Should Your Organisation Start a Podcast? Try the MIC Test First

It’s a bit of a funny thing for a podcast production company to say…

But not every organisation should start a podcast.

There, we’ve said it.

We’d much rather have an honest conversation that talks you out of making a podcast than help you launch one that’ll disappear after six episodes.

Podcasting isn’t a marketing box to tick and it certainly isn’t the latest shiny thing anymore. A podcast takes time, commitment and, dead importantly, a purpose. If it’s going to earn a place in your communications mix, it needs a proper job to do.

In fact, only the other day we found ourselves trying to convince an organisation not to start a podcast.

Here we are again trying to talk ourselves out of work!

So we chatted through their idea, and it was clear they hadn’t thought about what we like to call The MIC Test.

Before we recommend anyone starts a podcast, we always ask three simple questions:

1. Have you got something worth saying?
2. Who’s actually going to care?
3. What’s the job of your podcast?

They couldn’t confidently answer them yet. So instead of rushing into production, buying all the kit and nominating someone in their team to host it, we suggested they press pause, get clear on those answers and come back to us. 

Will they end up making a podcast? We dunno. But if they do, it’ll be a much better podcast because they started with strategy, not microphones.

So, before you start worrying about microphones, theme music or podcast artwork, we’d encourage you to ask yourselves those same three questions.

1. Have We Actually Got Something Worth Saying?

This is always our first question when we speak with new clients.

“Have you got something worth saying?”

Not…“What microphone so we need?” or…“Who can edit it?”

But… “Have we really got something our audience will value?“

Now for the uncomfy ick..

People don’t listen to podcasts because they want to hear about your organisation. They don’t usually press play because they want the latest news from your organisation. 

People say to us all the time they love listening to podcasts because they get to hear stories, conversations and different perspectives they’d never get anywhere else. It’s often something that’ll make them think, learn, laugh or look at the world a little differently – sometimes all in the same episode! 

We’ve lost count of the number of discovery calls that start with… 

“We thought we’d use the podcast to tell people about what we do and raise awareness”

Please don’t, your podcast isn’t an audio brochure or a radio advert. It’s defo not your annual report with background music!

The organisations with the best podcasts don’t spend forty minutes talking about themselves. They use their expertise, experience and unique perspective to create conversations people actually want to spend time with.

2. Who’s Actually Going to Care?

We ask this on every discovery call and sometimes we phrase it a little more bluntly.

Who’s going to be arsed?

The best podcasts know exactly who they’re for. Maybe it’s fundraisers looking for practical advice or parents navigating a particular challenge. Or it’s for policy makers, volunteers, researchers or people campaigning for change.

Your audience doesn’t need to be huge, but it needs to be the right people. The people who’ll value your content, act on it, share it and help you achieve whatever your podcast is setting out to do. 

We’d rather help you build a loyal community than chase vanity download numbers.

3. What’s The Job of Your Podcast?

This is the question we reckon most organisations miss. Every podcast should have a job beyond “we’d like a podcast.”

So, what’s its job?

• Is it there to build trust?
• Train your community
• Share your expertise?
• Raise awareness of an issue?
• Strengthen your community?
• Support fundraising?
• Recruit volunteers?
• Connect colleagues through an internal podcast?

When your podcast has a clear job, everything else becomes easier, our content, guests, marketing…we could go on.

Even deciding whether an idea belongs in the podcast suddenly becomes much simpler. Without that purpose, it’s easy to drift into random conversations that don’t really serve anyone.

So… Should Your Organisation Start a Podcast?

Maybe.

If you’ve got something worth saying and know exactly who needs to hear it.

And if your podcast has a clear purpose beyond simply existing.

If not?

That’s okay too.

Sometimes the best decision is to press pause, get clearer on your thinking and come back to the idea later.

Because the world doesn’t need another podcast, it needs better ones and yours could be one of them, if it’s created with purpose.

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