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Does anyone listen to the radio anymore?
No.
But everyone is listening to podcasts. Like, everyone. The number of Podcast listeners is growing at insane rates across all demographics.
Starting a podcast is a fantastic way to promote your blog across platforms. And it’s easy to do. But, you need to create the right content and take a few important marketing steps in order to send traffic to your blog.
If not, you won’t get relevant listeners. Or worse, you’ll send traffic to competitors.
Here’s how to funnel traffic from your podcast to your blog the right way.
Relevant Theme, Different Content
It goes without saying that your podcast and blog should share a common theme or niche. If your blog is about baking, your podcast should probably be about baking too, or at least something culinary.
That’s the easy part.
Developing content is a bit trickier. If your goal is to send traffic to your blog, you want to make sure that your blog and podcast content are complementary yet different.
If your content is too similar, new visitors to your blog will bounce. If it’s too different, they may Google the topic of your podcast and end up on a competitor’s blog.
Try to keep your content interrelated. For example, if you review a cookbook on your blog, you could interview the author on your podcast.
Parallel content will make it easy for listeners to become readers and vice versa. Plus, it will make it simple to promote both your blog and podcast.
To help you form ideas on how to create parallel content, try to break down potential topics into text-friendly and non-text content.
Text-friendly content includes how-tos, guides, and lists. Anything image-related should also go on the blog. Nobody wants a photo described to them.
Non-text content includes discussion, interviews, and other types of interactive/social content. Though, stories work well in non-text form too.
Get Creative with Your Podcast Content
It’s easy to get a little too informative with your podcast content, especially if you have a business-related blog.
Your readers may come to your blog for valuable nuggets of info.
But remember this: YOU CAN’T SKIM A PODCAST.
If your podcast content contains just as many valuable tidbits as your blog posts but the delivery is dry and boring, then your listeners will bail before they hear your blog promo.
What I’m trying to say is, your podcast has to be dynamic and entertaining.
How do you do that? Here’s how:
- Tell a story: Storytelling is the most engaging way to deliver information. Tell a story from your life, do a case study, give an analogy, or create a metaphor.
- Use sound effects: Sound effects add a new dynamic to your podcast, and they help your audience to visualize what you are speaking about. Plus, they’re FUN. You don’t have to make your own, either. There are plenty of free sound effects available online.
- Show emotion: You may need to exaggerate your emotions on your podcast because your listeners can’t see your face. Even if you think you’re emoting like crazy, you probably still sound monotone to your audience. Turn those feels up to 11.
- Change it up: On your blog, your readers can click between posts at will. But on your podcast, they are a captive audience. People have limited attention spans, so keep your content dynamic and keep the valuable info rolling. If you don’t deliver something worthwhile in the first few minutes, your listeners will abandon ship.
Promote your Podcast
There are over 850,000 active podcasts, so you’re going to have to promote yours if you want to attract listeners.
Where do you start? How about your blog!
Your readers should be your initial listeners. If they love the podcast, it’s likely you’ll attract more traffic. If they don’t, it’s back to the drawing board.
Once you’ve developed a cross-platform connection that works, it’s time to seek out more podcast traffic.
You can promote your podcast easily in the following ways:
- Interact with your listeners: Your listeners love you. Show them some love in return. If you feature their content or mention their name in a podcast, they’ll probably talk about it a lot more to friends and family. Encourage interaction with contests, discussion, Q&As, and more.
- Use SEO for your episode titles: iTunes, Google, and other podcast apps have their own SEO algorithms. Optimize your titles with keywords and you’ll be more likely to appear in searches.
- Buy ads: Ads on Facebook, Reddit, and Google are not too expensive and they can give you a quick boost in listeners and readers.
- Start separate social media pages for your podcast: Your podcast listeners will look for you on social media. If they only find your blog’s social pages, they might not make the connection. Create new pages for the podcast and link to your blog within.
Network and Collaborate
Technically, networking is part of promoting your podcast. But it’s so important that it needs its own section.
Podcasts are SOCIAL. The content on podcasts is about interaction. All of the non-text types of content that lend themselves to podcasting involve social interaction and connection, so your podcast will only improve if you collaborate with others.
Of course, this means working with other bloggers and podcasters on your (and their) podcasts. But it also means reaching out to all sorts of people within your niche to get them on your show.
Every time you work with someone new, they will promote your podcast to their fans. That’s thousands of potential listeners and readers per collaboration.
If you’ve built your blog and podcast to complement each other, your new podcast traffic will reach your blog in no time.
Time to Start Podcasting
The best thing about podcasting is that it’s easy to get into. All you need is a mic and a little creativity. It’s way easier than making YouTube videos.
Why not get started today? Before you hit record, do some polling on your blog to see what sort of content your readers would like to see on your podcast. This is a great way to generate a game plan.
