Last updated on January 30th, 2023
Besides visuals, now it’s the audio medium that marketers are adopting aggressively for brand promotion. Podcasting is such a fast-growing medium to educate audiences on different issues and enhance reach amongst target customers. But, it has become highly competitive and requires additional skills to make it effective marketing tools. In this panel discussion transcript, the experts have shared their experiences on how to handle podcasts as the marketing medium.
There is no doubt that visuals-based marketing is the biggest tool for brand promotion. But, businesses are now exploring the audio platforms as well to reach out to the audience. Podcasting is the new version of conventional radio in modern digital times and businesses know how popular it is amongst people.
When talking about podcasting, we understand the power of audio. For example, while driving a car, you cannot look at a video. But, you are still able to listen to a nice and useful interview conducted on a podcasting platform. That is the reason that the young generation, especially, is in the love of podcasting.
Studies have revealed that 58 percent of listeners spend anywhere between one to five hours to listen to podcasts per week. That is a highly valuable time of the listening audience that your businesses can exploit to engage the audience. But, businesses need to perfect the art of podcasting to reap its advantages.
To help businesses get the basics of doing podcasting in the right way for brand promotion, Designhill organized a panel discussion amongst industry experts in the field. The discussion took place on 08th September 2020.
The experts of podcasting shared their tips with the attendees during the session. They gave tips and advice on how to use podcasting to drive engagement and why businesses need podcasting. You will also learn about the best practices of recording, launching, and monetizing your podcasts. The experts shared tips on how to conduct interviews during a podcasting session.
Here Is the Video of The Panel Discussion With The Experts
Here Is How You Can Turn Your Podcast Into A Robust Marketing Tool
Designhill: The basic question first, why podcast?
Joe: Well, podcasting right now is taken off. I don’t need to expound all the stats about all the people listening to podcasts these days. But, that is a great way to connect with people in sort of the old school radio way which I came up with. That radio has always been the most intimate medium ever. People usually listened to it while they sat home alone or in their car.
So, radio was a great way to connect using your personality directly with an audience member. And one of the things I’ve always loved radio for is that it translated into podcasting. This is the connection that you can create in any other medium. All the mediums can dull the senses with sounds and videos and overwhelm you. But the idea of podcasting is the connection that you get that you can’t get in any other medium.
Designhill: Should a small business owner also start a podcast channel right away?
Kenneth: No, not necessarily as a last resort, but marketers tend to destroy anything they touch. This is especially with too much content and advertising. So, you start thinking about your strategy and what is your story. This means that you are trying to grab people’s attention. Whether commuting to work, going home, or closing their eyes, they can have an intimate and thoughtful conversation with people.
Useful content matters
The idea that you have to go out there is not anything that people need to think about running and jumping into without thinking about the strategy beforehand. People also think about the kind of content you have. Even if you are a small business, your content can be powerful. Some of the most powerful stories can come from small businesses.
But, you are still competing for people’s airtime. If you had a pizza business, you are not competing against every other local pizza shop. You are also competing against people like Joe Rogan. So, think about having thoughtful content and conversation that can help people learn and it should be an infotainment fuel.
Do podcasting if you love the medium
Joe: Don’t do a podcast because everyone is doing a podcast. There is this old joke that the podcast is the lower back tattoo of the 90s. That is because everyone else was getting podcasts does not mean that you have to do it.
First and foremost, you must love the medium. If you don’t love radio, slash podcasting, don’t do it. We have seen many people trying to make the jump to the radio and it never works. It never happens. They usually don’t have the skillset created. It is not that you have to be a master communicator. But if you don’t love doing it, it’s not going to work.
Designhill: So, what would you say to people who want to explore podcasts, benefit out of it, and take the first mover’s advantage within their localities or communities or their business and industry?
Think about your audience
Tim: There are a couple of things to consider. One is podcasting as a medium. Different people learn, listen, and view things in different ways. Therefore, podcasting becomes another medium that you potentially need to tap into.
But first and foremost, even before you use podcasting, you need to think about your audience. Know about the people whom you are trying to reach out to, and how they will consume your podcast.
Create engaging content
Think about your content. What is the message you are trying to get across? Is it being used as a sales medium? But as a sales medium, it may not be too effective. So, it’s probably better to start with some sort of education or entertainment, angle first. Then, have those ads to get the support.
Now, keep in mind that not all podcasts have ads that support them. But that is okay. My two podcasts do not have advertisements behind them, because they’re used as an educational vehicle. These podcasts then support my other parts of the business.
