How to Grow a Pod

This week, award-winning podcaster, author, sound design geek and academic, Lance Dann tells me his top tips to get your podcast discovered, how to game the system, get to the top of the iTunes chart and whether charts matter anyway.

This week, we hear from Alison Vernon-Smith whose thirty years’ experience as a producer in broadcasting at the BBC and in the independent sector makes her the perfect person to talk about producing podcasts. Or does it? She tells us how she applies her BBC mindset to high-end, sponsored podcast series for brands such as Harrods’ True Tales of Luxury presented by Mariella Frostrup and Belstaff ’s The Road Less Travelled with Reggie Yates.

This week, I’m talking queer podcasting with Tash Walker, Adam Smith and Shivani Dave, the team behind The Log Books, the niche podcast carved from real stories from Switchboard, the second- oldest LGBT+ telephone helpline in the UK which first opened in 1974. And it only went and won Best New Podcast award at the British Podcast Awards in 2020 -although none of us knew that at the time of recording.

This week, I’m with Award-winning podcast producer and playwright Chris Hogg who used the unlikely format of a drum ’n’ bass musical to tell the story of eating disorders to a young audience in his podcast Cassie and Corey. He told me 6 weeks after the launch about how he did it – the crowdfunding, the sip pitch, and how to get on New and Noteworthy. He started by telling me about working with the Arts council

This week, I’m talking podcasting value with Danny Lowney, managing director of influencer agency, Sixteenth who is watching with interest the potential of podcasting to become the next platform for making some serious cash. He explains the impact of podcast sponsorship and advertising and podcasting fits among the usual channels of Instagram and Youtube in terms of value for brands

This week, Josh Adley, Director of Commercial & Client Relations at London production company Listen tells Gilly Smith that podcasting as an industry has only just begun in Britain to offer a real income for anyone who wants to play the game..

This week, award winning sound designer, Hana Walker Brown on immersive storytelling, the political power of podcasting and where she thinks the industry is heading.

This week, Radio 4 and BBC Sounds producer, Georgia Catt tells us about her award winning series with presenter, Jamie Bartlett, The Missing Cryptoqueen, and the rise and rise of the long form podcast, the audio version of the Netflix binge.

This week, a bumper masterclass of an episode with Olly Mann who with Helen Zatlzmann was one of the earliest pioneers in podcasting with Answer Me This in 2008. Since then, he’s presented The Week Unwrapped and The Moderrn Mann and made real his teenage dream of becoming a BBC radio broadcaster. He tells me about getting in early, making it up as he went along, using his media savvy and creative brain to have a load of fun along the way and get to a point where he can pay his mortgage...

This week, in the very first interview I did for the book, I’m Zooming with the entire team of My Dad Wrote a Porno, surely Britian’s most famous and most unlikely success in podcasting. Alice Levine, James Cooper an Jamie Morten have been making media since they played around at their uni TV station, and talk about how to make a home-made passion project into a multi platform media phenomenon, when to monetise and how to tell when something’s really really funny.

This week, I’m with the matriarch of British podcasting pioneers, Helen Zaltzman whose Answer Me This, Veronica Mars Investigates and The Allusionist podcasts set the standard in home grown talent. Here she talks about community support, making money in podcasting and where she thinks the medium is heading.

This week, Gilly is with Ira Glass, the legend of podcasting, the brains behind and the voice of This American Life. Here he gives us a masterclass in storytelling and the immersive listening experience, and talks us through the iconic blurring of fiction and non-fiction that has madfe This American Life the most copied podcast narrative experience ever.

This week, Gilly talks to folk expert Jon Wilks of The Old Songs podcast on hobby podcasting, niche communities, using music and meeting your heroes.

This week, James Ramsden from The Kitchen is on Fire podcast, on not trying too hard, having a bit of a ramble with your best mate, a bit of a format and getting on to New and Noteworthy anyway. And all to the soundtrack of a helicopter over his roof!

This week, Matt Hill, co-founder of the British Podcast Awards on producing Fearne Cotton’s Happy Place, The Week Unwrapped and The Modern Mann, the place of awards and how to think laterally about monetising.

This week, we hear the full interview with pop star, Jessie Ware and her mum, Lennie from How to Start and Grow a Successful Podcast by Gilly Smith about their podcast Table Manners.

In this episode, we hear the full interview with George the Poet from How to Start and Grow a Successful Podcast by Gilly Smith. Find out why cartoons inspire him, why he went to BBC Sounds and why podcasting is for him the perfect platform for what he wants to say in the world.

How to Grow a Pod is the podcast about podcasting. It's the podcast to accompany the book, How to Start and Grow a Successful Podcast by Gilly Smith, a practical guide to podcasting filled with the voices from the pioneers of the industry. How to Grow a Pod is where you can hear the full interviews, virtually unedited and full of all the advice you need to make a successful podcast. From storytelling to monetising, marketing to producing and editing, this is the ultimate guide to getting the...