I know many of you have heard and even used a podcast. For those who haven’t or are curious to know if having a podcast could potentially generate revenue, the answer is yes! You can add podcasting to your integrated marketing strategy– and if done right– a lot of benefits can come with it, in that you can tap into a unique audience of avid podcast listeners.
List of things you need first:
- Equipment (you need a good computer that can handle audio editing software and live streaming).
- Get a great microphone (it’s a most) Search Engine Journal has a list of mics you can use for podcasting.
- If you are recording on the go, obtain a great digital voice recorder, some smartphones record pretty decent quality.
- Editing software: Sound forge is one of the best out there, but it is not free. As a substitution you can use Audacity, which is an open source software. If you wish to upload audio with an image the best solution is to use iMovie (mac) or windows movie maker.
- Pick a podcasting software that comes with cloud hosting services.
Cloud podcasting services recommended
- SoundCloud is regarded as the best option for sharing in terms of content discovery and analytics
- Youtube offers a portal to detailed and actionable data on audience demographics, traffic sources, minutes watched, overall performance, and more
- iTunes lacks search discovery and is poor on analytics, the upside is that iTunes is the easiest place for people to subscribe to your podcast, plus, have millions of users.
- Google Play since this is a google product, it is great in terms of discovery/search and analytics. In addition, you can reach millions of Android users.
Monetization
Before you set up a podcast, you have to decide on a business model and put significant effort into managing it. For example, sponsorships, upsells, donations, live events, co-marketing, contests, premium content, Kickstarting, merchandising and so on. If you want advertisers to partner with your podcast, the “industry standard” is 20k downloads per episode, but that’s on the high end.
Actionable Data
Each podcast platform offers different options and data availability varies depending on the server that hosts the podcasts. You want to make sure that you are clear about what your goals are for hosting a podcast and what data you want to obtain as a result. Do you want to measure total downloads, subscribers and download pick times, direct engagements, downloads over time (month to month), podcast reviews (how many where five stars), which episodes are good for reporting and in which channels? and so on.
Podcast marketing ideas
- First and foremost is your landing page UX. Pick a player: I recommend Smart Podcast Player. Here is a sample how it will look on your webpage: https://goo.gl/r9FRVs — Adding download, transcript, and subscription is not only this good for user experience, but it’s good juice to rank well on google.
- Publish new podcast episodes at least twice a week, or even three, within the first two months.
- Create attractive titles containing show themes that speak to the largest group of people.
- Get guests or sponsors to promote your podcast in their Email lists.
- Get listed In Podcast Directories like PodcastLand via the podcast subReddit. Its voting system can get your podcast posted on their website’s homepage.
- Create Sponsored Partnerships in exchange for free Ad space.
- In addition to promotion, also ask for free prizes to give away as part of a giveaway contest that requires iTunes reviews for entry.
- Host a guest in your podcast that can help endorse your new podcast.
- Quibb is a shared platform for reading and audio books and podcast.
- Or course, promote this on social media channels. In addition, Facebook and Twitter promotion can rank you on the first page of freely.com. For example their “non-profit channel.” This is essentially a curated list of content sources for people interested in different topics and industries.
- See what successful podcasters are doing and get ideas from them. A very successful podcaster website to check out is https://www.jeffalytics.com
At the end of the day, it is important however to have a professional running your marketing campaign with a well-designed strategy, actionable recommendations with conversion rate optimization tactics, and good analytics/reporting.
Additional resources: