How to Build Credibility and Authority Through Health and Wellness Podcasting

There are many benefits to podcasting in the health and wellness space. Ultimately, here we want to generate leads and revenue for our businesses, but another huge benefit is building credibility and authority. Now, this of course, supports that goal of generating leads and revenue, especially by building trust, but it also stands on its own as many podcasters say, that authority building is a goal of theirs.

Because that can help with things like booking, speaking gigs, and getting appearances on other bigger notable podcasts. Today we are going to talk all about how to leverage your health and Wellness podcast to grow your credibility and authority. This is profits through podcasting. I’m your host, Joel Oliver.

I wanna share a quick story here as we get started. If you’ve ever suffered from imposter syndrome, then we can definitely relate to each other here, because despite being in the podcast business for almost 10 years at this point, I’ve never really felt qualified or saw myself as one of those people on stage at podcast or doing webinars or anything like that.

I didn’t really feel like I had anything to share. But as we then launched our own podcast over a year ago, I started realizing. People were asking me questions that I had answers to. They were trusting me to share advice with their audiences, and they saw me as an authority figure in this space. That didn’t necessarily change the imposter syndrome that I had, that was in my own head, but clearly what was happening in the outside world showed otherwise.

Then came a fairly big opportunity. It was the chance to appear as part of podcasting Made Simple Live, which is an online virtual summit hosted by Pod Match, where experts from the podcasting space join in to give a short talk on a podcast related topic, and then they do a live q and a afterwards.

This is something I had looked at over and over and just sort of dismissed. Never really paid much mind to it because again, I was not really in the mindset of I’m an expert. I didn’t think they would even look at me or consider me. I just didn’t think I was that guy. But thanks to doing this podcast and putting more content out there and meeting more people, including Alex Sanfilippo of Pod Match, I realized there’s no reason I can’t do this.

I know just as much as all these other people speaking we’re on the same level. What’s the problem here? And not only that, but. Really, who better? Who is better than me? Who is better at being me than me? Or who is better at being you than you? You know what you’re talking about. You are a unique person.

Why couldn’t you do something like this? Right? So pod match, they don’t give any preferential treatment. Even though Alex suggested I apply, that’s where his involvement kind of ends. You apply and their team takes over the rest to makes the decision. So I did that. Thanks to his encouragement. I applied for the opportunity, put a lot of work into my submission, and apparently it was received well because I got that opportunity and I was able to appear on there.

This year, April, 2025. So that was great. I believe many of us are ready for things far before we feel that we actually are, or maybe even once that time finally comes, we still don’t feel ready, but we are brave enough to go through that anyway, something has gotten us to that point, whether we realize it or not, whether we feel like we’ve earned it or not. Someone thought that we deserved it. That’s how I felt about this event. I had a healthy amount of excitement, slightly anxious to go live in front of a thousand people, but I knew I could do it.

Come on. Right? And this was all thanks to those small wins over the years, especially of this past year and a half, putting out podcast episodes, putting content on Instagram, and starting to become one of those people that I was always looking up to in the community. So finally, my own identity in my mind was shifting.

So I shared that story because I want you to see. quick version of how that journey can go, and if you want to start growing your authority and your credibility, how your podcast can play a role in that. For me, the podcast role was giant, not only to give me that confidence that I should be part of something like this, but also the amount of learning that I did by having guests on our show and also appearing on other shows.

Right when we started the podcast, it led me to create some frameworks so that teaching would be easier, and I learned a ton of insight from talking to different people, and that just really helped with the belief that I do have knowledge to share and value to give. Absolutely. It’s just my own confidence had to catch up with that.

But also, like I said, when I did that submission, they clearly saw, okay, this guy knows what he’s talking about. And maybe you don’t fully have that confidence developed at that point, but they see something in you. Whoever gives you that opportunity, . They see a smart person with lots to share, someone who knows what they’re speaking about.

And so you’ve gotta trust. That’s the reason that they’re giving you the opportunity. And then go ahead, be brave and move forward with it. So if this is a type of direction that you want to head with your podcast, which is really no downside, you want to build credibility and authority, that’s the case. Then let’s talk about now how we can ensure that will happen. ’cause there are things that you need to be doing and thinking about to make sure that when you are putting these episodes out there, it’s working in your favor to help you grow this authority.

So first and foremost, the obvious one. Having the podcast is a great step. The fact that you’re doing this is fantastic, but let’s dig in a little more to what we need to be thinking about here. First of all, let’s talk specifically about the episodes. Consistency plays a huge role. I wanna emphasize here, long term persistence.

Doing your episodes on time every week or every two weeks, and building that up over time because your authority is gonna grow with time. In a robust episode catalog, someone looks at your podcast and sees, you’ve been doing this for five years and you’ve got three or 400 episodes, they go, wow, okay. This person has been doing this a while.

