► Tell us about you and your podcast
I'm a cognitive psychologist and mom of 3 with 25+ years of experience working with children and families. My co-host, Teri Miller, is a child development researcher and former stay-at-home mom of 9. We interview experts in parenting, child development, psychology, education, and family life who share advice and ideas for helping us all be better people and parents who want our kids to thrive in life, learning, and relationships. Our podcast is primarily for moms, but we hear that dads love us, too!
► Why & how did you start this podcast?
Teri's husband is a successful podcaster and she's always sharing ideas from all the podcasts she listens to, so the thought has always been in the back of my mind that we should do a podcast as well. I prefer to watch videos, so the idea of 'listening to learn' was a little foreign to me. But we're researchers who love to talk about our work. We're writers who publish an online brain health magazine to share the latest research in a digestible way. And we're mental health professionals who want to help as many people as we can with one of life's biggest challenges...being a mom! We pitched it to our boss who gave us the green light to run with the idea.
We decided to do a podcast in January of 2021. It took us three months to launch. We built the website, studied the podcasting process, mapped out our topic list and guest recruitment strategy, and recorded a couple of practice episodes. Then we launched on March 30, 2021.
We decided to do a podcast in January of 2021. It took us three months to launch. We built the website, studied the podcasting process, mapped out our topic list and guest recruitment strategy, and recorded a couple of practice episodes. Then we launched on March 30, 2021.
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► How'd you find the time and funding to do this podcast?
We release a new episode every Tuesday. It takes us about 6 hours to produce each one from writing the interview script to uploading the edited show. We're fortunate that this podcast is part of our day job, so it's something we get to build in to our regular workday.
► What do you gain from podcasting?
Our show is sponsored by the organization where we both work. So, all the expenses to operate the podcast are covered. We don't benefit financially from the show, but we get to meet so many amazing professionals in our field and related ones. It's an amazing way to network with other experts who share our goals and mission to help moms be even better at what they do and who they are!
► How does your podcasting process look like?
We conduct all of our interviews via Zoom. We use Auphonic to edit our sound, Rev to create our show transcripts, and Buzzsprout as our host. We also have a Worpress website for posting every episode and for hosting a guest inquiry landing page and forms. We use Calendly to manage booking. We invite guests from our professional networks, and I belong to multiple Facebook groups for podcasting and recruit guests through those forums. Agents and PR firms email us to pitch guests as well. For each episode, we ask guests to complete a pre-interview questionnaire. From that, we create a general script to follow. We record, edit, and produce the show, create the show art in CANVA, upload the files to Buzzsprout and YouTube, create an episode page on our website, and release it!
► How do you market your show?
To market our show, we have made sure to be listed on all major podcast platforms, but a majority of our listeners come from Apple Podcasts. We add a show transcript every week to enhance SEO and our rankings on Google. We have social media accounts on FB, IG, and Twitter under our show name. We share each episode on all of those accounts as well as our personal ones. Our organization promotes the show through their channels and email newsletter each month which goes out to about 250K subscribers. The most useful marketing strategy is asking our guests to share their appearances with their own social networks.
► What advice would you share with aspiring (new) podcasters?
The advice we'd share with aspiring podcasters is to really take stock of the time you have available for podcasting each week. In the first month, it took us 20 hours a week to produce our show. With practice, we became more skilled and have significantly reduced the time it takes us now. But that was something we had not expected early on. The most helpful resources to us were through the Buzzsprout community, including the 28-Day Challenge from Podcast Movement.