Do you listen to podcasts? Only 20% of the United States do, but that is about to change drastically.
In 2016, many new cars will be able to download and listen to podcasts. Drivers will be able to listen to what they want when they want. Podcast are quickly becoming on demand radio. Your ideal dream customers will be listening, but will they hear you?
The barriers to starting your own podcast have fallen. For under $1,000 in equipment and 4 to 5 hours a week, you can produce and host a quality podcast. You can speak directly to your prospects for 30 to 45 minutes each week. Learning how to record, produce, host and promote a podcast is easy. Many online courses teach everything and range from $500 to $2,000. The step by step instruction will allow you to launch in under 60 days.
If you want more results with less work, consider being a podcast guest. As one client explained “I could build my swimming pool, but why should I when get invited to everyone else’s?” With the investment of an hour, you can get featured on a new podcast, continually connecting with a new audience. While most people initially struggle with how to get on a podcast, having a proven strategy to turn listeners into customers is the key. Online course that teach you how to get business results as a podcast guest ranges from $500 to $1,000 and can show real business results in under 30 days.
Regardless if you are a host or a guest, here are five ways podcast can build your online brand.
1. Get More Speaking Engagements
If your goal is to speak professionally, podcasts serve as the ultimate marketing tool. Conference organizers can hear your message and know how you communicate and engage with others. No blog or book can accomplish this. Personally as a blogger, I struggled with getting speaking invitations. With every application, I included a recorded video presentation. Most organizers never watched it (Got to love Wistia’s analytics). Recently, I got two speaking contracts in one week after separate conference organizers heard me on podcasts. One interview was 18 months old, the other just posted. Podcast interviews truly are evergreen.
2. Rank Better on Search Engines
As a guest, you can benefit greatly from the podcast show notes. These typically include backlinks to your social media profiles and highlighted content on your site. Most hosts are very accommodating and will include the exact anchor text and link you request. The search engine sees these as authority signals and rewards your ranking accordingly. As far as link building goes, this strategy is as white hat as it gets.
As a podcast host, the benefits are not as strong. The best guests will link back to show and promote it on their social media. You can make this easy for them by providing preformatted tweets, posts, and images to share.
3. Improved Third Person Authority
As a host, it conveys authority when you are associated with respected people who chose to be a guest on your show.
The big benefit goes to the unknown person who is a guest on a respected podcast. Instead of referencing your website in email nurturing, point prospects to the interview on someone else’s site. Sure you loose the traffic, but you gain the credibility.
4. Expand Your Network
Who do you want to meet? That author, speaker, business leader or celebrity probably wouldn’t return your email request for a free 30 minute one on one conversation. They will respond to the chance to address your audience. One podcast host admitted his entire podcast plan was to meet people. He’d talked with everyone from sports stars to business geniuses. Then he was intentional enough to leverage and build that relationship. Fast Company described Podcasting as the new networking. As a guest or as a host, people that would never give you 5 minutes to talk, are suddenly giving you 30+ minutes on Skype to record a podcast.
5. The Holy Grail of Content
Audio is extremely easy to repurpose. The entire interview can be transcribed by a service like Rev.com for $1/min. The typical interview last 30 to 45 minutes and contains 5 -10k words. Since most blogs are 600 words, this means you could potentially make 5 to 10 blogs for around $5 each. Take that transcript and highlight your great one-liners. Those make for perfect tweets. Add your pearl of wisdom to a graphic on Pablo or Canva and you have a shareable image.
Podcasts are the best way to talk directly to your ideal dream customer. As a host or as a guest you can use this emerging technology to allow people to get to know, like and trust you. Then it’s a matter of setting up an automated and scalable online machine to move them from listeners to leads. By helping them solve their problem, they become customers and raving fans.
Tom Schwab is an Inbound Marketing Engineer. He’s run a nuclear power plant and an online business. Only one came with an instruction manual. Tom provides small business owners, entrepreneurs, and small business owners the manual to harness the power of the internet and accelerate their growth. He provides coaching and teaching to give a step by step roadmap. His book, CONNECT: Grow your business talking to your ideal customer as a podcast guest is scheduled to be published in September 2015.