Worthfull Media

A boutique podcast agency for seasoned personal brands

EP 32 Choosing Your Ideal Show Format

We’re continuing Season 2 of the show with a follow up to the last episode about playing to your strengths. Once you understand your strengths as a host, it’s essential that you format your show and episodes in a way that makes them binge-able to your audience. This means choosing a show format that lets you shine! We’re dedicating this entire season to teaching you our best tips for creating media that attracts your dream customers and audience, so this is a big one!

In this episode Tiff and Christine cover the essentials in order to format your podcast into a binge-able show.

“What allows you, in the most efficient and clear way possible, to share your expertise in a way that makes people keep coming back for more?”

Christine Baird

Topics covered:

  • (1:50) How to format your audio podcast to make it binge-able
  • (9:45) How to optimally format your video podcast
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Transcription of this episode:

(auto-generated, please forgive typos)

Christine (00:04):
Welcome to Think Like a Producer podcast. I’m your co-host Christine Baird.

Tiff (00:09):
And I’m your co-host Tiff Tyler. Being in the podcast industry, being in the content creation industry. This is what we learned, and this is how you can get out of your own way and get started.

Christine (00:20):
You name it. We’ve probably done it. This podcast is about bringing all the wisdom to you. Tune in weekly, to learn how to think like a producer.

Christine (00:33):
Good. Welcome to this episode of Think Like a Producer. We are so happy to be back for season two. If you didn’t listen to the first episode of season two, go ahead and listen. This episode is going to be a follow-up to that one, where we are going to really dive into specifics on choosing a format for your episodes and your videos, and really thinking strategically about that in order to attract your dream customers and audience. But just to kind of give you some background, because we’re going to be talking about audio and video strategies for choosing a format that really makes sense to sell your magic. Um, be sure if you’ve never listened to season one, go check out episode eight, because that is where we covered audio versus video. We did this like big, deep dive, Tiffany kind of sound off on our pros and cons of audio versus video content.

Christine (01:28):
And so if you haven’t listened to that, that would be a great primer where we go pretty deep on our basic things to keep in mind when you’re choosing, uh, how to focus on audio and how to focus on video now that we’ve even you, your homework let’s get into today’s topic, which is figuring out the absolute best format for your podcast or your videos to actually do what we talked about in the last episode, which is creating media to attract your dream audience and really sell what you do in the world in the best way possible by giving people a beautiful insight and giving them some great content for free and showing them what it’s like to work with you. Okay. So I’m going to talk about ways to think about formatting, a podcast, that’s audio based in the way to do this, and then Tiff is going to cover some really great stuff to consider with how to use a video to do this.

Christine (02:23):
So, one of the things that I talk to a lot with clients, when we’re trying to figure out the optimal format for their show is what allows them in the most efficient and clear way possible to share their expertise in a way that people keep coming back for more. So let me give you an example. Um, podcasts are really known for being bingeable, right? Just like a good Netflix show podcasts kind of fit into that bingeable content category. The cool thing about podcasts is you can listen to them while you do things. And so people can end up listening people. Meaning I have done this many for many years on random weekends of my life. People can listen to hours of your show, like on the weekend while they’re running and working out and doing the errands and cleaning the house and cooking and doing the prep and the laundry, like people just have a lot of time to listen when their hands are busy doing something else.

Christine (03:23):
So the way I want you to think about formatting, your podcast is what would be a way for me to share the very best of what I have. Right? We talked last episode about playing to your strengths, really focusing on your uniqueness. How can I put that into podcast episodes that is bingeable because when people start bingeing your podcast, this is really when the magic starts to happen and they become super fans of you. And they start to want to buy whatever you’re selling, because they’re like, I’m loving this person. I love listening to them for hours. I love it. When a new episode drops, I really vibe with how they do what they do. Of course, I want to like buy their book, go to their event, join their mastermind, you know, buy something from their Etsy shop, join their course, hire them as a coach.

