Starting a podcast without launching one with Tristan Pelligrino

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Episode Summary

In this episode of Recorded Content, Tristan Pelligrino, the co-host of the podcast and co-founder of Motion, talks about starting a podcast without launching one.

Tristan explains how launching a podcast can be intimidating for a company. However, he also notes it’s unnecessary to start with a full-fledged podcast.

Instead, a company can build a foundation of podcasting skills first. Tristan shares the story of a marketing team that scheduled internal interviews with experts to practice their podcasting skills. They used these interviews for creating blog posts, ads, web copy, and more, which helped them to improve their research, conversation, and planning skills.

Tristan ultimately breaks down four key ways a company can build the skills of its team so it can launch a successful podcast.

The excerpts featured within this solo episode stem from a podcast guest appearance Tristan had on the Modern Day Marketer podcast. A show produced by the Juice and hosted by Brett McGrath.

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Key Insights

Episode Highlights

Start with a low-risk activity

“Recently, I had a prep call with an upcoming guest on Recorded Content, and one of the things I uncovered was how the company’s podcast got started. The company didn’t buy a course, the company didn’t buy fancy microphones. The company didn’t spend 6 months on a strategy document. 

Instead, the marketing team scheduled interviews with internal experts and specific partners. This approach allowed the marketing team to build podcasting skills without actually launching a podcast. The team got to practice with research, developing an objective for a conversation, planning, and scheduling interviews, crafting interview questions, and conducting interviews with this approach. It was a low-risk activity.”

Internal interviews aren’t a waste of time

Tristan talked about how a company built a rock-solid interview process by conducting a series of internal executive interviews. “Even though the conversations weren’t published as podcast episodes, the [company] used these interviews as a foundation for blog posts, ads, web copy, and more.

It was viewed as practice, but with the added benefit of learning from one another. In many ways, podcasts are published conversations, and when you focus on the art of conversation first, it helps when your team is ready to launch the podcast. “

Podcasts are more than just another check box

“From my perspective, a podcast is more than an audio channel. And I think what a lot of marketers wrestle with is the fact they think a podcast is just another item on their list. ABM is this checkbox. Paid ads is another check box. It’s just another layer to what we’re doing. 

But we like to flip the script there and say, you know, a podcast is really a forum to have conversations with people in your space. They could be solo episodes where you’re sharing your own perspective in a creative way. But a lot of times where we start with companies is, is building on interviews or conversations that they’re having internally.