How You Can Start a Health and Fitness Podcast
Are you a fan of a good podcast? You’re not alone. Recent statistics show that almost 60% of US consumers have listened to at least one podcast in their lives, a figure that is only set to rise.
While you may be familiar with podcasts as a form of entertainment (Who doesn’t love listening along while exercising or completing chores?), they also represent a lucrative marketing tool. Combined with the fact that ‘health and fitness’ represent the fourth most popular podcast genre in the US, it’s clear that starting a branded podcast series could push your training or coaching business to the next level.
If you’re not particularly tech-savvy, the idea of starting a podcast may seem daunting. Contrary to popular belief, however, you don’t need a ton of extra money or niche-technical knowledge to record some truly engaging material. With this in mind, we’ve put together a guide on how to start a podcast as a trainer or coach. In the long term, these tips could help you build a loyal audience and enrich your marketing strategy.
Choosing a Podcast Topic
What’s your topic and target audience? Do you want your podcast to focus on exercise and personal training? Maybe a certain component of health, such as stress management? Or, would you like to start a broad-themed “health and fitness” podcast? Whichever you choose, make sure it’s something you like and can engage with! Podcast listeners cannot see you (unless you record a video and post it to your social media or youtube channel), so they rely largely on the tone of your voice and diction. If you’re talking about something you’re passionate about, your excitement will translate.
Recording and Editing
Outline your podcast episodes in advance. Organize your thoughts ahead of time, create a natural flow to the episode, and add any relevant articles or references. This helps to reduce excessive pauses, and, hopefully, streamline your editing process.
You can record a podcast with your laptop’s microphone, but we don’t recommend it. You’ll need a few pieces of podcast equipment to record clear audio. Record episodes in the smallest and quietest room possible to reduce outside noise and echoes. Shut your windows and doors, turn off any machines or devices that make a constant noise, and put your pets somewhere they won’t disturb you for a couple of hours. Fill your recording environment with soft items (couches, pillows, carpet, etc.) that absorb sound to muffle any errant noises.
Keep in mind that when you over-edit (cut out every “um” and “ah”) the conversation can sound unnatural. You should think of editing as a tool and refrain from using it as a crutch. To keep yourself from over editing, you can utilize “top and tail” editing which means cutting the parts of the recording before the content starts and after it ends. Don’t touch anything in-between. It all stays in as it was recorded.
Instead of relying on editing to make you sound like a better presenter, it’s smarter to practice creating cleaner recordings that don’t require editing.
Picking your Podcast Hosting Platform
Once your polished episodes are in the bag, you will need a medium to host them. There are plenty of affordable podcast hosting services out there that offer great features such as analytics tracking and voice mixing tools. Once hosted, you can post your podcast to your site and submit it to several platforms, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify. We recommend submitting your work to as many platforms as possible—the more places you appear, the more people are likely to listen to your podcasts.
Creatively Branding Your Podcast
What about naming your podcast. Will you do a play-on-words utilizing your name? Will you leverage a popular, trendy topic? You can quite literally choose anything. There are tons of podcasts out there, so you need to be creative and come up with fresh ideas to catch listeners. Think of unique segments as well as editing for your podcast, post-eye-catching images and brand artwork online, come up with memorable posts for your social media accounts, create a beautiful website, and so on. Do whatever you can to make your podcast and your online presence stand out.
Promoting Your New Podcast
Finally, you should dedicate time to promoting your podcast through a variety of channels. Capturing listeners is similar to attracting readers for your personal or business blog. Some options include:
Posting episodes to your social media: This is an instant winner since those who are following your or your business are already interested in you and the content and services you provide.
Guesting on other training or coaching podcasts: If you’re an expert on fitness, health and wellness, or training and coaching-related topic, why not offer to appear as a guest on a relevant podcast? Just remember to plug your own show at some point during the recording.
Promoting your show via email or SMS: Why not include information about your podcast in your regular newsletter?
Encouraging listeners to like, subscribe, and spread the word: This is the oldest trick in the podcasting book (And it works!).
Getting Started
Check out what it takes to start a career in personal fitness training. This is your most affordable and fastest way to become a highly qualified personal trainer.
Is your recertification coming up? Learn more about earning your CEU credits. You can find the full list of CEU courses here.
If you are ready to start your online personal training or coaching business, don’t forget to learn more about our online coaching course. You will also really enjoy this very comprehensive training course called Online Expert Empire.
There is always something exciting about earning a new training or coaching certification and applying that new knowledge of how you train your clients. This also helps you hit the reset button.
NESTA and Spencer Institute coaching programs are open to anyone with a desire to learn and help others. There are no prerequisites.
That’s it for now.
Take action!
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