Make sure it "has legs", meaning a concept that's flexible enough to grow and change while maintaining your messaging. People often pigeon-hole their brand right out of the gate. They find that in a year, they want to sell products too, or create a community around the idea but it's just called "The XYZ Podcast" and doesn't make much sense anymore. Therefore my recommendations would be the following:
- What are your goals for the show or the brand? Core values?
- Are you family friendly? Who is your core demo?
- Ensure that you can get the URL (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) of the same name.
- Think about the show/brand’s “voice” through before your start
- Are you lead by a personality? “The Jane Doe Podcast” or are you something more open-ended?
- Determine your audience categories - sports, fashion, politics, opinion, etc.
- Is this a business model? How? Why? Who? Bigger picture, does it have modularity to grow beyond the podcast product?
- What are the names of other podcasts within your vertical? What do they do right? What do you they do wrong? How do you want to differentiate yourself?
- Once you have a name you THINK you like, create a test group of peers to kick the name around and see if it means the same thing to them as you have intended for the show. The “Red Bird” Podcast could be about bird watching, baseball or any number of things.
- Once you’ve decided on a name, swoop down and do a social media land grab: Get the Facebook Page; Twitter Handle; Facebook Community Group (leave it unpublished until it feels like there’s real activity going on internally); Instagram Account and any related social accounts that you think will be necessary to support the directives.
Take time to fill your social with “LIKES” and podcast with ratings before you start REALLY pushing it out there with a real marketing effort. People are often reluctant to start with something new, fearing that it must not be good or that it might not have staying power. People take their digital time-share seriously and they don’t want to make an investment in something that they don’t feel is gaining momentum.
Have you ever started a Podcast or community that failed out of the gate?