How podcasting can help grow your agency

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Hello and welcome to today’s webinar. I’m Chip Griffin, the founder of SAGA, the Small Agency Growth Alliance. And today we’re going to be talking about how podcasting can help grow your agency. And for those of you who have participated in these trainings regularly, you’ll notice that I look a little bit different today because I’ve got this big microphone in front of me, and that’s because I thought we would do this a little bit more in the style of a podcast, since that’s what we’re talking about.

So I’ve done away with having slides and those sorts of things, and we’re just going to have a conversation about how podcasting can help, what goes into creating a podcast for your agency, both from a strategic and planning perspective, as well as some of the more practical technology steps. So, as always, if you are interested in asking a question, you have the Q& A button at the bottom of your screen, and I would encourage you to use that.

I will try to answer those questions. I’ll keep an eye on it this, this time since we’re doing it in this more conversational style. I’ll try to keep an eye as we go along so that perhaps I can address some of those questions in more real time than I usually do. We’ll see how well I do at that.

You just never know how much I’m going to get distracted by those things and how much I can actually still focus on you, the listener, but in any case, hopefully you will get some good ideas for things that you might do from a podcasting perspective to help grow your agency over the next, probably 30 to 45 minutes, depending upon how long the conversation takes us to get where we need to go.

As always, we have webinars just about every Wednesday at 1. PM. Eastern time. So be sure to check the schedule at smallagencygrowth.com for additional upcoming webinars. I know we’ve got some coming up on, , hiring and, , some, some different sales and growth tactics that you can use, for growing your agency, particularly paid discovery and things like that.

So. I’d encourage you to join that. And of course, you can always join the small agency community for free at smallagencygrowth.com/join. All right. With that, let’s go ahead and dive into the conversation directly. And so podcasting, you’ve, you certainly heard about podcasting. I’m sure it’s something that you may already be using on behalf of your clients.

It may be something that you listen to personally. Podcasting really has taken off in mainstream popularity, particularly pre pandemic, as people were taking advantage of podcasts to listen to during their commutes or at the gym. And even as we’ve gone through the covid era, people have continued to listen to podcasts as they’ve changed their own routines.

They’ve shifted from perhaps listening while they’re on a commute to listening while they’re out for a walk or a jog or something like that. They may even be listening at home. It’s very easy to use the smart devices we have in our homes to listen to podcasts. So they’re certainly becoming more prevalent.

They’re becoming easier to consume. It’s, it’s not as difficult as it was 15 or 20 years ago for you to subscribe to a podcast. Now. Your phone probably has a podcast app on it, whether that’s Apple podcasts or Google play or something like that, where you’re able to simply click one button when you go to a website and be able to start subscribing to that conversation to that series of shows.

And so how can you use this for your own agency? Let me sort of turn back the clock a little bit because I actually got started with online audio back in the mid 1990s, I believe 1997 was when I first became a regular contributor to what was then called an online radio show. And it was a lot more complicated to do things back then than it is today, and we didn’t really have very many listeners, but it was something that we started out doing.

And. As we were doing it way back then, we were trying to mimic traditional radio, so it was much more of a talk radio format, which is there are still some podcasts that are like that, but they’ve taken on a little bit of a different shape. Back then we were actually trying to get them to be the kinds of things that could be used by a real terrestrial radio station.

So. We stuck to specific time limits and those kinds of things, something that very few podcasts today adhere to where you’ll listen to a show and it will vary in length from week to week. Whereas back then, we were trying to really hit those marks as if we were doing traditional radio. So the technology was harder.

The production was more difficult. And then we move forward. And in the late 90s, I produced an interview podcast series focused on the New Hampshire primary because I had moved from Washington where I had been living back to New Hampshire and I wanted to keep my DC network intact. So I created what was effectively a podcast, although back then you couldn’t really subscribe to it.

