Content insights

5 Actions I’d Take If I Was Starting My Podcast Again.

This is an awesome blog post published by Kieran MacRae in Better Marketing's publication on Medium. I'm Jessica and I'll be your digital host.

After 2.5 years of podcasting, I still discover things I should have been doing all along. Did you know an AI tool can make your podcast sound baller? I do now…

It’s too late for me to go back and do it right. But if you’re still early in your podcasting journey, this list can help you.

1. Launch with a trailer:A trailer seemed so decadent. So professional. I didn’t know how to record a podcast. Why would I have needed a trailer? How wrong I was.

Having a trailer as your “first episode” creates your podcast page on all the platforms. This means that people have somewhere they can follow your podcast in anticipation of its release.

And A trailer is easy. It just needs to be 30 seconds of you saying the name of your podcast, what you talk about, where people can find you (on social media), and finishing with an ask to subscribe to you. You can do that, right?

Don’t overthink it, and make the best trailer you can. Besides, you can always make another trailer later.

2. Make your podcast sound professional with Auphonic:No sound engineer? No problem. We have AI.

Sure, you could pay an expensive producer to fiddle the bazillion dials on one of those giant mixer boards. Or you can do what I do. Upload your finished audio file to Auphonic (affiliate link) and let it work its magic.

Auphonic (affiliate link) boosts your voice while minimizing other sounds. So listeners don’t have to crank up the volume of their phones to listen. It’s well worth the sub $10 a month I spend on it.

Our recording studio, AKA our house, is surrounded by farms, so we often have tractors rattling past. With Auphonic, the listeners don’t hear them.

It can also do other things, like cut out silence, but I prefer to do that manually in Garageband.

It’s an easy, out-of-the-box way to get your podcast to sound professional.

3. Reach out to other similar podcasts in the niche:When we started our podcast, I saw everyone as competition. I assumed everyone else did it better, so they were “the enemy”.

It’s not true. Podcasting isn’t a zero-sum game. People who listen to podcasts in a niche tend to listen to multiple shows, so the more listeners, the better for everyone.

Reach out to other creators like you and say hey, maybe even ask them if they’d be happy to chat, and you can ask them for advice. Or, once you have a bit of rapport, take it one step further.

3.5. Try to guest on other people’s podcasts:Interview-style podcasts are always looking for interesting guests. If you’re starting a podcast, that’s interesting.

Put yourself out there. If there are podcasts you follow in your niche, email them a pitch to have you on as a guest. If their audience and yours cross over, then you have the potential for a flood of new listeners to come over to you.

Here’s a helpful guide on pitching to be a podcast guest.

4. Tell everyone you know you’re starting a podcast:I was a little bit embarrassed when I started my podcast. I’d feel awkward telling people about it and shy away if the opportunity came up.

Now I shout it from the rooftops, and people always respond well. They always ask a little more and even whip out their phones to follow it so they and listen later.

It can be scary, but you’ve got to put yourself out there. Podcasts spread by word of mouth, and the first mouth to start spreading the news is yours.

5. Make lists of podcasts on Podchaser:This is the most effortless and most actionable advice on the list. Head over to Podchaser and create an account. It’s a podcast discovery platform you can use to promote your podcast.

How? I’ll tell you.

You use their “Lists” feature to make lists of podcasts and include your own! I’ve done lists on Scottish history podcasts, scary history podcasts, spook podcasts, you get the idea.

These will all appear within Podchaser when people look for podcasts. You might not get 1000s of new listeners, but it’s an easy way to start getting your name out there.

I regularly get emails from Podcasher telling me that people have followed or liked my lists.

Final ThoughtsYou’ll hit the ground running if you do these things early in your podcast journey. Podcasting isn’t all about growth, but if you’re interested in getting more listeners, here’s the TLDR:

- Launch your podcast with a trailer.- Make your podcast sound amazing with Auphonic. - Reach out to similar podcasts to yours to say hey.- Shout about your podcast from the rooftops.- Make podcast lists on Podchaser.- Go put yourself out there.

These 3 Basic Human Skills Are the Key To Brilliant Marketing.

This is an audio version for the blog post by published in Summurai. I’m Dave and I’ll be your digital host. let’s get started.