And so you have to think about all of these components coming together. Don’t look at it in terms of I need to start a podcast, a regular cadence to it, and put ads behind it. I mean, there is much more involved in that. You have to know that your audience is going to love it before you even start down this path. This is because doing a podcast halfway isn’t good. You must have good audio quality or good video quality to produce something interesting. That is going to keep the audience engaged.
Designhill: What should be the point to start a podcast for a small business owner? Can you suggest some tools or some marketplaces, or agencies that helped you set it up and do a hand-holding initially, and then you can take it on?
David: Just like you guys post blog posts all the time, we podcast all the time. The amount of time it takes to create one blog post, my co-host, and I can usually do four podcasts, and I can edit them, and then have them transcribed. In this way, I have four pieces of content to produce.
So, people ask why you should do it, or how and when to get started. Well, if you are a person that struggles to write content, but you also don’t want to do video, a webinar or Facebook Live, or Instagram, then I would start podcasting. All you need is an anchor.
You can use a recorder on your phone and start there. We all have Yeti mics, we all have various degrees of cameras and all sorts of gear. You can use your Android or Apple phone and record it into that and start there and see what stories you come up with. Find out what kind of content you can create by talking to that by yourself.
Designhill: Do we need to have a library first, or can we do it spontaneously, once in a week?
Kenneth: No, you can do it once a week. I will say before you start anything, though, you should commit. That is one of the things that I preach the most, if you have an audience that you are going to talk to, or follow you.
Stick to your podcasting schedule
Now, if you are going to start a podcast, have a real commitment to sustain whatever schedule you want to do. I know a lot of top bi-weekly podcasts. Then, there are plenty that do monthly, and daily. I do it multiple times a week myself. But my audience knows that I’m going to keep coming back with content.
But, I make sure to tell the audience that they should consult me on this issue. This is because I want them to believe that the audience is depending on me for content. It may be a small commitment, but you are making it and that is ongoing with your customer base, the listeners that are your fans.
Designhill: How did podcasts happen to you and how has it benefited you in your business?
Greg: I was given the podcast because of the Forbes book deal. And I got Joe, who is incredible. I would say that you should first know why you need a podcast. Well, everybody does demand generation and you have to do it. When you look at demand generation, there are three pieces –watch, listen, and read. And so listening to podcasts, watching YouTube, and reading blogs, articles, etc.
I’ve been producing content for about 25 years and have seen these things change. And honestly, when Forbes said hey, you are gonna get a pie? I didn’t take it that seriously at first. I kind of like, find another form of content. I have found that I have gotten more. I do it for a deal generation. So I’m looking for investment deals and I have gotten more deal generation through the podcast, and I have through the other through the watch and read first.
Avoid using iPhone for podcasting
Second, I disagree with the concept of doing it over an iPhone or that sort of thing. The voice, the message, and the narrative have to be clear. You need to plan the end in mind. Consider the whole of the narrative of the podcast and the editing is critical. And if you don’t know how to do editing, then learn. You have prepared questions but the questions need to be engaging for the audience.
So, it has to do with what questions are you going to ask, how entertaining is the guest, preparation for the podcasts in terms of having a good sound, and clarity on the internet and stuff. And then editing is critical. That is how you start a podcast.
Know the outcome
Now, let us talk about the outcome. You have to realize what the outcome is to design your audience. Just as you would design an ideal customer profile, you design the audience that you are after. So, I am looking for a startup entrepreneur series seed in the tech sector. My guests for the conversation, the people in front of our people that would find interest in that from different levels. I had a professional basketball coach who brought leadership, that is different. And then I’ve had financial people that focus only on finance.
But these are all arms, or modules, if you will, in a hub and spoke system when you startup. And that gives you the element of understanding who you are focusing on, and how you get in front of them. You know why you should do a podcast in the first place.
It is a gradual learning process
I also learned the hard way, I tried to do a couple of podcasts, even from a studio. I learned that this is a subject matter of expertise. Like you, I believe that you don’t go out and try to bust out a podcast. You need to learn how this works. And to prevent yourself from making mistakes early on, you need to start with somebody who knows. And because if somebody goes to a website, and you can’t get them to convert right away, you’ll lose them.