So I just posted it on a website where I was keeping what we would eventually call a blog. At the time, it was just a website. , and so it was interviews with people involved in the New Hampshire primary, primarily political operatives, journalists, those kinds of things. And it was a great opportunity to learn, and, and help develop my craft at this very new audio communications online skill.

But what it really taught me was the value of those conversations. And that’s something that I’ve stuck with through most of my podcasts over the last 20 years or so. And having that interview component can be a really powerful tool. So that’s one of the things that we will talk about in our time together today, how you can use interviews to have conversations and to build your networks. Because when I was producing that audio show back in 1999 and 2000, I was building out my network of people involved in the New Hampshire primary so that I continued to get more sources so that I had information that I can include in my newsletter on my website and it allowed me to network with them for that reason.

But it also allowed me to network with people who might become clients, because I was able to talk to people who were perhaps involved in issue advocacy or the kinds of things that my agency at the time did consulting for. We were doing digital marketing for public affairs programs. So having those kinds of opportunities in those interviews was really valuable, really powerful.

And I’ve continued to do that over the next 20 years or so with most of those shows because that networking function of a podcast can be extremely valuable. It also, frankly, makes some of the content development easier because it’s not sitting there and on your own, sitting there and talking to a microphone as I’m doing today.

This is something that you certainly can do with a podcast. And we’ll talk a little bit about how you might integrate solo casts into your podcast repertoire, but for the most part, podcasts today that are in this particular space would have either interviews or regular co hosts or those kinds of things.

So as we move the calendar forward in the mid to late 2000s, I started a podcast where it was more of a round table format. So I would typically have two to three guests. And we would sit there and we would talk about the issues of the week from a communications perspective. It was called the Media Bullseye Roundtable.

And so that was an opportunity not so much to network with new people, because most of those guests were already in my network, but it was an opportunity to do a couple of things. We were able to focus on some of the Issues of the day, which helped me refine my thinking, the things that I could use to advise clients more effectively.

But it was also something where it gave me an opportunity to reach a broad swath of people through the listenership who might be interested in the same kinds of challenges and how they could solve them. And so they were able to listen to me and the other panelists talk about our perspectives and what we thought about some of the emerging trends or some of the top stories of the week.

and figure out how that might fit into their own philosophy, their own approach to communications. So it gave the listeners an opportunity to, to feel like they knew me more before I had a more substantive conversation with them. So now let’s move ahead to, currently. And so currently I run several different podcasts.

I have the Agency Leadership Podcast, which I co host with Gini Dietrich of Spin Sucks. We’ve been doing it now for two years. Gosh, I guess almost two and a half years hard to believe it’s been that long, but it’s a weekly show where, it’s just the two of us. We don’t have guests or anything like that, but we have a conversation about something that’s important to agency owners, some aspect of the business, whether that’s growth, profitability, hiring, all these different topics, the same kinds of topics that I may talk about to you on some of these webinar series or some of the other content that I put out at SAGA, but this is an opportunity for Gini and I to have really in depth conversations over a 20 to 30 minute show about some of the things that are important to agency owners and what that does is it allows a couple of things for us, because we both have our own businesses, we’re able to cross pollinate our audiences.

So, I’ve got my fans, she’s got her fans, and by having a show together, we’re able to merge those and have a, first of all, a greater audience that the podcast can reach, so that’s helpful, but also it means that some of her people are getting introduced to me and some of my people are getting introduced to her because there are certainly things that we do that overlap.

We both spend at least part of our time advising agency owners on growth tactics, on strategy and things like that. But we have a different style. We have different programs, and so it allows people who are in my audience and perhaps not interested in the way that I serve, maybe they’re more interested in the way that she does or some of the resources that she provides, and vice versa.

So what this is doing is it’s helping us find the best match for the people in our audiences, if in fact, it might be one of us to help them on their growth journey. And I think that’s really important for all of you to remember as you’re building your own agency business. It’s not about selling. It’s about solving.

