Podcasting can generate you millions in revenue, increase your audience 100% and establish you as an authority figure on your preferred niche.
If you’re stuck with your blog wondering how to shore up numbers or wondering how to breathe a new spark into your blog business, podcasting could be the smartest moves you make this year.
One of my main missions this year is to start 3 Podcast Series – one on inspiration and the other two on lead generation tactics and tips & tricks behind content creation. Then it will dominate my content creation service offerings to my clients. Why? Well, I have over 16 years experience in radio and a podcast follows commercial radio’s main audience and sales strategies so I will know how to grow it exponentially. More importantly, a podcast is a powerful way of establishing yourself as an authority in your social space effectively.
More and more people are gravitating towards podcasts for authority information on anything to do with fitness, health, diet tips, to motivation, finances and entertainment. With a well thought out podcast, you will grow a new audience and link them back to your main blog hence growing your overall audience. There are hundreds of thousands of free podcasts at your fingertips in various podcast libraries. Your next podcast could be downloaded on someone’s iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or computer. Suppose you dominated your niche with well thought-out material that millions of listeners are searching for?
Create a podcast. Then create a web feed. Software developers can customize apps for subscription to this feed, creating you a new revenue stream. That means that new episodes are automatically downloaded on any phone at any time. They make money, you make money. Nice, huh?
The other critical reason why you need to go into this right now is that the apple watch is about to become a perfect podcast machine. APPLE watchOS 2 Apple is doing a lot for the podcasting crowd that’s going to result in a much better experience once the watchOS 2 arrives this Fall. The company has anticipated Watch uses beyond simple voice memos and messages with watchOS 2 recording powers. It will be almost an entirely new device.
Here’s why.
The device will support local, long-form audio playback, and support for audio recording. Long form audio immediately gives rise to Audio Books one of the most attractive ways for bloggers to build a new following. As you enjoy your morning run, listening to your new audio book on ‘best diet plans for 2015′ or ’10 exciting ways to improve your profit margin’ for example allows the person to keep you on the top of his list on that subject. You are then more likely to be his first choice when searching for any related matter on those topics. Offering long form audio in the background is key, because now you can listen along to your favorite program as you do your workout or your morning run. Equally fascinating is the audio recording capability that the watch has where it becomes an input mechanism for creating podcasts. There are three distinct audio quality choices developers can use when capturing recorded content, including a high quality version that will probably provide serviceable raw material for podcast recording in a pinch. It gives rise to interesting podcast-related features like a list of upcoming scheduled shows, or the ability to finely scrub through an episode’s timeline on your wrist.
Brian Honigan is a Speaker, marketing consultant and a freelance writer. He’s written for Forbes, Mashable, the Huffington Post, the Next Web and others. He says this, “Even if you aren’t a good writer, make a podcast or start a YouTube channel to get quality content out there regarding your perspectives on your industry. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain by starting a blog, a video series or a podcast. We aren’t talking about a job with serious risks if you deviate from the norm like being a surgeon or an airplane pilot. One of the worst things that can happen if you start blogging tomorrow is that no one will see it. It’s a long-term effort that doesn’t happen overnight, but with hard work that you’ll begin to see results from step by step.”
The possibilities that podcasting offer you are literally endless! Let’s cover 4 of them.
1. Create an Educational Podcast Series
Nothing establishes you faster as an authority figure than the creation of an educational podcast, or an information podcast for that matter. If you’re into education, create a simple podcast series on any topic. Let’s pick “Learn to speak French in 30 days.’ Once you’ve developed the material, you can organize it into 15 key lessons. Within a couple of clicks someone from anywhere in the world can be using your course in minutes. That’s, of course, the first power that podcasting gives you – the universal audience – growing your audience beyond geographical limitations.
