There are three really good things that a podcast will do for your brand
- Authority: It puts you out there as the very best there is
- Networking: It helps you connect with people in ways not possible otherwise
- Content: It’s an endless source of really good cross-platform content about your brand
AUTHORITY
The simple fact is that a podcast for your brand puts you ahead of probably 95% of your competition.
With a podcast you quite literally become a spokesperson for your industry, for your brand or company and your area of expertise. Your podcast goes out to the world saying, here’s how it is guys! If you include industry news, then you become the news source for your industry. The podcast means you are the go to source of what is happening in your area of expertise.
When you think ‘news’ you may think you need the latest. Not so! Here is how you handle it.
You address stories and give your opinion or view of the news. A great way of doing this is to say ‘we have been talking about x story in the news’. When you do it that way, you’re not saying that this is cutting edge latest news. It could be something that happened two weeks ago. You are saying this is something that people are talking about. It means you don’t have to be ‘breaking news’ and any listeners who didn’t know about that particular story, it doesn’t make them feel stupid or out of date. So for ‘news’, relate the story, then give your opinion and your view on it. This builds your authority.
Interviews are very popular on podcasts and work incredibly well for building authority. Especially if the people you are interviewing are giving listeners information that they can use, information that they are learning from, information that they can actually put into action the following day.
With interviews, you can talk to the leaders in your industry and having the leaders in your industry on your podcast gives you authority.
It’s kind of like the way it works with the Late Late Show on television or with Graham Norton. All of these world class movie stars are coming in to this one TV show and what do we all say? Oh, such and such was on Graham Norton. Graham Norton is the platform. By establishing a podcast, you are establishing a platform for your industry and it’s got your name stamped on it.
We did a podcast for a very well-known tyre brand. Nobody really thinks about what type of tyre they need to buy, they just go with something they know. So the goal of the podcast was to become an authority in the motoring area and have their name above the door.
We handled it by getting motor journalists from a well-known national newspaper to present the show. As part of their work, they were able to talk to people who were launching the latest cars and the latest features and they were able to review the latest cars themselves. All this went into the podcast and it worked incredibly well for the tyre brand because they were able to go out there and say ‘hey, look who we hang out with’.
It gets better. Our audience were into cars, so we were able to chat more about tyres and different types/advantages etc from time to time. It wasn’t a sell. It was just keeping people up-to-date on tyres, the same as we would with changes to fuel, engine types, new models and so on. Because our listeners were into cars, they were seen as car ‘experts’ by their friends. So when the question of tyres came up, our listeners recommended that tyre brand for the reasons we had spoken about on the podcast.
Another way to build your authority is to show how you are an expert in your particular area. Because listeners are interested in what you do, you can dig deep, and talk in detail about items they are passionate about.
Take for example a heating industry podcast. The people who listen, work in that industry and want to know in detail about new developments and products. One of the recent issues concerned hydrogen and how it works in a low carbon heating future. Listeners want to know the ins and outs of how much money they are going to save and how easy is it to install.
When you have people from your company and other people who are working in the trade talking about this on your podcast, giving all the details, the listeners, really, really get into it. It’s an amazing way of being able to promote and own what it is that you do.
Another podcast we do is for an air filter company. Not air conditioning, the filters that go into an air conditioner. We had an amazing show with them where they did a study about how dirty the air can be in an operating theatre and how filters can clean out contaminants we can’t see.
A podcast shows your authority by giving your expertise about what it is that you do and what is coming down the line. Because people hear what it is you’re talking about, and have learned from you, they are way more likely to buy from you also.
NETWORKING
Podcasting is a unique way to meet new clients and really look after existing clients or suppliers.
If you have a prime contact you are finding it hard to meet with, invite them onto your podcast. You’re saying we would love to hear about what you do. Come on to our podcast and share with everybody. Next thing you know you’re talking and that of course leads very simply on to, hey maybe we should do some other stuff together.
It sounds cheesy but it works. We did a podcast for an electrical company and this was one of the results of the podcast. They spoke with several leaders within their industry and one of them became a customer with very large amounts of business done.
Networking works the other way with your guests mentioning their appearance on your podcast and exposing your brand to a whole new audience. When you get somebody well known within your area or industry, and they tweet ‘hey everybody, listen to this’, you could get a couple of hundred new listeners introduced to your brand. Now that is great networking!
It keeps growing because as your podcast becomes more known, you will find people will start calling you who want to come on to your podcast.
A weekly podcast we do for a technology firm, uses networking to actually pay for their podcast. It’s is well known in the industry, so people want to get onto the podcast. Part of the company’s deal they run for tech events, is that you get to come on the podcast.
CONTENT MARKETING
As we all know, content marketing is a whole ton of work. A podcast can give you a great base for really solid quality content across all your online and social platforms.
Here is what we do with every podcast we create:
- Transcription
A transcript is always littered with the most perfect keywords for your company, so the transcription on its own is a fantastic resource for SEO. - Podcast Summary
A professionally written summary article of the podcast. This makes for really good high quality social posts or an article that you can use in your website. Again, with all of the right keywords, it’s really boosting your SEO, Google ranking and your website traffic. - Video
We take little snippets out of the podcast and create short videos using animated text and backgrounds. A 10 second video may be literally just a quote from the podcast, or a longer one minute video will teach somebody something. All of it is excellent exposure for the brand. If you want to be found on YouTube, it’s also possible to put your entire podcast there so you can be discovered. After all, it is the world’s second largest search engine. - Social Media
From the podcast and all of the above, we generate lots of quality engaging content which works great for people grazing on social media. We get everything from quote graphics, to mini-articles to video hits.
All of this content is showing off your brand, on all of your platforms and it’s all generated through one podcast.
SO WHAT WILL A PODCAST DO FOR YOUR BRAND?
It builds your authority, puts you top-of-mind and delivers a whole heap of ways to promote your brand online.
Combined, this all adds up to giving your brand something that’s really hard to achieve with a website, text or video. It gives your brand a real human voice. It’s very much a conversation with real human beings, with all of those little nuances, so people will really feel your personality.
One of our favourite podcasts we create is for a builder’s merchants, where part of the brief is to give the brand personality. Their customers are tradespeople from plumbers to electricians so in the podcast we’d have a bit of craic, with occasional very mild bad language! For example, in one podcast about bathroom installations, the lady speaking said ‘yes shit does roll downhill’. Said in context it came out naturally and resonated with the audience. It gave the brand personality you just could not do via text or video.
All of this builds an emotional connection with your audience where people feel they have a connection with your brand. It is just unbelievably strong.
Look at the trouble that we go to, organising client days or seminars to connect with people. A podcast, for relatively little cost by comparison, gives you 30 minutes 45 minutes 60 minutes of attention from a person. And you can do that regularly, every month, every two weeks, or every week as you wish.
So, what are you waiting for? Get out there and grab some ears.