And podcasting can be a great tool for helping people to solve their problems and finding out if what you provide, if your expertise, if the talent that you have built into your agency is the right solution for that individual listener who has then become a prospect. So that can be a powerful use of podcasting.

So I’ve got the Agency Leadership Podcast. I have Chats with Chip, which is a show that I’ve had for many years and it’s made some evolutions over the course of that time. It focused more broadly on communications, but in recent years now also focuses largely on the agency space and conversations with agency owners or experts.

And so that’s a tool that I’m able to use, to continue to build the network out. So just as I used those conversations during the presidential campaign of 2000, I now use Chats with Chip to have those same kinds of conversations within my audience. And it might be that I use it as a way to have a conversation with someone that I’m just interested in getting to know.

I’ve reached out plenty of times to experts who I just, I thought it would be helpful if we knew each other. I’d love to perhaps find a way to collaborate in the future, didn’t have a specific agenda. So the first point of entry was a podcast, because a podcast interview is something that most people will not say no to.

Most people are happy to come on your show and talk about what it is that they do, because most people are interested in spreading their own message. wider, getting more people to know their product, their service, their issue, their idea, or what have you. And so, it’s a much better way to open a door with somebody than to simply call up and say, Hey, can I have 30 minutes of your time?

I’d like to bend your ear. Or, can I have 30 minutes of your time? I’d love to tell you about what I can do. Now, naturally, when I have these podcast interview conversations, we spend a little bit of time before and sometimes after talking about what they do and what I do. So inevitably the guest gets to know a little bit about my business.

And in some cases it’s been the teaser that’s gotten them interested in learning more. And we’ve proceeded to a more business development oriented conversation after the show, and from there, some of those have become clients. In fact, I’ve had some people who have pitched to be a guest on one of my podcasts only to end up becoming a client because of it.

So they never were out looking for the services that I provided, but because they pitch they wanted to be on the show to talk about whatever they were promoting. We had a good conversation. They learned about what I did outside of that individual podcast. And so that then turned into additional revenue for me and hopefully good solutions for them.

So podcasting can be a great way to open some of those doors, particularly for those of you who are not really enthusiastic about sales outreach. And we had a webinar a few weeks ago about how to do sales. If you are not a sales centric agency owner, if you are not someone who is excited about sales, or maybe you’re even afraid of sales or reluctant to do the kind of outreach that you think you need to do in order to grow, podcasting is a great way to, to knock down some of the barriers.

It makes it so that you’re having a more friendly human conversation with as your initial entry point with that individual. So podcasting can be great from that perspective. So I’ve got the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’ve got Chats with Chip. Then I’ve got a video show that’s sort of like a podcast. And in fact, I may start distributing it as a podcast as well because it’s not particularly visual most of the time.

So it would actually translate well into a hybrid video and audio. Podcast. And I think that’s an important point to consider here that podcasting doesn’t have to be just audio. I mean, it does to be technically a podcast, but you can leverage it for additional video purposes as well. So let’s hit pause on that.

And I’ll come back to that in a moment. But so this show that I have is a Friday show. noon Eastern time, and it’s called the Small Agency Talk Show. It’s something I just started earlier this year. And what it does is it brings together, it’s sort of like the, the Media Bullseye round table that I had years ago, where I brought in communications and marketing experts to have a conversation about current topics, current events.

Well, this is a group of small agency experts, folks who are doing things in HR, business development, operations, accounting, et cetera. And so I bring in a couple of those folks each week and we talk about some question that that’s been brought to us by an agency owner in our own practices or something that was in the news or something that’s just it’s kind of gnawing at us.

Sometimes one of us will bring forth something where we’re just like, geez, this is this is really burning me up that I keep seeing this. We need to talk about it. Sometimes it may be that one of us brings up something where we’ve been asked a question, but we don’t really have the best answer ourselves, so we throw it out to the group so we can have a group discussion about it.

