158. Creating a Profitable Private Podcast Series: Part 2

Sara Whittaker 0:01

Your Podcast is a powerful tool that serves your audience and your business. But how do you manage it all bring in new listeners, and convert those listeners into customers. That's what this show is all about. Welcome to podcasting for educators. I'm Sara Whitaker, classroom teacher turn podcast manager, and I'm here to help you get the most out of your show, all while making an impact on other educators. Hello, Hello, thanks for joining me for another episode of podcasting for educators. Today will be part two of our series on creating a profitable private podcast series. If you missed part one, definitely head back and listen to that one first, because today, we're picking up on where we left off in part one. In part one, we looked at what a private podcast series is, how it can help your business what kind of tech you need. And we also answered important questions like how you could use a series when you would launch it and more. Today, we are diving into the specifics of planning your private series. By looking at things like how many episodes you should include how to title, this series, episode, length, Episode, content, CTAs, and all kinds of good stuff, you'll hear me walk through an example of a private podcast series so that you can really get a feel for what your series could look like. But just remember that it's just that it's an example. There are so many different directions that you could go with a private podcast series. So do what feels right for you and get creative with it. This is something that could be really fun to put together. Let's get started. Okay, so let's look at the details of your private podcast series. You can make this however many episodes you want. But keep in mind, you want this to be bingeable. You want it to be something that people get through the whole thing, people will start to fade off if it's too long. So I have found that three to five episodes is a really good sweet spot of being able to offer valuable information, being able to share about solutions to their pain points being your offer, but in a way that that hooks people in and keeps them engaged throughout the whole series, you want to craft a clear title for your series, you want it to be a title that both hooks people, but also makes it really crystal clear what your private podcast series is about. You don't want there to be any questions as to what it's about or who it's for. And kind of like what I touched on before about not making it too long in terms of how many episodes you have. You also want to think about the same thing in terms of length of each of those episodes, keep your episodes, bite sized, and actionable. I think 15 minutes, maybe even a little bit less is a really good sweet spot for this type of podcast series. You don't want to be putting out five hour long episodes because people will fall off. And you will have a lot of people who aren't going to get through those episodes, you really want to consider your audience. If you're listening to this, you probably serve some kind of educator or parent. And they're very busy people. So think about what can somebody could somebody get through an episode while they're taking their kid to school or while they're driving to work or while they're on their lunch break or on a quick walk? Can they get through the whole series in a day, that would really be the goal. If somebody wanted to sit down and binge This is it super easy to do in a day's time.

