Just like videos, the use of podcasts is turning to be a preferred engagement tool for many entrepreneurs. It can be used to educate your audience on diverse topics and highlight news in the market. Podcasts can also be a great engagement tool with your clients and audience where you give them a platform to share their knowledge, expertise and opinions.
We asked entrepreneurs, podcasters and business owners how they use their podcasts for business.
#1- Core to our business development strategy
I own Break The Ice Media a tourism marketing agency and host the podcast Destination on the Left that focuses on creativity and collaboration in the tourism industry. The podcast is core to our business development strategy by inviting industry influencers and prospective clients to be guests on the show. It gives us an introduction to people we would want as clients, provides education for our team members and helps position us as thought-leaders in our industry. In addition, we repurpose the content from the podcast into blog posts, social media posts, ebooks and email marketing newsletters.
Thanks to Nicole Mahoney, Break The Ice Media!
#2- Search Engine Optimization
My greatest motivator for starting a podcast was for search engine optimization purposes. There are two immediate benefits to this strategy. First, you can link back to related or referenced content on your blog which gets some backlinks from all the podcast directories. Second, you can embed that same post in an existing blog post so that viewers landing on that page have another way to ingest that content – if they so desire, which decreases bounce rate and improves your competitiveness in search.
Thanks to Adrienne Johnston
#3- As a glass-shoe-fit solution
Podcasts are, for Talent Plus, a glass-shoe-fit solution to an (admittedly) good problem to have: we are flooded with high-quality information. A podcast lends itself to multi-tasking — and that’s the opportunity we could not pass up. In our space as HR consultants for organizations of all sizes around the world, we have run into our fair share of unique business problems and solutions over the last 30 years. Organizing all this knowledge into informative packets for the masses is hard when video isn’t always budget-friendly and written blogs and articles aren’t read as much as they are bookmarked for later. A podcast, however, can be accessed on one’s phone, car, smart TV and digital home assistant — and then shared among your colleagues just as easily. Condensed into conversations, we are able to showcase our unique know-how, expertise, as well a people- and solution-oriented approaches to our work — hopefully teaching and learning something along the way.
Thanks to Kimberly Rath, Talent Plus, Inc.!
#4- Two main ways
First, I can better connect with my audience as they can listen to me. Listening to a podcast allows you to connect with the host as you hear them talk about their expertise, answer questions, and provide additional viewpoints without losing context, which is easier to do when you discuss a topic verbally. Podcasting provides a unique and different human connection. Second, by providing weekly content, I can consistently and continually educate and inspire my audience to help them grow their businesses using a format that is convenient for them. They can choose to listen while doing something else like commuting or working out since they don't need to be looking at the screen. I do believe in – and provide – different modes of communication to connect with and educate my audience and producing my podcast provides a powerful vehicle to reach more small business owners.
Thanks to Stacey Brown Randall
#5- Improve my storytelling
As a trial lawyer, my job is to convince judges and juries of my clients’ stories. Podcasting has improved my storytelling tremendously by requiring that I be clear, succinct and thorough. Since I do all of my own editing, I’ve also improved my voice and diction and corrected a number of verbal ticks. This has had huge impact on my courtroom presence. Also, potential clients are able to hear me tell stories and listen for themselves how I organize and present information. This gives me a leg-up on my competitors. For trial lawyers, how you say things is just as important as what you’re saying. Lastly, having a podcast shows current and potential clients that I am modern, human and something more than just a lawyer. The days of the lawyer being just a lawyer are over, you have to be human and you have to be modern… podcasting demonstrates both.
Thanks to Michael Elkins, MLE Law!
#6- Highlight ways of delivering value
One of the main ways we've used our podcast is to highlight the different ways that a financial advisor delivers value to clients. There are a lot of areas of finance but most people think that all an advisor does is help with investments. But we just wrapped up a 9-episode series where we went into specific details of things a holistic advisor does to help people at various stages along their life journey to shine a light on all of the non-math and non-investment issues an advisor can help with.
Thanks to Pete Bush, Horizon Financial Group!
#7- Give a voice to experts
IoT is a growing industry that is still new to most. The IoT For All podcast provides us with the opportunity to give a voice to experts in the industry who can explain the complexities and nuances associated with this emerging market in laymen terms. Our podcast's ultimate goal is to help others succeed in their business endeavors. Because podcasts can have incredibly niche listening demographics, it presented a perfect business opportunity to simultaneously educate the world on the benefits and inner workings of the IoT industry while building relationships that can potentially turn into business opportunities for everyone involved.
Thanks to Shannon Lee, Leverege!
