How To Create A #1 Charting Academic Podcast - Mikko Heiskala

You may not know that podcast is not only a great marketing tool, but it can also play a significant role in academic learning. As our guest on this episode, Mikko Heiskala, a PhD student and university lecturer from Finland, has proved this.

Mikko's initial idea was to build it as a learning tool for his students. But while sharing his podcast learning experiences with his wife Nina, she suggested that since there weren’t any evidence-based psychology podcasts, they should start one together. This saw the launch of their show Psykopodiaa.

 It now has 1.2 million streams and averages 13,000 downloads per episode; just to give that some context, there are 5.5 million people in Finland, and this is a Finnish spoken language podcast. In addition to number metrics, their podcast is recommended by university lecturers to students, and doctors also suggest listening to it for their patents. They have gained deep professional trust through their podcast, which has led to a number of speaking opportunities.

In this episode, he discusses how focusing on the subject matter, adjusting the podcast duration to the listener, and respecting knowledge helped him succeed in the content creation journey. Tune into the episode to find out Mikko's success secret.

Listen to this episode on your favourite podcasting platform, and if you enjoy it, give us a review on Podchaser; please click https://www.podchaser.com/TheKultCreatorExperience.  It can really help others discover the Podcast.

Here are some quick highlights from this episode:

• [01:09]-Short intro of our guest Mikko Heiskala
• [03:09]-Mikko’s journey of starting a podcast
•  [06:45] -How to find an audience for your podcast and what topics to cover
• [8:28]-Finding podcast guests consistently when you just started
• [09:16]-The reason Mikko's focused on question-answer podcasts
• [10:27]-How long your podcast episode should be?
• [12:31]-Mikko’s determinant of success for his podcast
• [14:39]- A look into Mikko’s pre-production process
• [20:38]- A discussion about the content editing process
• [26:47]- Is it possible to grow a podcast without a large social media following?
• [30:14] -The opportunity Mikko and his wife benefited from podcasting
• [39:32]- Mikko's advice for new content creators
• [41:16]- What is Mikko's definition of a good leader?

KEY INSIGHTS

• The best advice for new content creators is to get started, especially with content that you're personally interested in. 
• A good leader serves the people he or she leads. Give them goals, provide them with tools and resources to accomplish them, and get out of their way. They should be supported and pushed, not micromanaged. 
• A great leader ensures that the environment they are working in is psychologically safe and everybody can make mistakes.

GUEST BIO

 Mikko Heiskala is a PhD student and university lecturer from Finland. Mikko's original idea was to use podcasting as a learning tool for his students, and he went on to do a short course in podcast production. At this point, his wife, a psychologist, suggested why don't we create a podcast about psychology.

She found that the current psychology content out there wasn't great. And it didn't discuss evidence-based knowledge. So on April fool's day, 2019, Psykopodiaa was launched. It was very successful, had 1.2 million streams, and averaged 13,000 downloads per episode. Now, just to give that some context, there are 5.5 million people in Finland, and this is a Finnish spoken language podcast

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