If you are interested in becoming an online influencer, then starting a podcast can be a great avenue towards building and engaging your audience. Starting a podcast doesn’t require a lot of fancy equipment, and studies show that nearly 28 percent of the U.S. population listens to podcasts weekly.
In fact, recent statistics show that podcast listenership continues to grow rapidly. As of June 2024, Apple Podcasts hosts 2,697,376 podcasts, a 13.5% increase from September 2021. And, 47% of people in the US (12+) listened to a podcast in the last month, up from 42% in 2023. This growth indicates the increasing popularity and it may be time to consider hiring a podcast manager.
Podcast episode example.
Despite the ease of entry, running a successful podcast requires a considerable amount of time-consuming work. Not only do you have to come up with ideas for your podcast episodes, but editing, transcription, promotion, finding guests and analytics are just a few of the responsibilities you need to handle. Because of the multifaceted nature of producing a successful podcast, hiring a podcast manager can help you tackle these responsibilities in a productive and fruitful fashion.
Podcast managers help podcasters stay organized and optimize the performance and quality of podcast content. By offering this service, they help ensure that podcasts produce a consistent flow of high-quality, focused content that retains and expands the podcaster’s audience. In the information below, we’ll go over the responsibilities that podcast managers fulfill and how they can benefit your podcasting goals. We’ll highlight the qualities you should look for when hiring a podcast manager, and then offer some final thoughts and suggestions on podcast management.
Let’s Discuss Your Podcast Goals
What are the Responsibilities of a Podcast Manager?
Managing a podcast involves a variety of different tasks and responsibilities. However, each of these tasks can fit into three categories: project management, quality control and content distribution. Let’s take a closer look at each of these categories to help give a full scope of a podcast manager’s responsibilities.
1. Project Management
Highly-effective podcast managers must have an extensive degree of project management skills. In order to optimize the production of the podcast, they have to help organize the flow of episode topics, find guests and sponsors, gather research on potential topics, transcribe audio, and keep detailed notes for future feedback. They ensure that the tasks for podcast production adhere to established deadlines and that all working parties are up-to-date on their roles and duties.
2. Quality Control
In conjunction with project management, podcast managers focus on optimizing the quality of podcast production. This includes editing audio and video recordings, creating theme-centered graphics, and tracking analytic data for the podcast. Many podcast managers also draft content topics for the podcast or help refine draft content from the podcaster.
3. Content Distribution
The last category that podcast managers facilitate is the distribution of the podcast. The first step of this process is identifying which platforms to upload podcasts to. Second, podcast managers will formulate an upload schedule so that listeners know when to expect the podcast. Lastly, podcast managers will regulate the marketing strategy to help expand the growth of the audience.
It’s worth noting that Spotify has the most podcast listeners, with 33.7% of overall podcast listenership, while Apple Podcasts gets the most downloads, with over 70% of all podcast downloads.
Benefits of Working With a Podcast Manager
Considering the various aspects of managing podcasts, podcast managers can be an invaluable asset to your podcast. The following benefits outline just a few of the advantages that podcast managers can bring to the table.
Increased Efficiency & Time Management
If you are just starting out with your podcast, there’s a good chance that you aren’t familiar with marketing, web analytics, SEO, editing audio and video, or many of the other critical components to maintaining a successful podcast. Not only are these tasks time-consuming, but learning them from scratch adds further time demand. By delegating these duties to someone with proper experience, you regain your time and heighten the efficiency of your podcast production.
With the average U.S. podcast listener tuning in for about 54 minutes daily—primarily from Monday to Friday—a podcast manager ensures your content stays consistently accessible to meet this demand.
Enhanced Productivity
In relation to efficiency and time management, podcast managers can greatly enhance your productivity with the podcast. If you have to do all of these processes on your own, it can hinder your ability to produce quality content. However, podcast managers can help you produce more content at a higher quality.
Expertise With Content Delivery & Optimization
In order to effectively reach your target audience, you need to have the ability to properly market you podcast and identify what platforms you should upload your podcast to. Experienced podcast managers will know what it takes to market your content effectively, and their data analytics can help assess important performance metrics. This can help you focus on optimizing things that work well and improve on areas that are underperforming.
Transform Your Blog Content Into Podcasts
Create informative podcast episodes from your existing blog content.
Learn More →Podcast Manager Hiring Process
With the advantages that podcast managers can bring to your production, you want ensure that you pick the right candidate for the job. When you interview a potential candidate, the following questions can help you select the right person for the job.
- Can you walk me through your editing process?
Any qualified candidate will be able to give you a step-by-step process for how they approach content editing. This doesn’t have to be a lengthy answer, but this question should reveal whether a candidate is inexperienced. - What is the relevance of podcast tagging, metadata and artwork?
Each of these components contribute to your SEO ranking, and your ideal candidate should show a strong knowledge of ranking requirements on a variety of different platforms. - What is your average turn around time for a podcast?
The ideal time frame for a completed podcast episode is 48 hours, which includes show notes and transcription of audio files. - What is your ideal marketing strategy for promoting a podcast?
This question is a top priority, as the whole point of a podcast is to generate and grow your audience. Your ideal candidate should demonstrate knowledge of social media platforms and how to reach out to groups and influencers in your niche.
The Future of Podcast Management
The future of podcast management will likely be shaped by emerging technologies such as AI-powered editing tools, voice recognition software for transcriptions, and advanced analytics platforms for better audience targeting.
Evolving Listener Expectations
As the podcast industry matures, listener expectations are evolving. Podcast managers will need to stay ahead of trends in content formats, episode lengths, and interactive features.
Adapting to New Distribution Platforms
As new audio platforms and smart speaker technologies emerge, podcast managers must adjust their distribution strategies to ensure podcasts are accessible on various devices and platforms.
Final Podcast Manager Thoughts
Running a successful podcast requires dedicated effort, and a podcast manager can ensure that these efforts produce the most desirable results. However, podcasters do have a variety of different options to choose from for their management needs.
For example, our team at Neur is working on podcast management services that allow people to transform blog posts into full-fledged podcasts using AI audio technology. We handle the uploading, analytics, editing and distribution needs that podcasters require, allowing a purely hands-off approach to generating podcasts.
Considering the possibilities and advances in technology, now might be a better time than ever to start a podcast. If you are considering starting a podcast, or you are running a podcast on your own, we highly suggest that you think about enlisting a podcast manager.