The same thing is with podcasts. Somebody is going to listen to an episode, they’ll skip a couple and listen to another one. If they get the feeling for it like you test out a new TV show, you lose them. So, it’s fundamental to get somebody to understand this and have the experience. And Joe is I mean, I hate to preach about but the guy has fundamentally changed the way I see podcasts because I thought it was like bullshit initially. And now I’m like, oh, my God, podcasts are the deal.
Professional equipment is essential
Joe: If you are a small business, you are a high leverage individual. You are not anybody doing a podcast, because it has to meet your brand standards. So, if you are the best plumber on the planet, you got to have a good podcast. You can’t be a kid in your parents’ basement doing TikTok videos thinking I could be a podcast star. This is because it doesn’t work.
Going back to a point earlier about doing a podcast on your iPhone or Android phone. Yeah, that is fine for anybody. But, if you are a high leverage individual like Greg Shepherd, who’s dealing in multibillion-dollar deals, who doesn’t want to record a podcast on his phone. Greg wants to have great high quality, almost professional-sounding podcasts as possible, even though he’s a novice in the field. But having someone like myself, or having one of the other members of the panel here, giving you advice and coaching you along the way, that is what matches your brand.
Editing matters
Greg: I know I’m doing this for your listeners. So, you get a lot of guests that will monologue like I’m doing right now. And they’ll go on and on. And what Joe will do is he’ll break up that in the editing, and then we come back in and ask questions in the middle. Instead of listening to something, somebody, he edits it so that I can plant a voice in between. And that is important too because it can’t be one side, it needs to be like a conversation
Designhill: What is a checklist that people should look at before starting the podcast?
Know who is your audience
Joe: I will reiterate a couple of points here. First, know who your audience is and what your audience is going to be. If you expect to come out and have 100 million downloads as a Joe Rogan podcast would, you will be greatly disappointed. So that is why I go back to my approach. This is the point of loving what you do so that people will love what you are doing.
If your main inspiration for doing a podcast is I want to be the next podcast star, you will fail miserably. If you want lead generation like Greg Shepherd, you can’t expect leads to come out of a podcast, you’ve got to work that content to produce those leads. Greg Shepherd has like an amazing reach on LinkedIn. He always likes to tell me how many LinkedIn followers he has. I forget. It’s a lot.
Know what you want
Greg built that before he started the podcast. And now all those people in his LinkedIn network, get this content that sounds good and matches his brand of success. So know what you want. But then, you cannot come in and expect to be the next great podcasting star. It happens over time. One of the big misnomers and one of the things that are lost from the translation of radio and podcasting, and I’m sure the gentlemen will agree on this.
Move up gradually
Most people who got into radio either started in a smaller market and worked their way up into the larger markets and succeeded. In podcasting, you don’t have that playing field. Everyone starts at zero and then goes from zero to 60, zero to 1000, depending on their quality. That incremental growth of a career you would see in any kind of other medium, whether it is TV, video, print, and small markets.
In podcasting, you have got to look at is your lifeline as a podcaster has to grow as any other broadcaster crew will grow. You have to expect that slow, incremental climb to success. And if you do it, and you are passionate about it, it could pay off.
Designhill: Why should a business advertise in a podcast? What are the incentives out there, in comparison to the other mediums?
Tim: I’m probably not the best person because we don’t take advertising in our podcasts. We look at it beyond that. It’s not about the podcast as its kind of discreet vehicle, and everything is contained within it. But rather, it becomes the vehicle that then carries us to support other activities that we do.
Look for ways to improve
But, I want to touch on something that Joe and Greg mentioned, too, which is about learning. We’ve got a pretty esteemed set of individuals here that have a lot of experience with podcasts. I’ve got a post that I’m already starting to take notes on, learning from these other folks. And so my point is, even those of us that have experienced this, we’re still looking for ways to improve and perfect our craft. And so it’s not a slam dunk that you set up a podcast going from zero to 60, or zero to 100, or zero to 10,000. It doesn’t work that way. It takes time.
Advertising is not the right solution
And the same thing goes for advertising. I had folks coming to me and wanting to sponsor my podcast before the first episode went live. And that is how much demand there was at the beginning. But the reality is that for my audience, I don’t think advertising is helpful. And so that is something you should be thinking about is that advertising is not always the right solution for the given problem.
Podcast is advertising
Greg: I agree with you that the podcast is advertising. So, it is like putting advertising on top of advertising pisses people off, like YouTube,
You need thousands of downloads for advertising
Joe: Also, I wouldn’t think about advertising if you are starting at a podcast, because no ad agency is going to even sniff at you until you have 100,000 downloads. So, that is why I say it’s an innocent climb, you will not get any advertising sales whatsoever.