Christine (04:11):
You name it. This goes across the board. I always like to plug one of my very favorite branded podcasts. The Trader Joe’s podcast, it’s called Inside Trader Joe’s. They are masters of this, right? It’s a grocery store that has one of the best branded podcasts of all time. And every time I listen, I immediately want to go to Trader Joe’s and buy all the products they just talked about. So don’t limit yourself being like, oh, this would only work for like an online coach that’s nonsense. Right? You could apply this to any kind of business. All right. So let’s think about this. If you’re choosing a format that would make your kind of expertise bingeable, this is very likely going to be potentially shorter episodes. Most people aren’t necessarily going to be really great at holding conversations for two hours that keep the listener engaged.

Christine (05:04):
Some people can do this, my all-time favorite podcast or his ritual, and he’s a master at this. So I’m never counting it out. I’m just saying this isn’t going to be most people’s core strength. So instead of trying to like hold yourself to two hour long interviews that you post every week, let’s think about like 20 minute, 30 minute episodes. Like what’s a format where it would really make sense where you could either have a really interesting conversation that keeps a good pace and keeps on a topic with, you know, if that’s what you realize you’re good at, or maybe you do interviews and you keep them to 15 minutes and they’re super focused on a niche topic. And maybe you end up recording 30 minutes, but you edit it down to 15 because you’ve realized like I’ve really gotten into a good flow with people.

Christine (05:50):
And I’ve gotten really good at pulling out awesome nuggets from them in 15 minutes on my super niche-y topic. Maybe you’ve realized from last episode that you’re super good at teaching. And so every episode you’re going to spend, like approximately 20 minutes teaching one of your core kind of, um, pieces of content. And that’s automatically going to get people interested in your courses and you know, your workshops and whatever. So first off, like we talked about last episode, you’re going to figure out your core strength. Then you’re going to come into this podcast world and be like, okay, what’s a format of an episode that makes sense for me so that I can play to that strength repeatedly and make enough content that people are going to binge it. Now here’s a couple of other things I want you to keep in mind. You don’t have to think of an episode that has to come out every single week forever and constantly be like brand new and fresh.

Christine (06:50):
You can have seasons of your show. We’ve talked about this a lot in the past season of think like a producer, we practice this ourselves, right? We took the whole summer off. We took a season break. We’re dropping this new season in the fall. And it has a totally unique theme just for this season. Our first season theme was all about the fundamentals. The frequently asked questions and really like the, what you needed to understand to get a podcast launched. So that’s our theme for season one, we’d went 30 episodes long cause we had a lot to cover. We were building an audience from scratch and we really wanted to give people the goods. Now in season two, we’re going to do a shorter season because we have a very focused topic. We’ve mapped out every episode. We know the flow of what’s going to make sense.

Christine (07:34):
And we want to take people through a specific kind of journey to help them with mastering this specific area of podcast and video creation. So in addition to seasons, other really awesome formats to think about our mini series and limited runs, this is something I love right now. And I’m telling all my clients about. So you might do a mini series on your podcast. It’s just only maybe like five, eight episodes. And they’re completely focused on one topic. You might even have multiple guests that all come and only talk about the same topic. You might have one guest like a guest host, and you just host a mini series together where you’re dissecting something and doing a deep dive. There’s just so many ways to use this. And there’s so many cool examples out there. So if you’re interested and you want ideas, feel free to DM us on Instagram and be like, Hey, I need ideas for mini series.

Christine (08:29):
Tell me where to go. We’ll always happily respond. Just DM us at think like a producer on Instagram. But, um, one of the coolest things I’ve kind of stumbled across this year that I love telling people about is this idea of doing a limited run podcast. That it’s whole point is to be short and standalone. And where I’ve seen this do really well is when people collaborate. So like two experts, maybe from similar industries come together and co-host a limited run show. The entire show is only ever meant to be like, let’s say 10 episodes. And they’re just doing a whole dedicated show. That’s only ever going to be one season one time, and they’re going to just do a deep dive and unpack something really important that they both have expertise in. And that they’re both going to give really powerful perspective. There’s just so many ways you can use podcasting to show your expertise, to really give people amazing content and enroll them to come work with you.

Christine (09:28):
So I want you to think big about this and just like make sure that you’re leaving behind old concepts of what a podcast is supposed to be. This is about playing to your strengths, thinking about sustainability and what kind of content your audience, the people you want to work with are going to be bingeing and loving. And it’s just going to be telling them all the answers to the questions that they have kicking around in their head all day on your specific topic and area of expertise. And then that is naturally going to have them say, oh my gosh, I have to work with this person because I can’t get enough of their show. K Tiff, let’s talk about video. What are the things that people need to know about that are really cool formats available to them with video?

