Podcasting 101: How to Find the Right Topics for Your Audience
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Did you know that of the roughly 2.5 million podcasts listed on Apple Music, only about 450,000 are active – meaning they’re still publishing regularly? If my (admittedly rough) number-crunching abilities are correct, that’s only 18%.
Perhaps one of the main reasons podcasts fall off the publishing deep end so quickly is because of how hard it is to continuously create valuable content. There’s nowhere to hide in podcasting – no shiny visuals or flashy colors. It’s just your voice and your listeners. You have to produce relevant, interesting content that keeps your audience engaged.
That all starts with choosing your topics. As a financial planner, you have a wealth of knowledge (pun intended) to share with your clients and prospects. With the right approach and a little perseverance, you can easily take that know-how and create a plan for what to talk about in each of your episodes.
The Importance of Planning Your Content
Before we dive into content ideas, it’s important to recognize how crucial a content calendar is in your marketing work – including your podcasts.
Content calendars promote consistency, help you plan around potential scheduling conflicts and ensure your listeners are getting a unified theme from your podcast. Before you start recording, try to map out some core topics you’d like to focus on this quarter, like tax planning or retirement tools. You may even decide to devote your entire podcast around one such topic. Once you have a theme in place, you can brainstorm subtopics for each of your episodes.
Here at Three Crowns, we often use a simple Excel spreadsheet to start mapping out podcast episodes. That spreadsheet has space for brainstorming ideas, planning episode guests, compliance approval and even keeping track of where you are in the publishing process.
Of course, if you feel like your topics of choice aren’t hitting home, it’s okay to adjust that framework as you go. The content calendar is simply a guide for you to use.
What to Talk About On Your Financial Planning Podcast
In general, there are three tips to keep in mind as you flesh out your podcast topics:
1. Know your niche
Just as in all your marketing, knowing your niche is of the utmost importance. It’s what sets you apart from all the others in your industry. Do you specialize in helping young health professionals? Are you especially experienced in business succession planning?
When you have a niche, you can also hone in on podcast topics that are most relevant to your target audience. For example, a financial professional that primarily helps young doctors could provide great insight on balancing student loan debt.
2. Listen to the experts (your clients)
Your clients offer an invaluable resource when it comes to choosing your podcast topics. The next time you send out that monthly newsletter, include a little blurb about your upcoming podcast. Invite readers to hit reply with any topics they’d like you to cover – you may get new ideas that weren’t even on your radar initially!
Be sure to thank clients for their time. And even if you don’t choose to go forward with a client’s particular idea, be sure to address their questions and provide more information for them.
3. Mix timely and evergreen content to optimize your value-add
Evergreen topics are those ones that will always be valuable – like “how financial planning can benefit your business” or “what are the main types of retirement accounts available.” Evergreen content should make up the majority of your podcast episodes, because it will likely still be valuable to listeners in a year or even five years.
Timely topics are things happening in the moment – like when the SVB collapse happened last year. It was on everyone’s mind for a few weeks, and then it fizzled out. Timely content can help establish your podcast as current and knowledgeable, but may not bring in much traffic long-term.
The best podcasters know how to make a mix of both, providing both short- and long-term value to listeners.
25 Topic Ideas to Kickstart Your Financial Planning Podcast
Now that we’ve got the “what” and “why” out of the way, we’ve put together a list of 25 podcast topics you can use as your own, or as inspiration for your financial planning podcast.
- What is financial planning and why do you need it?
- How to create a budget that really works (and stick to it)
- How much should be in your emergency fund?
- What is estate planning?
- What types of insurance do you need?
- The 411 on inflation, shrinkflation and the price of eggs in 2023
- What is a “risk tolerance?”
- The benefits of portfolio diversification
- Paying off your mortgage: Now or later?
- Tax-advantaged accounts for college savings
- How to talk to your kids about money
- Common money mistakes
- How to optimize charitable giving
- The pros and cons of different types of bonds
- Intro to crypto: What is it and why should you care?
- Renting vs. Owning
- The benefits of working with a financial planner
- How much money do you need to start investing?
- What are non-traditional investments?
- 3 strategies for paying off medical debt
- 5 money management tips you’ve never heard before
- What are Social Security benefits?
- How can you minimize risk in your financial plan?
- What is ethical investing?
- Can I retire early?
And if you’re looking for more inspiration or related subtopics, it’s a great opportunity to try your hand with ChatGPT to generate even more content ideas.
Perfect Your Podcasting with Three Crowns
Our podcast team can assist your firm with brand creation and awareness, podcast ideas, full-service production, marketing and more. Click here to connect with a member of our team and get started today.