Apple Podcast Directory | Beyond Your Side Hustle

How Can I Make the Most of my Guest Appearance?

Congratulations! You’re booked to appear on a podcast.

Now what?

Listen to at Least 3 Episodes of the Show

You should have already listened to an episode of their podcast to get a general feel for the show, its format, and how interviews fit into it. For each confirmed guest appearance, pick three episodes of the podcast to get a much better understanding of the show, how it “flows,” and to get better acquainted with the host(s). These episodes should all be episodes with interviews, and the interview guests should be as closely aligned to your five areas of focus as possible to fully prepare for your appearance.

Ask Questions

As podcasts hosts, we try to anticipate everyone’s questions about their upcoming interview. It never fails that something gets missed on occasion. The best way to prepare for an awesome interview is to ask the team what to expect. After listening to four total episodes for research, your other questions shouldn’t be generic, and the podcast team will appreciate that you’ve put effort into learning about the show before you appear.

Also, you should ask for a pool of questions that they intend to use in the interview. For guests of Hustleburg, they receive these questions about a week before the scheduled interview day and time. Each guest should be able to put their best foot forward to the Hustleburg community, and if they prepare well, they will shine.

For every interview I’ve given and panel I’ve appeared on, I ask for questions or an outline of topics. That way, I can prepare my notes and how I will tie it all in with “The Five” and a call to action in the interview.

Prepare Two Calls to Action

As part of your preparation, you should create an offer to add value for each listener that you can refer to in the interview naturally, as well as provide to the podcast audience in the show notes. If you have a white paper, email course, cheat sheet, or other special offer, tie it into the conversation you foresee happening. It’s even better if you can direct them to that podcast’s specific URL to measure the response from your guest appearance. This contextual call to action that flows from the interview’s conversation should feel natural and part of the conversation, as you share with their community how you can add even more value for them.

In the same vein, almost nearly podcast host will give you the opportunity to promote yourself at some point during the interview, so preparing a call to action for that closing is as important as your earlier, contextual one. You’ve probably heard Hustleburg guests asked, “So, where can our listeners find out more about you/your business?” You shouldn’t just list every possible outlet. In fact, limit your response to 3 at most, including calling back to your contextual call to action within the interview.

Be Interesting, Be Informative, Be Happy

When it’s almost time to record, you should arrive several minutes early to the in-person or virtual meeting, so that you can get your bearings and focus on the task at hand. This will also keep the podcast team you’re about to meet from freaking out about running late or a possible no-show. It also gives you a few minutes to separate this from the rest of your day and get ready for the conversation.

Finally, in these few minutes before you sit down to conduct the interview, relax, breathe, and look over your notes one last time. If you’ve followed the earlier advice, you’re prepared, and you should feel confident about the conversation about to take place. As the conversation begins, make sure to smile. Even when there is no video component, your tone will often convey more about your state of mind than any words you say.

Have fun!

How Do I Pitch Myself as a Podcast Guest?

You’ve identified all the podcasts that are appropriate for you by podcast hunting, right? You found the shows where the audience is right for your business, their topics intersect with “the Five,” and you have good contact information. What do you do with all of it?

Before we get into the mechanics of pitching yourself as a guest, now is a good time to set realistic expectations. First, be prepared to be rejected a lot. Moreso, be prepared to not hear back from a lot of podcast teams. Getting booked as a guest is a combination of what you bring to the show and the number of pitches you send.

Extremely popular podcasts get lots of high-profile guests, so it’s probably best to approach them with realism and experience. Early in your journey as a guest, aim for some of the smaller shows that will be ecstatic about someone who wants to be a guest on their podcast to build your guest resume. Once you have experience as a guest and a portfolio of appearances to point to, you can go after the bigger podcasts.

1. Listen to an Episode

Before you reach out to a podcast, listen to at least one episode of it that includes an interview or a panel. Listening will give you a glimpse at personality issues, problems with the format, or that you don’t actually want to sit down for a 3-hour interview that only hits on your five areas of focus once or twice. Listening to an episode will eliminate about a quarter to a third of the directory you’ve acquired through your podcast-hunting efforts.

2. Prepare a One-Sheet

A “one-sheet” is an introduction to the podcast host(s) and producers about you. In it, you are providing podcast hosts and producers with the right information to know that you are right for their show. It serves as your podcast resume, summarizing who you are and what you do. Most importantly, it centers around the value you can add for their audience.

