We all have something to say. We want people to know about our brand. We want others to know our unique spin on a product, and the value we add to the world. Yet, we all face the same problem: Rising above the noise. And it’s insanely noisy out there.
So what do we do as entrepreneurs, as leaders, to rise above the noise? We could read one more marketing book, look at one more strategic plan, or worse add one more tactic to our list of ways we communicate. Great! Just what I need, one more activity that will take away time from my family or presently eroding sleep allocation (5 hours of sleep is enough, right?).
That’s not what this blog post is about. My goal is not to complicate your life further. Actually the opposite. I want to tell you a little bit about podcasting, why it’s become so popular (50% of American households are podcast listeners according to Neilson), the value it could add to your business, and how it may just be the tool to streamline everything you do, and give time back to your life.
I run a podcasting company, and the truth that podcasting is such a powerful platform, honestly still baffles me. With everything around us screaming about the new technology, VR this, bots that, podcasting is at its core an old technology. It’s essentially on-demand radio. So why is it such a powerful platform for listeners? Even further, why is it growing so fast and how can it help you?
- On demand. We must start at the major shift in the way we consume content. Over the last 15 years we have all grown quite fond of on demand content. Entertaining and educating ourselves when we want to.
- Multi-Tasking. Podcasting is one of the only ways to safely educated and entertain yourself while doing something else.
- Our Desire for Connection. In our ever connected world, consumers want to feel connected to the people they work with and buy from. Now, with millennials (arguably the most connected generation yet) representing 1/3 workers in the work force today, that desire for connection hasn’t even reached its peak yet.
- Trust. The connection made through audio is a powerful one, earing is one of our first senses to develop in the womb. There has never been another time in history when you could be piped directly into your customer's and pre-customer's ears.
- Evergreen. Generally speaking, most podcast are evergreen. Once they are produced and distributed, the content has an extremely long tail. There’s actually a show I have that has been dormant for 4 years, and it still receives 25-30 monthly listens. Without any work on my part, that’s 25-30 people hearing my voice, my message. Unlike a social media post, The residual benefits of podcasting are incredible.
- Non-disruptive. With so many marketers disrupting our lives. Podcasting doesn’t do that. You are not trying to grab someones attention while they are scrolling at the speed of light, or capture their attention while they are grabbing something from the kitchen in between their favorite shows. Listeners are choosing you. Taking their valuable time to listen to you.
I know I’m probably getting a little ridiculous, but it’s simply to show you this platform is for real (I also had to delete 3 more reasons because this blog post is getting too long ha). It may be called something else in 5 years, but on demand audio is here to stay. Much like social 10 years ago, we are beginning to see more and more brands look up and say, “hey! everyone has a podcast, we should probably do that”. The initial big chuck of the early adopters are here entering this platform.
Let me wrap up by speaking of the last big benefit of podcasting. It can give you back a large chunk of time. For some of our clients, they have a perfect storm of a thriving business, no or a small marketing team, and the need to participate in multiple platforms of communication. For those podcasts, we take the audio content and transcribe it to text. Then we pull out 1-2 blog posts, and quotes for social media (pairing it with hi-res pictures). That’s right, 1 podcast creates a month worth of content on multiple platforms. The big picture impact is two fold. First, obviously it quit literally adds back hours to month. And if you’re like me, toiling away over every word in a tweet, maybe even days. Secondly, it takes away that frustration of having to constantly teach your social media director how to speak in your tone of voice. You don’t have that frustration because it is literally pieces of content you’ve already said being disseminated on other platforms. It’s you. Your voice.
Don’t sleep on podcasting. It can change your business in a big way over the next year. Or you can choose to continue to communicate through legacy platforms and miss the first big wave of podcasting for brands.