I love to discover creative entrepreneurs at my local Sunday pop-up markets. Vendors handcraft everything from jewelry to essential oils to artisan foods. But, even in the small confines of a 20 booth market it’s hard to stand out.

Add to that the fact that nobody really needs any of the things being sold and creators have an uphill battle getting browsers to part with their money.

As a former marketer for over 25 years, I couldn’t help but give my advice to one particular creator in the market who had so much potential, but no buyers.

I was wandering around the market and I saw a guy standing behind a booth where no one was shopping. He had about 10 bottles of his different hand-crafted, liquor-infused vinegars lined up.

“Would you like a taste?” he said.

“Hmm. Can you drink vinegar straight?” I said.

I was not looking forward to this but I felt bad about the fact that no one seemed interested in his booth.

“Sure,” he said, and he poured a teaspoon of bourbon barrel-aged, shitake mushroom vinegar into a paper cup.

I tried it and the pungent taste went right up my nose. “Ew” is not the sound you want to hear when someone tastes your beloved product.

The idea of a vinegar infused with bourbon and shitake mushrooms was original. “How did you come up with the concept for this product line?” I asked. That’s when he shared an amazing story that hooked me and made me want to hear more.

“I was a sommelier for a Michelin-starred restaurant in New York,” he told me.

“The wine companies would send me bottles and bottles of free wine. I was living a life that looked thrilling on paper — a hot girlfriend, a cool job, and an exciting social life. But, I developed a problem with alcohol, had to stop drinking, and had to leave my job as a sommelier. That’s when my love of creating flavors took over. I started tinkering in the kitchen and decided to figure out how to infuse vinegar with liquor in unique ways.”

“That is an amazing story!” I said. “Not everyone has a story but you’ve got a doozy.” That story wasn’t on his social media or on the cards he handed out with his name and website address.

That story made him stand out, made me care about his business, made me want to root for him, and affirmed his expertise.

Your story is step one in standing out. It is the “why” of your marketing. It is step one in creating a relationship with your audience.

1. Tell a story that makes people care about your business

His story sets him apart from everyone else who has developed a homemade product. It is packed with information. It’s emotional. In a world of millions of products and thousands of vinegars, his one-of-a-kind story is also his why.

The detail about having been a sommelier validates his expertise since it means he has the ability to pair ingredients and has a heightened sense of smell and taste.

What’s more amazing than the expertise is that the guy developed his product as a way to overcome addiction. Like an alchemist who turns lead into gold, he mixed alcohol with vinegar to create potential gold for himself.

Would you trust a product that someone put his soul into? Damn straight.

His story is a classic hero’s journey. He had a seemingly happy life. He faced challenges and struggles. He overcame those struggles and learned valuable lessons, transforming himself in the process.

The second problem he is that he was selling the product instead of what it could do for people. Vinegar, like most products, is a commodity. Even infusing it with exciting flavors isn’t enough to make people want it.

People care a bit about the actual product but they care much more about what the product can do for them. They don’t need another vinegar, but they do need to be able to cook foods that will impress their family and friends.

2. Sell the inspiration, not the product

During many of the years I worked in marketing, the product I marketed was yarn. Only a few things could be more boring than vinegar and one of them is yarn. When I started working for the company, I suggested they offer free patterns.

“We are not in the pattern business,” one of the guys who owned the company said. But that was a mistake. The patterns were what inspired people to buy, as we found out when we eventually added thousands of patterns to our website.

So, I suggested to my new friend at the Sunday market that he offer recipes and instead of sampling vinegar he sample food made with the vinegar.

“Nobody tastes vinegar and says ‘I have to have this.’ But, if they taste a piece of pan-seared chicken deglazed with Madeira Sichuan calendula vinegar, then they will want the product that made it.

The creator of these tantalizing vinegars told me about how vinegar is a wonderful ingredient for deglazing a pan. I had always heard about deglazing but didn’t know how to do it. This leads to the next rule of marketing.

3. Educate people and you will grow your audience and create power users

When I got home from the market with my new selection of vinegar, I Googled “How to deglaze a pan.”

If you teach people to use your product in ways that make them look and feel good, you enlarge your market. You do more than create new users, you activate the high-volume users by improving their ability to use the product.

Product education (in this case, cooking instructions) made my life better, by making me more creative and by enriching my family dinners with new recipes.

