Podcasting is a great way to reach a new audience and show your personality. But before you pull out a microphone and press record, there are seven things you should know.

Podcasting is the new black – businesses are jumping on the bandwagon in droves because it seems like an easier alternative to blogging when it comes to demonstrating expertise, building relationships and extending reach. But it’s not all sunshine and lollipops.

Here are seven things you’re probably not hearing from podcasting enthusiasts. I share them, not in an attempt to put you off, more as a ‘heads up’:

1. The time variable

It’s significant. Yes, you need to set aside time to record the show. But you also need to set aside time to:

• Create the concept for each episode.
• Research the guest you’ll be interviewing.
• Produce the episode, and add the intros and outros so that it sounds great.
• Create individual episode graphics and show-notes.

To get more out of every episode you need to think about one call to action that will get your listener closer to becoming a customer. You should contact your guest and let them know that their episode has aired. And you need to market the episode on social media.

These additional points will take you more time, but they’re important to the success of your podcast.

2. The technology complexity

If you are not very technically inclined, the hardware and software components might baffle you. (I’m a technical person and I still found myself baffled – when I was first starting out it took me two-and-a-half weeks to realise that my mixer wasn’t sending sound through to my recorder. It was very frustrating.)

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That said, once you understand how the different components talk to each other, it is pretty much a set-and-forget exercise.

3. The consistency habit

When life gets in the way we tend to drop tasks that we think aren’t delivering an immediate ROI. This is a mistake. Think about your favourite TV series, for example. If they randomly missed a couple of weeks would you lose interest? I think you might.

As a podcaster, your job is to create content continuously and consistently. So when you’re allotting time to your podcasting efforts, you need to ensure you set yourself a schedule you can stick to.

4. The post-interview struggle

As podcasters we love the interview. We love connecting with the person we are talking to. But we hate the idea of putting it all together and creating show-notes.

This took me over 16 months to get right. Nowadays I have a team of people around me to help with that sort of thing so I can just get on with recording the show. However, this can be a real pain if you don’t have the resources to outsource that kind of work.

5. The marketing imperative

The biggest myth around podcasting is that all your energy needs to go into getting the most famous guests and then you will become famous yourself. NOT TRUE.

In fact, this is the furthest from the truth. There is the 80-20 rule of podcasting. That is, you have to spend 20% of your time creating your content and 80% of your time marketing that content. If you don’t do that, your podcast won’t get the traction it deserves.

6. The lack of leverage

You need to know why you are creating your podcast. You need to spend time understanding how it is going to benefit you, your business and your goals. If you don’t know this, you won’t know how to leverage the wonderful content you have just created; your audience won’t know what to do once they’ve finished listening.

7. The ROI measurement

The most common question I get asked all the time is, “Ronsley, podcasting is great but how do you make money from it?”

People need to remember that the ROI of a podcast (like blogging) cannot be measured by money alone.

When you have a podcast, the connections you create with your guests and your listeners are second to none. There is no medium that can replace that connection and there is no way that that connection can be measured in money.