Unless I will say you can side hustle it like if you are in a business where you have a lot of connections and someone personally says, hey, listen, I’m starting up this podcast, if you give me 10 K, I will put you as a sponsor. Or, I’ll put you as a mid-roll, a pre-roll, or post-roll.
That is great, but no ad agency, and this is where the big bucks come in, is coming that advertise the same as on television and the radio. They will not even look at you until you are in that 100 k space. And that does not happen overnight.
You may lose an audience with advertisements
Greg: And it is also vertical appropriate. I’m doing a Forbes podcast on Boss and business people that are trying to learn about an inappropriate place for advertising. But I do see advertising on a more entertainment-type podcast that may be a little bit different. Those people are purely entertainment, they’re not there to learn. They want to burn up some time and get enough time to watch a podcast to listen to a podcast. And then three minutes of it is an ad and you already lost them. So, the tolerance of somebody to even have an ad is also vertical-specific.
Joe: As a kid, I’ve always wanted to be in show business, You have got to go in knowing you are not going to get rich off of this. So, it’s the same when it comes to podcasts, do not go into podcasting expecting to become a wealthy person, because the odds of that are very low.
Do not expect big money
It’s like being a professional athlete. There are some professional athletes like Patrick Mahomes, who signed a half a billion-dollar contract. But then there is a professional athlete who makes $50,000 a week on the practice squad of an NFL team. It goes to show you that if you want to make a lot of money, podcasting is not the way to do it. If you want to help, lead generation, you want to help build your brand, then do a podcast. But if you are looking to get wealthy, podcasting is not the venue for you.
Designhill: What should be a business owner’s incentive to test podcast waters?
Kenneth: If you are a small business, you are generally not going to get a lot of people. It depends on what kind of business it is running into, as Joe said, wanting to give you money to sponsor for your small business. Plus, nobody wants to listen to another direct response channel all day long. It gets very annoying, and it makes people tune out.
Be on other people’s podcast
But there is a benefit to doing the two. The first one is to take advantage of being on other people’s podcasts. From an SEO perspective, for somebody who lives on website value, it’s worth a lot of traffic. Secondly, if you are going to build your audience, make certain that you commit your audience. This is because if you have built that following focus on building your audience first or at least making them fans of what your brand is about.
Make sure that there’s a reason that they’re coming to you not that you are going to start a podcast. But It does not happen that everybody’s going to come running to you, because they haven’t heard of your product before. It did me, Joe Rogan didn’t happen. Without Fear Factor, the UFC and show on radio days on NBC. I mean, there’s a lot of things that go into making that for most people, he’s an exception.
So at least make sure that you spend some time building your brand unless you have a lot of money already behind you to help elevate that podcast.
Grow on others’ audience
Joe: There’s no better way to build an audience than stealing someone else’s audience. Look at how many internet Twitter followers are there, how many people they have on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn. Use those followers because the best way it’s called the term is called cross-cross platforming. So, if you can steal anyone else’s audience by either you appearing on theirs, or they’re appearing on yours, that is the best way for organic growth. This is because that is the only way to grow a podcast.
I get this question every day, from anyone who signs up, what are packages? How do I grow an audience? What’s the magic bullet? I say there is none. But the most organic way is the easiest to do it. You are presenting yourself and the other person involved. So, stealing an audience is the only way to go about doing that.
Greg: But you must have a brand to start with. If you want to be a guest on somebody’s show and it’s a worthwhile show to be on. So those guests, I post and I promote those podcasts with my audience. And in return, they post it to me, and then I get the audience that I used to draft into my podcast.
That gives you content, food for content. And it also allows you to do so I would advise that people do both so long as you have, you should have some value to add. If you can get into a podcast and you don’t have value to add, then that says something about the podcast.
Designhill: Would you like to give a technical head start to people who wish to start their podcast?
Dave: That is another good reason to start being a guest. First, if you have something to sell, or if you have a lead generation, you can promote it. But you also then get to watch and see what other people do.
For instance in my podcast, my co-host, and I share 99% of the time, it’s us. We don’t use zoom and certain things. We also don’t have a studio because we’re distant, and a little bit cheap. But we have, over time, implemented better solutions for technically we have, we’ve upgraded our mics, we’ve upgraded certain things.
