I have a fear that podcasters are taking the “build it and they will come” approach. One’s attitude could quickly become cavalier once their newest episode is uploaded. Sit back, put your feet up, and wait for people to come find it, right? Wrong.
So, you’ve got the podcast but you’re still not seeing the listener engagement you were hoping for. Never fear! We’ve rounded up five of the best tactics to help you see your podcast participation go up, all it requires from you is a little time and planning and you should start to see the broadcaster / listener back and forth increase in no time!
So, you’re thinking about starting a company podcast but you haven’t got round to doing it yet, we give you three reasons why this form of audio content might be just what your business’s content strategy needs in 2018.
In this digital age, podcasts make marketing sense, less people are reading and more people own mobile devices, meaning you need to adapt your content strategy to cater to these changes and when done right, this easily shareable content will allow your business’s message to reach far and wide.
“Video killed the radio star,” sang The Buggles in 1979. For almost 40 years they were so right that some people might have thought that they were soothsayers.
Recently, something’s changed and the radio stars — or the podcast stars, to be precise — are finally having their revenge! Podcasts are becoming increasingly popular, and some of them are so well-followed that even companies are using this medium as a way to conquer new audiences and drive the product they’re selling.
Babbel, the world’s leading language learning app, started an Italian podcast called 4 Verticale in February 2016. The two hosts, Stefano and Giulia, are storytellers who share their experiences with listeners: living abroad, being expats, making fools of themselves in foreign languages, and also sharing Venetian words that are used all over the world and Italian vintage insults. It’s all about being interesting, funny and engaging their audience.
As a small business, it can be impossible to find your unique voice in the marketplace and successfully reach your audience. Consumers’ lives are saturated by advertising on a daily basis, so just how can you create brand personality and make your business heard? One answer is podcasts. Podcasts are increasingly being integrated into brands’ content marketing strategies and rightly so; it is advertising which requires minimal equipment, little money and offers businesses the opportunity to create an intimate rapport with their customer.
If you need further convincing as to why podcasts are the future of B2C advertising, here are three more reasons as to why they might be just what your business needs to get on the road to establishing a relationship of trust between brand and consumer:
3 Essential Steps to Get Your Podcast Looking Great
They say a picture tells a thousand words. Podcasters pride themselves on their ability to paint a compelling and detailed image of a topic with their voices. Podcasts are a powerful canvas for spoken word. But choosing images for your podcast does not pose a dilemma of visual vs. audio. On the contrary, a picture exemplifies the richness of your content and those thousands of words. Here’s how to start embracing image use in your podcast.
Think about it: when you hear a good story or conversation, it sticks with you much longer than a Facebook post you glanced at does. This is because we engage with audio in a different way than we do with written content.
As Emma Rodero, a professor at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, told The Atlantic,
“Audio is one of the most intimate forms of media because you are constantly building your own images of the story in your mind and you’re creating your own production. And that of course, is something that you can never get with visual media.”
Audio content involves the audience in the narrative; it entices them to imagine the people, places, and situations they’re listening to. This can help your brand create a deep and meaningful connection with potential customers.
Here are five reasons why you should start podcast for your brand:
Ask yourself: how accessible is your podcast? Can listeners follow your story, or get through your content in one sitting? Could they more fully appreciate your podcast with extra background information or references?
Accessibility isn’t just about making sure your podcast is available on every listening platform, or blowing up people’s social network feeds. It also lies in the structure of your content, how well you tell your story, and the marketing strategies you use to hook listeners in; your podcast needs to be easy to consume for listeners.
Spreaker is now giving you the ability to add chapters to your episode through our CMS. With chapters, you can delineate a clear outline of key points and favorite moments that listeners can get to easily, and create new ways to share your content.
It’s a podcasting renaissance, as we already know. I won’t reiterate how it can be affirmed, there’s already very looong literature available on that (sources here, here, and here).
Besides its general increased use, podcasting has also landed on new content landscapes in the past two years, becoming a medium that content marketers can turn to when it comes to building relationships with potential clients. Marketers and consultants – the entire marketing sector, even – have started using this “new” tool as another way to stay in touch with the communities that follow them.
As part of my job at Spreaker, I study what can seem like a heterogeneous podcasting ecosystem to find common patterns that can help me with my daily struggle in understanding this fast growing market. One of the most interesting things I’ve noticed in the last months is the use of podcasting as a main platform in content marketing strategies.
Podcasting doesn’t end when you hit “Publish.” Your content needs to get to your listeners’ ears, and effective distribution means sharing your content quickly and looking good while you do it. But when your podcasting to-do list is already inundated with different tasks – mixing, editing, uploading, describing, tagging – some of the process risks falling by the wayside.
That’s why we’ve been focusing so much on the new CMS, to offer you a dashboard full of quality tools and features to help you every step of the way. Today, we’re eager to show you the newest addition: the ability to auto-share “camera-ready” episodes to all your social networks.
Here’s what we mean:
