How to set and achieve your Podcast Goals for 2023.
The start of the year is always exciting as it’s filled with abundant possibilities and opportunities. I’m sure that when you think about your podcast, production, or newsletter you have a river flowing of incredible ideas, however, wanting to achieve them all can feel overwhelming.
Whether you want to reach a certain number of listeners, update your social media graphics or land your dream sponsorship deal – there’s no better way to start the year than with a plan.
Here are five steps to setting and achieving your podcast goals:
Step 1: Define The Goals
Identifying your goals upfront will help steer you in the right direction and will impact the decisions you make and what you prioritise. Not all your goals have to be massive or award-winning.
To start, think of easy short-term goals that you can achieve in a week, a month, or a quarter.
This could include: writing down your objectives, creating a social media plan, securing guests, recording a certain number of episodes or just being consistent.
After that think of a few bigger goals that might take a little more planning and strategy. These intentions can be seen as medium-term goals and will take a few more months to achieve. Aspects like reaching a certain number of listeners, creating more innovative graphics, including video in your content, launching a newsletter, landing your dream guest or getting a sponsor all fall into this category.
Finally, plan your long-term goals. Think of this as all the achievements you would have accomplished at the end of December 2023. These ideas can include generating a certain amount of revenue, winning a podcast award or speaking at one podcast conference this year. You can also add the accumulation of the success of all your short and medium-term goals.
Step 2: The Measure of Success
Now that we have a list of short, medium and long-term goals the next step is to define your measurement of success.
In a typical work environment, we use Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that help set measurable and tangible results against the targets set. As a podcaster, each month or quarter set yourself targets that can help you reach your goals. You can adjust the targets based on your success. So if you’re surpassing your targets set more challenging ones and if you’re way below your targets then decrease them and work your way back up.
Let’s use listeners as an example, it’s always difficult to determine a good listenership number as many factors can affect this – such as your subject matter, audience size and the team behind the production. A good measure is to give yourself a percentage of growth. You could state, for example, that you want to increase your listenership between 5-10% each month. That would base your success on your actual podcast and not other productions.
One other example we’ll quickly look at is – social media. Everyone wants to increase their social media following as it can have a positive impact on increasing your listenership. Again looking at the numbers ask yourself how many followers you’d like to gain each month as this will be able to give you a tangible measure of success to benchmark against.
Step 3: Plan Your Steps
With your goals and targets set, you need an action plan on how you aim on reaching these aspirations. In essence, you need to know how you’re going to get there.
If your goal is to increase your social media following your steps could include creating a social media calendar and posting consistently. Note consistency doesn’t necessarily mean every day – but rather consistent to the days you have decided to post.
You might also consider creating innovative graphics. And certainly engaging more with your audience. When you understand what your audience likes and what content gets the highest engagement you should create more of that content.
If your goal is to obtain a sponsorship or advertising deal your first step could be to create a proposal. The proposal should include aspects such as your podcast overview, what you offer, sponsorship opportunities and the benefit to the potential sponsor. After you have your proposal, make a list of potential sponsors and finally pitch your proposal.
Essentially, your steps are the road between your goals and achieving your success.
Step 4: Set Deadlines
Being deadline-orientated will keep you motivated. But it’s no good having one big deadline and doing all the work the night before. Rather break your goals up into bite-sized tangible pieces leading up to your deadlines.
Make sure your deadlines are realistic and achievable, given your resources and time constraints.
Step 5: Have Fun
Most podcasters got into the industry because it was a fun side hustle. And whether you’re working alone or in a team – find ways to make sure you’re enjoying the journey. Perhaps you want to record some behind the scenes, start a TikTok account or colour outside the lines and experiment with your production. Or better yet once a quarter go out and celebrate achieving your success because you deserve it.
About the Podcast Sessions:
The Podcast Sessions focuses on the African podcast industry. Our offerings include a magazine, news website, and podcast, all of which provide in-depth coverage of the latest trends and developments in the African podcast industry.
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