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How to Determine If You Have a Great Podcast Idea
Jenna Weiss-Berman says she was “in the right place at the right time” when podcasts started taking off, but she has also been the reason for some of the industry’s biggest developments.
Starting off in radio, Jenna then moved on to make “The Moth”’s podcasts before eventually launching Buzzfeed’s podcast division, a marriage of brand and medium that seems particularly well-paired. There she created such memorable podcasts as “Another Round” and “Women of the Hour with Lena Dunham.”
“I got in early, and I felt like it allowed me to have some good influence in the space. I made it a priority to reach new podcast audiences, like young people and people of color, and I'm glad the industry has moved in that direction,” she says.
Today Jenna—a proud Girl Scout alum—runs Pineapple Street Studios, a high-level production company she co-launched in 2016, known for popular podcasts such as “Missing Richard Simmons” and “With Her” with Hillary Rodham Clinton. In August 2019, Entercom purchased the company for $18 million, according to the Wall Street Journal.
“It's been shocking to watch huge acquisitions of podcast companies by large media companies and platforms,” she says, adding, “It's been super fun and wild! I never thought podcasts would become so popular, but I'm glad they have.”
With so much saturation in current podcast options, you may think you’ve missed the chance to get in on podcasting, but Jenna says that’s not true.
“I have a lot of optimism for the industry, and I think it will continue to grow for a while,” she explains. “There’s so much that hasn’t been done that it feels like [a] space that’s wide open for creativity.”
So how do you know if your kernel of a podcast idea is a good one? Read on for her insight.
- Evaluate what’s out there.
“There are over 700,000 podcasts, and it’s hard to figure out what they are and it’s hard to find them,” says Jenna. “So making sure you have a new and unique idea is important.”
“Ask yourself, ‘Do I feel like I have something important to say that other people need to hear?,’” Jenna suggests.
- Decide if you’re the right host.
“There are lots of different types of podcasts: podcasts about hobbies, about storytelling,” she says, adding that they all have one thing in common. “People want to have a host they feel is an expert on the subject matter, and they want to learn things. You should host if you think you have something to teach people.”
But passion cannot be faked on podcasts, Jenna warns.
“This is a medium where you have to have authenticity. It’s so intimate,” she explains. “If your passion is ballet, but you think a show about economics will do well . . . you should still do a podcast on ballet. If you’re passionate, you’ll find an audience.”
- If you’re not the right host, consider producing.
“Think about your skills beyond being the host,” says Jenna. “Using your skills to help lift up other people’s voices is another really important job.”
“I want to produce podcasts—not everyone should be hosting them,” she adds.
- Go into podcasting with your eyes wide open.
“What’s appealing about podcasting is that the barrier to entry is low,” she says, adding that it’s not quite as low as people think.
“People just think it’s talking into a microphone and putting it on the internet, but if you want to make a good podcast, [you must] be able to devote one or two full days on it as the host.”
- Set aside a modest budget.
“If you want to do a chat-style show that’s minimally edited and has a little bit of music, it might cost you $1,000 to get started, that is if you’re hosting, producing, and editing your own show,” she says. “After the initial costs, it’s almost free.”
“You’ll need a recorder (we use a Zoom H4n Recorder, which costs approximately $200), a couple of microphones (we use [the] Rode NTG-2 microphone because [it’s] good for recording inside and outside), editing software (such as Hindenburg), and to pay some publishing fees (maybe $30 a month) to a file-hosting service,” she explains, breaking down the initial costs.
Of course, that’s just the barrier for entry. “At the top end, for something super produced, they cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per episode.” - Set a goal.
“Because there are so many [podcasts] and they’re hard to find and hard to make, you need to know your goals going in,” Jenna explains. “If your goal is to have 100,000 listeners right away, that’s hard.”
But she adds, “if your passion is knitting and you have 50 devoted followers who feel that you have really created a community for them . . . that’s success to me.”
- Know your next steps.
“Once you create a community,” Jenna explains, “help it grow and give other people voices.”
She suggests starting a Facebook group and having some listeners on your podcast as guests.
- Don’t assume revenue is out of the question.
“There are creative ways to make money that don’t require hundreds of thousands of listeners,” Jenna says. “You can be more creative with ad sales. Maybe you have 500 listeners on that local knitting podcast. So you go to a local yarn store and say, ‘If you pay me $100 an episode, I will tell people they should come here.’”
“There’s a lot of work that has yet to be done in podcast ad sales, and I have seen a lot of independent podcasts do better than the huge ones.”
