What do you talk about on your podcast? I break down some podcasting topic ideas you can use to help you come up with episode after episode with ease
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🕒Timestamps🕒
00:00 Start
2:22 overview of podcasting topics
3:04 your wins
7:15 your challenges
10:23 your expertise
14:34 case studies/stories
16:07 Tips/Guide/help
19:41 Questions
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Podcast Topic Ideas – Video Transcript
Hello, and welcome to the live stream, whether you are joining live with us now, or if you’re catching us on the replay. In this live stream, I want to talk about what are some podcasting ideas? What topics can you talk about on your actual podcasts?
I’ve been doing a series of podcasting videos. How do you get started with a podcast? What equipment do you need? Should you choose between YouTube or your podcast? And this one is all about once you have a podcast or if you’re going to start a podcast, what are you going to talk about?
I’m going to break it down into a framework ’cause I’m a frameworks girl, because it makes it easier for you because you don’t have to think. And I love being able to not focus on the nitty-gritty and just being able to create content.
Let’s get right into it. This is what we’re all talking about today. Podcasting ideas. For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Sara Nguyen, and I help you build your business using video and content on social media with ease.
Now, whether you are joining live with us now, a couple of people been on the last few live streams, or if you’re watching us on the replay, please, if you have a question, drop it in the chat or in a comment and I’ll answer it as soon as I can, as well as, you know, if we need to create another video, because I love to create these videos for you.
Let’s get right into it because you know no time like the moment. And there’s a lot to talk about today. If you’ve been watching the last few videos, I’m looking to launch a podcast, not looking to launch, I will launch my podcast in January, 2021.
Hopefully if you’re watching the replay, then I would’ve really done it. But this is all the things that I’ve kind of come across and that I haven’t uncovered that I was like, you know, if I’m coming across this many people will as well. I’m creating this content for you now.
I’m looking to launch the podcast. It’s going to be called the thriving creator. I’ve got like, you know, some merch for it already. I’m really excited. And it’s going to be about how do you be profitable and successful as a creator?
What does that look like? What does it involve? I’m going to talk about strategies. I’m going to talk about my experience as a creator and the money and the business side of it, as well as, you know, the light and the shade and the struggles and the challenges.
Let’s talk about what topics can you talk about on your podcast. I’ve got these five areas and then we’re going to drill down a little bit deeper into it. From these, you should be able to have heaps and heaps and heaps of podcasting topic ideas.
My five are your wins, right? We’re going to go deeper into what your wins look like. We’re going to talk about your challenges, your expertise, it’s number three on the area that you can create podcast content about, case studies and stories, as well as number five, your any tips, guides and help.
Let’s get into the nitty-gritty of these podcasts ideas. What you can actually create your episodes about. The first one, your wins, I think in terms of podcasting, it has a different level of intimacy than video because of the fact that people are listening to it for the most part, with their headphones and they don’t see you.
So it’s a different type of focus, right? They’re not distracted on the YouTube universe, where there are all these suggested videos on the side, and there’s all these other things, you know, flashing all the time. And these ads, you know, popping up, it’s a lot more intimate.
I think it’s a really great space in terms of the topics that you choose to really talk about your wins. And these are things that, you know, have gone well for you in your journey, right? And it really is about forward momentum.
Processes that you’ve discovered. For me, it could be things like, you know, efficient processes that I’ve put in place to create content. And what that has looked has ended up, you know, helping me with in terms of not being able, not only being able to produce more content, but to be able to generate more revenue, to be able to generate brand deals and all these types of things.
The wins in terms of the processes that you’ve delivered. Financial wins, of course. Like, if, particularly if you’re in the business space, particularly if you’re, you are a coach or a consultant, talk about, you know, accounts that you’ve won, if you can’t, if you can’t actually name the accounts, you can’t talk about the projects, you can talk about them broadly, right?
Financial wins that you’ve had because people want to hear about this, they want to hear about this. And don’t think that it’s like ‘Uh, I’m gloating’. It’s more like people want to hear about it so that they can see if there are any little nuggets that they can apply.
And so they can get inspired as well. I think talking about your wins on a podcast is definitely a way of building authority and building trust and getting people to know, and like you, and also, you know, they want to hear about things going well. I also talked about wins in terms of mental wins.
I think we have the financial wins, where yes, you know, you’ve made this brand deal. Yes, you’ve made this, you know, financial gain or yes, you’ve been accepted into this program where you make more money. But mental wins where it’s like, I had this aha moment, you know, I let go of this thing and then it allows me to be more, you know, be better in whatever way.