But we did start small. We are because we were also like Joe talked about earlier, we wanted to do it. We both were speakers at conferences, but we didn’t know if we were going to love podcasting. So we invested some and got started. And then we started looking at third party services, at Zen caster, at zoom, and Skype. With zoom, you can download the files individually, the quality is not the best. But every service you look at if it’s an in-person or a distant one, it has pros and cons.
Also, it depends on your budget and what you are trying to do if you are starting. If you are a big company you need to start big. So, the bigger the company, the bigger you have to start because everyone is going to assume that you are going to be out of the box. Super production is super great. If you are a small business and do not know what you want to do, then do not invest money.
Keep on improving on editing
Use your phone, but don’t publish it either. Yeah, editing. What’s that? I said, there you go. I agree with that. Yeah, well, no, don’t publish it. I have a small client who is trying to produce content. I’m like, what? Get your stories out, record them. See what the quality sounds like, see what you like doing? How long is it? Because the other problem is how long is it you are editing. I admit I edit my stuff, we’re very simple because we do it. We do one take usually I very have, most of the time, I have to edit out the sound. I suck as an editor, I’m getting better, but I honestly suck.
But I watch lots of videos, I keep improving. Last week, I was looking at three different tools that might help me. We have been podcasting for three years, and I am still looking at things to make me more efficient, better, quicker, and a sound better. And so it’s a constant learning, constant new technology constant investment in being better.
Designhill: What are the advice, tips, or some hacks you would like to share with people to start the first episode of the podcast?
Make a catchy first episode
Tim: First, you need to make sure that your first episode is catchy to draw the audience as that becomes your beachhead. You should think about the content, the guest if you are in a guest type of podcast. One of the things I did when I launched my first podcast CIO was that I went big. I looked for a large CIO that was well known, which can pull in a good audience. It created a great beachhead for the podcast. ,
Secondly, you also start to think about what that first episode is and what do you want or not want to do with it. About editing, one of the things I learned was, I started withYeti mic, which you see in the background behind me. I have got a Sure a seven B, seven B is fancy.
But my point is, you should know how to kind of get off the ground comfortably and that can at least get you started. But know what you are good at and what you are not good at. One of the things I learned right out of the gate was that I started to do the editing myself using GarageBand.
Opt for professional podcast editors
I like this editing aspect and I am an audio file. This editing aspect is not for me, it’s a waste of my time. So, I did a lot of research and I found a company that is a group of audio engineers, and they edit podcasts. I send the six elements, elements being podcasts intro episode, intro, guest recording, host recording, outro, and jingle. I sent podcast recordings to this company for each episode, they do the mix down, the leveling, and the editing for me because that is not something that is a good use of my time. Therefore, it’s important to think about what is a good use of your time.
Focus on content
The content also needs to be a good use of your time. You need to focus on content. It should be relevant for your audience. Figure out how to do the other pieces, and think about the technology. It doesn’t cost a lot to get started. You can use your phone but get some pretty good audio quality mics. For very inexpensive, the Yeti Pro that I see Joe is using today. That is a pretty darn good mic to use. So got another one in the house, I’ve got one in the closet. We’ve all started there.
But, think about where you start, what you are good at, focus on the content, first and foremost. Then, branch out from there. As you go through each episode, you will start to understand what you need to edit or change or tweak up. For example, right now, my kind of workflow that I use is I do guest interviews across Zoom. And so I have, it’s usually the format for my podcast is either in person when I’m doing an interview, or it’s across Zoom remotely. I have the guests come remotely, but I don’t record in Zoom.
I feed that audio into an external digital recorder. And then I have my local recording of that separately using the big podcast mic. And so you think about your workflow, you think about the different components, timing, cadence, whether it’s monthly or weekly. Then you have to start thinking about who your guests are, and get them lined up. You can’t easily be with my workflow. I can’t record today and publish tomorrow. There is a certain lag time that has to come into play because of the production requirements.
Learn how to coach your guests
You need to have a queue of guests lined up. A case in point is with CIO. When I launched it, my objective was to have six or seven episodes in the can. Or, I wanted to be pre-recorded and ready to go and ready to publish before I launched the first episode publicly. We have had probably four or five right out of the gate, and they were coming fast and furious. So, a good indication that you are getting good traction from the guests.
But, you won’t know what success you are going to have until you start doing those first couple of episodes. And you’ll start to get a feel for it. Once you get through the first couple of episodes, you will know how you can coach your guests. If you have guests, know how you can coach them from an audio perspective. That makes sure they have good audio that they’re not on speakerphone, or in a noisy or echoey environment. So, think about all of these components for your first podcast, but focus on content first and foremost.