Your one-sheet should include:

Your photo (headshot preferred) and your business logo
Your qualifications as an expert
“The Five” – the five areas of focus you can add value in
Any suggested questions for the interviewer
Recent appearances on other podcasts or outlets
How you plan to help promote the episode that features you

Your company website should also include a page (maybe as a sub-page of your About or Contact page) that contains the above for any media contacts that might be seeking you out for an interview. Having this information available would make any show’s host or producer invite you in a second. You can also share the URL on any online forms for guests that may only allow plain text submissions.

3. Reaching Out With Your Pitch

You’ve reached the easiest part of getting booked, reaching out. You’ve done the hard work of researching the podcast and preparing your one-sheet for their viewing. While reaching out to podcast teams, do yourself a favor and make sure you don’t flood every podcast at once.

That means two things:

You should send each podcast an individual e-mail focused on that show and the value you can add to their audience. No mass emails to every show.
Your contacts should be spread out, so as not to confuse one show with another. Besides the embarrassment of possibly confusing shows, your time spent finalizing your calendar to appear will be more organized and defined with fewer appearances to juggle.

Finally, by sending your one-sheet information in the body of an e-mail, rather than attaching it, you are more likely to be seen by the intended recipient and not caught in a spam or threat filter.

4. Follow Up in a Week

Be prepared with a follow-up e-mail that shows even more value than your initial contact. In it, you should include a link to another podcast or news appearance, a testimonial for your speaking or writing capability, or links to an article you’ve written on the topic you’d like to be a guest on the podcast about. You should probably wait at least five business days before sending a follow-up to your initial contact.

With these tips, you’ll be on a podcast in no time.

How Can I Find Podcasts Looking for Guests?

Real talk: Just about any podcast that uses interviews as a part of their show’s format is looking for guests. Hustleburg is always looking for guests to interview. Both interviews and serving on a panel are wonderful opportunities for you to build and promote your brand, while the podcast team creates content for the community they’ve built.

1. Identify Relevant Podcasts

You’ll need to find relevant podcasts where you can add value for the audience. Start with seeking those whose topics match or dovetail well with “The Five,” the five areas of focus for your content as the beginning of your search for relevancy. With how many podcasts exist, you will probably find several that complement your expertise well. You just need to know how and where to search.

How to Search

To begin, go through Apple’s Podcast Directory by category to identify potential shows for your appearance. Podcast creators self-categorize their show with a good degree of generality. Your best bet is to list all shows that look to intersect with your five content areas. When starting to compile your list, don’t focus on specifics yet. You want to amass a list before going too deep about each podcast and narrowing it down.

Additionally, search Google’s Podcast Directory for specific keywords that make up “The Five” for you. In addition to finding entire lists of possible podcasts, you’ll also find individual shows that didn’t categorize themselves well with Apple for your category scan of their directory. Don’t fault the creators for this, as Apple only three categories for a podcast.

Next, turn to Google and search. Your efforts with typing “podcast+ {one of your five focus areas}.” Additionally, if you identified a target audience for your guest appearance, I would also search for that “{target market}+podcast.”

Other Ways to Find Podcasts

Those aren’t the only options to find suitable podcasts. By looking at the influencers in your industry and in “The Five,” you can find previous media appearances they have done. This will likely overturn an opportunity or two here that you hadn’t thought about previously.

Obviously, Apple’s podcast directory and Google searches will only turn up so many opportunities. There is actually a large enough disconnect between podcast hosts and potential podcast guests that there are several podcast matching services, like podcastguests.com, findradioguests.com, and perfectpodcastguest.com, aiming to connect podcasts and guests. A bit of a disclaimer here: We’ve not found much success either as a host or potential guest with any of the matching services.

Last, but not least, your local podcasts might be a fit for you. Attending local podcast meetups to network with podcast hosts and reaching out to your local Chamber of Commerce may point you in the right direction. Often, the Chamber features local businesses on their podcast.

2. Get More Information

At this point, you identified a lot of possibilities, but you don’t know a lot about them. Now, amassing a list is replaced by eliminating those irrelevant to your business. To look further, Google each podcast name from your list. You should look to find the following:

Podcast Website
Podcast Host(s) Name(s)
Topics
Reach (local, state, regional, national)
Contact E-Mail or Online Guest Form

Knowing this information will give you a better and deeper look at whether they are a good fit for you. You’re likely to strike a lot of podcasts because their topics, while related to your five areas of focus, don’t really line up with where you can add value to the audience. You will also eliminate a lot of podcasts because they have a reach that won’t intersect with your intended audience. For example, there’s no sense in appearing on a podcast that is focused on New Mexico when your business serves Saint Petersburg.

