So, you’ve decided to start a podcast! Congratulations! This is a great way to promote your business and position yourself as a subject matter expert.
Starting a podcast can be both exciting and nerve-wracking. After all, you want to be sure you’re providing your listeners with engaging conversations and interesting information, while simultaneously ensuring you’re running it effectively and professionally…not to mention, profitably.
So how can you ensure your podcast is compelling and engaging, while also ensuring you’re legally covered, especially when working with others through podcast collaborations? Here are some simple tips and resources to help you do exactly that!
Podcast Collaboration Tips and Resources
As you probably already know, guests are king for the growth of your podcast. Drawing your podcast listeners in with exciting guests who help solve a problem in your industry is one of the keys to a successful podcast. Guests that can provide a new way of looking at challenges, or share their insight and experiences, help grow your podcast brand awareness. There are many avenues for finding guests for your podcast. Some ideas include:
- Authors and/or writers of prominent books or whitepapers
- Speakers and regulars at industry conventions
- Popular influencers or thought leaders in your industry
- Online groups and forums
- Networking events, and
- Directories such as helpareporter.com or podcastguests.com.
Quick and Simple Ways to Protect Your Podcast
But once you finally land that once-in-a-lifetime podcast guest, making sure you’re prepared and protected with a quality Podcast Guest Agreement will be key to ensuring you don’t miss your opportunity–or worse–put your podcast on shaky legal ground. This agreement ensures both you and your podcast guests are on the same page by ensuring you both:
- know what to expect from each other
- understand ownership and publicity rights
- know what the show’s goals are
- outlines the responsibilities of both the guest and host.
It also includes the release waivers.
It will help keep your podcast protected, while allowing you to be polished, smooth and professional for all parties.
I’ve Got the Guests…Now Where’s the Money?
Once your podcast is running like a well-oiled machine, it may be time to start monetizing your podcast. The right sponsors for your podcast provide the products and services that your audience needs. This is why it’s important to niche down. You want to know the needs and wants of your audience, while simultaneously thinking about the long-term implications for your podcast, business, and brand.
Sponsor Ad Placement is an Important Part of Your Podcast Collaboration Strategy
Running ads during your podcast through sponsors can bring that additional stream of income we should be striving for in our business. Depending on your goals, there are various options when it comes to podcast ad placement. You can choose one or a mix of the following, depending on your goals and preference.
- Pre-roll ads occur between the intro and start of your content.
- Mid-roll ads are placed, of course, in the middle of your interview or main content
- Post-roll ads are placed at some point before the outro.
Knowing when your ads will run is important.
You’ll want to ensure that all parties involved in the podcast collaboration agree on ad placement and other important podcast details. But beyond that, you’ll want to consider other important logistics, such as:
- the type of long-term partnership you want with your potential sponsors
- exclusivity
- how you can work with other companies and brands
- content ownership
- payment terms
- implementation of the ads themselves.
You’ll want to put your best foot forward with your sponsors and have a Podcast Sponsorship Agreement in place to ensure all those details are ironed out before the podcast airs. This helps ensure a long-term partnership with sponsors is established, so that you can be included in their quarterly or annual ad spend budget.
But What About Copyright Issues?
I would be remiss if I didn’t take a moment to address the backend side of podcast collaborations and your podcast. Sometimes, those you are collaborating with aren’t just guests, sponsors, or even co-hosts. They can be the people who help your podcast and its brand identity. As far as your brand goes, you may have reached out to a designer to create a logo or thumbnail for your podcast, or a composer to produce your musical intro or outro. If so, you want to ensure you actually own these commissioned works when you publish your podcast. This is so you don’t run into copyright issues down the road. Because once your podcast blows up, it’s amazing how many people can come out of the woodworks wanting a piece of your pie.
Protect yourself and your creative works
The only way to do this is with a Transfer of Copyright agreement between yourself and other creatives. This is important, because copyrights can only be transferred by a signed writing. So if you have someone create any creative work for you and want to ensure you have proper ownership, you’ve got to get it in writing.
If you’re working with a creative who does this for a living, they may already have this in place. It’s a good idea to have a Transfer of Copyright template in your files. This way you can ensure that the language needed is sufficient to protect your business interests.
Now, if you want to truly be in the driver’s seat with your podcast collaboration, grab the Podcaster Bundle from The Legal Pad. It includes both the Podcast Guest and Sponsorship agreements, along with the Transfer of Copyright contract – and have everything ready to go before you need it. This allows you to focus on creating content, establishing great podcast collaborations, and growing your podcast brand.
Nothing in this article constitutes legal advice nor forms an attorney-client relationship between the reader and Hughley Smith Law.
