Creating a Podcast: Key Questions for Planning Your Podcast

Think about what you want the subject matter of your podcast to be. Will it have a consistent unifying theme throughout or will each ‘episode’ relate to something different. Will you have an overarching mission? 

Examples: 
The Serial podcast was an investigative journalism podcast with one non-fiction narrative running across multiple episodes in each series
The Blúiríní Béaloidis podcast has a common overarching theme, but each episode explores a different, specific topic

Think too about what you DON’T want your podcast to be. What misconceptions do people have of your subject or topic? Your podcast might present an opportunity to correct these, and move away from old stereotypes.

Will you be producing a bilingual podcast? What implication will this have for your potential audience and accessibility?

What demographic do you think your podcast will appeal to? Where can they be identified? Where are they located?

Learning more about your audience will help you focus your planning, and may help guide your topic choices for episodes, and promotional tools.

Do you hope to create a commercially viable podcast, or do you simply wish to promote your research, your product, hobby, or organization to new audiences?

This decision will colour your distribution, promotion and pricing choices.

This might seem like a reasonably simple decision but it can have its difficulties. In an ocean of podcasts you want yours to stand out and be ‘findable’.

Thus think about names that tell the listeners something about your podcast content immediately without them having to spend time digging for information. 

Examples: 
Blúiríní Béaloidis / Folklore Fragments - immediately lets the listener know that the podcast has some relation to the theme of folklore.

Do your research as to whether similar podcasts are already available. Speak to colleagues in your area of interest or do some online searches.

When you’ve identified these alternatives, ask yourself:

What are their strengths and weaknesses? What special value can you offer in your podcast? What unique material, specialization, perspective or unique selling point (USP) can you offer to help your project stand out from the competition?