Podcast: IoT For All Podcast
#8- Share stories of inspirational business owners
I decided to launch my podcast, Path to Success, for a very specific reason, lots of my clients don't see themselves as business owners or entrepreneurs and I was seeing in the industry many people were giving up if things didn't work out straight away. I wanted to create a platform to share stories of inspirational business owners so others could see that they also had struggles and bad days. It was about opening up my audience to the idea that success isn't a straight line and that it can be whatever you want it to be. My podcast has now evolved and I am sharing personal stories of things which have happened to me and teaching alongside the interviews which will mean my audience have an additional source of content from me to help them start and scale their businesses.
Thanks to Ruth Kudzi
#9- Engage our customers
A podcast is an effective technique to deliver your thoughts in a unique way to build your business. We use the podcast to engage our customers with the same topic on different platforms. We publish the blog on the same topic of the podcast to provide detailed insights. It helps us to make a habit for our listeners to visit our blog for more information. The other way we use our podcast is through YouTube by making explanation videos and then embed that video in the blog. In this way, we enhance the multimedia experience for our users.
Thanks to Mika Edword, Cogneesol!
#10- As a sales tool
I have found that with podcasts and guesting on others podcasts, these tools allow me to enter the story that my customer is already having in their head, literally! This media tool relays the message of how I can support them in winning the day and meeting their goals. When this message jumps from the words on a screen and into their ears and mind, the sales process is accelerated because many are then motivated to take action and allow me to help them meet their goals..
Thanks to Amelia Roberts, The Business of Nursing!
#11- Build trust and relationships
We work with business owners all over the UK, but engaging with them is more than a little difficult. When we began by publishing a lot of written content, guides etc., we found that directors of small companies simply don’t have the time to stop and read all that much. So instead we launched a podcast called *9 to when*?, “for business owners that don’t stop”. In it, we use humour, something – we couldn’t have got away with in written form – to talk about business news, innovations and inventions as well as marketing trends, all topics small business owner said they want to hear about, and so far the reception has been amazing. It’s still early days, but we’re getting good unsolicited feedback from every episode of the podcast we release – especially the brilliant or bonkers section where we rank inspirational quotes – and as a result we’re certainly invested in podcasting for the foreseeable future. It's been a great way to build trust and relationships with our customer base.
Thanks to James Maddison, iwoca!
#12-A number of ways
We use our digital marketing podcast as a knowledge base for potential and existing customers. It’s also a great way for us to network within our industry as the podcast attracts high-profile guests such as ex-Airbnb employees and well-known bloggers, as well as several successful company founders. Above all, the podcast is an easy-to-digest resource. Instead of trawling through long chunks of text to decode a complicated subject, our listeners can learn about digital marketing in the most engaging way – through storytelling.
Thanks to Tim Cameron-Kitchen, Exposure Ninja!
#13- Educate physicians
We use our podcast to educate physicians on all of the topics relating to their personal finances. I look at it as we go 5 feet down and a mile wide.Trying to help them understand and relate to their finances in a way that they haven't been taught before. By giving away as much content as possible, we have found that our message and philosophies around money get shared. Naturally, people that relate to us reach out to us to help them with their finances. We don't have any hard sales pitches, we just give out as much information as possible in a format and message that they can relate to.
Thanks to Ryan Inman, Financial Residency!
#14- As an extension of my website
As an extension of my website, The Military Wallet My site primarily focuses on military and veterans benefits and financial topics specific to the military community. Many of the topics can be easily be covered in a written format, but some topics are much more nuanced and require a deeper explanation. Our podcast has been invaluable for doing some of these deep dives into specific topics. It's also a great medium for interviews, updates, and discussions. The podcast has been beneficial in two primary ways. The first is that it serves as a new medium for people to find our site. The second, and just as important, is that we embed our podcast episodes into full-length articles on our site, which improves them, and gives our audience the opportunity to read or listen. This has also had a positive impact on Search Engine Optimization, as people tend to remain on those articles for a long time. Overall, the podcast has been a great benefit to our business.
Thanks to Ryan Guina, TheMilitaryWallet.com!
#15- Building a community
The Passionistas Project Podcast is an integral part of our business model. The project is three-tiered — a podcast, a subscription box to be launched this fall and a network of female hosted podcasts coming in 2020. Our mission with all three endeavors is to shine a light on women following their passions and to create a network of women who can support and guide each other on their journeys. The podcast was the initial step in building this community. Our interviews with empowered women following their passions is inspiring others to do the same. We will also use the podcast to promote the subscription box and the podcast network to our audience — women who are at the ready to support female business owners and artisans. In addition, the podcast creates a revenue stream from patrons and sponsors that enable us to support the other elements of The Passionistas Project.
Thanks to Amy & Nancy Harrington, The Passionistas Project!
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