Most B2B podcasts don’t actually have a job.

They exist because someone, somewhere, decided the company “should have a podcast”. Not because anyone decided what it was meant to do.

I’m Neal Veglio, and in this episode of B2B Podcasting Insights, I’m asking the grown-up question almost nobody asks before they hit record...

In this episode, I break down:

1. Why so many B2B podcasts quietly become jobless
2. How interviews often mask a lack of strategy
3. What changes inside a business when a podcast becomes operational
4. A simple test to tell whether your podcast is earning its keep — or wasting attention

If you’re responsible for a B2B podcast and can’t clearly explain what should change after someone listens, this episode will help you spot the problem — and decide what to do next.

Useful links:

Visual breakdown: https://podknows.co.uk/jobless

Podcast Growth Diagnostic: https://podknows.co.uk/diagnostic

Timestamped summary

00:00 Why most B2B podcasts don’t have a job

01:20 The question nobody asks before launching

02:26 Why “brand awareness” isn’t a job

03:22 What an operational podcast actually does

05:00 How podcasts end up jobless

09:20 What changes when a podcast has a job

12:40 The disappearance test

15:40 The Podcast Growth Diagnostic

Mentioned in this episode:

Chapters

This podcast uses chapters in apps that support them.

Most B2B podcasts don't actually have a job. Get

a job. Why are you just sitting here? He's completely

useless. Go find some work. Yeah. Stop being so

lazy. They exist because someone somewhere

decided at some point this company should really have a

podcast. But in most cases, nobody actually

decided what the podcast should do.

When a podcast doesn't have a job, it quickly becomes what

I call pamphlet podcasting. It's kind

of like a stakeholder within the company sitting down in front of

a microphone and reading out company literature.

And who wants to listen to that? Certainly not me. The

truth is, with some podcasts, the sole

duty is to fill space in the content

calendar. It makes the company LinkedIn page

look a little bit busier, but it doesn't change anything for the wider

business. Not really. And that's what I want to talk to

you about today. Welcome to

B2B Podcasting Insights with Neil Velio,

founder of PodKnows, a podcast agency helping you get better

results from podcasting. So let's get into it.

Why is your podcast jobless? I want

to ask you a grown up question that nobody tends to

answer when they start a podcast. And it's this. What

job is this podcast actually meant to do

for your business? Ask yourself right now. Do it

while I'm with you. What job is this podcast

meant to do for my business? You might be

forgiven for asking, what on earth do you mean by a job?

How does a podcast have a job? When I say a podcast

needs a job, I mean it doesn't need to be something

vague or polite. A podcast's job is not

really brand awareness. That's a facade, not a

function. A podcast's job is not really

thought leadership. That's just a label that people use

when they don't want to be specific about things. And it's

definitely not furnishing you with more content. I mean, that's a

given. It's content. A podcast's

job is something operational. And a

podcast's job looks something kind of like

shortening sales conversations, aligning

expectations internally within the business before someone ever

books in to have a chat with you, pre educating

any prospects that you might have coming in so that

you're not starting from scratch within your sales calls.

So really it's about building their belief in you

before there's any direct contact.

Here's the line I come back to time and time again when I'm talking to

my corporate clients. If nobody inside the business

can tell you what should happen after someone listens to your Episodes,

then the podcast doesn't really have a job. I mean, it might well sound

good, it might even get compliments from your regular listeners,

but it's not doing any actual work for your business.

And it may well have become your most overpaid,

underdeveloped member of staff. So how do

podcasts end up jobless?

Well, you see, this is where things you usually go sideways when

it comes to starting and producing

a podcast as part of a business. First of all,

the podcast gets handed over to the marketing team, and that's

not really the best way of treating it. Not because it's wrong for

marketing to be involved. Of course it is. It's a marketing tool.

It's a marketing asset. But that's not why it's ended up with

them. It's usually because no one else quite

wants to take responsibility for it. They don't understand it, it's

uncomfortable. And it also seems like a heck of a lot of

work. Someone within the team has probably realized that

it's gonna have to have weekly content, and they're already at breaking

point with having to get the weekly email newsletter together.

And nobody has time within the business to come up with more

original content for the podcast. You know, even if it's a case of just

uploading the content from the email newsletter into ChatGPT

and getting it to repurpose it for reading

on a podcast. And they probably realize even then,

surely it's just gonna sound like someone reading out our company emails.

Good instincts. So then what happens is it defaults

to interviews, because interviews feel easier.

You send an email, you ask somebody to be a guest on your show, and

then you sit back and let someone else do all the talking, all the work,

and it still feels productive. It fills the gap in

your social media content marketing calendar. Oh,

and let's not forget the KPIs. I mean, the success gets measured purely

in downloads, because downloads are easy to understand.

You can see them, they're a number in a dashboard.