And so those open some great doors for, further thinking and for, information sharing. So I get tons of value out of those conversations. Hopefully listeners do as well. And so that’s another way to use podcasts. So I’ve sort of touched on three different kinds of uses for podcasts based on what I’m doing.

But then the fourth piece is actually appearing on other people’s podcasts. So this discussion today is not simply about creating your own podcast. I mean, that’s certainly something that you can do. But the other thing to think about is, are there podcasts that you can be a guest on? Because a lot of podcasts are looking for good, high quality guests.

And if you’re out there and you say, look, I’m listening to this show, I think I have a lot to add. Their audience is my audience, their audience would be interested in what I have to say, then that’s the kind of thing where you might look at reaching out and saying, hey, Hey, You know, I’ve seen some of the some of your episodes, and that’s important.

You need to you need to actually listen to some of the episodes of these podcasts before you or your team is pitching you to be a guest on it, because it’s very easy to miss the mark on podcast pitching, and I get inundated with requests to be on my shows. That are just so far off the mark that it’s laughable and it, frankly, it’s a waste of their time.

It’s a waste of my time and and it’s it’s really frustrating. And so it’s something where if you’re interested in being a guest on a show, make sure that you take the time to figure out if you are a match. One of the things you need to think about first is does this show even have guests? I mean, Gini and I get requests.

Multiple times a week for folks to be on our show. In two and a half years we’ve never had a single guest in two and a half years. It has never had that format. We don’t do interviews and yet we still get inundated with pitches and that’s clearly from people who are not paying any attention to what the show is.

So they may say, listen to your show all the time. It’s great. No, you don’t. Because if you listen to the show all the time, you would know that we don’t have guests. So don’t be that person. Find the right fits. Make sure that whatever you can talk about is something that that podcast host would be interested in.

But it can be a great way to get your agency out in front of new people. People, and it’s a good way to get started before perhaps you start your own podcast because it gives you some experience in how people operate their podcast. What do they do as far as their pre show communication, their post show communication, how do they record, what tools are they using?

What’s the format that they use? Do they edit a lot? Do they just go live to tape? Do they, do they have fancy equipment? Do they have rudimentary equipment? You know, all of these different things are things that you can learn by being a guest before you take the leap to create your own podcast. But now let’s say that you’ve decided.

That’s great. I’ve done some podcast interviews or maybe I haven’t, but I just, I know that I want to create my own show for my agency. Well, then what you have to do is you have to start thinking about what is the show going to be about? What is your focus? And it is important for your podcast to have some real clear direction.

So it starts by defining who your audience is and probably your audience is going to be people who fit in your ideal client pool. So it really starts with knowing who your ideal clients are. And, and so if you know who your ideal client is, that makes your whole business development process easier, but it certainly makes crafting your podcast easier because once you’ve defined your ideal client, you then have a sense as to what your target audience will be for your podcast.

And you want to be realistic with yourself. Are the people who are going to be searching for an agency like yours likely to listen to podcasts? So it might be worth doing some research and talk to some of your existing clients, talk to some prospects, and find out, do they listen to podcasts? Which ones do they listen to?

And so do that same market research that you would probably do if a client came to you and was asking you to put together a PR, marketing, or advertising campaign. You wouldn’t start blind for a client and you shouldn’t start blind for yourself. So start thinking about what are the kinds of things that your audience would be interested in.

And so then you’ve defined your audience. You now start thinking about some of the topics that you might be covering on the show. And, you know, if you’re going to be doing, say, a weekly podcast, which is probably the most common frequency, but you can do different frequencies twice a month is not uncommon.

Monthly is not uncommon. I think anything less than monthly is probably, you know, it’s not consistent enough. So I would tend to lean towards weekly or biweekly, but you know, it’s really just a question of being consistent. It’s a question of making sure that you’ve got enough material to cover in those shows and I suspect you will most agencies have plenty to talk about because you can either focus on some of the kinds of services that you offer the solutions that you’re offering.

So, I mean, let’s say that you are an agency that is focused on social media advertising, well, then you could have a podcast that’s focused on that as well and talks about some of the strategies and tactics that you can use for advertising on Facebook or LinkedIn or Twitter or those kinds of things.

And it starts to give you some additional authority in the space, it gives you the opportunity to have conversations with other experts in that that you might learn from, but certainly that you can share that expertise with your target audience. so much. And it also gives you the opportunity to talk with people who are facing the challenges that you solve.

So, if I’m interested in figuring out how I can use Facebook more effectively for my business, I might listen to your podcast, say, hey, you sound really smart. Maybe I should, instead of trying to figure all this out by myself, I should work with someone who actually has been there, done that, and has the level of expertise needed to be a podcast host on that particular topic.

So, you can really leverage your podcast in that way if you’ve targeted effectively. So you have to think about those things. You have to start mapping out what some of those episodes might look like. I’m not of the mindset that you need to have a ton of episodes in the can to begin with. There are some people who would advocate that you record a whole season and seasons are becoming more popular with podcasts where perhaps you might put a 12 episode season out over the course of three months.

And then you, you take a break and come back again later for season two. That’s certainly a valid approach. I personally think that it’s, it’s more valuable just to be pretty consistent over time and continue to move forward. But, you know, again, you have to figure out what works for your business and your audience and as you’re putting it together, start mapping out, you know, What’s the format of the show going to be?

Is it going to be interviews? Is it going to be live to tape? I prefer live to tape because it requires a whole lot less editing on the back end. The only thing that I’m really editing typically in my audio would be any glitches that occur or things like that, but I’m not doing editorial style modifications to the audio files.

I’m not Interspersing my commentary with the interview, I’m not extracting my own piece of the interview to, to go to sort of a more, packaged news piece style, but those are all valid approaches too, those all work. There are great podcasts out there that take more of the NPR style where they’ll do a long form.

radio style, conversation piece, where you have a mix of the reporter speaking and the expert guest interview or interviewees, who are part of that. So there are all these different kinds of approaches. You can use the solo cast. There are good podcasts out there that they’re just the host to the audience, and that’s it.

Now, you do have to remember that when you’re doing that, you don’t have the advantage of being able to show anything visual. So you have to make sure that if you’re doing it solo, you’re able to communicate everything that you want with words. And so, that’s something that most communicators certainly can find a way to do, but a lot of us when we’re teaching things like to find additional ways to show things and explain things visually in addition to the spoken word.

So, just as I’m doing this show without any of those aids to sort of show you how you can do that in the one to one format, you need to make sure that you’re comfortable with that as well. And everybody’s style is a little bit different when it comes to that. So think about what the content is going to be.

Think about what the format is going to be, the frequency. And then once you’ve nailed that, then it’s a question of sitting down and actually figuring out what the logistics are to get it done. So logistically speaking, let’s start with, if you’re going to have guests, if you’re going to do it solo, obviously it’s, it’s easy, right?

You don’t need to think about much in the way of scheduling or anything like that. You just need to block out time on your own calendar. You can do one show at a time. You can batch them. The only thing I would say is if you’re going to batch them, just make sure that you think about speaking in an evergreen way.

So if you’re recording something, that’s probably not going to be distributed for four or five weeks, then you don’t want to be referring to something that happened this week or last week. where the audience knows that that was actually a month or two ago. Same thing if, by the way, if you’re doing it with a guest, it’s often helpful to say to the guest that this is not going to be broadcast for another two months so that hopefully they’re that same mindset that they are not out there saying things in that same time sensitive manner.

And it’s not the end of the world if something gets through that way, but it’s just it’s better if you can try to have the conversation in that style. So then you start looking at other logistics. If you’re going to have a guest, how do you schedule them? I love using a service called Calendly. It makes it super easy to just send a link to the guest or to their representative who’s able to then figure out what of my recording times are available for them to pick.