They know what they’re talking about. It’s just the way it is. As opposed to someone who has a podcast with 10 episodes is brand new. Sure, maybe they know what they’re talking about still, but. It just, you can’t argue with the fact that having a big catalog of episodes is great for boosting your authority and giving you credibility.

As well, that consistency is important because you get the opportunity to show and say that, I’ve been doing this once a week for the last five years. I never missed an episode. That’s what we want to hear. Not well. I’ve done it on and off when I felt like it and stopped for a while. That’s not so good.

Okay, so consistency, really important. Now let’s look at the episode content. You can break these down further, but essentially you could do one of two types of episodes, solo or guest interview. Now solo, I highly recommend mixing in some of these. If you’re not doing any at all, you could be doing all solo, that’s fine.

If you’re doing all interview, I recommend we mix in some solo, although optimally, I think you get some good benefits from doing both. But with solo. They are really allowing you to build authority because it’s your time to shine, your time to show who you really are. Show your knowledge, show your true personality.

When you’re only ever interviewing people, your guests might be getting value, but they’re never fully hearing from you. You might have a few words to say, but typically if you have a guest on the spotlight’s on them, you don’t wanna be saying too much and your listeners, yeah, they could be hearing great things, but they may actually end up going and doing business with your guests, which is not a bad thing. But if you’re only ever highlighting your guests, how about you? You want to maybe get some business from this too? So the solo episodes have a lot of merit.

And I highly recommend that you are doing at least some of these. They’re arguably easier to produce as well, although some people find it easier to just do interviews than prepare for solo episodes, so I won’t even comment on that. But there are a lot of benefits and definitely you should be doing at least some solo episodes.

Now on the side of guest interviews, if you’re only doing solo and you need to be convinced of why to do guest episodes I’ll tell you some of the benefits that I think here and why these are so important. First of all, of course, the more notable figures that you can have on your episodes, the better.

That’s gonna come with time as you build and grow. But definitely pull any strings that you can to get bigger and bigger guests on your show, because then you’re able to springboard off of them. To access their audience. You’re reaching more and more people in return for the time that you have to invest.

You can use them to connect with other higher profile guests after they have a good experience on your show. So they’ll only take a certain connection and you might already know someone out there who can help you connect with someone else and then give them a good experience and they’ll help you connect with someone else.

Right? So there’s a lot of benefits there. the connections, the learning that you’re gonna do from. All of these people that you have on your show, as I mentioned earlier, I found that invaluable to be able to actually have people come on here, share their knowledge and stories. With not only me, but the audience of the podcast gets it.

And then I can take that, go back to our clients when we’re working together one-on-one. I can help them in that way. I can develop our business further. It. There’s just so many benefits that I’ve found from talking to people, but I wouldn’t only do interviews. There’s still that benefit of solo as well.

Okay. So that’s what I think. I think optimally you should be doing both. But in regards to the two types of episodes. That’s it. Now, when you’re doing this content, whether it is solo or it’s the guest interviews, you need to be coming across professional and authentic. This is interesting because authenticity well,

Probably a an amount that we wanna keep it locked to. We want to be authentic, we want to be ourselves, but we don’t want to make our business, our professional self look bad either. So there’s a balance, and I’ll leave that discretion with you to figure out exactly where that line is being yourself, let’s other people know who you are and lets them make the decision of, is this the kind of person I wanna work with or not?

And. It’s important to put your full self on display, but really if you want to get into talk that’s maybe more suitable for. At home in private, that kind of thing. Well, you can decide if you feel that has a place in your podcast or not, but my point is, you want to come across as professional in this health and wellness space where it matters.

So if people are trusting you for knowledge about something to do with health and wellness, medical advice, whatever. You want to make sure that in that case, in that aspect, you are appearing professional. You don’t want to be second guessing yourself or sounding like you don’t know what you’re talking about.

Ensure that you are confident and you are well prepared for all the interviews and the episode recordings that you do. Piggybacking on that, we want to have quality audio and video. That’s also very important as it gives an impression to the audience of what is this person like? Are they not making any money in their business so they couldn’t even afford a decent camera?

Or to get someone to help edit that kind of thing, or they can’t hear you, it all adds up. Even if it’s subconscious, people just see that the quality just isn’t there. Versus when there is a nice sharply produced episode that sounds great and looks great, that’s gonna make a world of a difference.

So absolutely when you were doing these episodes, make them look good, make them sound good, make the content good, be well researched, show up prepared, cite some sources if you can, that’s gonna be very integral in boosting your credibility and authority and making it sound like you know what you’re talking about.

