Let me guess – you’re struggling to find exciting podcast topics and ideas.
How do I know? Not one, not two, but three different surveys found that finding new content ideas is among the top challenges of professional podcasters.
This isn’t surprising.
With so many podcasts popping up in every niche, content creators are constantly under pressure to come up with new content angles and newsworthy stories to engage their audiences.
But thankfully, it isn’t as complicated as you think, especially when you have a system to generate podcast ideas.
So, in this article, we’ll help you in two ways.
We’ll first give you a list of proven and highly engaging podcast topic angles that you can use in any niche. Then, we’ll give you a framework for finding new podcast ideas so you never face this problem again.
Let’s dive in.
15 Podcast Topics And Ideas To Hook Your Listeners
Finding new podcast topic ideas is time-consuming. So, we recommend you list all the topic angles we’re about to share in a spreadsheet, brainstorm ideas, and write them in the corresponding columns.
Use it as a live document updated every month or quarter to keep your content calendar full.
Podcast Topic Idea #1: Expert Interviews
Interviewing industry experts, specialists, celebrities, and influencers from your niche is among the best ways to create a highly engaging podcast.
And the best thing about this podcast angle is that you’ll never run out of topic ideas because every industry has numerous people worth interviewing.
People like Lewis Howes, Tim Ferris, and many others have grown multi-million-dollar podcasts by solely focusing on interviewing the most relevant people to their audiences.
So, whether you create content on technology, productivity, art, AI, personal development, or relationships, use the interview podcast format to provide multiple perspectives to your audience and attract your guest’s followers to your content.
Podcast Topic Idea #2: Success Stories
Who doesn’t love a success story? Featuring people’s achievements in your podcasts and breaking down their success formula is an excellent way to captivate your audience and create share-worthy content.
The best part? You don’t even have to invite a successful person to your show to cover their story. Just keep an eye on any stand-out success stories, research them, and break them down for your audience.
This is exactly what James Buttler does in his podcasts.
He covers wildly successful businessmen and helps his audience understand their success secrets.
Scott Clary, another successful podcaster who routinely repurposes his podcasts for YouTube and other social networks, covers different success business stories through interviews or summary lessons for his audience.
For example, in this podcast, he shared the shutdown rituals of various successful entrepreneurs and why they’re critical to your success.
Again, you can use this topic angle to find unlimited podcast ideas that will resonate with your audience.
Podcast Topic Idea #3: Trending News And Events
If you want a spike in your audience while sticking to your niche, cover different trending and newsworthy events in your podcasts.
The modern internet user’s FOMO is the biggest reason why covering trending topics almost always guarantees success. People want to get the latest news first and understand what’s happening in their interest areas.
This recent episode from Chris Gullibeau’s podcast, Side Hustle School, is an excellent example.
Chris’s primary audience is people looking to make money online, and AI is the hottest topic in that niche. So, this episode makes for perfect listening for his audience.
How do you find trending topics to cover in your niche? Try these methods.
– Use Google Trends to find the rising trends in your target region or topics related to your niche.
– Follow relevant social media hashtags, especially on Twitter, to stay on top of the latest industry trends.
– Use Google’s trending searches and auto-search suggestions to get ideas.
– Search for your niche in Google News to find any relevant topics.
– Set up Google Alerts for your niche keywords to get notifications for any new content Google indexes.
Podcast Topic Idea #4: Personal Experiences
If you’ve been creating content in your niche for a while, you must have several unique experiences and learnings that your audience would love to hear about.
Why not make these experiences a regular part of your podcasting calendar?
For example, if you’re a productivity coach, tell people about your routines and how you ensure you achieve your goals.
If you’re a marketing consultant, tell your audience the most common traits of your successful clients.
Apply this to any niche you want.
For example, Nancy Ray has a popular podcast about entrepreneurship and personal growth, where she regularly shares her personal routines, experiences, and learnings.
Ali Abdaal’s audio and video podcasts are another example.
Ali regularly shares his experiences and breaks down different concepts helping his audience achieve faster growth.
So, the next time you’re struggling to find podcast ideas, think about the last few days or weeks of your life and list any interesting events or experiences that your audience might find valuable.
Podcast Topic Idea #5: Book Reviews
With TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and so many other visual distractions around, you might believe people don’t read books anymore. But stats paint a different story.
According to Statista, almost 790 million printed books were sold in the US in 2022.
So, if you’ve read a book recently or heard good things about it, why not share it with your audience in a detailed podcast?
It doesn’t matter if you’re a marketer, an artist, an athlete, a productivity coach, a personal trainer, or a copywriter. You’ll find high-quality books in every niche.
This podcast about the famous management book “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, is an excellent example.
Where to find relevant books to cover in your podcasts? Amazon, of course. The New York Times Best Sellers is another great place to find books your audience would love to know about.
So, if you’re an avid reader, you can offer immense value to your listeners by summarizing the best books in your niche.
