Episode Summary
You can’t improve what you don’t measure. And the same goes for podcasting. If you never take the time to evaluate your show, you’ll miss out on opportunities to improve your podcast. But how exactly do you evaluate your own podcast? How do you measure what’s working and what isn’t?
In this episode of the Recorded Content podcast, our host Justin Brown takes a deep dive into the main points to consider when evaluating your own podcast. He shares some valuable tips for podcast creators who want to become better with every new episode they produce.
Featured Co-Founder
- Name: Justin Brown
- What he does: He's the Co-Founder of Motion.
- Company: Motion
- Noteworthy: Justin is also the co-host of the Recorded Content podcast.
Key Insights
- If you want your podcast to be better, go back and listen to each episode. The best way to improve your own podcasting skills and performance is to listen closely to each episode. Justin explains, "A lot of people ask me, 'How do I get my show to be better?' and my first question to those folks is always, 'Well, have you gone back and listened to your show?' And a lot of times, if that person is in marketing — which is a lot of the people who we've worked with — they have gone back, and they've listened to episodes, but they still want to know how to get better. And other folks who are actually the host and maybe they're in marketing; maybe they don't want to go back. 'I don't want to go and listen to myself,' but the thing that I tell them, whether they do go back and listen or don't go back and listen, is that, 'Well, the main way to get better is going to be to go listen to yourself.'"
- How to evaluate a podcast episode? There are a few points to keep in mind when listening to and evaluating podcast episodes. Justin shares the most important things to focus on. "What I want to do on today's episode is talk about the process that I go through when evaluating an episode and that consists of a few different items. I go through the premise, the lead-in and lead-out, question-asking, follow-up questions, rapport with the guests, the biggest highlight, and the biggest place for improvement."
- Take it one step at a time. As much as you want to fix everything that's wrong with your podcast at once, it's impossible to do effectively. Instead, start with the most important changes first, then dig deeper. "When you go through this exercise, there are going to be lots of things that you're looking at and that you're analyzing. Taking it all away is going to be tough. If you think about a golf swing — if you go do your golf swing and you think about ten things at once, well, you're going to end up hitting the ball into the woods."
Episode Highlights
Start by evaluating your podcast’s premise
“What was the topic of this episode? Was this episode just a chit-chat between friends and colleagues, or did you actually tackle an issue, a problem in your space, and actually use an overarching premise of the show that would impact your audience? And so if it is just two people talking, maybe I would say, ‘This episode was a really good conversation, but I think maybe the audience would have cared a little bit more had it been relevant to a topic that they’re running into or a problem that they’re running into in your space.'”
Asking the most popular podcast question is not always a good idea
“For example, I don’t love the question, ‘So tell the audience a little bit about your background.’ And sometimes, when I’m analyzing the lead-in, the first question will be, ‘Tell the audience about your background,’ and the guest will go on for 10 minutes. They are doing what you asked them to do. You brought in the show the way you wanted to bring the show in. But what you didn’t want to have happened is have the guests talk for 10 minutes to get started before you’re able to even get into your premise because if you ask what their background is and they answer the question, you have no idea how long that’s going to be. And then from there, you may be 10, 15 minutes into your episode without even touching on the premise that you wanted to.”
Listen to how you ask questions
“When you go back and listen to the way that you ask questions, there will be takeaways that you’ll get where you say, ‘Hey, the way I asked this question, the way I framed this up, maybe I talked a lot, or maybe I asked a question at the beginning, and then I talked a lot, and I would have wanted to flip that.’ Because I’m all for people giving their own insights when hosting a podcast. You don’t always have to be very strictly interview-based like you’re a reporter. You can have this back-and-forth dialogue, but the way you frame up your questions can definitely help you get better responses out of the gate.”
Use your active listening skills to ask better follow-up questions
“Then I’ll also point out some times when it was done well, where the guest finishes up and says, ‘Yeah, X, Y, Z, and that’s how we’re using our podcasts.’ And then the host says, ‘Very interesting. So when you refer to X in your podcast, I’m interested in how that is translating into Y.’ And you see, that’s a nice transition of a follow-up question using some active listening skills from when they were talking a moment ago to what your follow-up question is going to be.”
