Having a podcast for your business allows you to reach out to people on a different level. Podcasts help humanize your company, adding brand flavor while amplifying your voice.
Like other forms of content, the podcasts you produce, publish, and share are an opportunity to:
Most importantly, you can communicate candidly and directly with people through your podcast. A podcast allows people access to your business’s core values and gives a glimpse into its personality.
Plus, go ahead and showcase thought leadership while helping listeners with information and resources. Sharing a mix of what you know and what you are learning means you have an eternal field of possible topics to explore.
Create Awareness
Awareness of your business happens in phases when you add an audio component to your digital content mix. These phases represent a path to gain awareness and attention for your business. And by creating valuable audio content touchpoints for new audiences, you increase your content reach and drive newly engaged traffic to your website.
Remember as you go, however, all roads are geared to make deeper connections between your business and potential customers.
Working the awareness stage with your audio content is as simple as recording quick audio clips. Create mini audio content campaigns to introduce content to invite people to check out your newest blog posts, for example, or promote an upcoming event.
Borrow immediate content by using your existing written content repurposed into audio episodes. Or, create batches of episodes around one or more of the core topics pertaining to your business. Further, answering most-asked questions around your business makes a good starter series to quickly get your audio message off the ground.
Using the content suggestions above on your way to creating awareness allows you to understand yourself, too. Pinpointing your business focus to produce the appropriate podcast content helps you gain insight into developing a more advanced audio strategy.
And, you can start now.
Platforms like anchor.fm are user-oriented and more straightforward than you imagine. I love the Anchor App and have been introducing it as a free-to-use solution to many businesses and bloggers over the years. Try it out to experiment and dip your feet into podcasting to see if it’s a good fit before investing more.
For more advanced solutions, Spotify is growing in terms of user size and services. In fact, it is now the parent company of Anchor.
The most established and highly recommended professional audio platform is Libsyn.
Reach New Audiences
However, there are many platforms to select from, and they offer a plethora of options for services.
Notably, most platforms connect your podcast feed to the likes of Apple Podcasts* and Google Play, along with a slew of others. The availability of this RSS feed sharing system gives you a big step up for reaching new listeners. Again, like most content assets you create, gaining reach and finding new audiences through awareness requires amplification and distribution. (*Note: this is currently changing with Anchor and will be up to you to set this up for yourself.)
So, in addition to getting reach via these podcasting platforms, implement a social media marketing component into your audio strategy. Listeners turn into followers, and followers turn into sales.
You can also work on reach by promoting your shows, paying close attention to creating enticing titles and descriptions, for example. And don’t forget to promote to your email list, letting people know when a new episode is published.
Further, collaboration offers a chance to reach new audiences simply by “borrowing” them from your collaborators. Of course, at the same time, you share your audience right back. As an added bonus, you get to meet and make new friends and business connections in the process.
Networking is always part of meeting new people and making business connections. Your podcast is another doorway to networking. Plus, audience reach grows when you interact with listeners. Make sure to reply to comments and thank people who share your podcasts on social.
Because podcast listeners enjoy the ability to listen on their terms—anytime and anywhere they like—audio content is one of the most user-friendly types of media. On top of that, podcast listenership continues to grow, as illustrated in the infographic below by musinoomph.com.
Infographic by:
MusicOomph.com
Stand Out in Your Field or Community
One way to stand out in your field is to interview interesting people for your podcast; select guests to talk about your key topics or topics related to what you do. Try to find guests offering new information or a unique spin to add to the discussion. Remember, it’s all about your audience, so it doesn’t hurt if you find guests with a bit of sparkling personality to go along with the first-rate info.
If you want to stand out in your local community, pair up your content with local happenings. Get creative and discover cross-over subject matter to enrich content, and participate in local events. Cross-promotions are often good business drivers, and the addition of an audio asset gives you a new level of reach.
Think about a way to “go live” with your podcast and involve your customers in some way, or interview people attending a local event giving you networking opportunities onsite and off. Invite your neighborhood businesses to your podcast to talk about what they do or how you work together. Maybe each one can share their history of operating in the local community.
The more visible you are in a community, and the more you are willing to network and promote, the more people get to know you and want to do business with you. Your podcast is a great talking point and a way to invite collaborators into your community.
Increase Reputation and Build Authority
When you’re the one initiating things and stirring up interest, promoting others, and staying visible, your reputation and authority grow. People look to you to participate, solve problems, and come up with new ideas. Helping in this way works in the digital space as well as in your local community.