Again, I know that I've already talked about this a lot. But I really want to drive this point home, you are going to be speaking to those pain points that I mentioned before, inside of your episode content. And you are going to be planning your content around your offer. You want to present your episode content in a way that organically leads into a solution, which is your resource or the service that you offer. And like I said, I'm gonna give you an example of this in just a second. And then you will also want to plan a call to action or CTA for each of your episodes. So at the end of your episode, or the beginning of your episode, your your CTA does not have to be at the end. It could be something that you mentioned at the beginning in the end. But this could be an action step for the listener to take after listening to an episode so maybe you're going to give them something that they need to apply what they learned after listening or it could be to go sign up or go purchase whatever it is that you're selling. I personally recommend mixing in both types of CTAs you absolutely 100 purchase Sam need to be talking about what it is that you are funneling people into inside of your episode content. This is a piece that a lot of people miss, we want to make sure that we are sharing about that membership or that course or that TBT bundle in the episode content. And there's lots of different ways that we can do that. Okay. With that, let's look at an example, private podcast series. So this is a totally hypothetical situation that I am sharing with you all to kind of get your wheels turning and see what you might want to try in your series. Okay, so this example series is going to be called Mastering kindergarten classroom management. So very clear title. If my ideal listener was looking at this, they would know that this series is going to be for kindergarten teachers who are looking for help with classroom management. This pretend series is going to funnel listeners into a classroom management membership for kindergarten teachers. That is going to be the offer that we're focusing on. This private podcast series is going to be five episodes. And I'm going to give you examples of titles and topics for these five episodes again, so that you can get some ideas for yours. So episode one is going to be called Why is classroom management is so difficult in kindergarten, the reason that I would do an episode like this is because it speaks to your listeners pain points, which we've talked a lot about, you're letting people know, I see you classroom management and kindergarten is so hard, because of XY and Z because many of your students have never been to school before, because you are one person with 25 little humans running around. Because you might not have the right system set up in order to effectively manage a classroom. So you are letting them know, I get it, I have been where you are. You're not crazy, you're not doing anything wrong. These are the reasons that it's so hard, you're validating their feelings. Episode Two is going to be called build a strong classroom community with these three strategies. So this type of episode is going to be an episode where you are giving actionable strategies that your listeners can walk away from, they can listen to this episode, and they can apply what you are teaching, they're getting a sense of your teaching style you're building trust by sharing actionable information with them. Episode Three is going to be called a mistake teachers make when dealing with challenging behaviors. Now, this type of episode is one that I highly recommend that you include an episode that speaks to a mistake that whoever your ideal listener makes. Talking about mistakes is a great hook for an episode. People want to know if they're making the mistake that you're talking about. And most importantly, they want to know how to fix it. If you do an episode like this, talk about the mistake, of course, let them know that you have made this mistake, too. This isn't an episode where you're just like up on your soapbox telling them what they're doing wrong. But you're letting them know, Hey, I'm talking about this because I have made this mistake. And the teachers that I work with have made this mistake. And then most importantly, you're going to give them a solution, which should relate to your offer. Okay, so this would be a place that you could very organically sprinkle in some stories from, like I said in this made up scenario, it's funneling people into a membership. So I could sprinkle in some stories of teachers who have made transformations. Maybe they made this mistake. But then after joining the membership, this has improved, you could sprinkle in those types of stories, you could talk about your own experience, you could talk about how resources in the membership have helped teachers stay away from making this mistake. Episode Four is called the dynamic duo of teachers and parents. And this type of episode would be one that teaches and organically funnels into a solution for people. So I'm imagining in this episode, you would talk about how important that parent teacher relationship is, and how to really nurture that relationship and make sure that it's a positive one throughout the year, so that you can really work as a team to help their child and this would be a great time to talk about the importance of this relationship, share some solutions, and then talk about how you're membership has resources that can really make this easy for them. So in a membership, maybe there would be monthly email templates or phone call scripts that you could refer to in the episode to just kind of, you know, just sprinkle it in let people know, hey, in the membership, I make this really easy for you, I make this parent teacher relationship that much easier for you, because I offer you scripts or templates to help you deal with situations that are sometimes tricky. And then episode number five, this is one of my favorite types of episodes, how these two teachers mastered their classroom management. And this will be a type of episode where you would have one or more of your students or customers on with you to share about their experience with using your resources or services. And it doesn't have to be a flat out just talking about how great your resources are. But instead, it would be inviting people from your community on to have a conversation with you, and share their story and share their transformation. You would focus on what their struggles were before joining your membership, or before buying your TPT bundle, or before taking your course. And then what it was like after using those resources. This is a great way to organically sell your resources and provide social proof for people you're showing your audience. Hey, people have bought this, and they've had great success with it. And you can too, because hearing these stories from other people, it really builds that connection, again validates their feelings of I'm not the only one that feels this way. I'm not the only one who's dealing with these challenges. There is a solution for it. And these these people got this solution and it worked for them. So maybe it could work for me too. So it's just a really great way to sell your offer without feeling salesy. So now it's your turn to plan your episodes. I want you to start with your offer and plan backward. Remember to think about these questions. What are the pain points of your ideal customer? What solutions does your resource or service offer? And how can you speak to these pain points and offer a solution in your episodes? Okay, those are the big things you are going to think about, you really want to touch on those pain points, validate people's feelings, offer solutions, actionable tips, and then make sure that you are actually sharing about that thing that you're funneling people into.