And so it has saved me immense amount of time. It has made doing interview style shows much easier because we don’t have all of this email back and forth. And so that’s a great tool to use if that’s something that you are interested in doing having guests on your show. So I would recommend Calendly or another calendaring service that you can use for it.

And the beauty of Calendly is I use it for all of my meetings, but you can set up different kinds of meetings. So for example, there are certain times that I prefer to record and certain times that I prefer not to so that the available time slots for the podcast scheduling link are different from the ones for regular phone calls or zoom calls or those kinds of things so you can customize it that way.

Well, then you need to start thinking about the logistics from a recording standpoint. And so obviously you’ll need a microphone. You don’t need something that’s nearly this fancy. I’ve had this one for about 15 years now. It is my favorite mic of all time. It is the Shure SM7B in case you were interested.

It is, it is not an inexpensive microphone, but it, it works, I think, really great and does a nice job. With my voice, it’s something that’s very popular amongst traditional radio talk show hosts as well. So you don’t need something like that, though. You can use their great $30 USB microphones on the market these days that you can use, that you can plug into your laptop or your desktop and you’re good to go just like that.

So don’t think that you need to spend a lot of money on it, but you do need a microphone. I would encourage you not to use the one that’s built into your laptop itself. If you’re doing an interview, make sure that you’re using either headphones or earbuds or something so that your voice isn’t feeding back into the microphone or so your guests audio isn’t feeding back into the microphone because it can create a weird echo in the recording and you may not even notice it.

while you are recording. These are things you want to recommend to your guests as well. So I always try to have a pre show checklist for them or information sheet so that they know how I’m going to record what the process is going to be like, how long it will take, what they should be doing as far as microphones and headphones and things like that.

And some of your guests will be very familiar with all these things already, and it will be, you know, a needless reminder for them, but others who may not be guesting as often, it may be beneficial for them to have some of those reminders in hand. From a logistic standpoint you also need to consider whether you’re going to be doing your podcast with a video component as well, and I generally recommend these days that you record video at the same time that you’re doing audio, even if you don’t distribute the show via video in its entirety, it gives you additional material that you can use either now or in the future from a video standpoint.

And because it’s a video recording of a podcast, it’s often a good way for you to dip your toe into the video waters without the same level of pressure that that many feel if you’re going into video and it’s solely for the purpose of video. So you can use a service like Streamyard. That’s how I record a lot of my podcast conversations these days.

Streamyard is generally for live streaming, but you can actually use it to record things for future use as well. And so that’s what I use for the Agency Leadership Podcast, Chats with Chip. And so what it does is It allows me to record these conversations. I get all of the video. It’s pretty clear, quality audio and video.

I can take the audio file as it is and use that for the podcast feed distribution. But then I take the video file and I put that on YouTube and on my website and places like that. So that someone who’s interested in consuming the video, and, and so they get the benefit of sort of seeing behind the scenes as the recording takes place, sort of like how, you know, 15, 20 years ago, it was, you know, fairly popular.

And actually, even today, you still will see on some, some cable sports shows, for example, it’ll be a simulcast of a radio show. So you see behind the scenes in the studio and they’ve got the headset and the mic and all that kind of stuff, but, you know, they’ve also got the video camera. So that’s a little bit what

it’s like when you take the video recording of your podcast recording. and share it out. So I like having those additional distribution tools. You don’t have to do it. Certainly, if you are going to do video, make sure that your guests know this in advance. You don’t want to surprise them. And if they’re expecting to be recording audio only, they may not dress the same way that they might for video.

And it’s not that you have to dress fancy for video or anything like that. But some people I’ve certainly had guests who had not realized that my recording was going to be on video. And so they They asked for a minute to go, you know, put on a collared shirt or something like that. And that’s fine. But the more that you are able to educate people in advance, the better.