Quality is not an issue for the first podcast
Joe: It is not that important in terms of the quality of it, because this is not a TV pilot where you have to sell to a network. Your first podcast and your 10th podcast will sound vastly different. Greg Shepards is 10 times a better broadcaster than he was in episode one. But episode one lives there because it’s a good quality podcast, but improvement is there.
It’s okay that your first podcast isn’t that great. Most people do not consume podcasts. It’s not the way people do it. The other day, I was on a road trip and I was listening to a crime junkie podcast from 2019. It’s a people’s podcast, an on-demand medium. People listen whenever they want, wherever they want.
So don’t worry that your first episode may not be as good as your 10th. It is more than likely that most people won’t even hear that first podcast. They will probably find out about you in the eighth or ninth. And then they are like, yeah, let me go listen to some of his older podcasts. So, don’t put so much pressure on that first one out of the box.
Designhill: How does the persona of the audience who listen to podcasts look like and how to get them hooked beyond the first episode?
Kenneth: Somebody who prefers to listen to the audio? It may be the one who wants to learn. That is such a broad topic. There are many podcasts about Instagram, LinkedIn, for example. Joe Rogan’s got a podcast talking about God knows what at any one time, smoking something with Ilan Musk, the topics are so broad. It’s not necessarily one size fits all, like LinkedIn is focused on business or Instagram cute girls in bikinis. I don’t know that I can put it in that sort of realm.
The audience wants to learn
But I do know that at least, that a lot of people consume podcasts for what we primarily do for us to help people learn, help them fix a problem. So it’s a, but it’s the same Joe mentioned in true crime dramas. I mean, one of those, you did the true crime, those kinds of dramas is a different audience than what’s going to typically listen to most of our other podcasts, it depends on probably overarching is people that like to consume media through an earpiece.
Joe: And I will say, though, that they have data on this. They say that podcast listeners are loyal, affluent, and educated. there’s something like your 44 audiences 45% more likely to be a college graduate.
Kenneth: A lot of that one of the stats he used was to forget what it was, it was something like 75% of the people making over $75,000, which, again, a little more upscale of an audience. But again, that is such a diverse background on top of that,
Joe: But if you are a small business, you want to reach these people in the box. It’s whether you are in radio, television advertising, it’s that adult 2550 for a demographic that everybody wants, is the sweet spot for everybody. And that those are the people that make the money and spend the money.
Kenneth: Let me put it this way than if you are a busy start. It is typically the kind of audience you want and who’s going to buy your product or service?
Think about your audience persona
Tim: You have to think about the persona within your audience. In my case, I’m targeting an executive audience and not someone within the IT organization and that might be an administrator, database administrator, or developer, or operations person. I’m specifically working at an executive level.
The reason why that is important is that it will start to drive your decisions around who your guests are, and who your guests will attract. It’ll start to drive questions, what questions you are asking and the content that you are starting to develop. It will also start to drive the decisions you make in terms of where you go with your podcast.
Therefore, it is important to think about the persona of the person that you are trying to target for your podcast. I wanted to get very specific with that. I know in other cases, podcasts are meant to be general-purpose podcasts. But think about whether yours is going to be more general or there are certain personas you are trying to target.
Designhill: Does SEO in the podcast world work?
SEO matters
Dave: Well, one hosted on your site or domain or website that you control, don’t use it on Libsyn or that has an iTunes, if you care about SEO. If you don’t, then, post it wherever you want with whatever service. But if you want to care about lead generation, SEO, controlling the brand, and doing maybe you do want to do ads or a certain like that, then you need to have a web page.
I write up 200 to 400 words, maybe a little bit longer summary. Also, I bullet out different things that we talked about in each of our episodes. Then, I also do a transcription service and drop the transcription on the site for each episode. You can also upload that into YouTube and other places to include it along with it if you do that. But we keep all of the content and create an article out of that podcast and video.
Designhill: How can businesses differentiate their podcast content and make their content stand out?
Have a voice
Kenneth: One would not sound like everybody else. There are pretty vanilla and so many podcasts. And it’s frustrating. You should identify what your unique voice is if people are going to take the time to tune into you to make it worth it. I often advise my folks on making certain that they have a voice that sounds different than other people.
