7 Podcasting Services Every Company Should Consider

Chips without salsa. Jim without Pam. Mornings without coffee.

Some things are just better together. Sure, you can probably get by with one without the other (well, probably not mornings). But would life be as good?

It’s kind of like hiring a podcast production partner and they only offer you audio engineering. There’s so much more you could be leveraging! And life is better when good things come in bunches.

There’s a lot more to podcasting services than audio production.

What are the podcasting services every company should consider? 7 podcasting services every company should consider are:

1. Branding of the show
2. Content planning
3. A media day experience
4. Guest outreach and coordination
5. Audio production
6. Video production
7. Graphics

We’re a little biased, yes. We offer all seven of these podcasting services and then some. Yet, honestly, if a modern podcast production agency isn’t offering you these services, you should consider seeing what else is out there.

Check out the seven podcasting services every company should consider a lil’ closer.

Podcasting services every business should consider

These are seven podcasting services that your company should be looking into when hiring a podcast production partner.

1. Branding of the show

News flash: The name of your show is crit 👏 i 👏 cal 👏

Naming your show

Your first instinct may be to name your show after your company or a product. Your podcast production partner may even agree with you.

STOP.

Reassess.

Think about who this show is for. Is it to build up your company or to build up your customer? Hopefully, the latter. If it’s the former, good luck getting anyone but your coworkers to listen.

Your podcast agency should help you in nailing down the name of your show. Here’s our methodology for reference:

1. Define your most profitable buyer (aka, your ideal buyer).
2. Pick one of the following naming formats:

Ideal buyer’s industry + ideal buyer’s role
Example: The Healthcare CEO Show

Ideal buyer’s industry + generic role
Example: The Healthcare Executive

Ideal buyer’s industry
Example: The Healthcare Podcast

3. Keep it straightforward.

As you can see, there’s no need for cutesy show names. You want to keep it as clear as possible, making it easier for listeners to search for your podcast.

It’s unlikely that a potential listener will search for the name of your company or product in their preferred podcast listening platform.

Put yourself in their shoes. If you want to learn more about the healthcare industry, would you search for Bristol-Myers Squibb in Apple Podcasts? Or, would you search for healthcare, healthcare leadership, patient satisfaction, healthcare business, physician wellness, etc?

Focus on your customers. That’s how we came up with B2B Growth instead of the B2B Podcasting Show. It’s also why we highlight the expertise of our customers on our shows (we call that content-based networking).

Include a powerful logo

When you think about branding, it’s hard not to consider what the logo is going to look like.

This is another podcasting service that your partner should be helping you with. Your show’s logo should grab the attention of searchers when they’re scrolling through podcasts in Apple Podcasts or Spotify. We’ve found that a sharp, vibrant logo background really helps with this.

Take these logos for example:

Even though the content of your podcast is most important, it’s essential to focus on the name and logo to attract a listenership.

That famous saying “don’t judge a book by its cover” just isn’t realistic. People judge.

Don't let your podcast cover art suck.

2. Content planning

Another podcasting service your company should seriously consider: content planning.

A good architect doesn’t go into a project without any blueprints. A podcast production partner shouldn’t let you jump into recording without a plan.

That’s why we offer content planning services to our customers. You can extract WAY MORE content from your show if you plan it out first.

Here’s our content methodology:

1. We ask the customer for five high-level topics they want to be known for in their industry. The topics are really broad, like the tags on blogs.

Example: company culture

2. Google Alphabet Soup: We take the five topics and use Google’s auto-suggestion feature to find more granular search terms. To do this, we type one of your topics into Google’s search bar, followed by [space] and “a.” We take note of the auto-suggestions Google populates. This process is carried out for every letter of the alphabet and for each of the high-level topics.

Example: company culture a, company culture b,company culture c, etc.

3. There’s now an extensive list of granular topics to drive each of the customer’s episodes. These long-tail keywords have varying levels of competition, however, they’re all relevant to what people are actually searching for.

