Your Basic Guide to Finding Podcast Guests

If there’s anything one needs to know about finding podcast guests, it’s this: it will require time and effort.

However, it is not as difficult as it seems.

If you are in the process of finding podcast guests, the following basics should get your search off to a good start.

Creating personas

Ideally, before you can invite your dream guests over, you first need to have a crystal clear idea of who they are. Sure, this might seem like a given but you’d be surprised to know that many podcasters forego this step and can’t comprehend why finding guests has been so challenging for them.

So, how do you go about finding the perfect guests?

Start by creating the “persona” of those guests you want. In a nutshell, personas are fictional characters made to represent a group of people. Once you’ve created a persona, it’s time to move on to the next step.

Finding guests

Finding guests can be challenging, true. However, it can be done, given you know how to go about it. The following are some of the common places you can find potential podcast guests:

• Influencers in your industry (speakers, authors, bloggers, etc.)
• Firms or companies you have done business with
• Individuals mentioned in publications relevant to your industry
• People who have been invited guests on other industry-related podcasts
• People on your email lists or existing customers

You can also find likely prospects using an RSS reader

You can significantly hasten the entire process by using an RSS reader to review podcasts, blogs, and other relevant sites. Feedly would be a great resource you can start exploring.

It will allow you to add feeds for news sites, podcasts, and blogs you want to keep under your radar. It also provides you with the option to search for the latest content using relevant keywords.

Pencil out time to scan your Feedly feed on a consistent basis (daily or weekly, whichever is convenient for you) and look for interesting stories and topics and find the individuals behind them.

In a perfect world, you should be consistently adding new prospects to your pipeline each week.

Evaluating your prospects

Once you have gathered enough prospects, it’s now time for you to evaluate the leads and finalize the people you’d like to have over. This is one process that’s best done by you instead of being delegated to others.

To help you evaluate a prospect better, the following methods can come in handy:

• Check their personal or company website
• Read their bio or their about page
• Check their Twitter or Linkedin profiles
• Look for any recent blog posts or articles they have written
• Check any interviews they might have given

Fortunately, there is no need for you to spend a significant amount of time evaluating prospective guests. You don’t have to know everything about them. Just the basics to help you gauge if they’d be a good fit for your show or not. In fact, 5 to 10 minutes per person would often suffice.

Once your invitation has been accepted by a prospect, that’s the time you should feel obligated to do thorough research so you’ll know the right questions to ask.

Also, getting to know your guests a bit more through research can also help ensure they’ll feel valued. If you get lucky, they might be willing to visit a second time around or introduce you to to others who might also be a good fit for your show.

How do you go about finding possible guests for your podcast? What methods do you swear by? Let us know in the comments section below!

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