Podcast Seminar: Choosing a topic for your podast.

This post marks the start of another new series of posts inspired by the recent seminar that was put on as part of the Long Beach Podcasters. The topics were a good outline of what a new podcaster might want to know. Rather than attending the seminar and paying the fee, I’m giving you what I might include in such a seminar. Here are the topics we’ll be covering.

1. Choosing a topic for your podcast.
2. What length should your podcast be?
3. What type of podcast do you want to produce?
4. What equipment/software do you need?
5. Should your podcast be daily, weekly, monthly?
6. Creating your podcast with a blog.
7. Marketing your podcast.
8. Show notes and SEO, why they are important?
9. Podcast metrics
10. Monetizing your podcast
11. Spreading the word through Social Networks.

It’s not organized exactly as the seminar, but the topics are mostly the same. Let’s get started.

Choosing a topic for your podcast?

What are you interested in?

You should podcast on what gets you heart pumping. In other words, podcast about what you are passionate about. Back at the first Podcast Expo in 2005, Leo Laporte gave the first keynote of the event and this was his topic, podcast your passion. If you’re not passionate about what you’re going to talk about, then why are you talking about it? Why would anyone else want to hear you talk about it? If you want to do a music podcast, be passionate about music. If you want to do a knitting podcast, be passionate about knitting. Your audience will be able to tell if you’re only mildly interested in the topic.

The best example I can think of for podcasting your passion would have to be Wine Library TV. Gary Vaynerchuk is passionate about wine and his podcast shows it. If you’ve never seen WLTV, go see it now. Whether you’re podcasting for you business, for your school, or for you favorite football team, be sold out for that topic and your listeners will appreciate it.

I’m not going to tell you to podcast about the Mac, Windows, wine, knitting, music or any other topic. But I will tell you to pick your topic and be focused. The more focused you are on the topic of your podcast, the more success you will have in podcasting. Trying to have a podcast about “the Internet” is a little too broad. Pick one topic and stick to it. It may be a small market that will find your podcast.

Let’s look at the example of fly fishing. You may be passionate about fly fishing. Your target audience is probably men, already cutting the market in half, with an interest in fly fishing, smaller market yet, and who are looking for fly fishing content on the Internet, smaller yet. That may be a pretty niche market, but there are fly fishing podcasts. There is someone out there on the Internet waiting for your content.

Lastly, I heard recently about this idea that everyone wants to be significant. Everyone on this planet wants to be remembered. They want to put their mark on this world before the leave it. This would explain why podcasting has become so popular with thousands of podcasts being produced every day. But desire to podcast isn’t enough. You need to have something to say.

Next time we’ll talk about; How long should your podcast be?