5 Reasons To Start A Podcast

Podcasting can be an invaluable tool. If you have a business, a podcast will help you to build an audience, get new customers, highlight your strengths and set your company as the market leader. If you don't have a business, a podcast can still be a powerful tool for meeting new people, and for getting your ideas across. Although growing in popularity, podcasting is the most underestimated social media channel, giving you the most growth opportunity in the near future. This blog post explains why podcasting is the next frontier of brand marketing, and we explain it using podcast segments from the podcasts themselves. In the past, if you wanted to advertise something through word of mouth, without spending any money, the easiest and most effective way was to blog about your learnings. Thousands of people took advantage of it, from Seth Godin and 37 Signals, to established corporations like Google. Blogs were the way to reach millions of people who wanted to hear from you. But blogging got so popular, so saturated and competitive, it lost some of its magic powers. SEO experts and professional markets flooded the market. Longing for another way to express themselves, authentic creators turned to YouTube, but that too was soon overrun by professionals with excessive advertising budgets. Creators needed a new platform to express themselves, and podcasts offer just that. Unlikely blogging, podcasting is a relatively low effort activity. To start, all you need is a microphone and a friend to talk to. Pick a topic you both know something about, and discuss it. If you have the money, buy the best microphone for podcasting, but it is entirely not a requirement. A simple pair of Apple headphones, the ones that come with an iPhone, are great! Just make sure you are recording in a quiet room with little echo. Focus on uncovering something exciting that your audience might yet know about, educate them, enlighten and inspire them. At the end of the day, the best podcasts deliver more value to their listeners than they get back. Dan Romero, the host of Disrupting Japan and now the Google Startups head in Japan says that podcasting lets you tell stories like no other medium, it is an amazing tool for networking and brand building, and it can even be financially rewarding if you put in the work. Courtland Allen, the founder of Indie Hackers site and podcast, explains that podcasting had a huge long-term value add to his business. Courtland started it as a side project, but in just two years the podcast was bringing in more business than his main website. Podcasts can grow your network, just ask the right questions. The Art of Charm guys brought thousands of customers to their business, all because they were willing to give a lot of their secrets for free on the podcast. They never had to leave the house, or go to a single networking event. Podcasting is magic! Of course, like most things podcasting is easy to start, but it takes work to get good at. If you are starting from zero, if you have no followers on other social channels, where do you get your first listeners? Lucky for us, the master of marketing Gary Vaynerchuk has a trick for how to build an audience when you have no following. In short, Gary says you should leverage the followers of other people. That's why so many celebrity guests end up chatting on multiple podcasts. When they share the episodes with their established audience, you get to ride the wave. Perhaps the hardest part of starting a podcast is consistency and public humiliation. Short of being Tim Ferries or Joe Rogan, you are going to struggle at first, you will make mistakes, screw up, and be embarrassed by your errors. Very few people will listen to your podcasts at the start, and even fewer will care. This is the reality, and it hurts, but there is a way to persevere. Do not do it for the money, or the fame, or all the business and networking reasons I just told you about. Do it because you can add value to the world. Steli, one of the best podcasters out there, has an answer to overcoming the emotional hurdle of content creation. Take a listen, and remember what he says. It is all true. Last but not least, If podcasting seems like a lot of work, you can always spend money, instead of time. Grow your product through affiliate marketing, pay other creators to send their listeners to your brand, to your product. It won't be as difficult, or as much fun, but it will get the job done and in the process will put a few dollars in the pockets of hardworking podcasters elsewhere. Whether or not you start a podcast today, the key is to stop worrying and start doing. Once you commit to podcasting, put a plan in place and go for it. Happy podcasting!