Keeping your word and acting on it proves you’re honest and reliable, a trusted business member and resource, solidifying your reputation, and continuing to grow your authority. Just remember, everything you do in business reflects on you and your reputation and builds (or destroys) trustworthiness.
Podcasting helps you show people who you are as a business—your core values, company culture, and attitudes toward business—and listeners get to know you and learn your beliefs about doing good business.
Establish and Grow Credibility in Your Industry
Another part of growing your authority is also the key to gaining credibility. And the question is, of course, do you know your stuff? Not only is it great to be a go-to resource in your community, but you also need to go a step further and prove you’re the best-in-the-business for whatever it is you do!
Taking your credibility higher in your industry requires you to stay updated and on top of exciting new developments and any changes. Go ahead and take a leadership role working towards innovation while staying on the cutting-edge. You can’t rest on your laurels as you strive to improve continually. I want to be the best in the world at whatever I am doing, so I just keep striving to improve. For business purposes, this attitude works, helping to propel you forward.
Psst, this article is starting to feel like a podcast!
Growing your credibility means finding teachable moments all around you and applying them to developing thoughtful and high-quality content for podcasting. The best kind of credibility comes after you are a proven entity backed by successes, wins and happy customers galore. You’ll know when you’ve built credibility from your podcast and your actions when customers refer business to you. The goal is to never have to sell again. How? By consistently receiving referrals because you’re already in demand!
Yes, your podcast is part of your content and inbound marketing plan.
Repurpose Top Content to Communicate Your Core Values
The core values you provide in business need to be a common thread skillfully woven throughout your communications consistently. On top of that, your business needs to offer multiple touchpoints for people to notice you, and repurposing your content does the trick.
Repurposing allows you to share the same or similar content via various formats to satisfy the different ways people like to consume content. Soooo repurposing content helps you extend content to new audiences while allowing you to communicate a message in more than one way.
Initiate New Relationships and Nurture Your Community Towards Sales
There’s no doubt, creating and maintaining good business relationships lead to sales and growth for your business. But building and fostering those relationships starts with connecting with the people who are interested in your services. It’s about reaching people who resonate with your core communications and need precisely the things you do.
Podcasting is a content and media form consumers enjoy and, at the same time, cuts layers away from nurturing the know/like/trust formula over time. Lending an actual voice to your content gives you a shortcut to impact your audience. Allowing listener input for show topics offers you another opportunity to shorten connection time and build genuine relationships.
Like all marketing now, two-way communications rule. Listening to and including the people you interact with or who interact with your audio content matters. You’ll find podcasting interactions organically spread across your channels, so engaging with comments, shares, and feedback is vital to your growth. Although you may think of audio as a one-to-many format, it’s the one-to-one interactions that help you grow your brand and reputation.
Produce Unique, Creative Audio Content in Simpler or Complex Varieties
Everyone likes to talk about short attention spans. Instead, why not focus on producing valuable content assets spotlighting important information, updates, tips, and more that clients need to know. You see, people have selective attention spans and all you need to do is captivate them with your sparkling audio content. Therefore, the message—and not its length—is what makes a difference and where your best efforts belong. Of course, that’s easier said than done, right?
As I mentioned earlier, there’re a lot of ways to get started quickly for producing valuable audio content. Still, making some decisions in advance helps to clarify what you want to communicate and how, who it’s for, and more. Naming, branding, tagline, and design considerations including logo, colors, and thumbnails are items to pre-plan for a smoother start.
But the richness in your audio productions lies in the content you create. Its uniqueness, relevance, point-of-view, and helpfulness are all factors, among others. Delivering audio clearly is the most important measure for your listeners, so focus on the quality of your sound first. But after you master the technical component for quality sound and have the administrative and overarching show theme design in place, your original content takes center stage.
Remember, the content you create remains in the spotlight for successful podcasting. However, just as you recreate written and other content forms into audio presentations, audio content easily transforms into written content for blog posts, guest posts, and web copy, for example. How-to’s, product reviews, and adding your two cents to trending topics work for on-the-fly audio subjects that reboot well in other formats to repurpose and extend visibility for audio.
The ability to reach new or extended audiences, increase visibility, awareness, traffic, and most importantly, to directly connect with people, makes audio content attractive. Ready to podcast?
Sound Off
What do you think? Are you ready to podcast? Already host a podcast? Drop your feedback, questions or podcast link(s) in the comments below, or share your thoughts with us on social! (Sue-Ann’s social media links are below.)
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