Podcast Topic Idea #6: Movie Reviews
Who doesn’t watch movies? If you research YouTube or Google Search, you’ll find millions of monthly searches for movie summaries and reviews because people want to know if a film is worth watching before dedicating a couple of hours to it.
So, if you’re looking for engaging podcast ideas, list all the movies relevant to your audience and review them from time to time.
For example, movies like The Wolf Of Wall Street or The Pursuit of Happyness are full of lessons for anyone interested in stocks, investing, ambition, and perseverance.
Tim Ferris, and many other podcasters, use this podcast angle regularly.
The great thing about this angle is that millions of people search for movies online. So, reviewing a film helps you attract new listeners who’ve never heard of you before.
If you’re not an avid Hollywood fan, just Google the best shows and films related to your niche, and you’ll find lots of content to cover.
Podcast Topic Idea #7: Discuss Research Findings
Another excellent podcast topic idea is to discuss and break down the latest research studies and survey findings in your niche. Help your audience stay on top of all the developments in your niche and show them how the latest research impacts them.
For example, if your podcast is about business and entrepreneurship, you could cover the surveys about the impact of ChatGPT on business strategy (like this study by Authority Hacker)
Unsurprisingly, they did a whole podcast on this study themselves.
You could also visit sites like Statista, Pew Research, and eMarketer to find unique data, charts, and scientific studies about various industries.
Pick any data set, simplify it for your audience, and extract actionable insights for them.
Podcast Topic Idea #8: Roundtables
Need an audience boost to your podcast? Pick a hot topic and hold a roundtable discussion with four or five content creators and experts from your industry.
This would give your audience several unique perspectives on a topic and help you attract new listeners from multiple sources because each participant in your roundtables has their own following.
This real estate roundtable podcast is a good example.
What we love about this podcast topic angle is that you can generate numerous follow-up ideas from one such session. So let’s say you hold a roundtable podcast about SEO and AI with three experts having different opinions.
You can do three or four follow-up podcasts picking each expert’s perspective and breaking it down for your audience or sharing your opinion about it in more detail.
The downside is that roundtables are hard to execute because lining up the participants and ensuring you have a fruitful discussion without constant interruptions is challenging.
Still, it’s worth doing one roundtable podcast every few months.
Podcast Topic Idea #9: Controversies
Nothing sells like controversies,
This is why you always see controversial stories on conventional media channels. But you don’t need to hype up stuff or use controversies negatively to get listeners.
Instead, find out any topics sparking debates in your niche and share your perspective on them in your podcasts.
In fact, even if a controversial event is not directly linked to your industry, you can still analyze it to extract lessons for your listeners and provide them with actionable value.
For example, this lifestyle podcast discusses the lessons from the hugely controversial startup founder Elizabeth Holmes and her fraud med startup case.
The topic isn’t directly related to this podcast’s usual theme. But since it was a trending topic generating a lot of debate, they used it to their advantage.
Podcast Topic Idea #10: How-Tos
How-Tos are among the most engaging and in-demand content types in any format. They teach people new skills, help them simplify complex problems, and gain real value from your content.
So, when thinking about How-to podcast ideas for your audience, analyze the most common tasks they perform in their day-to-day affairs.
Think about the tools they use, the software they purchase, and the services they hire to solve their problems.
Then break down each of them into easy-to-understand How-To podcasts that share everything they need to know to get the job done.
Smart Passive Income Podcast by Pat Flynn is an excellent example.
In every episode, Pat invites a successful entrepreneur and asks them to explain their business model and help beginners replicate their success.
With over 6 million downloads across podcast platforms, it is one the most popular shows on entrepreneurship because it provides step-by-step guidance instead of scratching topics on the surface.
Podcast Topic Idea #11: Niche Fundamentals
Have you covered the core concepts of your niche before addressing the more advanced topics? Don’t ignore your niche’s simple yet foundational topics because they drive traffic due to high demand and establish your credibility as an expert.
For example, if you have a podcast about content marketing, you can create dedicated podcasts on the following topics:
- What is content marketing, and why is it important
- What’s the difference between content writing and content marketing
- How to create a content marketing strategy
- What’s a content marketing funnel
- How to generate leads with content marketing
- The biggest content marketing mistakes
Ross Dunn and John Carcutt use this approach perfectly in their popular podcast, SEO 101.
They’ve not only covered advanced SEO concepts and trending topics but have also done detailed podcasts on all the fundamental questions of their audience.
This approach helps you find dozens of engaging podcast ideas in the form of beginner questions.
Apply it to your niche, and you’ll be surprised how quickly your podcast calendar fills up.
Podcast Topic Idea #12: Q&A And AMA Sessions
Answering your audience’s questions and allowing them to interact with you live is among the best ways to boost engagement, build credibility, and grow your listeners.
This is why Q&A and Ask Me Anything (AMA) podcasts are such a hit among content creators.
You can do Q&A podcasts in two ways.