While taking this deep dive for information, you will also discover that several shows’ contact e-mail addresses or online guest forms are hard to find. If you’re really lucky, they may share how they source guests on their website. With Hustleburg, we find Saint Petersburg entrepreneurs through our activity within the business community and we urge them to contact us here. This type of information could be found on the about page for the show, the hosts’ personal websites, or in the reply-to for their mailing list or newsletter.

Hustleburg Episode 36 – Answering Your Podcasting Questions, Part 3 – Being a Guest

This episode is a Q&A episode with questions from you about podcasting. In Episode 32, Brett asked for questions and you delivered. The first podcast Q&A episode focused on how a podcast could help your business. The second podcast Q&A episode centered around podcast monetization. In this episode, we will answer questions about being a guest on a podcast with a pretty substantial step-by-step guide to get you behind the microphone.

How Can I Find Podcasts Looking for Guests?

Just about any podcast that has interviews or panels as a part of their show is looking for guests. First, you’ll need to find relevant podcasts where you can add value for the audience. Start with “The Five,” the five areas of focus for your content to begin your search for relevancy.

I would start by going through Apple’s Podcast Directory by category to identify potential shows for you to appear on. Additionally, utilize Apple’s Podcast Directory to search for specific keywords that make up “The Five” for you. Next, turn to Google. You should be able to find plenty of shows here as well by typing podcast+ one of your five focus areas.

Take a look at influencers in your industry and in “The Five” to scout the media appearances they have done. The disconnect between podcast hosts and potential podcast guests is large enough that there are several podcast matching services who aim to connect podcasts and guests.

You identified a bunch of possibilities. Now, it’s time to see how relevant they are to your intended audience from the list of podcasts that you identified. A few bits of information will give you a better look at whether they should remain on your list going forward. You may also discover that their show’s contact e-mail address is hard to find.

How Do I Pitch Myself as a Guest?

Now that you’ve identified all the podcasts that are appropriate for you… Be prepared to be rejected a lot. Also be prepared to not hear back from a lot of podcasts. Before you do anything further, listen to at least one episode of the podcast that includes an interview or a panel. Prepare a one-sheet as an introduction to the podcast host(s) and producers about you. The easiest part of getting booked is reaching out, because you’ve already researched the podcast and prepared your one-sheet for their viewing. Have a follow-up e-mail ready that is different from your initial contact, but offers more value with you as a guest. You’ll be on a podcast in no time.

How Can I Make the Most of my Guest Appearance?

Congratulations! You’re booked to appear on a podcast. Now what?

If you followed what I outlined in the previous question, you have already listened to an episode of their podcast to get a general feel for the show, its format, and how interviews fit. The best way to prepare for an awesome interview is to ask what to expect. Also, you should ask for a question pool that they intend to use in the interview.

Use this information to prepare notes and figure out how to tie it all together with “The Five” or a call to action in the interview, both contextual and in closing. As part of your preparation, you should create an offer to add value for each listener that you can refer to in the interview naturally, as well as provide to the podcast audience in the show notes. In the same vein, almost every podcast host will give you the opportunity to promote yourself toward the end of the interview, so preparing a call to action for that closing is as important as your contextual one.

You should arrive several minutes early to the in-person or virtual meeting to record, so that you can get your bearings before jumping into the show. Finally, before you sit down to conduct the interview, take a few moments to relax, breathe, and look over your notes one last time.

The Interview Went Well, Now What?

You really knocked it out of the park with your interview! Now that the interview wrapped, you want people to listen to what you had to say, right? Often, you can ask the podcast host or producer how they promote each episode of the podcast and what that process is like: what platforms they use, when promotion for an upcoming episode begins, and how long it typically runs after each show publishes. A day or two before you expect their promotional efforts to begin, you should share a post on a shared social media outlet, tagging or mentioning them in a post about how excited you are for your upcoming appearance or how much fun you had recording it. For each social media outlet, your efforts are better spent directly sharing their post talking about you, rather than creating your own content about it.

If you look back fondly on your experience, definitely connect future guests with the podcast team. Believe it or not, podcast creators talk among each other, so speak fondly of your experience or don’t mention it at all.

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Be a Guest on Hustleburg

If you have any questions you’d like to have answered on an upcoming Q&A episode, please take a moment to visit beyondyoursidehustle.com/podcastquestion and ask there. If you’re a St. Pete businessperson who’d like to sit down for an interview, please reach out to us here.