Tuesday, September 8, 2015

Podcasting beats cold calling

podcasting-beats-cold-calling

Podcasting has seen a resurgence in the last year that may have put it on your business’s radar. And you should be considering a podcast for your business.

At last year’s Social Fresh Conference, we started an on-stage interview series with a few select speakers that we will be continuing at Social Fresh 2015 in a couple weeks.

Last year, during my interview with Jay Baer, we talked about his first podcast (he now has several), the Social Pros podcast.

Jay had several goals with his first show that I think translate really well as advice for any business looking to start a podcast. Here are some simple tips:

  1. Don’t do “me too” content. Make the podcast unique, especially if there are already other podcasts covering the topic.
  2. Don’t make it about yourself. Instead make it about people doing real work in your topic arena or industry.
  3. Make it incredibly useful. Ask the types of questions whose answers will help your customers. Get to that insider baseball discussion that they crave.
  4. Shine a spotlight on your guests. This helps you strengthen and build new relationships that are invaluable.

The biggest benefit of all that Jay sited for his podcast is the relationship building.

“Our podcast shines a spotlight on the people who actually do work in the industry,” said best-selling author Jay Baer at Social Fresh West 2014. “The biggest benefit of doing an interview podcast is the relationships you build.”

“If you have a podcast, it’s so much easier to cold email someone about being a guest on your industry podcast than it is to email them about hiring you. You have something to offer them.” – Jay Baer

We’ve found this to be very true with the Social Toolkit podcast as well. For us, we have enjoyed extending relationships with our conference speakers and stakeholders.

On a recent podcast episode of Social Pros I talked with Jay about how a podcast was really a community lever. It is a tool for building trust with an audience.

Listening to someone’s real voice for an extending period of time, like on a podcast, is powerful for building trust, an essential community ingredient. Voice is powerful.

That community lever is even more powerful with your guests, who are likely movers and shakers in your industry or may even be customers.

And the beautiful part of all this is that if you are genuinely interested in the topic your podcast covers, and the people you interview, it is an effortless medium. Of course it requires some show notes, research, and prep, but it does not feel like “content creation”.

As Jay said, it feels like building relationships. And that is always the best kind of marketing. Human marketing.

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Check out the full interview with Jay Baer, and his awesome socks, below.

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