How to Be a Great Podcast Guest with Paige Velasquez Budde

Full video transcript

What’s up, what’s up, Jarvis nation, Darby here, and I’m joined today by Paige Velasquez Budde. Paige is a partner and CEO at Zilker Media, an Austin-based agency building people-driven brands. During her tenure as CEO, Zilker Media has been named one of the fastest growing companies in Austin and one of the best places to work for two years in a row by the Austin Business Journal. Her approach to people-driven marketing has been featured in many media outlets including Inc., Thrive Global, Texas CEO Magazine, Authority Magazine, Business News Daily, and Business.com.

Welcome, Paige. This is going to cover one side of the PR component for authors, which is podcast interviews, and the reason this topic matters is because for over a decade the Zilker Media team has done end-to-end branding for some of the world’s top executives, thought leaders, companies, and authors, so they’ve seen how much the landscape has shifted in terms of what actually delivers value for authors in a PR or marketing strategy.

The session covers three things: where podcasts fit in today’s changing media landscape, how to pitch podcasts to secure a guest spot, and how to prepare and deliver an interview that makes an audience want to visit your website, buy your book, or hire you.

Before diving into podcast specifics, Paige stepped back to talk about the media landscape as a whole. Several years back, there were really only two ways to get a message out at scale: rent or buy coverage (an ad, a magazine placement, a billboard), or earn your way onto a media outlet through an interview. Today there is a third, increasingly important category: owned media.

Rented media covers messages where you control the content but the platform belongs to someone else — advertising is the obvious example, and so is social media (Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter). Some people push back on social media being “rented,” since it feels like your own network. Paige described learning this the hard way: her team grew a client’s Facebook page from about a thousand followers to over two million, generating huge organic engagement and revenue, until Facebook shifted its algorithm from an organic model to pay-to-play around 2013. That shift proved Facebook, not the business, owned access to that audience.

Earned media is being invited onto someone else’s stage or platform — speaking engagements, PR placements, awards, client referrals. Because it does the most for credentialing, most authors put nearly all their effort into earned media. The limiting factor is that authors have only indirect control over it: you can write a great book or give a great interview, but you still have to wait for someone else to extend the invitation. Earned media is important, especially early on for credibility, but the strategy has to shift over time toward owned media alongside rented media.

Owned media is the email list and the website — assets the author fully controls. The strategic point of doing a podcast interview (earned media) is to convert some of those listeners into an owned audience, because that’s the channel with direct, lasting control.

On pitching: the key to a good outreach email is that it’s simple and leads with value. A strong example pitch led with the author’s credentials directly in the subject line, since that immediately catches a producer’s or host’s attention. Because producers may see hundreds or thousands of pitches a day, the email needs to be short and easy to read — bolded key details, concise paragraphs, and bullet points to deliver value quickly. The example pitch discussed was under 250 words. A host who opens an email full of long paragraphs is likely to just delete it, so the priorities are: keep it clear, keep it value-driven, research the specific podcast, and use bullet points at the end to lay out potential conversation topics tailored to that show. The recommendation is to listen to at least one, ideally two, episodes before pitching, both to understand the topics that resonate and the host’s interview style.

For contact strategy: look for a host contact and a producer contact. If both are listed, pitch the producer first, since producers are typically the ones screening applications and deciding what fits the show’s long-term strategy and themes. If there’s no producer, the host is the next best contact.

On what to avoid: don’t come across as overly promotional or jargon-heavy — that’s the most common mistake. Watch for overused words; the session referenced a list of the most overused terms in 2021 press releases, including “unprecedented,” “thrilled,” and “cutting edge,” which don’t help an author stand out. Lead instead with factual credentialing.

A viewer named Linda asked how to pitch a podcast when the outreach has to go through a contact form on the website instead of email. Paige’s advice was to do as much investigating as possible to try to find a direct email regardless, since many shows do have one somewhere even if a contact form is the primary listed option; contact forms and other rented-media pitches follow the same core approach of leading with value and staying concise.

Once a pitch lands and an interview is confirmed, there are three phases to focus on: pre-interview, the interview itself, and post-interview follow-up.

In the pre-interview stage, the biggest shift Paige has seen, especially during and after the pandemic, is that authors need to be prepared for video. Many podcasts that used to be audio-only now also record video — sometimes to keep host and guest able to see each other during the conversation, sometimes just for promotional clips, and sometimes as the full published format on YouTube with audio stripped out for the podcast feed. The recommendation is to always be video-ready: good lighting, an appropriate background, and avoiding sitting directly in front of a window. Explicitly ask the producer or host ahead of time whether video will be recorded, so you aren’t caught off guard.

Many podcast hosts also require a 15-20 minute pre-interview call. Paige emphasized this isn’t something to be intimidated by — it’s mainly to confirm chemistry, sometimes to align on themes for the conversation, and it’s a good opportunity to test equipment if the call happens on the same platform used for recording. She recommended investing in decent earphones or a mic if doing podcasts regularly.

Another prep step is listening to past episodes to understand what kinds of questions get asked and the host’s interview style — episode style tends to be consistent from guest to guest. A common misconception is that guests always get questions in advance; some hosts do send them, but Paige said this is the exception, not the rule, and guests generally shouldn’t ask for questions if they aren’t offered.

The last pre-interview step is getting a backup number from the host or producer in case the call platform or internet connection fails, and offering your own cell number in return, so a technical issue doesn’t turn into a rescheduled interview.

During the interview itself, the main things to manage are: turning off notifications so nothing interrupts the recording, finding a “soft room” with carpet, furniture, or wall decor that absorbs sound (avoiding concrete, tile, or glass, which create echo), and keeping energy up throughout — most interviews run 30 minutes to an hour, which counts as long-form content. Paige’s team recommends smiling even on audio-only calls, since it changes tone, and some clients stand up to keep their energy elevated.

The most important part of the interview is the ending: planning and delivering a clear call to action. The point isn’t just getting the interview — it’s using it to drive listeners back to owned media. At the end of most interviews, hosts ask guests where people can learn more. Rather than just naming a website or social handle, the goal is to direct people toward something that captures them into an email list, since most listeners won’t be ready to buy immediately and need to be nurtured over time.

On follow-up: it’s important to be intentional about sharing the interview once it’s live. Paige acknowledged this can feel uncomfortable or overly promotional to some authors, but recommended sharing the interview twice on social media, tagging the show and host, pushing it to your own email list, and adding it to your website to maximize reach. This also builds goodwill with the host, who may invite the guest back or make them a recurring guest. Staying in touch with the host or producer afterward — following their newsletter or social accounts and occasionally sharing their other content — helps maintain that relationship over time. Zilker Media’s team sometimes rates a podcast’s fit before pitching it, and continues assessing that fit after the interview airs as part of ongoing outreach strategy.