Education enriches people’s lives. When you educate people on how to get more out of your product, they become the creators. They make the product their own.

The bottom line

A product is a black-and-white commodity until you color it with meaning and purpose.

The sommelier who sold vinegar was in love with the product. But his audience had to learn to love it.

Stop selling. Start giving people a reason to care about you and about your product by telling your story. Inspire your audience with ideas that make your product come to life. Educate them so that they can customize it to their needs and make it their own.

Talk about how great your product is and you’ll lose your audience. Show them how it will make their lives better and it sells itself.

The chief minister said the gang lured patients from hospitals and performed the operations privately in the region of Taxila, the city of Lahore and in Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

“They were able to do this in Kashmir because there is no law regarding kidney transplant, so it was easier for them to carry out the operations there,” Naqvi said.

Three deaths have so far been confirmed, according to the chief minister, but authorities were still confirming the data.

“There must be more operations that must have been carried out, the number is the only ones we’ve confirmed,” he added.

The missing link in Apple’s event

Though the mythology of personal computers is a long and misty one, the work of Douglas Englebart and his colleagues stands out as defining. In their 1972 piece, Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework, the imaginative foundation was laid for what eventually became the personal computer. Its purpose? To aid individuals and groups in “comprehending complex situations, isolating the significant factors, and solving problems.”

The framework Englebart and his colleagues proposed was made of four pieces: “a trained human being together with [their] artifacts, language, and methodology.” That is, the problem solver (the human) would describe and conceive of a problem using a language. They would then proceed to solve that problem by wielding artifacts according to some methodology. It’s a beautifully concise and expressive framework. For more on that, see my article The Unfinished Revolution, or, better yet, check out the original work.

Further compounding the pressure, as a founder, I couldn’t just tell the team how I felt. These super-ambitious engineers had poured their hearts and souls into the product. I had no way of telling the team we weren’t ready, and worse yet, no strategy for getting out of the situation — which is not something they would want to hear. I wanted to find the right language or framework to articulate our current position and convey the next steps that would get us to product/market fit, but was struggling to do so.

That’s because the descriptions of product/market fit I found were immensely helpful for companies post-launch. If, after launch, revenue isn’t growing, raising money is tough, the press doesn't want to talk to you and user growth is anemic, then you can safely conclude you don't have product/market fit. But in practice, because of my previous success as a founder, we didn’t have problems raising money. We could have gotten press, but we were actively avoiding it. And user growth wasn't happening because we deliberately choosing not to onboard more users. We were pre-launch — and we didn’t have any indicators to clearly illustrate our situation.

The descriptions of product/market fit all seemed so post hoc, so unactionable. I had a clear understanding of where we stood, but I had no way of conveying that to others — and no plan for the part that should come next.

So I racked my brain for an answer on how to travel the distance between where Superhuman was and the high bar that we needed to hit. And I eventually started to wonder: what if you could measure product/market fit? Because if you could measure product/market fit, then maybe you could optimize it. And then maybe you could systematically increase product/market fit until you achieved it.

The realm of social media marketing is akin to a river with swift currents - it's constantly flowing, ever-changing, and can sometimes take unexpected turns. Now, if you're a business, staying ahead in this river means not just swimming with the currents but anticipating its bends and turns. This anticipation is crucial for those looking to expand their online influence and resonate with their audience.

Now, you might wonder, "How do we anticipate these changes?" Well, forget stargazing or peering into a crystal ball. The clues are all around us. Just consider that a whopping 60% of organizations lean on social data every day. However, this isn't a stroll in the park. Brands are continually juggling shifting consumer habits, evolving user behaviors, and the entry of new spenders with distinct needs each day.

So, where to begin?

Start by keeping your eyes on social media influencers. Observe the partnerships they're forging with brands. Often, the products or services these influencers endorse give away hints about where consumer preferences are heading. But go beyond mere observation. Dive deep into their content. Look for patterns, recurring themes, and topics. The repetition often holds the secret to trends about to hit the mainstream. And don’t forget those influencers on the rise in your industry. By tracking their performance metrics, you'll uncover valuable insights. Remember, today's rising star might just be the beacon shining light on tomorrow's trend. Even micro-influencers, who might have fewer followers but a highly engaged audience, can often be the pioneers of niche trends. Collaborate and keep a tab on their content to spot avenues where your brand can make a mark.