Not necessarily just making it sound that way, but showing people that is the case and not having the opposite effect.

Think about how you can deliver actionable evidence-based advice as well to your audience if they’re tuning in to get this knowledge from you. They want to have a clear picture on what do I do now? What do I do with this advice? I. Not just overwhelming them with information and then not giving them a path forward.

So that’s important as well. And even if that’s in, say, a lead magnet or a product that you sell, that’s great. Also And finally, when it comes to your episode content, ensure that the content is valuable to your ideal client.

You can figure this out by knowing your ideal client very well. So just talking to people like that, using feedback polls, stats from your episode downloads, that sort of thing. But obviously if we’re not putting out content that is relevant to these people, then you’re not gonna build any credibility or authority because they’re not even gonna listen.

Next way to build credibility and authority through health and wellness podcasting. This is not so much to do with your podcast, but. Other people’s podcasts ’cause they wanna talk about guest appearances, being on other podcasts to help expand your reach. This is a no brainer in my opinion, if you’re in the podcasting space already.

’cause you’re comfortable being on camera, being in front of a mic. You’ve got the proper setup for it. You’ve got lots to say. You should be appearing on other podcasts. And not only that, but consistently trying to get on bigger and bigger podcasts as well. Because as I touched on earlier. The bigger audience that you can reach, that’s the better value you’re getting for your time.

Rather than having to do a hundred different podcasts where they only have 20 listeners, you get on one podcast with 10,000 listeners. That’s great. Okay. But starting out it’s okay. Just having practice is great. So if you’re new to this, you haven’t done many guest appearances or your following isn’t too big, totally normal to start with.

Some lower sized. Podcast because you’ve gotta kind of have credibility as we’re talking about in this episode, to end up getting those bigger appearances, right? So take the practice, take what you can get. Don’t waste too much time. Know when to cut it off and know when that time is right.

That okay, I don’t need to accept every invite anymore or appear on anything, but certainly helps to build up your skills and get started. It improves your speaking skills. It gets you comfortable talking on the fly. You’re gonna make new connections even more than if you’re only doing interviews on your own show.

You’re meeting all these other people now, which is great. You’re reaching their audiences and it also gives you content to show to other podcasts that are considering having you on. You can say, look, here are my other appearances, and list the notable ones. You can use the video content on your social media.

So you’re repurposing that and getting even more content for the time that you’re investing, which is fantastic. And also all the hosts of these podcasts, you can then connect with them on social media. So Instagram, LinkedIn is great. It helps your LinkedIn numbers, which I won’t even get into, but I’ve heard people say and I’m working on it now and is very useful to them.

Just having bigger numbers on LinkedIn, like those follower numbers and the connection numbers are massive in helping with your credibility and authority. See, there are a lot of facets to all of this, but it all helps and you wanna maximize what you’re doing. So if you’re doing these guest appearances, make sure that you are connecting with the guests on those social media platforms.

Make sure you are getting access to their audience and they’re gonna promote it properly, that sort of thing.

 Next up, have a strong brand. This is going to help you stand out. So on your own episodes, guest appearances, social media, everywhere people see you, you’re gonna stand out. You’re gonna be received well by the correct people. You’ll be memorable. Because having a clear brand identity is really what resonates emotionally with listeners.

That’s when they say, I like this person for some reason, or there’s something I like about your brand, or they know that your brand and you are the person to help them. So how do we actually do this? How do you have a strong brand? Well, you need to define your niche and your values.

Focus on a specific health and wellness topic. So niche that down even further from just a broad, workout coach. Who specifically are you helping? Are you helping moms in their forties? Are you helping young entrepreneurs? That’s gonna go a long way with helping articulate who exactly is going to be the right fit to work with you.

And not just that, but say the content, the tone in which you present yourself, all these things will add up, right? And let people know if you are for them or if you’re not. And it’s totally fine if they’re not. Not everyone is going to be. We just want to put ourselves out there, as well, leverage storytelling as part of this. When you are doing your own episodes or you’re on other podcast episodes, sharing personal or relatable stories is great. You can actually get help with this either by just, reading some books or watching some videos about it, or getting help from a coach that can help you craft some stories and share those.

When you’re out doing these things, it’s a good natural skill to have, but. S not everyone’s gonna have it naturally, but you can work on it and appear that you do have a natural skill. And I’ve also seen if you watch enough appearances from certain people, they share the same stories on all their appearances.

So they’ve kind of worked on a handful of stories and crafted those into something that works really well. So that’s something to think about as well. Like what could your stories be and what can you share when you’re doing these episodes and appearances. And by doing this, you can also weave in your, qualifications, your certifications, your experience.