I think mental wins and things that you realise, and you learn about yourself in the process are definitely things to talk about as topics as well. And it really is about sharing the progress you’ve made.
Wins are they don’t have to be these grand glorious pockets of, you know, Ferrari, money-throwing things, but it can be like where you are, the progress you’ve made, you know? You may think that, okay, the progress that you’ve made is really small, but to someone on the outside who hasn’t started the journey, that’s a massive thing.
Right? For example, you know, for me creating the podcast is a huge thing because for me, it will be a win when I launch it because it’s taken me probably three years of contemplating, “am I good enough to create a podcast? Is anyone going to want to listen to me?
Should I even do this? Like, how is this even going to work?” so for me, one of the wins will be I’m creating a podcast and it took, I think, all of the craziness of this year. And it took creating, you know, the success of my YouTube channel this year.
And it took a brand who said, we want to sponsor you. We would like to sponsor your podcast as well. If you have one. And I was like, I don’t have a podcast. And they were like, why not? You know, so that’s what I talk, you know, out of all the self-doubt and out of all the things that took a brand to say, “We want to give you money for it.
Why don’t you have one?” so that’s what it took for me. And that’s a massive win because I have to go through all of these crazy self-doubt and talk in my head in order to kind of get there. I think talking about these things as topics, creates a lot of content for you, and it creates a lot of connection for you as well.
I definitely recommend, you know, talking about your wins as you know, think about all the things that you’ve succeeded in. Think about all the progress that you’ve made this year, and you can break them down into topics and you can break them down into episodes for your podcast.
And that should give you a whole heap to get started. That’s number one. Let’s talk about the next batch of podcast content episode ideas. And these are the challenges, right?
I believe deeply in showing light and shade because it’s not all sunshine and rainbows, like with the success of YouTube that I’ve experienced this year, there’s also been darker sides. You know, things that I experienced that were negative, that I didn’t experience in the past.
And things that went wrong as well. I think in terms of the challenges, it’s not about being like Debbie Downer or negative, it really is about sharing that light and shade. And that creates relatability that once again, builds connection.
Right? And talk about when things went wrong, but also after that went wrong, how did you bounce back from it? Or what did you learn? Right? Talk about the mistakes you’ve made. What went wrong? What did you do wrong that you learned from, and that you can tell people about so that they don’t make that mistake as well?
And this helps to establish you as an authority because you’re like, Hey, I’ve done this, you know, I’ve got this experience and I can talk about it. Right? Talk about your failures. I know it sounds really weird, but I love podcasts. There’s a couple of podcasts that I listen to.
There’s one called The Product podcast and they talk about failures in terms of programs and in terms of like things that they’ve done, where it’s like, “Whoa, we put all this money into it and it didn’t go very well. And these are the mistakes that we made”.
And I love the transparency of that because I think it’s one thing to hear about when things go wrong, but when things don’t go as planned and then you hear how people dealt with it and then how they can recover from it, that, that builds trust. That I think has so much depth in terms of building a relationship with you and the listener and you, and, you know, member of your community, because it shows just how amazing you are, right?
It shows that, you know, yes all these crappy things happen and this didn’t go to plan, but this is what I learnt from it. This is how I’ve come out of it. And then also when you’ve lost money, right? Particularly if you are in the business space, particularly if you are in the creative space, you want to talk about when you lost money so that you can help people avoid making the same mistakes as you.
And I think like, this is the beauty of podcasting, because it really helps us, you know, help each other. Right? And it gives you a bit of a silver lining in, okay, this went wrong, but I’ve learned from it and you can learn from it too. I think your challenges will make you more relatable than you think. And people shy away from the ugly side.
Oh, you know, so to speak, people shy away from showing this side of things, because I think everyone needs to think that my life is perfect. Everyone needs to think that the business is perfect, but we all know that particularly if you are a business, particularly if you are a creator like that stuff that disappoints you all the time, but let’s talk about it.
Let’s talk about it respectfully. And let’s give it a silver lining or let’s give it a lesson so that, you know, something can come out of that. That is tip number three. Let’s look at the next topic category, which is your expertise.
I am a big believer that people underestimate, how much of an expert they really are. Right. And I think that people are more, more of an expert in areas than they give themselves credit for. And expert, I think is a term that people either go ‘uh’ or they’re like ‘meh’ about, right?
Expert means that you know something, right. And you have experience in an area. And you don’t have to be an expert of a hundred years in order to teach something, you just have to have some experience with it. And I think in terms of a topic, talking about this on a podcast makes complete sense.