Example: company culture and values, company culture quotes, company culture examples

4. Our team whittles down this behemoth list to 20 hand-selected topics. We do this by considering the searcher’s intent and analyzing the top three articles currently popping up first on the results page.

5. Our customer, then, picks 12 of those to focus on for the first six months of content generation.

6. The 12 podcast recordings are turned into keyword-rich blog posts.

7. Highlights from the recordings and blog articles are turned into succinct social media golden nuggets (both graphics and videos).

That’s our content planning process in a nutshell!

3. A media day experience

Number 3 of the 7 podcasting services you should consider is a media day experience. This is a time your podcast partner carves out to solely focus on your show’s production.

Our team calls the media day experience 48 Hours to Industry Influence. Basically, it’s two consecutive days of production with one podcast host. We do this either remotely or we fly the host into Orlando, FL (where a big part of our production team is based).

During the 48 Hours to Industry Influence, our production team captures…

… podcast audio.
… video.
… headshots.
… bloopers.
… retakes.
… banter.
… smart quotes.

Customers get our full and undivided attention during these two days. We talk with you, laugh with you, eat with you, create with you, and eat with you again.

Your podcast production team should offer a media day experience not only because it’s an efficient way to batch your content creation, but it’s also just really fun.

4. Guest outreach + coordination

One of the toughest things about podcasting is keeping a steady queue of guests. If you’re paying a production company to produce podcasts for your business, guest outreach and coordination should be included.

Just like content planning, guest prospecting is done in the pre-production phase of the show. Our team has a wonderful individual who coordinates all of our customers’ guest outreach (her name is Alexis and you can connect w/ her on LinkedIn).

With all that goes into our podcast pre-production, we want our customers (the hosts) to be able to simply show up and do the thing.

We don’t think there should be any friction when you’re paying for a service.

5. Audio engineering

If your podcast production partner doesn’t offer audio editing, ask for your money back.

That is all.

6. Video production

If you’re already recording audio for your podcast, why not get some video while you’re at it?

The thing about video, is that it works extremely well on social. Audio on its own does not.

That’s why our team sees video as essential to your podcast strategy. We feel that if you’re already recording audio, it’s just as easy to hit record on the camera. If your podcast production partner offers video services, they should also be able to complete the editing needed to post the video to social platforms.

Full-length videos

When we’re doing our 48 Hours to Industry Influence, we record entire episodes with the video camera. These full-length videos are then edited and published on YouTube.

From the full-length video, we also produce micro-videos.

Micro-videos

Micro-videos are quick snippets cut from the full-length video. These short and informational videos perform really well on social media, especially after the video editing team gets their hands on them.

In fact, here are some examples of our micro-videos:

To be successful in podcasting, it’s a good idea to capitalize on video. You won’t regret investing in this particular podcasting service.

7. Graphics

There is a whole lotta opportunity to implement graphic design in your podcasting strategy. Graphics can be used for

• LinkedIn slide decks
• Quotes
• Blogs based on podcast audio
• Article headlines
• GIFs
• Your show’s logo
• Instagram carousels

Our team’s podcasting services include two main forms of original graphics:

1. Quote graphics to complement written content. We pick out insightful quotes from our shows to transform into engaging quote graphics. Many times, we add the host’s headshot to quote graphics — makes it more fun for them to share!
2. Social media graphics. Images are perfect for sharing on social media. We like to highlight our customers and the shows they host. (And recreate the occasional meme.)

Check out these examples:

Make ‘em fun, make ‘em fresh, make ‘em fire. 🔥

The podcasting services you deserve

When you hire a podcast production agency, you should be familiar with all the podcasting services that are out there. Don’t settle for audio editing alone — there are so many more options! (Options that will increase your ROI, nonetheless.)

Wanna find out more about the podcasting services we just shared? Email me (Logan Lyles) at logan@sweetfishmedia.com

I’d love to chat!