I highlight those in the stories I. That’s going to give you a big boost in terms of credibility and authority. ’cause you’re not on there bragging or reading out some dry bio about your 20 years experience. It’s a story of when you helped someone in a certain situation, right? So weave those details in and you’re gonna find that, that helps you a lot in terms of being memorable and building your credibility.

As well. Develop a media kit and you can showcase your podcast in that. You can showcase your social media stats, your audience demographics and testimonials from clients, all those sorts of things, your other appearances. This will help when you’re pitching to events or sponsors.

Trying to get speaking gigs, all that, maintaining this polished online presence on your social media as well, like a proper headshot on LinkedIn, that sort of thing that all adds up. And having this, media kit is just an extra touch. That’s something that professional people typically have so highly recommend that.

Next up in leveraging your Health and Wellness podcast to build credibility and authority. A little look at social media here. Make sure you’re posting on social media and you’re repurposing your podcast content. Having a following on social media is huge for credibility, and if you’re doing a podcast already repurposing your content into video clips or images, however you want to do it, gives you extra content which can help grow your following, and you didn’t really have to do any extra work.

So this is a great way to utilize the effort that you’re already putting into your podcast. And everything that you put on social media should be some level of quality making you look credible. It’s gonna be posting stories sometimes maybe in your pajamas. You know, There’s totally nothing wrong with that, people like that authenticity, but when it comes to the professional level content, make sure that you’re coming off in a professional way.

In a way that would look respectable. you never know if you’re pitching a speaking gig, for example, they could look on your profile at the wrong time and see something off putting or whatever, and they’ll just go, yeah. This is not the kind of person we want to be associated with.

So there are some demands there and bal things to balance when we think of authenticity. But make sure whatever you’re putting on your social media in some way is helping support this and not detracting from you. Still being a credible and professional person with authority. Even if you are being yourself, that’s fine.

Just wanna be careful as well. Engage with your followers and audience, especially when you’re first starting out. This is huge. People love getting a comment or a like on their content or knowing that someone watched it, so you can leave some meaningful comments. If people are commenting on your stuff.

Make sure you respond. This is a great way to grow your social media account, which then in turn grows your credibility and authority. Okay, today’s economy. It’s just how it is. People check how many followers you have, and if you only have 50, it’s not gonna bode so well for you. So as much as you might hate it, if you’re doing podcasting, you’re putting some stuff on social media, we wanna put some methodical effort into there in terms of actually growing the social media and making sure what’s on there is supporting you in your goals.

Another one, gather testimonials from your work and feature those in your podcast when possible. Audio testimonials can be great, or even full on interviews with clients sharing their success stories. These are a great way for people to hear how you’re helping other clients in the world, and they may not always have that opportunity, right?

If they don’t happen to visit your website or they didn’t look on your social media to see if you’ve. Posted these there posted testimonials on your website or put something on Instagram about it. This is just another way to reach people with a great testimonial and let them know, here’s the kind of awesome work I’m doing and this is how we’re leveraging the podcast and getting more out of the podcast.

Same way as we want to call to action at the end of your podcast episode. This is just another way to get more mileage from your shows.

And my final point here is know where you are going. Have a plan of what it is that you actually want to achieve. So if it’s on stage doing speaking gigs, you gotta be working on that. Figure out who do you need to meet, how do you do it? Where can you start? How do you learn and practice that sort of thing.

So think longer term, big picture, what your ultimate goals are, what type of events and conferences are available in your industry. I. Within the health and wellness niche, whatever space it is that you’re in, where do you need to go to make these connections and mingle with the right people? Are there any in your city coming up?

Do you have to travel to the big ones? Figure that out and take the steps to get in those rooms and take the steps to learn. How you’re gonna achieve what it is you wanna achieve. If you wanna become a speaker, if you want to meet certain people, you can also do work online with this, you can get in health and wellness groups, whatever it is.

Again, specific to your or niche. Find those places that you need to be. Provide value there. Don’t be salesy. Don’t come off annoying or weird, but just get in there and give value Any opportunity that you can. To provide value, learn from others, connect with others, even connections on LinkedIn integrate.

There are many ways to do this, but as I’ve talked about before, there’s a common theme oftentimes and things that I share is the podcast is one element. It has so many benefits, but it takes other work to really maximize what you’re getting from the podcast. It will help you build credibility and authority, but you can’t just only do the podcast and nothing else.

There’s other things you need to be doing. That’s why I’m saying here, think about your ultimate goals so that you can put yourself on the right track and make the right moves to actually achieve those goals. So this kind of work building credibility and authority, it just takes time. There’s no real way to fast track it, but it’s definitely something that your podcast can and will help with.

Don’t give up. If you feel like things are taking too long, stay with it. Just ensure that you are making the right moves.