It’s very helpful to make sure that they understand even if you’ve shared things via email or checklist or something like that in advance, make sure in your pre recording session that you’ll have because typically there’s some back and forth for at least four or five minutes before you hit the record button.

Make sure in that time that you set out what the show is going to look like, you know, remind them it’s going to be live to tape if that’s how you do it. So that you don’t have a situation where they think that it’s being edited. And so may the answer they say, hold on, I’d actually like to revise that. You know, don’t, don’t hesitate to let them know how you do things.

I always explain how I do my open, what it’s going to sound like, at what point I’m going to pass over to them. I talk to them about, you know, where the promotional items that they want to talk about might be I usually put those at the end of the show where I basically give them free reign to promote whatever URL that they want to for their own purposes.

And so walking them through that so that they understand that it takes some of the pressure off. Sometimes the guest might feel to work things into the conversation and feel like they need to just jump in with their URL in a way where it doesn’t flow smoothly. So. Make sure that they know what your expectations are and what your plan is.

And, and importantly, how long you plan to continue that conversation for so that they can, in their own mind, think through how long it will take to complete. You want to make sure that you have your own checklist for things. I know that, that I’ve done silly things like forget to hit record or forget to turn on my mic properly.

If I’m doing a solo cast, then you have to you know, start over and obviously you don’t want to do that. So having your own checklists, having scripts, perhaps if there are things that you want to make sure that you say, at the beginning or the end of the show, or perhaps somewhere in the middle, those are all helpful things.

Now, once you’ve got that recorded audio file, you can then either work with their, their folks on Fiverr, there are podcast production companies, or you can just. You know, edit it yourself with something like GarageBand on the Mac. Audacity is what I use on the PC. It’s a very easy way just to do the basic cleanup.

And there are plenty of tutorials online that will show you the basics of how to do that if you or your team aren’t already comfortable with it. And it doesn’t take very long to clean it up. I then will take that audio file and run it through a product called Auphonic. It’s a web based service that basically cleans up the audio levels.

It’s particularly helpful when you’ve got an interview because it really tries to balance out the loudness of you and your guest, which can sometimes be a problem. And so, it takes care of all that. And it just makes the audio sound a little bit cleaner, a little bit crisper, and it can also be set up so that you can automatically add an intro and an outro.

So something that you’ve recorded where it says, you know, welcome to the Agency Leadership Podcast. You can find more at agencyleadershippodcast.com those kinds of things, right? So you don’t have to say that every single time that you record the show, you can actually just have those prerecorded for the beginning and the end that you’re able to apply through Ophonic or through some other editing service.

From there, you have to host your audio files somewhere. I host on a service called Libsyn. It’s been around forever. It’s probably the industry standard for podcast hosting, but there are plenty of other sites out there now that do that. And this is not meant to be a tutorial on all of the different aspects of it.

But, suffice to say that Libsyn or some other services where you will post it, and then you can take the link from that and embed it into your own website, which will then be used to distribute the podcast feed itself. Again, so many resources out there that can help you walk through all of these things step by step if you’re not already comfortable with it.

All right. So we’ve now talked about sort of how we how we think about a podcast from a business perspective. We’ve talked about some of the strategy behind it. We’ve talked about some of the mechanics of it. You know, now let’s talk about the promotion of it because ultimately, once you’ve got a podcast, you still need to distribute it.

You still need to get listeners because Yes, it’s great if you are creating content, but you also ideally want people to be consuming that content. The first thing I would say here is don’t get too wound up in your listener numbers because absolute numbers don’t mean a whole lot. You’re really looking for a quality audience.

You’re, you’re trying to reach some people who are likely to become your clients. Or likely to become your employees or likely to help you in some other way. And that’s part of your definition of your audience, right? You need to know why you’re doing this podcast and who you’re trying to reach. And so it’s not about, you know, having 10, 000, 100, 000 listeners.