For me, it is the sharks’ perspective. That is because I’ve been swimming with sharks literally since I was a kid. That is a nickname I’ve had since I was a kid. It’s literally and figuratively my hook if you will. People know that as much as I’m going to talk about Seth Godin, and Guy Kawasaki, I’m going to talk about stupid stuff like hammerheads and bull sharks.
So, people follow me for that sort of fun and silliness on top of some advice for business. That is the unique story that I bring. I know that what I focus on is trying to deliver to anybody.
Designhill: Can you break a long-form content into small pieces of content?
Joe: Well, one of the things with creating your content is the fact that you own it, and you can do whatever you want with it. For example, you do a one hour podcast, and you think that this podcast is out to the world, what can I do with it?
First, you can create what’s called audiograms. They are short-form videos that you overlay audio over like a JPEG, usually, your podcast logo, or something like that. And it’s a minute to two minutes of content, essentially a teaser, to your podcast. Then, you can use that as a sort of extra content for your social media feed your website, and think you miss this conversation. And then it’s the one-minute conversation and then you attach the link to the actual podcast.
That creates additional content and promotes the original base content of your podcast. Those are called audio grants. There are all different things you can do such as make useful YouTube videos. You can use that audio any which way you prefer. But always use it like your podcast and sort of your Sunday sermon.
Make sure you are expounding what you want to say in that podcast. Then having these little other elements is sort of like your traveling preacher going from town to town and telling people what it is all about.
Designhill: How do people go about promoting their podcasts?
Greg: I have promoted through the email, the website, all the different social media channels. Joe produces little pieces of content and links and stuff that I can plugin. That is what I do. I promoted them everywhere, all the time. I’ll do one that says, new podcasts covering data coming up next week or something. Then I’ll say, okay, it’s released, here’s the podcast. Then a week later, I’ll don’t forget to catch the podcast that we did last week.
My podcast has grown pretty fast because I already had an audience. But the growth is not from the audience, because even before I post stuff, I tested it in the beginning to do an A B test. I noticed that it was growing organically. So some of that has to do with Apple and Spotify and that sort of thing.
Blog about other shows
Kenneth: One of the SEO tricks that will help provide a little bit of lift is blogging. You should blog about when you’ve been on somebody else’s site. We are supposed to blog about our podcasts. But when you are on somebody else’s audience, another way to help continue to grow that audience of your own is to blog about being on any of these guys, great shows.
That is a little thing that I’ve seen some smart SEO folks do. And it is not like they’re going to lose their audience by you are not going to lose a listener. They decided to go look at somebody else’s blog or something like that.
Often, we think about the content that is for ourselves. And sometimes there are ways to help enable furtherance of that audience by doing something simple about blogging, on somebody else’s show.
Write on your guests’ social media posts
Joe: On top of that is don’t be afraid to write on your guests’ social media posts. That is what I do for every podcast that I’m on. I will write the post. Then all they have to do is copy and paste because a lot of people are not as savvy or social media experts out there so they’re lazy. They could if you tell them hey, do me a favor, keep posting. You are on the show, though. But I was on the show, check out the link, no use writer forum and you say, hey, I appeared on Greg Shepard’s podcast we talked about entrepreneurship and the ways we can help fix the failure rate. Don’t be afraid to do that for your guests.
I’ve never had a guest come back to me and say like, you didn’t have to do that. Nine out of 10 times, they will say thank you so much for writing that because I don’t even know what to write. Sometimes, I’m doing a climate change podcast. I wrote for this, and the scientists appeared on it. He’s not on social media. So I wrote it for him. And he copied and pasted what I wanted to say, with the proper tags on it. So he doesn’t have to search on what this person’s Twitter handle? What is the link I’m supposed to use here? Do it all for them.
And you do that all as sort of your post thank you email to the person. Once they’ve appeared, you say, hey, thanks very much for appearing on this podcast. And then you don’t even say if please go ahead and promote usually what I’ll say is suggested tweet, and leave it there with the link. And then what they do with it is up to them. But at the same time, you are winning that battle, because your podcast is going to look good on their feed. After all, you’ve written it for them.
Kenneth: It would be good as being self-promoters. I mean, give them a suggested tweet. that is fantastic.
David: Well, when here’s when we’ve had guests say, hey, I was on the business of the digital podcast, it’ll be coming out soon. We’ll save it and then go back in a week or two or three whenever it goes live. And every one that liked it, and commented said, oh, that is great or awesome. Would you talk about, we drop in the link to it. So hey, here, it’s live. Now go check it out.
