WE ARE SOUND MEDIA

Showcase your expertise with your own podcast

You really know your stuff. I mean you REALLY know your stuff. But how do you showcase that to the world?

Well a podcast is a really great way of showing off your expertise, naturally and organically, and in a way which engages with your audience and gives them genuine value.

And when we talk about ‘your expertise’, in this context, it isn’t necessarily limited to just you as an individual – we could mean your entire team, everyone within your business. Podcasting allows you to show off what you all know – and why wouldn’t you? When someone uses your business’ services, they don’t just get one person’s input, they get the sum of all of your parts.

One of the organisations I work with is a digital recruiter – they have an entire podcast channel, with several different shows spanning all of their main areas of expertise.

Similarly I recently started working with an education company. They have a different member of their team on each episode, themed around an actual question they’ve received from one of their service users.

Answer questions

Sometimes, it isn’t rocket science. If people are searching for the answers to questions, and you can provide those answers better than anyone else, then you’ve got them.

Of course, the questions need to be relevant to your industry or space, and you need to make sure you have a clear and effective call-to-action too (a good lead magnet so you can get their info, maybe?) otherwise it’s all a bit of a waste.

Stop for a second and think about your industry. Think about what questions potential customers or clients are likely to have. I bet you can come up with ten of the top of your head. There you go, you’ve got ten episodes.

You can also use the internet to help you – sites like Answer The Public will help you get a feel for what people are searching for.

Repurposing

You might already be producing blogs or other forms of content – video maybe – to showcase your expertise. Your simplest step into podcasting could well be to create an audio version of your blog.

Think about how an audio book is just a read out version of a printed book… we’re talking about the same sort of principle here.

Get whoever’s done the blog or video to plan out an audio version, record it, and hey presto you have a podcast.

Yeah of course there is a little bit more to it than just that, but essentially you’ve done the hard work – coming up with the subject and the actual body of the content.

Be Strategic

I say this to everyone when it comes to podcasting: it needs to be backed up by a strategy.

We touched on this a little earlier – there’s little point doing a podcast which brilliantly answers someone’s question if you haven’t thought about the right CTA to help move that person into your pipeline.

SEO is really important here too, and should be part of your strategy. You need your episodes to be named correctly and the right keyphrases throughout your show notes to make sure that you match.

Similarly, it’s really worthwhile following up your podcast with a written form of content too, and embedding the episode onto the page, so you’re also ranking in Google searches. If your approach is to repurpose content as we touched on further up the page, then you may already have this covered, but make sure you give SEO the thought it deserves.

Show a bit of you

How does the old saying go? People buy from people. I know you’re not DIRECTLY trying to sell through a podcast for your business, but that’s the overall aim, so it applies here.

Show us your personality. Reflect your brand. Get the tone right. That doesn’t mean you have to be super happy and jokey – just make it a fair representation.

I’m not picking on solicitors here, honestly I’m not – but if you’re a solicitor doing a podcast about quite complex legal matters, it is naturally going to need to have a more grown up and serious feel to it.

If you’re a coach interviewing some really interesting founders, you can have a lot more fun and show what makes you YOU.

What next?

Let’s talk more specifically about you and your business and where a podcast will allow you to show off your expertise – set up a call here