Power Of Podcasting
Go Where The Eyeballs Are
In this Growth Engine Daily, I want to raise with you the power podcasting.
If you’re looking to amplify your message, look at new mediums, ride the trends of where the eyeballs are, give some thought to this.
Personally many of you will know that I run a podcast called The Open Mike, and the reason I chose to do it is that I saw a major trend moving in the marketplace and that is obviously the smartphone revolution where people can access more than just social media from their handsets.
The Convenience of Podcast Listening
Think about how popular audiobooks are and how far they’ve come, if I’m stuck here in my car, I can’t read a book, but I can listen to an audiobook.
Podcasting has a very, very similar sort of convenience factor that means it doesn’t matter if you’re at home, you’re in the car, you out in the gym on a treadmill, you can listen to a podcast and get that valuable piece of information.
Now, whether that’s a business podcast or leisure podcast or family and health and well being podcast, it doesn’t matter.
Here are some crazy, crazy stats, but realistically, you know you’d be a fool not to at least take notice of these and a serious contributor to where your ideal customers and audience are.
The Exponential Growth of Podcasts
Apple reported just over 550,000 podcasts on its channel in June 2018. Twelve months later, there are over 750,000 podcasts. So, you might be thinking, with a 200,000 growth in podcasts, that’s over 4,000 podcasts a week getting released.
Now, one thing about competitive positioning is if there is a lot of competition and a lot of people are doing it, and that’s really because there’s a demand for it.
People don’t keep putting money into running podcasts, and I’m going to get to that in a moment because there is a cost in both time, energy and money to do that.
The reality is people don’t do that if it doesn’t work.
The Podcast Growth
So, if you think about it, 200,000 people have launched podcasts in the 12 months.
Why? Smartphone revolution. Podcasts are in their hands. The WWDC worldwide developer conference, that’s where Apple launches all these new products, state ridiculous stats. Now, put an infographic below from various sort of stats around podcasting.
But, they also report that podcast listeners are more educated, they’re more dedicated, because they’re seeking knowledge.
They’re taking time out. I think there’s a Nielsen reports as well that states that the average American now listens to over seven hours of podcasts per week.
Now, you know that may be a blend of business. It may be a blend of consumer or retail. It doesn’t really matter.
Podcast Content Diversity
Getting Started With Podcasting
Image Credit – podcastinsights.com
I’ll give you a little bit of background on how you get started with podcasting.
I can look back on my journey. 2016 we played about, within the first 10 episodes, we were trying to find out the format.
So, here’s a quick set of bullet points to get you going.
Start with the topic:
- Think about what your podcast is going to be about
- Whether the content that you’re going to serve is actually going to provide value
- Whether the content will help solve the problems or create interest in your specific audience.
As a guide – I mentioned earlier my The Open Mike Podcast is all about an
“entrepreneur’s view and on growth strategies and how to bridge the gap between the ideas and successful implementation”
Then pick the format of your show.
So for me, mine’s pretty straightforward.
I interview influencers from around the world, New Zealand, America, Europe, the UK, on their specialist subjects.
My format for The Open Mike is as follows,
- I introduce the title and specialist subject we will be discussing on the show.
- I then give my personal view on it and what my experiences are around the subject, this helps frame the subject better.
- I introduced the influencer.
- I give a bio about that person’s influence so they can demonstrate credibility and authority.
- I then ask them five questions about that specialist subject, the popular questions that people want to know.
- How to do it, not just what it is but how to implement it.
- Then I give a recap at the end to summarise
- I then close out on the show.
Podcast Duration & Frequency
My podcasts run on average 45 to 60 minutes. There are some at only 30 minutes and then the really deep dive ones are done at 90 minutes.
I average an hour I publish them at least four to five times a month.
Different shows will have different frequencies and formats, I mentioned Sophy Ridge on Sunday on Sky News and she does a political podcast.
Sophy Ridge On Sunday is a recording / basically repurposed TV show into a podcast. Op
Show Format:
- Interview politicians of the day about relevant political topics
- whether that be Brexit
- The new Conservative leader elections
- Anti-Semitism in the labour party
- The political issues that are happening at that time
- Political scandals
- The resignations in the cabinets and things like that.
- Sophy goes out and about in constituencies through the week and interview the public and in many cases uses this as research to grill the politicians
- The TV Show is recorded live and the audio repurposed to a weekly podcast
Podcast Hosting & Distribution
So, it’s not difficult. If you get your format right, what’s your show going to be about, then how to host and distribute.
This is actually the straightforward part.
We use Libsyn, L-I-B-S-Y-N.com. It starts from a free version. I think ours is about $30, $40 a month because we’ve put quite a bit of content on there.
That will then push it out to all the distribution channels like
- Stitcher
- Spotify
- Google Play
- Apple’s podcast
You can then go to additional distribution channels as we do like on
- A cast
- Overcast
- TuneIn
There are so many distribution channels.
Production Counts
We may even overproduce our podcasts but we certainly make it high value, your listeners are more likely to subscribe and the quality of guests you will attract will be higher.
Podcasting Consistency Is Essential
A pro-tip when it comes to podcasting is consistency.
Do not keep changing the experience of your listeners, because they will leave.
If they sign up for a podcast for a reason, whether that’s a daily, weekly, bimonthly or monthly podcast to get a specific piece of information they expect to be delivered consistently with value. Their time is valuable don’t abuse it.
As a football fan, I dial into the Sunday Supplement podcast another Sky Tv show (repurposed into a Podcast)
That’s where the UK’s journalists report on what’s happening in the latest football news. Insider news, it gives you good tips. Again, if they changed that show or it wasn’t every Sunday throughout the regular season, then I’d be saying to myself,
“Well, why are you changing that?”
I tuned in for a specific reason. You’ve changed that.
Constantly Review Analytics and Apply What You Learn
It is essential to improve it, modify it, listening, looking at your analytics inside platforms like Libsyn will by no means not do you any harm.
It gives you good practise to sort of look at the analytics, so to look at improvements, get feedback from your audience, but ultimately find your niche.
Why would you not have it as another marketing medium? Why not is a hard question to avoid?
You already use more mature mediums such as
- Direct mail
- Press Releases
- Magazine Ads
- Trade shows and all the offline stuff.
Then, you’ve got the online mediums you are supporting such as
- Pay per click
- Display advertising
- Google paid search
- Email marketing
- Landing pages
- Webinars
Why not podcasting?
So if you’re struggling to think about how to get started, go back and recheck those points that I’ve done. There’s also a great website called podcastinsights.com.
Other Pro-Tips
You will need a Google Play licence and an Apple developer licence.
The Google Play licence is totally free. The Apple developer licence, I think is about $80 a year, something around that you have to pay to be an Apple developer.
Once you get that up and running, you can start publishing on the platforms and people like Libsyn are going to help you get started as well.
I’d love you to leave me a comment below about podcasting.
Ask me a question. As a podcast host, I’m here to help.
If you want some help with podcasting we’ll get those questions answered for you.
I hope it’s sort of sparked your interest about, “Hey, could I find a place in Podcasting?” Well, there are 4,000 people a week who are launching out podcasts over the last 12 months, there is enough demand.
Just be unique, be authentic, provide more value than you ask for in exchange for the time that people would need to invest to listen.
Do your research, and as always, continue your growth engine development.
Leave us a comment below, happy to engage on that comment with you.
