Your Guide to Building a Branded Podcast

We’re launching our own show to teach the ins and outs of creating a business podcast that drives your brand forward.

Ever since Relationary Marketing launched, the aim has been simple: create engaging branded podcasts that help businesses promote their brands and foster key relationships. That’s where the name, Relationary, comes from.

Through the years, we’ve created numerous podcasts for major companies and brands that have helped them push their content forward. Now, we’re doing the same with our business. We want to make it even easier for businesses to learn the basics of creating their own engaging podcasts. What better way to show the power of great audio marketing than with our own, step-by-step podcast?

Brandcasting - Five Steps for Building a Successful Branded Podcast

Transcript available below

Welcome to Brandcasting with Relationary Marketing.

Over the course of this season, Clark Buckner, Relationary co-founder and the host of Brandcasting, will sit with experts to explore the ins and outs of what makes a branded podcast a success. You’ll hear from podcasters and radio hosts, from audio engineers and marketing giants.

We’ll also take you through the five steps we use to create meaningful branded podcasts for our clients, from pre- to post-launch, starting with content design.

Branded podcast with a purpose

Likely the most important of the five steps, we’ll start by taking a deep dive into establishing your show’s primary goal. Why does your branded podcast exist in the first place? Who are you trying to reach, and what do you want them to do once you’ve got their attention? Identifying specific answers to those questions will provide a roadmap to success for you to follow.

By the way, the experts we spoke with revealed the true measure of a successful show often has nothing to do with the number of subscribers it has; it’s whether or not your original purpose for starting one has been achieved. So start there!

Good shows get great guests

No one wants to listen to a boring conversation between two people who clearly know nothing about the other or the topic they’re discussing. Finding guests who are both engaging and articulate is crucial to build a solid show, and trust with your listeners.

We’ll talk to radio hosts and producers of interview-style podcasts who share secrets they use to source the right kind of guests. You’ll also hear why it’s so important to prepare your host and interviewee in advance of their recording, and how to avoid a conversation from getting hijacked.

More than a mic

It takes more than just good gear to capture quality sound. Sure, equipment matters, but so does the environment you record in, and the workflow you put in place to handle the capture. Audio engineers will provide tips and techniques to ensure you’re recording the best sound possible, no matter the circumstances.

They’ll also explain why the quality of your audio builds credibility with your audience or could push them to unsubscribe.

Umm … we’ll fix it in post!

The fourth step to building a successful branded podcast happens in post-production. Editing out the “isolated umms” is a no-brainer, but what happens when you take out every single one? Or when you snip out all the extra breaths or pauses? Your guest is counting on you to present them in the best way possible, including preserving the authenticity of their story and speech. Don’t make them sound like Siri.

But knowing what audio to keep and what to cut can be tricky. Our interviews uncovered proven methods and best practices for editing and assembling raw audio, including the use of music, narration and sound design.

From post to publish

The last step we’ll cover this season is publishing and promoting your podcast. You’ve done a lot of hard work just to get to this very moment, when your first (or next) episode drops. But if a podcast publishes, and no one hears it, does it make a sound?

Speaking with fellow podcasters and content marketing leaders, we’ll take you through the process of publishing your show, from generating RSS feeds to using embedded media players on your blog.

We’ll also remind you of step one – the purpose of your branded podcast and the people you hope to reach. Find out what methods work best for the type of audience you have and the calls to action to engage them.

All of that and more will be covered this season on Brandcasting with Relationary Marketing. To make sure you don’t miss a single episode, be sure to subscribe to our newsletter!

Ready to start your own branded podcast? Let us help you get started with a free consultation.

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Transcript: Episode 0 of Brandcasting with Relationary Marketing

Episode Title: Introducing Brandcasting – Your Guide to Building a Successful Branded Podcast

Clark Buckner: Welcome to Brandcasting with Relationary Marketing, a new podcast all about how to build a professional branded podcast that delivers on your business’s goals. We’re excited to share some of our best advice from over the years paired with some of our favorite folks in the industry – experts like Jeff Brown, radio veteran podcast, coach, and host of the super popular show, Read to Lead Podcast, who reveals the value of using a podcast to expand the reach of your message.

Jeff Brown: I would just say that if this is a place you’re not currently publishing content, you need to really dig deep and ask why is that? Why are you not doing that? There are so many, as we said a moment ago, places where you could be found that you’re missing out on.

Clark Buckner: Data shows us that each year brands and corporations are increasingly adding podcasting to their content marketing, but they struggle to do it well for a few reasons. One, they don’t have the specific expertise needed and two, they lack the in-house talent and resources to consistently produce high quality podcast content. That’s where we come in. And that’s why we’ve created this podcast for you.

