Simple content plan for your first 10 video podcast episodes

This post is for anyone who has Start a podcast on YouTube at the top of their New Year’s resolution list. First, just freakin do it & there are no rules!

Look at all the things that you think are stopping you — you don’t have the perfect recording space, can’t decide which mic to buy, or you don’t know how to design a WOW thumbnail. 

Add up these small, individual blockers & they form a massive wall between you and that PUBLISH button. Now, that wall is actually a precarious Jenga tower. This post will pull out the last supporting block and scatter those excuses on the floor.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

1. Picking your topic (briefly)

2. Outlining your first 4 pillar episodes

3. Connecting with your audience with 4 stories

4. Keeping momentum with your next 12 episodes

Let’s get into it.

Pick your YouTube podcast topic

If you’re already here, you watch quite a few podcasts and filed away some ideas of what you’d do as the host.

Take inspiration from the shows you enjoy — they’re doing something right! But there’s one risk that I’ll highlight right away. That’s launching a show around you (and your co-hosts) commentary on whatever’s trendy right now. 

Big, established shows can pull this off and viewers will keep coming back to them. They’ve proved their value to their listeners over years. But starting with that can be a dead end. Unless you’re bringing a massive reputation & big audience from some other platform, relying only on your hot takes is risky. 

Choose a niche you’re passionate about

That passion is your foundation. On top of that you want a topic with depth and some level of dynamic change over time. You may be very obsessed with baking the perfect chocolate chip cookie but by episode 12 you’ll have scratched all the way to the bottom of the mixing bowl and be out of episode ideas.

Find your niche from either professional experience or a side hobby you’ve been into for years. The other option is to take viewers on a learning journey with you as you take up something new, but this may be better as a vlog-style series.

Find something in the middle of this diagram:

Outline your first 4 pillar episodes

The goal of the first 10 episodes is to reach as many people as possible and hook them into subscribing. For a few, that may happen on episode 1, but chances are many more won’t find your show until episode 3, 8 — or even 30. 

So the point of pillar episodes is to always have a roadmap for your new listeners to follow. Here it is in a flow chart:

This is general and vague because a lot is going to depend on your show setup — but it’s an adaptable format to launch no matter if you have a:

• Solo show

• A round-table style with 2+ hosts

• A show with 1-1 interviews

For the Pillar episodes, take your chosen niche and break it down into 4 broad, timeless categories. These are the discussions that always pop up, the questions newbies always ask, your high-level ideas/frameworks/opinions that you bring to your niche. 

Unless you’re an experienced host, these Pillar episodes are not going to be your best, most amazing shows because you’re new and your skills will improve over time.

They exist to give your future shows and listeners a clear anchor point — a short series to clearly understand your premise.

Connect with your audience with 4 stories

Pair each Pillar with a story. Even in the age of AI, we’re still very socially wired as humans. Your audience will want to know how and why you came to these ideas. 

If you’re co-hosting, one of you can take the role of interviewer in these episodes. If you’re doing 1-on-1 guest interviews, you can try to line up guests that broadly match each pillar idea. 

These should be formative stories in your life, ones you’ve told many times over coffee or beer. You want to be comfortable with the content and smooth with delivery. Just like the story in Reservoir Dogs, you’re building rapport here with people (new listeners) who don’t quite know if they should trust you. 

Then the logical path is always back to your Pillar episode. So if you hook someone on story 3, they go back to Pillar 3 and then they want to know all your Pillar ideas, binge all your shows and become a happy viewer ever after!

By the time you finish the 4th story, you’ll have 8 episodes published and you should be getting feedback on the show. If you make it that far, you’ve already beat the ~47% of podcasts that never published more than 3 episodes!

Keep momentum with your next 12 episodes

You now have your binge bank published — those four Pillar episodes and stories that you should refer to regularly as you move into your ‘regular’ show cadence. 

No matter what format you choose for your show, the road to 20 episodes will be rocky. If you need an efficient editing team to take those headaches away and let you focus on the content, we’re here to help.

Use these first 20 shows to get into a rhythm.

If you started out thinking you could push out 1 show per week but realize by episode 12 that you’re totally stressed out — dial it back. Growing your audience is not just about putting out new episodes, but also marketing the ones you’ve already published.

This plan is simple because getting to episode ten with a new show is not easy. There are a lot of little tasks that you won’t see if you’ve never launched a show before.

Get your workflow and tools dialed for:

• thumbnails

• writing descriptions

• publishing short clips on social media

• handling remote recordings, etc etc.

The more of these processes you get dialed in ahead of the launch, the faster you’ll be able to put things on autopilot so that the show production itself takes less time and mental energy. 

You want to put all that towards the content, building a guest network, engaging with the audience — the fun stuff!

If you want your show to launch with a pop, talk with us and we can make each episode and clip shine!