And it can be what’s your experience in terms of, you know, what you do. What a workflow is that you do, how are you more efficient? How have you been able to tweak your workflow so that you can do things better?
And this is important. This is important in sharing the journey, and this is important in helping people. And this builds trust because you’re showing people, this is how they can go a little bit faster in the journey as well.
Your perspective is so important. There’s this beautiful poem, that I reference all the time. And the line in the poem is “Your perspective is your saving grace” and how true it is that? Your perspective, you know, it, it changes everything for you and it changes everything for people as well.
Your experience, your perspective of your business journey, your experience of, you know, your, how you are going in whatever you’re trying to do is really important. My perspective, your perspective matters.
And we need to have diversity in perspectives so that people don’t just think there is like this mainstream way and that’s it. Because we know that like mainstream is not the only way, like there is so much diversity, there is so much greatness and your perspective matters. I’m getting a bit emotional. I had a lot of live streams today.
I think, you know, in terms of expertise, I think we can do, we can respectfully, very important, we can respectfully talk about mistakes that we see other people making. Now, I am not saying that you do a, you know, a slander slanderous, hateful, “this person’s doing this and it’s all wrong.” no, we can do it in a respectful way.
I’ve seen very well done, you know, reaction videos, or reaction type of podcasts where they talk about, okay, this is what this person talked about. And this is what I think they could have fixed, or this is what they did wrong because, right?
And I feel that it’s important that this is respectful because I don’t want anyone into like, turn their podcast, turn their YouTube channel into a space of hate. Like, that’s the wrong reason to do it and we should not be doing that.
It needs to be a respectful view of these are the mistakes that people were making, this is what I would do and reasons why, because this will help you. It needs to be respectful. It needs to be helpful, which is very, very important.
And once again, it’s about talking about your experience, your expertise, so people can understand what they can expect, right. That builds trust. I will be talking about on my podcast, you know, just the experiences, the positive side. Yes.
But I’m also going to be talking about the shadow side, the not so nice side of YouTube that people don’t talk about, you know, the things like trolls on YouTube, the things like the politics and the clicks of YouTube that people don’t see unless you’re in it.
Just what people can expect when they get later, when they get further down in the journey to where you are so that they know what’s coming up and they don’t have to struggle with it like you did.
I think your experience and your perspective is so important, and it will give you so much content. It will give you so many different, you know, episode, topic ideas to come up with. Then we have case studies, right?
And I think podcasting, live streaming, creating content is such a glorious space where we can tell stories in terms of case studies of experiences that we’ve had, or we can create a space where we can share, you know, invite other people on board to share their experiences.
And, you know, you can do this by having a guest on your podcast. You can interview people, you can tell your own stories, you can have them tell their stories, and you can talk about observations of what you see happening within your niche. And it’s all about the journey. I feel like I should just, that should be a T-shirt.
It’s all about the journey, right? At the very least, because people want to hear about other people’s, you know, paths to success. They want to hear about what’s happening to them because there’s, ’cause they’re probably going through a bunch of stuff and they’re looking for validation in their successes, and they’re also looking for validation.
And when things go wrong to hope that they’re not the only ones going through that as well. Sharing case studies, sharing the journey, however, you know, that looks like is a great way of producing content for your podcast.
Think of all the interviews that you can do, where people can talk about, you know, whether they’re further along the journey than you, whether they’re at the same stage of the journey as you, like so much content, so much content. Case studies, stories, guide us of how you do it, great way to do it.
Now, let’s talk about the last segment. And this is really to create podcast episodes where you’re helping people with tips, you’re guiding them and it really is about episodes where you’re sharing or you’re taking people from point A to point B. And it’s about transformation.
And this may be where you are breaking down a complex process. For example, I could talk about the complex process of creating a video and uploading it to YouTube. I don’t think that’s the most exciting topic that I could talk about, but it’s one topic that I could talk about.
Right. I could talk about tips and ways to help people with the pains of YouTube. Oh, so many pains, so many pains of YouTube. You know, I think people think that, particularly if you’re not a creator, that YouTube is just turn on the camera, show up and then views happen.
But if you create content for YouTube, whether you are live streaming or whether you are uploading videos to YouTube, you know, there is a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes. So much work. You’ve got to come up with the content.
You’ve got to produce the actual video. Even if you’re live streaming, you still need to show up, right. You still need to put energy and effort into it. So many things to talk about. Right. So definitely break it down.
Talk about things that can help people with their struggles because, and you know their struggles because you’ve gone through it, so things that you’ve experienced in the past. It really is about moving people to the next step. An episode could also be, you know, just not necessarily the physical steps through to something, but just the emotional steps.