Tiff (10:16):
I appreciate it. I’m like taking notes over here on your set. Um, but for video, uh, what, you know, I love to ask people is what is the end goal for their video? I think I just try to reverse engineer a little bit because everyone feels like they need to have video right now. And they have to have a YouTube channel. They have to have all these videos going up across all their social media accounts and for your particular audience, maybe you do, but maybe you don’t, you know, I think we’ve talked about this before on season one, just the power of audio clubhouse in different apps that are really emphasizing, just listening to what the person is saying and the message. And as opposed to seeing them all the time or, you know, the way they look or judging them or anything about, you know, makeup or no makeup and all the different things that can kind of factor in to people, you know, getting distracted from your main message.

Tiff (11:10):
One of my mentors, I love him so much. He does everything in black and white. He’s been like they, um, taking photographs from Chicago and different places has one of the most historic collections ever all in black and white. And I asked him, why does he take photographs in black and white? And he said, because people can really pay attention to what the story in the photo is. The color sometimes can be very distracting. And I never thought about that before, right. You know, the different colors and different things that just like draw people’s attention or distract them from what you’re trying to say. So I’m saying all that to say, use video to support your message, not to distract people from anything else that you’re trying to relate to them. You don’t necessarily have to have a YouTube channel to have a very powerful show or to have a very powerful presence on social media.

Tiff (11:59):
An example of this, you know, people ask me some times whether or not they should have their video on Vimeo or on YouTube. And there’s a major difference. YouTube, there’s a power to monetize. There’s a power to grow in a certain way and hit a very niche audience and Vimeo. Um, you know, to me, it’s more of just a very nice clean way to play your videos. If you’ve seen some short films or, you know, certain things commercials, people will put on that platform because the way that it’s consumed just makes it a nicer experience to play your content back. And YouTube is really meant for mass consumption. It really feels more like a social media app than Vimeo does, in my opinion. Um, a good, another good example would be testimonials when people are just using video for testimonials for their, for their website.

Tiff (12:48):
You might’ve noticed that when you embed a video on your website from YouTube, you can kind of see the YouTube play button. And sometimes the title and description will populate that little nice rectangle. And it just looks a little busy when people need to play the video. I mean, you can literally check our website, worthfullmedia.com/TLAP. And if you go on individual parts of our podcast, you’ll see YouTube is at the very top. And for us, it doesn’t quite bother us because my goal is to grow our YouTube channel. I want to use the power of YouTube and its social media more so than I want a very clean, sleek look for our website, the website. So it looks nice. There’s nothing wrong with it. But, um, if we were trying to get more traffic to the website, for a particular reason, I would choose to use just a cleaner player, even just have the video directly on the website.

Tiff (13:41):
Which some platforms allow you to do where I don’t have to use an outside source or an outside video link to get the video where it needs to go. Um, so I’m saying all this to say, right? The power of video really know what you want the end user to do if you’re selling something. And we’ll talk about this later, when it comes to marketing, you know, there might be a reason why you want more attention on your website and less distracted people going to your YouTube channel. So really think about the end goal. Um, also you, another reason to say you don’t believe to have easy channel. You can post different video clips and things to market your audio podcast, or to market your business in general, without having to have a whole platform that will actually require another person to be there.

Tiff (14:24):
Think about it. Do you have the time and space and capacity to run all these social media platforms yourself? Or do you need someone to help you? The reason why I say this is because when it comes to formatting a YouTube channel, you want to think about your thumbnails and your design and the things that are going to get people to click. If you notice, whether people have a beautiful theme with certain colors and nice texts, or they just have their face really, you know, up there with a particular gesture, everything is really thought about, they think about their thumbnails and what’s going to attract the most people. They experiment with their thumbnails using different platforms. Third-party platforms like Tubebuddy to AB test. What’s going to work the best and really get in front of a lot of people. So I’m not trying to persuade you not to use YouTube or to not be on video.