- Announce a Q&A podcast date on your social media profiles and share a deadline for submitting questions via comments and email.
- Announce a Q&A date and take questions live.
In the first approach, you’ll pick the best questions, prepare answers and address them individually in your podcast.
Here’s a good example.
The second approach, live questions, is more engaging but harder to pull off because of challenges in content moderation and prioritizing the most valuable audience questions.
Either way, this format helps you understand your audience’s most burning questions and gives you plenty of content ideas to cover in your future podcasts.
Podcast Topic Idea #13: Product Reviews
Whether you publish podcasts on weight loss, productivity, relationships, or any other topic, your listeners are consumers as well and routinely spend thousands of dollars buying different products online.
Since they listen to your podcasts, they already trust you to an extent. So, when you recommend a product and help them make better purchase decisions, they’re likely to follow your advice, earning you valuable affiliate commissions.
For example, if you’re a podcaster in the digital marketing space, you can recommend the best market research tools to your audience. If you podcast about content creation, you can recommend the best mics, lighting equipment, recording software, and other relevant tools.
The CultCast, a dedicated podcast about Apple products, is all about reviewing the latest Apple gadgets and helping consumers make informed purchase decisions.
But you don’t need to dedicate your show to product reviews.
Instead, you can share the products and tools you regularly use and trust so your listeners know where to spend their money.
Podcast Topic Idea #14: Critique
If you’re a creative designer, an artist, a marketer, or an expert in any niche with an audience eager to learn new skills, offering detailed critiques of publicly available websites, designs, and marketing campaigns can be a great way to provide value to your listeners.
For example, as a marketing consultant, you can break down a major brand’s promotional strategy and share actionable learning points with your audience. Or you could pick a product’s design and share reasons why you think it is good or bad.
Design Critique is a popular podcast that reviews different products from a user experience perspective.
Design Review, another popular podcast, gathered listeners by discussing various aspects of a graphic designer’s job and critiquing different mobile and web applications.
This podcast angle not only helps your audience learn new lessons but also does an excellent job of building your authority and positioning yourself as an expert.
Podcast Topic Idea #15: Experiments And Challenges
One of my favorite podcast topic ideas is doing a group challenge or experiment with your audience.
Here’s how it works.
Suppose you have a podcast about weight loss and fitness. Instead of telling your audience to be more conscious of their diet or exercise regularly, do a 30-day challenge where you sign up people to chase a fitness goal, like a zero-sugar diet or 10,000 steps daily, together.
This engages your audience and helps you build a tribe around your brand that ultimately benefits your podcast’s promotion and audience growth.
5 Ways To Find Captivating Podcast Ideas To Grow Your Audience
Looking for more podcast topic ideas? Here’s a simple step-by-step framework you can use to find unlimited ideas to engage your podcast audience.
Step 1: Check Your Analytics
Most podcast hosting platforms give you in-depth audience analytics. Use them to find your most popular podcasts and the topics that have brought you success. These are proven ideas you can repeatedly use to create more engaging content.
Step 2: Learn From Your Competitors
Go to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or any other podcast platform and search for the top podcasts in your industry. See what your competitors talk about, view their most popular podcasts, and note any patterns you can follow. Instead of constantly experimenting with new ideas, use your competitors’ proven podcast ideas.
Step 3: Explore Ideas With Google Search
Google Search has unlimited audience insights if you know how to use it.
Google Suggestions: Type your keyword in the search box to get keyword suggestions from Google. These suggestions are based on the most frequent Google searches on your topic.
People Also Ask: Search for your main topic and scroll to the People Also Ask section in the search results to find your audience’s most frequent questions.
Related Search: Scroll down to the related search section, where you’ll find more keyword suggestions.
Keyword Research: Use tools like Ahrefs, SEMRush, or Keywords Everywhere to get the search volume of different keywords and find the most popular topics you can cover in your podcasts.
Step 4: Browse Online Discussion Forums
Reddit, Quora, Facebook Groups, and industry-specific forums are excellent places to find the actual problems of your audience. Browse the discussions on these sites to understand your audience’s concerns and generate unlimited ideas for your podcasts.
Step 5: Ask Your Audience
If you can’t think of any ideas, simply ask your audience what they want to learn about.
Are You Still Looking For Podcast Topic Ideas?
The angles we’ve shared in this article should help you find numerous engaging podcast ideas. Pick any of them and start creating content to see what resonates with your listeners the most. Read our guides to starting a podcast, choosing a podcast hosting platform, and the best podcast equipment if you want more information on these topics.
Jeff Cobb, Founder of Learning Revolution
Jeff Cobb is an expert in online education and the business of adult lifelong learning. Over the past 20+ years he has built a thriving career based on that expertise – as an entrepreneur, a consultant, an author, and a speaker. Learning Revolution is a place where Jeff curates tips, insights, and resources to help you build a thriving expertise-based business. Learn more about Jeff Cobb here.
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