Choosing the right topic ideas for your podcast plays a significant role in attracting the correct target group and staying motivated to come up with new content consistently.
This article talks about defeating and unlocking the inner barriers to podcast ideas creativity. We will map out the steps necessary to start your brainstorming process and the fuel you need to accelerate that process.
If you're looking for some great topic ideas for your podcast, you’re in the right place. To do so, brainstorming is excellent, to begin with. Here are a few tips to get you started:
1. Define your purpose
In order to do that, the following questions can be asked:
- What do you want your podcast to achieve?
- Who is your target audience?
- What are you passionate about?
Answering these questions will help you narrow down your ideas and focus your brainstorming.
2. Consider your format
There are many different ways to format a podcast, so think about what would work best for your purposes and audience. Do you want to interview guests? Tell stories? Or have a panel discussion?
Your podcast doesn't have to be fancy, but it should be well organized and easy to follow. The format of your podcast will depend on the topic you're discussing and the tone you want to set.
If you're interviewing guests, make sure to introduce them properly and give the audience a sense of who they are and why they're qualified to speak on the topic.
If you're discussing a controversial topic, be prepared to fairly present both sides of the argument. Otherwise, you’re risking being attacked by one side of the argument. A similar thing happened to the Joe Rogan Experience.
Whatever the format, make sure your podcast is engaging, informative, and entertaining.
3. Make a list and narrow down your ideas
Once you understand your purpose and format well, it's time to brainstorm ideas for episodes. Write down anything and everything that comes to mind, no matter how outlandish it may seem.
Now is the time to be super creative - try to come up with ideas that are outside of the box and will really capture your audience's attention.
Once you have a good list of ideas, it's best to narrow things down and determine which ones will work best for your show. Think about what podcast topics will be most interesting to your audience and which ones will best fit the format and purpose of your show.
4. Get feedback
Once you've narrowed down your list to a few final ideas, it's a good idea to get some feedback from potential listeners. Ask friends, family, and colleagues what they think of your thoughts and whether they would be interested in listening.
Inspiration to come up with podcast topics
Now that we talked about choosing the best podcast topics for you, here are several ways to get inspired, keep up with what’s trending in the world, and how to get inspiration from others.
Trends
While keeping up with trends, automatically, you are constantly learning new tools, new events to participate in, and new ways to be efficient. This gives your a wider variety of things to work with. Thus, you allow yourself to experiment with more things and use them to generate new (podcast) ideas. Ultimately, this ensures that the new ideas you come up with will always be modern and up-to-date.
There are many ways to keep up with trends. Two of the most convenient ones are to look at Google Trends and what’s trending on Twitter.
Other ways to keep up with trends are to sign up for email lists of influential people from your niche, take advantage of training and webinars (tons of them are available for free), keep up with competitors on social media, find an industry buddy to talk to every day, and follow industry experts on a variety of platforms.
Books
Nothing can beat the knowledge you gain from reading and researching. Read books or academic papers that give you insights into your niche. There are plenty of books out there that might help you with coming up with ideas for your podcast, just like Google.
Not only that, but reading helps you develop your focus and concentration qualities. Overall, it helps your creativity too. This focus acts as a catalyst for us in creative fields (designers, writers, marketers, etc.)
Similar podcasters
Getting inspiration from colleagues should also be considered a high priority. We, as humans, can always learn something new from people that have been doing something specific, in this case, a podcast, longer than you.
To name a few - Joe Rogan and Lex Fridman are great examples of crushing the podcast game. Listen, take notes, absorb the information, and apply their podcast ideas to your own.
Change your typical scenario
The last tip for boosting your idea generation and brainstorming process is changing your typical scenario. Sometimes our creativity could be temporarily blocked. These ways help you to overcome this barrier:
- Go for a long drive.
- Take a walk outside.
- Work out.
- Visit your nearest library.
- Meditate or do yoga.
How often should I release new episodes?
There is no set rule for how often you should release new episodes of your podcast. It largely depends on how much time you have to dedicate to podcasting and how quickly you can produce new episodes.
That being said, most successful podcasts release new episodes on a weekly basis. This gives listeners something to look forward to each week and helps to build a strong following. If you can't commit to a weekly release schedule, try to release new episodes at least bi-weekly.
Conclusion
Sometimes the topic ideas for your podcast wouldn’t be the best. However, other times you’d have a bang. This is when you need to keep the momentum going. One thing is sure - consistency is key. When you’re being more consistent with your posting, you can start growing your fanbase and build your community around your podcast. It’s a challenging task, but it is indeed the way to success. Once you have your audience on Spotify, or any other social platform, you can capture the data of your most loyal fans by releasing gated content with Fangage. This data can be used to directly send email or text messages about new podcast episodes to your listeners.
