How to start a podcast and leverage it to become an influencer in your genre
No matter what genre of music you produce, it is almost guaranteed that you are competing against thousands, if not millions, of other people trying to become successful within the same niche. Even if your music is incredible, how can you stand out from the crowd? How can you improve your branding to become one of the most recognized producers within your genre? A podcast may be the answer you have been searching for. And so during this article, we’re going to discuss how you can start a podcast, and how to leverage it to further your career.
A podcast within electronic dance music can discuss many things relating to the target audience. For example, you could create one around music production tips, marketing advice, or simply having conversations with iconic names surrounding their careers. No mater what you decide to focus your podcast on, it must be relatively entertaining or informative in order to sustain the attention of the end consumer.
Once you have your podcast planned out, it’s time to set it up so that it can appear on iTunes, Spotify, and various other platforms. Websites such as Anchor.fm will allow you to select the cover artwork, title, description, category, and even manage the distribution of your series.
Podcasts are a great method of communication with your audience because it’s a format which many more people are starting to use every single day. Instead of having to be fixated to your device, it’s able to be listened to whilst in the car, on the plane, walking the dog, or anywhere else without the need of a wifi connection. Because of the passive nature of consumption, it does not distract users from what they would otherwise be doing throughout their day.
Also, it can help increase your audience size. If you’re able to use highly sought after keywords in the title, the number of listeners you get will increase due to SEO practices. In a similar fashion to YouTube, if you’re able to jump on topics just before they start trending, you’ll notice a giant spike in the size of your audience. For example, you could create a podcast episode focused around Tomorrowland. Once the event rolls around, more people will be searching for it – and so your view count will increase.
Podcasts are also incredibly cheap to produce. If you don’t have the funds available to purchase a $500 microphone, it’s not necessarily a problem. After all, some podcast episodes can even be produced using voice recordings from your phone. For example, Gary Vaynerchuk did a whole audio series in which he recorded several clips whilst on an aeroplane and then published them onto iTunes, Spotify, and many other platforms.
Podcasts can additionally be a great way of acquiring new customers for your business within the electronic music industry. As you are communicating about a topic to an audience who is interested in listening to what you have to say, they are naturally going to be interested in what value you can provide them. For example, if you are a mastering engineer, you could produce a podcast talking about how to master tracks in an effective way that will lead to high-quality audio. As you are knowledgeable about the topic, you’ll start getting inquiries to master songs whilst your audience is simultaneously growing even further.
But how can you actually leverage your podcast to accelerate the growth of your artist career into the upper tiers of the electronic music industry? That’s what the remainder of this article shall discuss.
Firstly, you can leverage the size of your guest’s audience to increase the following of your podcast. If they’re able to post links on their Instagram, Facebook, or any other social media platform, it will ultimately drive traffic directly towards the episode. Therefore, being strategic about your guests is incredibly important. In an ideal situation, they should be someone who’s got a reasonably sized following, and also has a lot of experience/knowledge that they could share to benefit the listeners of your podcast. Both before and after the episode has aired, stay in regular contact so that you’re able to network with their team. There may be some potential opportunities down the road for you to work with them on future projects.
Also, asking for reviews will significantly impact the number of listeners on your episode, and your artist career as a whole. With iTunes and many more platforms, the charts are ranked depending on how many reviews a particular episode has. If more & more people are enjoying it, the algorithm will naturally push it higher in the rankings so that more people can listen to it. If you are able to propel your podcast into the Top 100 of a particular category, you can use it as leverage to get higher quality guests on the episode, and subsequently, more people will hear about your artistic brand.
Finally, leaving a call to action is a great way to get your podcast audience to do something. Often mentioned at the start or end of the episode (or even both), it can be a great way to drive traffic towards other projects. As an example, if you have 5k listeners and get them to listen to your new song on Spotify, it’ll boost your streaming revenue significantly, and will also give it a higher chance of being featured on curated playlists due to high exposure in a short amount of time.
Podcasts are a great way to propel your artist brand towards the top tiers of the music industry so that you’re able to get more fans, followers, and higher booking fees at shows. By creating content around your artistic niche, it positions you as a thought leader & influencer within your space.