Relationary Marketing is a turnkey podcast production agency for B2B content marketing. Simply put, we help brands and agencies create engaging podcast content that establishes thought leadership, promotes special events and conferences, and most importantly, nurtures key relationships. In fact, that’s how we came up with our name, Relationary.

I’m your host, Clark Buckner, co-founder and partner here at Relationary, and over my eight years of podcasting, I’ve developed a five step proven process for producing B2B podcasts. We’ve successfully deployed these steps in partnership with marketing agencies and even several Fortune 500 companies. In season one of Brandcasting, we’ll take you through each of our five steps: Content Design, Prep/Invite, Recording, Post-production and Publishing.

The first step, and arguably the most important, is Content Design. In this step, you’ll establish the main goal of the show. That’s the purpose. And here’s a tip: there will be one, maybe two primary goals. You really need to keep these specific. And the reason why is because these goals will help you identify your target audience along with what success means for your show. And another tip: for most brands, success is so much more than just podcast downloads. Content design is about setting the foundation of your podcast and the rest follows. One of the guests we brought on for this particular topic is Emily Siner. She’s the news director at Nashville Public Radio, WPLN. She talks about what’s important to keep in mind when you develop a new podcast.

Emily Siner: I mean, I think this goes back to the idea of what is your show’s reason for existing in the world? Like what hole does it fill that doesn’t already exist? So rather than just throwing something up because you have an idea, thinking about where it fits into the context of this entire podcasting landscape.

Clark Buckner: Step two is the Prep/Invite. When you have an interview-based show, who you invite on matters and how you prep them matters. Both are valuable relationship-nurturing touch points, because when you make that ask and identify why you want your guests to be on the show, they’re going to feel great. But it’s important to make sure they’re prepped so they don’t accidentally hijack the interview. Not only will they have a better experience on your show, your audience will thank you for it too.

That brings us to step three, Recording. This is not only when you hit record on your equipment, but it’s also your recording environment. The gear and workflow you use, along with where you actually record, determines the quality of your audio. To dig into this more, we sat down with Robb Wenner, the marketing manager at Auralex Acoustics and owner of New Noise Music and Sound Design. He shares his tips for capturing quality sound that will build credibility with your listener.

Robb Wenner: Your number one goal is to make sure that the listener is engaged. The listener is paying attention to your message, listening to the story and whatever you can do to make sure that listener does not leave that because of something you can take care of – really important.

Clark Buckner: Step four is Post-production. In this step you’ll polish up the audio while preserving the authenticity of the person who’s sharing their story. For instance, we’ll edit out what we call “isolated ums.” These are “ums and ahs” and other little phrases that are distracting. But we definitely want to keep some of those ums and ahs because, well, that’s how we talk as humans.

We’ll also preserve pause and timing and breath because what you don’t want to do is chop up every little sound where you’re cutting out the air and the breath that people take. It sounds like this, and that does not sound normal whatsoever.

It’s in the post production phase where you also add in narration and music assets. This is the part of the editing that transforms your recording into a finished product. We also have an episode planned where we’re going to give you a sneak peek into how we build our own custom original theme music for all of our shows right here in Music City.

The fifth and the final step is Publishing, whether that’s posting your episode onto an RSS feed, which is how you’ll show up in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and all of those, or maybe it’s just adding an embed link to a blog post on your website. Different strategies call for different tools. To talk more about publishing, we chatted with Minh Le, who’s a director at DVL Seigenthaler, a public relations firm based in Nashville, and they’re part of the global Finn partners network. Minh explains why it’s important to focus on your audience and remind yourself what success actually looks like.

Minh Le: Not every company is going to have thousands of people that they can engage, but even if it’s 20 or 50 folks internally that you can help get the word out, that’s a huge help. And who knows those 20 or 50 could have two or three friends and that grows to hundreds and hundreds. And then I think that’s just how you get the snowball effect rolling.

Clark Buckner: There you have it. Those are the five steps. With the help of some of our favorite podcasting and content marketing experts, this season of Brandcasting is going to give you a deep dive into each of these five areas so you too can start and succeed with a professional podcast for your brand.

We can’t wait to tell you more about these five steps and how we can help you build a branded podcast. Make sure you don’t miss an episode. You can join our mailing list and subscribe now on Apple Podcasts or wherever you find your favorite shows. And for more content like this head on over to our site, relationarymarketing.com/podcast.

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