It took me a long time to embrace podcasts as a marketing tool. It took me a long time before I even started listening to podcasts for my own education. But podcasts are an incredibly popular way that people consume content.

A PodCast is usually an audio show that people subscribe to and listen to offline.

I know many people who do not:

• read blogs
• follow much social media
• watch youtube videos
• read books

But they do:

• listen to podcasts
• listen to audio books

Why Listen?

Many people like to fill their commute with educational audio. And Podcasts can fit into that niche and category.

With all our content marketing we want to cover as many channels as we can sustainably manage.

It took me a long time before I started listening to podcasts, but when I started introducing a 30 minute walk into my daily commute I wanted a way to make that part of my day more productive. And I started listening to podcasts and audio book programmes.

An audio programme is also the natural learning source for someone who is visually impaired.

Why Create?

I’ve also found that management level and ‘C’ level roles tend to listen to podcasts and audio books, which means that you might target a different demographic when you start a podcast.

If you are already creating video content then exporting your video to an audio file might be an easy way to start, but you have to make sure that your content takes audio into consideration. If you constantly reference images or videos or rely on facial expressions and hand movements to make a point then you’re video will not work well as a podcast.

I found that I had started to create more ’talking head’ videos where I was talking into camera, and these are perfect for conversion into podcast so I decided to adopt this as part of my marketing strategy and I’ll now target my ’talking head’ content for my podcast.

Low Cost

This is a very low cost way of creating content.

• Armed with a microphone, or mobile phone, you can create an audio file.
• Use Audacity to edit the file
• Sign up to a podcast service, e.g. Podbean
• Upload mp3 and you’re done

It is cheaper to create audio content than video content, and it can be faster to edit as well.

People actively seek out new podcasts, so if you are listed in the iTunes search engine then people might organically find your content.

You’re not on Camera

For a lot of people, the thought of being on camera puts them off creating video content as part for their Content Marketing strategy.

With a podcast, you have the advantage that you don’t have to appear on camera so it might act as a good confidence boosting content creation mechanism which can eventually lead to your creating video content.

Improve Your Technique

One thing that put me off podcasts in the past was the lack of editing and consideration for the listeners time.

Too often the podcasts:

• were rambling conversations,
• full of ‘ums’ and ‘ahs’
• overlong silences that made me we wonder if my power on my mp3 player had failed

A side-effect of creating a podcast is that you will improve your content creation technique:

• edit to remove gaps
• tighten the content to have more focus
• use more sound effects to maintain interest
• edit to cut out irrelevant material

That’s Why

I think there are a lot of advantages to creating a Podcast, and if you have already been creating videos or blog content then, with a podcast, you have targetted another sensory channel.

It is a very low cost experiment as you’ll already have a microphone in your possession, all you have to do is learn how to use an audio editing tool and upload to a podcast host.

Podcasts are growing in popularity and the tooling is getting better making it easier for people to listen to podcasts. And once people start, they get hooked and actively seek out new podcasts. If you are out there then they might well get hooked on you.