How We Built the Strategy for Our New Flagship Podcast
You didn’t think we’d launch a podcast network without a new HubSpot show, did you?
We’re excited to announce our new flagship podcast, The Shake Up, featuring comedian Alexis Gay and Venture Capitalist Brianne Kimmel. It’s produced by Senior Producer, Matthew Brown and brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network.
The Shake Up offers business leaders unfiltered insights into companies that dared to be different. Alexis and Brianne talk with business leaders from disruptive companies like Square, Daily Harvest, and Nerdwallet about their investments and go-to-market strategies.
Sounds pretty cool, right? Well, now we’re going to tell you how we did it, including:
- Our planning process
- Building the format of the show
- The structure of a successful podcast team
Let’s dive in.
How Can We Be Better and Different?
Once we know our business objective, audience, and budget we set out to put together a show concept that will resonate with our audience and help us hit our goals.
To do that, we needed to know what our audience is listening to today.
According to Chartable, there are over 8,334 branded podcasts on Apple Podcasts.
While we couldn’t audit all of them (we’re only human), we did want to understand the tactics used by the top podcasts in the business category. So, we did an audit.
We evaluated 20 high-performing business podcasts and gained five insights.
- Male Voices: 87% of the hosts were male.
- News & Commentary: 18 out of 20 podcasts provided commentary on industry news.
- Broadcast Communications: Very few shows used audience engagement tactics to connect the audience with the hosts.
- Business & Academic: The tone of the shows was lackluster and many used jargon.
This audit gave us the context to define our strategy.
How would our show be better and different?
- Diverse Voices: A commitment to diverse voices across hosts and guests.
- Research & Stories: Focusing editorially on relevant stories with added depth.
- Audience Engagement: Featuring our hosts and implementing tactics to engage the audience on social media.
- Business & Entertainment: We don’t have to be boring and unfashionable to talk business.
These became our editorial guidelines for the rest of the show.
Deciding on the Show Format
Next, we set our show format.
There are a few common podcast formats that have the ability to grow an audience.
- Interview: A show type that brings on an expert guest for a Q&A.
- Chat Cast: A co-hosted format where hosts provide commentary and criticism on a variety of topics.
- Debate: A co-hosted format where hosts take one side of the argument. Debating the facts, figures, and opinions on a given topic.
- Narrative: A journalistic-style podcast that includes research, scripts, and a strong storyline.
After exploring various formats, we went with a hybrid format — Chat Cast + Interview.
Source:: HubSpot Blog