Chances are your podcast isn’t going to have that. Right. But it’s a question of getting the right ones at the right time. And if you’re able to do that, then the podcast is successful. And the podcast isn’t necessarily just about introducing you to new people. It can be used as a tool for moving people through the pipeline.

So when I think about the distribution of my podcast, I always want to make sure that my prospects, people who are in my pipeline or are in my network of people who are interested in what I’m doing, but maybe haven’t advanced to an actual sales conversation, I want them to be consuming my podcast content.

Because if they’re listening to my podcast, they’re hearing my voice. They’re hearing how I think about things. They’re understanding better, you know, what my approach is. And so that means that when I do have a conversation with them about how I can actually help them grow their agency business, they already feel like they know me because they’ve been part of the listenership of the podcast or watching my videos or those kinds of things.

So you need to think about all of that when you’re thinking about distribution. From a distribution standpoint, you want to make sure that you’re listed in all of the main podcast directories, places, like Spotify, like Apple podcasts, like the, the Google play store. You know, there’s, there’s a whole bunch of the basic places where you want to be listed.

And if you use one of the WordPress plugins, if you’ve got a WordPress website, WordPress plugins do a great job of distributing. , your content to the right places, but there are other ways to do it. Libsyn will do it for you if you’d rather go that route. So there’s a variety of different approaches that you can take, but you definitely want to be thinking about distribution.

You want to be thinking about promotion. You want to think about how you can be sharing this content out. If you’ve got recorded video, you can think about doing little video snippets that maybe you share on social media. Or that you share on YouTube and they have links back to the complete podcast episode page because you do want to podcast episode page.

You don’t want to have just the audio file. You want to have a page on your site that you can use as your primary link back. It’ll, if you’re using, again, one of the WordPress podcast plugins. They all have tools that you can embed a play button that will start playing the podcast on that page, but it’s also a place for you to put show notes that could just be a few paragraphs explaining what that episode is about.

You obviously want to be thinking about the title of the episode in a way that it conveys what that show is about and hopefully enticing people to come check it out. You might include a transcript. I’ve recently stopped doing that because I didn’t see tremendous additional value in it. And, but it’s, it’s something that I may go back to.

It’s very easy to do. I used a service called otter.ai, and that will just take the audio file from the podcast and convert it into a pretty darn good, automated translation of the, the audio into text. And so that. Automated text transcription is something that you can then use and post on your website.

Google has gotten a lot better at indexing audio content, so it’s not as important as it was, say, 10 years ago, where without a transcript, Google didn’t know what was in that audio file. But there’s still value. You may have people in your audience who prefer to skim through a transcript rather than listening to it.

You just have to decide what’s working, maybe try different things. And that’s the beauty of podcasting or any of these online media that you have to help promote your agency. You can try a lot of different things. Podcasting for your agency can also be a great way to experiment with the medium and some of the tools that you use to promote it.

So it helps get your team more educated on how podcasts can be used from a PR and marketing perspective. And I’m a huge believer in using your own agency as a guinea pig, as a testing ground for your new ideas or to develop the skill sets that your team has. So think about how you can leverage podcasting from that perspective as well.

So hopefully, I’ve covered a lot of ground here so that you have. an opportunity to see how podcasts might fit into your own growth strategy for your agency. Hopefully you have a better understanding of some of the approaches that you take, some of the considerations that you need to have for how you structure it, how you have the logistics laid out, all that kind of stuff.

If you have additional questions, I would be happy to answer them. You can always email me at chip@smallagencygrowth.com. Happy to take questions or your feedback about this or any other training session that I do. If you have suggestions for future topics, I would love to hear those as well. And of course, if you do end up creating a podcast as a result of what you’ve heard here, I would love it if you’d email me and let me know about it so I can subscribe to it.

So with that, that will draw today’s session to a close. Thank you for listening, and I look forward to seeing you at our next training.