Like I talked a little bit about earlier in this live stream, how, you know, it took me three years and all of this stuff to come to the conclusion that I am good enough to create a podcast. And looking back and saying that out loud, I’ve realised how insane that is.
But for me, like these were all the things that I went through. I can talk about them so that people can identify if they’re struggling with whether or not they should or not.
And they had the same doubts as me that, you know, I can help them realise that this was all just in my head and that it was all stuff that I shouldn’t have let get in the way of creating the content. Really helping people and helping to guide them. These are the branches, of the topic ideas that I had.
Talk about your wins. It’s really important to share the successes that you have because people want to hear about how things are going well, and it’s not necessarily about big wins. It can be the small wins and just the progress that you’re actually making.
Also, talk about your challenges. It’s important to share the journey and things that you’ve learned, and lessons you’ve learned, and mistakes that you’ve made so that people can avoid them and that they can be a silver lining to everything that, you know, you’ve went through.
Your expertise. You are more of an expert than you think, right? Teaching what you know, and just helping people with the amazing knowledge that you have. Lots of podcasts, content ideas. Talk about case studies.
Whether that is you and the successes that you’ve had, or bringing other people on board and interviewing them so they can share their journey and their case studies as well. And then I talked about tips, guides and helps and moving people, helping them with the transformation so that they can progress because everything, whether it is, you know, YouTubing, whether it is podcasting, it’s all a journey.
And everyone needs help. We wanted so much help. I’m just going to jump to the questions quickly. Jade Starr, hey, great to see you on the podcast. Jade says, “Sharing the mistakes make us all better”.
I think so, too, right? I think it really is about light and shade. And like, this is the struggle that I had. And I think struggle makes you really relatable because everyone struggles, no matter what they say, everyone struggles.
Charlie says, “I like making mistakes. It makes me tinker more until I get it or find a solution for it”. Exactly. Right? And how great if you talk about that so that other people can be like, all right, he’s made that mistake. I understand what he’s learned from it. I can either avoid it.
Or he’s made that mistake, I made that mistake too. I wonder what he’s doing to fix it. What a great, you know, way of actually creating content and then being really, really relatable.
Jade Starr says, “There’s so much work”. There is so much work in YouTube. There is so much work in content creation. I don’t know where this illusion, that content creation is this elegant, effortless thing that just happens came from but it is definitely not the case.
And it’s not the case for me anyway. Like there’s a lot of work. I think there’s a lot of work when you have creators like yourself, Jade Starr, when you have creators like Pete Johns and myself where we work really hard to make the content as good as possible.
I think it’s effortless when it’s crap, right? It’s effortless when you don’t care. It’s effortless when you know, the quality is really bad, but if you really want to put out the best content possible and to grow, it’s a lot of work, but you know, anyway.
Hopefully these tips really help you. These podcasting topic ideas help you. And for me, you know, I don’t think it’s about, should you do one or five? It’s really about okay, of these five things, what are different things that I can do in each? You can probably talk about maybe three to five wins.
You can probably talk about three challenges that you’ve had. You can probably talk about 10 different, you know, things that you know from your expertise. Case studies, you can probably do one or two. You see what I mean?
From these like five different areas, you could probably come up with a full season for your podcasting show, right? And this is, it’s all about having that framework. You can just jot down and then produce the actual podcasts. I’m really excited. That essentially wraps up today’s live stream. And today’s live stream,
I’ve done three today. This is the last one of the three where I’ve covered all these different podcasting topics. Thank you so much for joining me here, particularly those of you who’ve been on all three live streams today.
Absolutely absolutely grateful to have people show up again and again on my live streams. It’s something I’ll never take for granted. If you found this video useful, give me a thumbs up and don’t forget to subscribe to the channel if you haven’t already, where I do lots of live streaming tutorials, social media training.
I’ll help you grow your business using video and content with ease. And if you haven’t grabbed it already, make sure you get a copy of my Social Media Checklist. I show you how to get up and running on all of the major social media platforms so you can start leveraging the power of social to grow your business with ease.
That is a wrap for today. I’m going to go and have a gin and tonic now. Thanks, everyone for joining me today. Been amazing as usual. I will see you on the next live stream. Bye for now.
- [Thriving Creator Podcast] Episode 40: Want Better YouTube Videos? Use This Tool. (Yep, it’s his simple)
- [Thriving Creator Podcast] Episode 41: Someone Needs Your Rescue from Fyre II – Will You Answer the Call?
- [Thriving Creator Podcast] Episode 39: YouTube Success: Revealing the Not-So-Secret Formula
