In order to gain a loyal audience, you've got to take the time to build your podcast brand. So you may ask, what does branding mean? The process of branding means creating a unique image of your podcast through the formation of relationships, emotions, and memories around your brand. Ultimately, your brand is your podcast and your brand is defined by your audience's perception of your podcast. So, creating and maintaining a unique image and communicating it to your listeners is how you build your brand and eventually generate a loyal audience. To get you started with branding your podcast, we have listed our best tips for successfully building a brand around your podcast.
Identify Your Audience
As with anything else regarding your podcast, identifying your audience and focusing on them is of the utmost importance. Once you identify who your audience is, then you can create a brand identity that your audience understands and can relate to. Knowing your audience also helps you communicate your brand effectively because you are more knowledgeable about their online preferences. So, think about who you imagine listening to your podcast. Consider their age, gender, race, ethnicity, lifestyle, interests, and any other demographic information you can think of. By understanding your audience, you can tailor your brand identity and how you communicate your brand, so that your audience truly resonates with your podcast.
Have a Distinct Mission & Overall Vision
Ensuring that you have a specific mission and overall vision for your podcast is important for you to create your brand identity. What do you want to accomplish with your podcast? What is the purpose of it? How do you want you and your podcast to be perceived? What values are at the core of your podcast? If you don't have a clear mission and vision, then your brand identity will likely be inconsistent, which will make it difficult for your listeners to resonate with your podcast. And, if your listeners can't resonate with your podcast, then you definitely cannot build a loyal audience. So, think about what value you want to bring to your audience and how you will go about bringing that value. Then, you can ensure that all of your communication of your brand is rooted in your vision.
Establish a Unique Voice
Establishing your voice is important for making an engaging podcast, but it is also important for creating your brand. Let your personality shine through. Incorporate different slang that you like to use as well as terminology specific to your podcast topic to create your unique voice. Generate a set of words that you think are unique to your voice and consistently use them. Listeners often pick up on words that their favorite influencers say, so you can build a strong brand with the words you use. And, the common usage of these words can help create a community of loyal listeners who use the same terminology and connect with each other because of it. After all, listeners are coming back to your podcast to listen to your voice, so be creative with your voice, but always consistently on-brand of course.
Be Consistent
Create content that is consistent with your brand. This closely ties in with your distinct mission and overall vision. In every decision that you make regarding your podcast, whether that be artwork, episode segments, episode topics, etc., make sure that your decisions are directly linked to your mission and overall vision and thus your brand. Everything that your listeners see related to your podcast should be clearly on-brand. Consider making some guidelines for what your podcast looks like online, including fonts, images, colors, etc. This way, you can ensure that everything that your listeners see is clearly your brand, which makes your branding powerful because your brand is reliable and memorable.
Network, Network, Network
Connecting with people within your specific industry as well as across other industries is a great way to build your brand and communicate it. So, reach out to people via social media and email and go to any events that you can. This interaction gives you the opportunity to tell more people about your podcast. Not only does this allow you to increase your brand awareness, you can learn a lot from other people in your specific industry as well as in the overall podcast industry.
Be Creative
While you want to be consistent, you also want to be memorable. There are tons of podcasts out there, so you need to be creative and come up with fresh ideas to catch listeners. Think of unique segments as well as editing for your podcast, post eye-catching images and brand artwork online, come up with memorable posts for your social media accounts, create a beautiful website, and so on. Do whatever you can to make your podcast and your online presence stand out.
Build an Online Presence
This means creating brand awareness and promoting your podcast on social media. Promoting your podcast everywhere possible online is the first step to creating brand awareness. You want to make it incredibly easy for people to find your podcast. Make sure you put your podcast on as many platforms and directories as you can. Also, make full use of your social media accounts. Take your brand to your social media accounts and try to reach new listeners as well as your current listeners. Social media provides for a great space for you to introduce yourself to potential new listeners to grow your audience and it provides a space to connect with current listeners to convert them from casual listeners to loyal listeners.
More than anything, branding your podcast requires you to have a clear vision for it. Then, all of your decisions that follow have to align with that vision. Your vision is the foundation and everything past it are the building blocks to create a successful podcast. And, ensure that you are considering your audience and how you can make their experience and relationship with your podcast as easy and enjoyable as possible. Your focus on their interaction with your brand then helps you generate that loyal audience that you are looking for. Happy podcasting!
For information about how to start up your own podcast, take a look at our Podcast Equipment Guide for Beginners as well as our How to Start a Profitable Podcast article.
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