Now, while the influencers might offer qualitative insights, nothing beats the precision of data analytics. This is where you get quantifiable evidence of what’s stirring the waters of social media trends. Engagement metrics, like likes, comments, shares, and click-through rates, can provide a real-time pulse of what's gaining traction. Tools like Sprout Social and Mention, which monitor conversations around your brand and relevant keywords, can be invaluable. Couple this with industry surveys and reports to get a broader perspective.

Yet, as we talk about data and influencers, don’t overlook the platforms themselves. Platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn are continually evolving. They introduce new features, hinting at new marketing avenues. Remember, these platforms sometimes test new features with a select group before a full-scale launch. Such beta tests can provide you with a sneak peek into the platform's future direction, giving your brand an early mover advantage. Also, always be prepared for algorithm changes, for they significantly impact content visibility and engagement.

And hey, always be adventurous. Test waters with new platforms that are just starting to gain attention. Dive deep into case studies of those who've made a mark on these platforms. Their journey might just offer the roadmap for your success.

Another treasure trove of insights? Online forums and industry-specific communities. Places like Reddit and Quora, where industry enthusiasts and experts hang out, discussing, questioning, and sharing. Monitoring these platforms can offer insights straight from the ground, often giving you firsthand information on emerging trends.

Moreover, it’s always wise to keep an eye on the competition. What are they up to? Any changes in their messaging strategy or creative campaigns? Such shifts might be indicators of upcoming trends. And while you're at it, watch the engagement metrics on their posts. A sudden spike might just be the sign of a new trend catching wind.

Lastly, tools like Trendspottr can be a boon, helping you sieve through the noise and uncover trends pertinent to your brand. Input specific hashtags, keywords, or influencers, and these tools will show you precisely where the conversations are headed. They don't just offer insights but also give strategies on optimizing marketing, analyzing competitors, and creating timely content.

To sum it up, in the dynamic world of social media marketing, waiting for trends to arrive on your doorstep isn't the best strategy. It's about being proactive. By analyzing influencers, harnessing the power of data, staying updated with platform changes, and keeping ears to the ground in industry discussions, your brand won’t just stay afloat but will ride the waves of change, always staying ahead of the curve.

Are you a ceo, cmo, vp of sales, or marcom manager? If so, please listen to this!

While there’s no such thing as the “perfect answer” for how to attract new clients or customers, Content Marketing is certainly something worth trying these days.

When I first started getting seriously involved with Content Marketing back in 2008, I honestly didn’t know much about it. That’s not too surprising - it was fairly new at the time.

Well, at least the name “Content Marketing” was new; the concepts behind it had been around since the early 1900s. But I met a fellow in the Washington, D.C. area who hired me to join his Amplifier Content Marketing team because I’d already had many years of experience in what we traditionally just considered to be “marketing.”

My title was Vice President of Business Development and my job was to pitch business to all types of large corporations ranging from Canon to Sony to Melitta Coffee. The business I was pitching was music-based content; the owner of our firm had a background as a music magazine publisher and had somehow been exposed to this thing called “Content Marketing.”

He decided that we could market our existing music assets (articles, interviews, photos, videos) to companies that might want to leverage that content to attract more customers. Customers who loved music.

Long story short, our business closed after just a few months. It was the time when the stock market crashed, fall of 2008, and most of our prospects had a hard time getting their minds around the idea of becoming a “music content publisher” of sorts. Content Marketing was just too much of a radical concept, I guess.

Fast forward a couple of years and I decided to start offering my services as a copywriter for hire. One thing led to another, and I soon added video production to those services. I’m a former NBC television news anchor and executive producer.

And then one day, I mentioned Content Marketing to someone and they’d actually heard of it! Enough time had passed that now some businesses were catching onto the idea of using content to “tell their stories” and get their own prospects, clients, customers, and members interested in what they had to say.

It was suddenly favorable to talk about Content Marketing!
This was in 2010 and it was the birth of what has become one of the greatest loves of my life - Smart Content Marketing, LLC in Washington, D.C.

I hope you’ll follow our stories in the coming weeks…months…years. Maybe they’ll help you in some small way. Thanks in advance!