, well, let Ethan and I show you the way. We have something called the Podmaster Startup Program, six sessions of an hour each and a load of resources and extra sessions in between.

And we take you from conceptualizing your podcast through to monetizing the whole thing and everything in between. So find more information on our website, Baird.Media.