Special guest Annemarie Cross on Podcasts.

 Online has now got a growing audience and podcasting can be a very helpful way to reach out to them. They are a great way to engage with the audience.

However, a lack of strategy in these podcasts could cause ‘ pod fade ‘. This is when your podcasts easily burnout and do not provide the reaction you were looking for.

The mistruths of Podcasting:

“ If I launch a podcast and get content out there people will instantly be intrigued and want to reach out to me. “

This is not entirely true. You may build your reach and impact with your message. But the clutter involved in most peoples lives in the time between hearing your podcast and getting back to the office causes a lot of your audience to not reach out.

“ If you get all the best sound technology and equipment for your podcasts you will be successful. “

You need to consider your message before anything else. The best equipment is not going to turn a bad message good. As well as the fact that you need to be able to monetize the podcasts and a higher cost will make this harder.

If you don’t have the end in mind as your monetization strategy and your message this is often why people struggle to monetize from podcast.

Helpful Tips

• Create a keyword-rich topic name for your podcast. So that when someone is searching for that topic on Google your podcasts come up. Or when you are sharing your podcast link across social or Facebook, that heading captures the viewers’ attention.
• Introduction – From music right through to how you engage are all things that compel someone to want to keep listening. Keeping consistency and maintaining everything across this spectrum is very important.
• These podcasts are more likely an intimate conversation so you don’t need to sell. If you provide real values, insights, solutions and case studies then people will keep listening and want to find out more. It is a good idea to you do it in a very authentic way because the topic could be similar to what other people in your industry are doing.
• You must define how you are different from everyone else doing similar things.
• This can be done by using personal experiences. Speak about your journey, things other people wouldn’t have experienced the way you did. If you can’t define your topic and uniqueness it is not going to be easy to keep the attention of your audience.
• Refining your message is just as important as defining it. Talking about too many broad topics and bringing on too many guests that don’t align with what you are trying to get across is only going to portray you as the jack of all trades and a master of none.
• Be mindful of how you introduce your podcast. The experience starts with the music so focus on the tempo and the words you use. Put it all together to create an experience you want to give. Your words must be in line with your music aspect. It is often the unspoken things in the podcast that grab the attention of a viewer.
• Uninspiring or boring introduction – Don’t have fluff or banter. This is your chance to build relationships with people who do not yet know you, like you or trust you. You need to give them something of value to walk away with because they want relevant content.
• In your inte犀利士 rviews, you need to show that you are genuinely interested so that viewers who are looking for potential guests are now encouraged to get you on their show or podcast.
• Ineffective calls to actions are the biggest mistake. You need to have a strategy and you need to subtlety draw them into listening to the next episode. Keep their interest going so that they WANT to contact you for more information.

Growing your podcast

You need to be clear and don’t get sucked into the vanity matrix. The moment you have too many views or downloads it becomes a lot harder to engage personally with your viewers and this could change the dynamic of your brand.

The lengths of your podcast depend on your audience. Your podcast needs to be just as long as you need to get across your message keeping in mind the time the viewer has to listen to your podcast. Many people do not have excessive amounts of free time so staying away from over lengthy podcasts is a good idea. A good way to compensate if you have a lot to say is to create two versions of a podcast. One with the shorter more straight to the point bits with a link to the longer more in-depth version for whose attention you have grabbed and have more time. Or even formatting your podcast so that you cover your message briefly in the first thirty minutes. And then say that you will now be going in-depth for the remainder of the podcast for interested people.