June 20, 2022

I jumped into doing a podcast because I wanted to keep my marketing skills current. Here's what I've learned so far:

I've seen launching "Girl, Take the Lead!" similar to launching a new product. Over the years in my career, I've had the opportunity to launch over 90 products and services. I find that I care a lot about our podcast just as I cared about each product that I birthed. When I lead a fast cycle team we had a motto: "Doesn't need to be a work of art; just needs to get done!" - doing a podcast is a lot like that. This website for example: not perfect but it'll do the job. I can continue to improve it and shape it so it better reflects our brand.

Branding a podcast is very similar to any other branding I'd done over the years and involves the same key distinctions: Positioning, Strategies, Tactics - BUT unlike what I'd done in the corporate marketing efforts I'd executed, there's one key strategy which makes podcasting very personal, and that's Authenticity. I think all podcasters would agree that the more transparent and honest our podcast, the more the audience trusts and believes you. I found it takes a toll sometimes and I think we'd all agree, there are some episodes we need time to recover from - for me, it was our Episode #1 about finding my voice. I realized I'd dug deep and shared some trauma associated with the episode. Thank you, God, for my sister-in-law, Andrea Canny, who helped us through that first episode. Since then I've always tried to look deeply into our topics, do the research, read the book, and explore questions I think are important. I trust our listeners will learn something new.

Positioning includes defining a target audience and when it comes to podcasting, I've found that to be a challenge, particularly with a general topic like "Leadership" which can apply to many. So what guides me is my ideal target, women like my daughters who will face their own issues as they progress along in their careers. Perhaps some of those will be similar to my own. I also want to stay close to their issues and listen for their concerns and offer what I can to help them along. This helps me visualize what we're up to, our vision board:

Like any good marketing effort, metrics are of great interest to me as I've launched episodes. Interesting audience trends I've seen are:

  • Age groups are pretty equal (except the younger than 18 group which I don't get)
  • Female/Male percentage are around 67%/33%
  • Global plays grow every week
  • Episodes 15/16/17 have been the most popular but all have strong number of plays

In my last position with John Muir Health, I'd learned about social media but boy it is a whole different thing for a personal brand. The one thing for most hobby podcasters is that we do everything ourselves. It can be overwhelming at times but the pressure is self-imposed so it can be released without impunity, too. I use FB, LinkedIn, and Instagram, and like many of my cohorts, I am always learning and hunting to find my peeps. I notice my ease in posting about my latest episode with a clip included but I know that's not enough. Like everything else in podcasting, authenticity and transparency also relates to social media. Building engagement creatively in a reel or story can be elusive at times but I'm up for the challenge - I say, bring it on, baby!!