And so once the show is actually live, it's published to

an RSS feed, and it's in the podcast apps. Nobody really owns

the strategy anymore. It just plods along,

continues aimlessly. There's a routine built around it.

Oh yeah, we record Monday, we publish Fridays. And I want to be

clear, not all of these podcasts are that bad. Some are

actually really well produced, well intentioned,

perfectly pleasant to listen to. I listen to these kinds of podcasts

all the time. They're great for some free advice now and again, but

they're strategically jobless. None of them shift me from being

a casual listener once a week to being a

paid customer. If you think about it as another staff

member, they're kind of the person that rolls in every

single week. Nobody really knows what they do, but they sit at their

desk, they do stuff, and then they go home at the end.

They're showing up to your business as required, but they're not

anchored to a real business outcome. Now I've put together a

visual on what it might look like when a podcast doesn't have a job

compared with when a podcast does have a job. And you can find

that@podnos.co.uk,

that's podnows.co.uk

and of course I'll put the link in the episode description for you. So

what changes when your podcast does indeed have a job?

Let's get into that.

So when your podcast does have a job, this is the bit that people

don't really expect. When a podcast has a

clearly defined job, it behaves differently

inside any company. It doesn't matter whether it's a small business,

a medium sized business, or a massive corporate with

thousands of employees, maybe around the world. You will

start to quickly notice the benefits of having the podcast,

which in my experience is one of the biggest challenges

of a company running a podcast. Nobody gets

the benefit of it. This is that thing that takes us time to

make and then we don't really get any measurable results from it.

Here's what it might look like. Episodes start getting

shared internally as a form of stealth team

building. You know, the CMO might pick up on something that

somebody did on the podcast that was really great

and share it around the team. Hey, listen to what

Helen talked about on last week's episode. Well done, Helen.

Round of applause. And that makes them feel good.

Sales teams start to send specific links to podcast episodes

instead of explaining things from scratch to their would be

clients. And if you're really on fire with this thing, well

then prospects start referencing episodes on calls without

being prompted. You'll start to hear things like I already

know how you guys work, so we're definitely aligned. When can

we start? Or that episode you just put out this week

completely answered the question I was going to ask you today. When can we start?

You might even get someone saying to you, I feel like I'm talking to a

celebrity. It's happened more than once with my clients. When

you've got a podcast that's doing its job, your conversations

don't start from building trust. It starts

when trust is already established. And this is the key distinction,

I think, for me, the best B2B podcasts,

they don't just create demand, they accelerate

decisions. Once that demand has already been met,

they don't need to compete with other shows to convince strangers.

They help the already interested move faster along your

sales pipeline. And then, of course, they'll have more confidence to make

a final decision. That's your podcast's job.

I want to give you a test for this podcast now. Not a framework,

not a worksheet, a test. You can do it in your

own time. And here it is. If your podcast

disappeared tomorrow, how would that affect the business?

Would sales conversations suddenly get longer? Would prospects be

a little bit harder to qualify? Would you lose a shared

internal language for explaining what it is that you guys do

and how you work? Or would nothing actually be

affected at all? And if the honest answer is nothing,

that's not a failure as such, it's just

information. But it does confirm your podcast

doesn't currently have a job. And that's something that you need to think about

changing if you're going to continue with that podcast

over the next 12 months. If you're

responsible for a B2B podcast, whether it's your own business

or or as part of a wider brand, and you can't

clearly explain what is meant to change inside

the business, that uncertainty doesn't stay

theoretical. It shows up as longer sales

conversations. It shows up as content that feels

busy but inconclusive. It shows up

as a podcast that keeps running on empty

without ever quite earning its keep. The

Podnos Podcast Growth Diagnostic exists to

resolve that. Let me briefly tell you a bit more about it. It's a single

session designed to answer one key question for you,

and that is, is this podcast actually doing a useful

job for our business, or is it just taking up our attention?

By the end of the session, you'll leave knowing whether the show is

worth doubling down on, maybe simplifying somehow, or

rethinking altogether. And it will also help you understand what you

can safely stop investing any more time and money in. This

diagnostic is not about improving the podcast. I have my

audits for that. The diagnostic is about removing the

uncertainty so decisions get easier

afterwards. If that's the kind of clarity you'd like to

have before you keep publishing more episodes this this year,

the details to book for your session will be in the

episode description or go to

podnose.co.uk

diagnostic that's

podnose.co.uk

Diagnostic. And remember a podcast

without a job actively wastes

attention, yours and your listeners. And

we all know that attention is the most expensive

thing in a B2B business and marketing in general.

So if you're not quite sure what job your podcast is meant to

be doing, that's literally what I will help you untangle.

Stop making a pamphlet podcast and start making an

operational asset that helps move your business forward.

Again, the link is in the episode description.