So, we’ve already created some awareness three weeks ago, four weeks ago, a week ago. And anytime we’ve discussed it or posted about it, we go back and we drop in the link so that everyone gets a notice that, two weeks ago was like, oh, I don’t remember. No one remembers what the heck they saw on twitter 10 minutes ago. But now it pops back up. It is now live. And it’s like, oh, yeah, I was interested in that. And then they follow.
Retweet or repost links
Tim: Don’t forget that kind of to Dave’s point that people don’t remember what piece on twitter 10 minutes ago. They may not have been on it 15 minutes ago, when you tweeted it, and may not see it. So, do not be afraid to retweet or repost links to the different podcasts that will grow your audience even further.
And it is renewable content that might have gotten to the audience you had a year ago when you first went public with that particular podcast. But now you have a larger audience than you are reaching out to. So you want to make sure that they’re aware of that as well.
Take some of those snippets and use them as an additional asset that you can then build upon. So, there might have been certain nuggets that have come out of a podcast episode. That enables you to build either a blog post or even another episode, maybe you have a follow-up episode with that particular guest to go deeper into a particular subject.
Or, if you are doing a monologue is, as Greg was saying earlier, that might be a specific podcast on that specific topic. And so there are a lot of different directions, you can go with the content. But then also, don’t be afraid to promote it yourself and get it out there on the different channels multiple times. So people get to see it,
Kenneth: When I’m actively changing my website, I look at it in about a week when it’s done. But one of the things I was thinking about, again, that I’ve gone back and revisited some posts is that as you build up a library of whatever your current podcast. I’m getting close to 250 episodes on this one and starting to look at some of the pieces again that I’ve already grouped, that were specific to a vertical in marketing or advertising or business.
Now I’m positioning those as an additional group. Maybe they didn’t want to hear, maybe it didn’t on that podcast, maybe it didn’t drive enough traffic, but maybe they were all talking about I’m going to give an example. Content marketing or graphic design or whatever his subject is, you can start positioning those subject groups. And that gives more reason for people to go listen to the collective group you have, rather than that is one podcast that you did three months ago.
Know what your podcast stands for
Tim: Well, I want to add on what Ken was saying. Something important I’ve seen with other podcasts. It is you need to be clear on what your podcast stands for and what is the message of your podcast? What is the content about?
I’ve seen some podcasts that they travel to the countryside on. And so it’s hard to understand, do I go to this podcast or not? listeners subscribe to this podcast because I’m interested in x or y. Therefore, it’s important and others may disagree with me on this. But it’s important to be clear on what it is that your podcast stands for.
So, for example, CIO, in the know, is the intersection of Business and Technology. But we take a provocative but pragmatic look at it. We’re talking about the intersection of Business and Technology and not about homebuilding. So you tie that into your persona, content, questions, and the rest. , and also your
Joe: When I’m coaching any talent, I say, leave yourself at 11. Whereas, be a semblance of who you are, like even the greats like Howard Stern is not like he is on the radio as he is off there. But that is a version of him, cranked up to 11. So first and foremost, when you are doing podcasts, and I know, we’ve sort of hammered hot over all these issues about making a podcast, it’s gotta be you.
Be yourself
So, it doesn’t capture your spirit of who you are, it’s not going to work as people can see through that. Don’t be a phony, Joe Rogan succeeds because he is Joe Rogan, he has got these crazy political views. He is not worried about upsetting people. if you are a small business owner, you have to be afraid of upsetting people. That is because it is going to cost you money. So make sure that you are yourself.
So, these are the fundamentals that the podcasting experts shared. Pay heed to what they say and follow their advice to the best of your ability. You will get the results but it may take the time. Therefore, have patience and go on improving with time.
You will also need some impressive visuals for marketing your brand. These visuals include logos, brochures, business cards, websites, and many others. But make sure that like your podcasts, visuals also are designed perfectly to make a lasting impression on the audience.
You can outsource logo design and other design works to Designhill, the leading creative marketplace. Just launch your design contest and get the designs created by professionals from across the globe. You will get the design work done shortly for brand promotion.
Wrapping Up
Podcasting is an effective marketing tool to enhance your brand’s reach and target audience. Experts advise doing podcasting on a specific issue that is relevant to your brand. You should focus on the content and interview the people who matter to your audience. The intention should be to educate people on different issues that your target audience is interested in.