Tiff (15:12):
I really just want to bring the attention that if you’re going to use this particular format to grow your business, to make sure that you’re putting the time and the attention that you need to grow it well, now you can always start the channel and decide to put more time and attention to your audio or into your other social media accounts. And just let YouTube grow organically without putting a lot of time and attention until you get to it later. That’s also a possibility, some people that we’ve had in our beginners bootcamp, in some workshops that we’ve done have bulk recorded content and have things ready to go. But they’re choosing to only like focus on one format right now, instead of jumping into all these different platforms, because it’s one person or two people that are managing it. And like Christine said, this is something we talk to our clients about.

Tiff (15:59):
Do you have a team or are you doing this by yourself? How many people are really dedicated to your show and to your growth? So you’re not, you know, expanding yourself too much and also setting these unrealistic goals of your growth because you really only have so much time in a day as an individual. The last thing I’m going to say about YouTube, which is still kind of an interesting choice of whether like whether or not this really helps grow your channel or not, it’s statistically still better. If you choose a particular length of your episodes or of your content, if you’re going to go with a three to five minute content plan, it’s a little bit different than going to 15 to 30 minutes and very different from having 90 minute, two hour long interviews, or even if you talk for an hour and a half and you can keep people’s attention awesome.

Tiff (16:49):
And the best of your solo set up, uh, but really choosing the length of your, your channel is going to be important because, um, it, it kind of all comes down to data and I’ve explained this on other episodes. So I’m not going to go too far into it. If you really want to, um, understand how we lay out our show, audio and video, check out episode 24 from season one, or we go over the elements of a podcast and have a show. So you can really break down how you want to set up your episodes in particular for yourself. But overall choosing the length is going to help with, you know, if you’re doing three to five minutes and people are watching the full video, that’s awesome. YouTube can see that people are getting five minutes of your content back to back to back.

Tiff (17:35):
But if you mix that in with 90 minute, two hour videos, then it looks like a lot of people aren’t watching. If they’re consuming that five minute content more than the longer content, YouTube is like, oh, you’ve got two hour long videos. How people only watching five minutes and it seems like they’re cutting off. So I hope that makes sense. That’s the simplest way that I explain it to our clients that you really need to pick. You really, really need to pick a format so that YouTube isn’t confused by whether or not people are enjoying your content. You might say, I don’t know which link to choose. You can start to YouTube channels. You can have longer content on one channel and shorter content on the other. Again, going back to my argument, you want to have a good team in place. You want to have people there to support you so that you can help grow these channels together, but it’s possible to start two or three YouTube channels and see what format does best. And then stick to the channel. That’s really working in drag drawing the most attention. And then there you go. You know which format you’ve experimented, you’ve kind of asked the audience and you know, which format is really bringing in the people that want to be a part of your audience. Please, please be sure to checkout season one, because we’d talk about these formats in all different kinds of ways, but Christine, is there anything else that you want to talk about when it comes to the format of a show?

Christine (18:53):
Yes. I love what you shared. This is such golden info for you to now take, did just think about, and if you have an existing show, feel like you have complete permission to retool and refashion how your content is formatted. This isn’t just for people who are about to start. A lot of our clients actually have existing shows and they’re like, oh, this is what I’ve been doing, but it hasn’t been getting me the result I want. So how can I kind of tweak the way I’m doing things? And like we just shared in this episode, there’s a lot of things that if you already in a groove of creating content, just a few shifts can make a huge difference in actually bringing in that dream audience, attracting those customers and making it really easy for them to binge your content fall in love with you and figure out how to work with you.

Christine (19:43):
So just to practice what we preach, if this is really speaking to you and you’re like, holy moly, I need to do a session. I need to get deeper strategy. I want to invest in some consulting on my own content. We are always delighted to work with new clients, even if it’s just a strategy session or you need something deeper and you want to work with us on a longer term basis. So check the link in the show notes of ways to work with us. We love doing this for our clients. And we would, of course, encourage you to subscribe to this podcast either on your favorite podcast platform or on YouTube to make sure you’re getting all of our content for this season, which will be focused on creating media to attract your dream audience. So until next time, thanks for watching and listening.

Christine (20:36):
Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Think Like a Producer. This has been a Worthfull Media production. Massive thanks to our team who makes the show possible. Worthfull Media for audio editing, Jorge and Veronica from Mosaico Productions for video effects and Amela Subasic for our amazing artwork and graphics.