Starting a podcast is a bit of a bucket list item for many small businesses. It sounds glamorous: hanging out in the studio, interviewing industry stars, and watching your Spotify rankings rise by the day.
The reality, of course, is more mundane. Podcasting is a LOT of work, especially if you go for a video, rather than audio-only podcast. And many small business podcasts don’t attract high profile guests or grow huge audiences.
What podcasts can do, however, is provide a platform to build deeper relationships in your niche – and that has real value.
Let’s explore the case for and against podcasting for your small business.
The case for podcasting
Podcasts are uniquely brilliant for building brand loyalty. They command someone’s attention for 20, 30, or 40 minutes at a time. They can listen to your friendly voice in their ear while they’re driving, walking the dog, or doing the dishes. That’s an intimacy other formats can’t touch.
It’s also a super efficient repurposing engine. One 30-minute recording can become a blog post, a handful of audio snippets, some LinkedIn quote cards, and a couple of Reels.
The case against (or at least, the reality check)
The consistency you need for a successful podcast can be brutal. A podcast that publishes three episodes and goes quiet does more brand damage than no podcast at all. You need guests, questions, editing, hosting, distribution – and an audience that actually shows up, which can take months (sometimes longer) to build.
And audio vs video isn’t a neutral choice either.
Audio-only is lower-effort to produce and plays well for the ‘background listening’ crowd – but you lose out on the visual cues that keep viewers hooked. You’re also more limited in your repurposing options as you won’t have any visual material to turn into social content.
Video podcasting gives you clips for Reels and Shorts and a searchable YouTube presence, but it adds complexity and cost into your production process. You need a studio space with lighting and cameras, and the raw material will need more extensive editing than a simple audio file.
Can’t AI do some of the heavy lifting?
AI tools can now assist with a lot of the previously painful parts of podcasting: transcript-based editing, filler-word removal, automatic clip generation, even full text-to-speech voice generation for scripted episodes. But, like all decisions involving AI, you’d need to work out where you as the human need to be in charge, and where it’s safe to delegate to AI.
We’re testing the sharpest end of this ourselves with our own podcast, Digitally Speaking. We’ll be upfront: it’s a live experiment, not a finished product. In an ideal world, we’d do this “the human way” – real voices, real banter, all of it. But for now, we’re trying the 100% AI route, generating episodes from topics and themes pulled straight from our own blog. It’s partly a genuine production shortcut, and partly a live test of whether people will actually listen to AI-generated voices.
Spoiler alert: they do. Though we’d probably get considerably more listeners if it were more human and authentic – which tells you something important about where the ceiling is for AI-only audio right now. It’s a solid way to get something out there and start learning what your audience responds to, but it’s not (yet) a substitute for a real, warm human voice.
So, is small business podcasting worth it?
If you’ve got a clear angle and audience, and you can commit to a regular production schedule, you might want to give podcasting a try.
Start smaller than you think you need to: audio-only, one guest format on a non-punishing production schedule. See if this sticks before you invest in expensive equipment or commit to putting out several episodes a week/ month.
If you want a hand figuring out whether podcasting fits your business – or you’d like us to run an intro to podcasting workshop with your team – get in touch.