Here is your kind of overall checklist of implementation for this private podcast series. If you are like ready to go, you definitely want to try this out. Here are the steps that I would recommend taking. Number one would be to outline your episodes, some people prefer to really script it out like write word for word, what you are going to say either way is totally fine. Whatever you're more comfortable with. But don't forget to mention your offer. Remember, it can be a casual, CTA at the end of your episode, you can sprinkle it into your content, but you need to talk about it. Then you would record your episodes and edit your episodes. Design your cover art, remember Canva is a great place to do that. Sign up for Hello audio go in there and set it up, you can set up a hello audio account in like 15 minutes, there's not too much to do in there. And there's lots of options in there where you can choose, like I talked about at the beginning, you can choose if you want this to be available all the time. You can also even choose if you want to drip it out. So maybe when somebody signs up, they get an episode per day for five days, you can make it so that the content expires. So maybe you have this again helps to create that urgency. So maybe you always keep this private podcast series open. But once somebody signs up, they only have access to it for two weeks. Or maybe you offer a coupon code for your resource that you're promoting. And that coupon code and the episode content expire in two weeks. So you can set those options up in Hello audio. It's very straightforward. There's also a great Facebook group for Hello audio that has a lot of customer support. And there's tons of tutorials and articles if you need to troubleshoot anything but everything is fairly self explanatory on there. And again, that's where you would upload your episodes and then you could schedule them out. So maybe you To get all of this ready a week before you want it to go live, you can schedule it ahead of time, then this is a really important piece that we haven't touched on yet and that a lot of people miss with any kind of opt in that they create. But I really encourage you to write a nurture sequence to go along with this private podcast series. And if you aren't familiar with a nurture sequence, it's a series of emails that you send that you drip out to your audience after they sign up for one of your pieces of content. So what this could look like is somebody opts in to your private podcast series, your first email that you would send them would be a welcome email that says, you know, hey, congratulations, here's your access to the private podcast, and just kind of you know, build that buzz, make it exciting, welcome them to the series, then I would recommend dripping out over the next week or two, one email per episode at minimum, okay, where you can kind of touch on some talking points from your episodes, or take a teaching point from your episodes and just put it in your email. That way you're following up with the content. Any CTA that you give in your episodes, use that same CTA in your email, make sure that you are including a CTA to purchase your offer in these emails, email a lot of time is where you really seal the deal. Because maybe somebody's listening to this private podcast, in their car or on their walk. But then when they get those follow up emails, those nurture emails, and they see oh, yeah, I heard her talk about her membership in that series, and I really want to join, but they had just kind of forgotten about it. Well, now they're getting this email, they're on their phone, or they're on their computer, they can click and join right then in there. So these emails are a really, really important piece of your private podcast series. And then lastly, promote the series, make sure that especially if this is something that you are going to have on evergreen, where it's an evergreen opt in, people can always sign up for it, make sure that you are actively promoting this once a week or more, constantly talking about it so that you are continuing to get that steady increase of email subscribers. All right, that wraps up this training on creating a profitable private podcast series. I hope that it gave you everything you need to really get started with this idea and put it into action. If you decide to try this in your business and put together a series I would love to hear about it, please, please, please, either email me at Sara at podcasting for educators.com or message me on Instagram at podcasting for educators. And tell me all about your series or tag me in it. If you're promoting it on Instagram, I always love to see the finished products that y'all come up with. I also will mention that if you listen to this, and you are super excited to try this, but you know that maybe you don't have the time to actually put all of this together, or you don't know how to edit or you really need somebody or want somebody to kind of hold your hand through this process and be a soundboard for you and just kind of take it off of your plate. But beyond the recording, of course, I do have a VIP day where I fully put together your private podcast series for you and set it up for you inside of Hello audio. I will put a link to that in the show notes so that you can really see all of the details of what's included. And you can see where you can book a free discovery call. If you want to kind of chat through that with me get some more information about it and see if it would be a good fit for you. Thanks again for listening to this two part training and hopefully I'll catch you here next week. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. To keep this conversation going connect with me on Instagram at podcasting for educators. I'm always looking for an excuse to talk about podcasting. If you're looking for support and launching, managing or growing your podcast, check out my online course the podcasting for educators prep school at podcasting for educators.com/prep school. I'll see you here next time.

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