Podcasting, once known as “audio blogging” has catapulted into a massive business opportunity, with top podcasters earning upwards of six figures in revenues from their podcasts.

Today, politicians, brands, agencies – everyone has their own podcast. Why? Because podcasting represents a more intimate way to connect with your audience.

The number of global podcast listeners is expected to rise to over 504 million by 2024. What sets is apart from other forms of content is that it lets you engage with your audience with unique, long-form content that does not feel scripted or promotional. Besides, people pressed for time find it convenient to simply start playing a podcast while they tend to more routine aspects of their days.

Why Hire a Professional Podcast Producer?

Do you have something that you’d like to share with the world? Hiring a podcast producer to create a high-quality podcast is one of simplest ways to do that.

For many, a podcast producer is a trusted ally, a creative and strategic collaborator tasked with managing the podcast, including its production, marketing, and distribution.

SoundCartel have been producing professional podcasts for decades – even back when they were called podcasts and distributed via CD! This experience is applied to every project we take on, ensuring your podcast message is heard by your audience loud and clear.

1. Creating a vision for your podcast

To begin with, a podcast producer develops and maintains the overall vision of your podcast.

• What purpose does the podcast serve? Is it get more leads/sales, or be recognised as a thought leader in your industry, or just merely to start a conversation about something that your business is deeply passionate about?
• What does the story look like from start to finish?
• How to prioritise what needs to be done for that story to be communicated in the best way possible?
• Which podcasting format would be appropriate for your podcast? Is it a single-voice podcast with one narrator, or a conversational group show co-hosted with a guest?
• Other considerations like optimal podcast length, publishing schedule, recording equipment, etc.

SoundCartel’s podcast production team has years of experience in developing and producing professional podcasts for businesses and organisations. This experience keeps your project on track and on budget.

2. Overseeing Podcast Production

Overseeing the audio production of each podcast episode and pitching in ideas for new episodes is one of the main responsibilities of a podcast producer. To do this, producers usually have deep knowledge into diverse podcasts and episode concepts.

Many podcasts start off strong, but quickly run out of steam. Having a professional podcast producer keeps your podcast on track without dipping in quality as episodes go by.

SoundCartel work with you to get to the core of your brand story and then develop engaging audio content that keeps your audience coming back for more.

3. Writing SEO-optimised title and descriptions

The podcast text that appears on your website (show notes) and the small podcast descriptions (episode summaries) visible inside podcasting apps like Apple Podcasts and Spotify need to be keyword optimised. While this does not mean that you should indulge in keyword stuffing, it does point to the fact that your podcast title and description needs to reflect the terms that people are searching for.

Show notes are also an important part of SEO-content marketing process. It’s usually about 400-500 words in length and contains guest bios and links to relevant content. Getting your show notes right is crucial since it makes it easy for your audience to learn more about your podcast and tune in to it, which, in turn, attracts new subscribers and boost your ranking on the Podcast Charts. Put simply, now that you’ve done the hard part, most people are not averse to sitting back and enjoying the show, as an agency does the heavy lifting.

One of our producers, Jeff Waters, is a veteran journalist whose spent several decades working for local and international broadcasters including the ABC, BBC World and CNN International. Jeff is a natural storyteller, making him an ideal individual to describe your podcast in a way that entices people to listen.

4. Expert recording, editing and post-production

Any professional podcasting agency worth their salt will most likely have expert sound engineers with superb recording and audio editing skills, and this includes SoundCartel.

This stage involves taking your raw, unedited episode recordings and fine tuning it using it editing software so that it sounds brilliant. Since most businesses find this process to be difficult time and consuming, they prefer outsourcing the task to expert producers fully trained in producing professional shows.

Soundcartel can help you record your podcasts either in a professional podcast studio, or virtually using recording software. This flexibility ensures that our clients can conduct their business from wherever they are.

Our head of Audio Production, Peter Leets, has been with us for over 21 years and knows every trick in the book when it comes to making sure your podcast audio quality is pristine.

5. Distribution and Marketing of a Podcast

Experienced podcast producers set up a podcast hosting service and ensure that each episode, artwork, and metadata is uploaded to a podcast hosting platform and across different podcasting apps. Producers also provide embed links to publish your podcast on your website and cross-promote your content across email, social and other podcast directories.

SoundCartel help you to not only produce a podcast that tells your brand story, but also get that podcast distributed so your intended audience can hear your messages.

6. Analysing your results

Podcast producers also deep dive into your podcast analytics to give you an insight into your podcast, your audience and the various platforms is available on.

• How many people have listened? Key metrics include downloads, streams, and listens.
• Where do they live and how did they access your podcast? Key metric here would be traffic source to identify your best performing channel.
• What are your audience demographics? Reveals important data points like gender, location, etc, which allows you to ascertain if you are reaching your target audience, and if any potential untapped markets exist.
• What is your audience behaviour? How long, on average, are listeners engaging with your content? Where are they dropping off? This would tell you if your podcast is too long, and needs to be broken down into smaller, more digestible components.
• What are your highest-ranking episodes? Perhaps look at Top 3 episodes and look at what’s different about them in terms of title, content, length, etc.
• Is there any monetisation potential? Advertisers may be willing to pay for ad space on your podcast on a Cost-per-Impressions (CPM) basis.

Using this data, we can help you to make changes to all your upcoming episodes. We assist you to track the impact of your marketing and distribution efforts over time, and help you to get the best ROI from your audio strategy investment.

If you’re a brand and thinking about producing your own podcast, let us help you. Please call us on +613 982 8333 or drop us an email below.