2. Gain a Universal Audience
With a podcast, your audience is worldwide. Sit in your home studio in Johannesburg, and have listeners in India, Mexico, brazil, Australia and other countries around the world. Your podcast can be listed in iTunes, right along with podcasts from The Discovery Channel, Disney, and NPR. As Internet Access grows in various parts of the world, your audience footprint will consequently mushrooms without you needing to do another thing to scale it up. Now, cars are being fitted with podcast devices. In the next 3 years, Vehicle Industry Lines in USA will be equipping practically every car that rolls out the Manufacturing Line with Podcast players.
3. Establish a stronger connection with your audience
The one on one approach that podcasting offers you allows you to have a powerful connection with your audience. It works just like radio. People are more attracted to voice interaction rather than one voice talking away to you. Every principle of radio begs true. You can start your podcast with a question posed by a listener and use that to influence your topical direction. Use a hook and then come back later and satisfy the hook. Pose questions and invite listeners to respond via email. Hold a competition and award faithful podcast listeners every once in a while.
4. Increase Your Online Website Traffic
Podcasting is the space you need to dominate if you are really serious about growing your audience. Worried about webpage rankings? Not with podcasting! Most bloggers are doing everything in their might to get their blog and website on page 1 on Google. It means they have to create exceptional content on a weekly basis, wait for months for organic growth, or spend thousands of dollars on paid advertising. Unknown to many of them, a simple change in algorithm, Google Panda for example, can affect their website rankings. From millions of people accessing your website to virtually no one knowing about who you are, a simple algorithm change can either impact your blog positively or negatively. How would you feel if your blog was downgraded from Page 1 to Page Unknown in minutes?
It’s here. It’s inevitable. It’s called Google Panda, the latest Google’s search algorithm which aims to promote the high quality content site by dooming the rank of low quality content sites. Since its release and updates, many sites have been shown to be terribly affected by the algorithm, but the worst rumor here is, they can do almost nothing to recover the ranking and traffic. With podcasting, you don’t run into that problem. As you as you listen and categorize your episode properly, you will be easily found by someone searching for that topic.
GREAT BLOGGERS ON THE PODCASTING BANDWAGON
Leslie Samuel is a blogger who uses podcasting to great impact. He has over 219 episodes listed in iTune, RSs and Stitcher radio that demonstrate how you can set up a successful blogging business The ‘Learning With Leslie’ Podcast is a podcast that gives actionable advice on how anyone can start and grow an online business with a blog. No, not just any blog that will fall by the wayside when Google has a mood swing, but one that will thrive no matter what gets thrown at it.
Most expert bloggers will say that you have to have a lot of traffic coming to your blog in order to start making money from your business. Kate Ahl is different. She’s managed to earn as much as $8000+ a month from her service-based business with a very small email list and not much traffic.
Pat Flynn is another example. He’s living the dream. He has a successful blog called Smart Passive Income. It was one of the first blogging resources I turned to when I decide to pursue this fulltime. One of the key interests that Pay Flynn has is podcasting and he does it remarkably well. In fact he says “Starting a podcast has been one of the best decisions I have ever made for my brand. Ever. Since starting The Smart Passive Income Podcast in July of 2010, the show has surpassed 12,500,000 total downloads. (as of January 2015) The podcast has become the #1-way people who read my blog found out about me – that’s above search, social media and links from other websites. I was contacted by a Hollywood producer who listened to my show to consult as the social media director for a $10M independent film Fox News reached out to me to feature my story on the evening news. I led a panel at Blog World Expo in New York this past June about the power of podcasting. It was cool to see the room filled beyond capacity. Podcasting has allowed Pat build a much stronger relationship with his audience, “… much stronger than I could ever do with just my blog alone.” It would be safe to classify Pat as one of the leading authority figures in blogging now because of his mastery in podcasting.
In short, podcasting will allow you to
Grow your audience exponentially.
Build a stronger relationship with your audience.
Open up new networking opportunities.
Open the door to new audiences your blog can’t give you.
Empower people’s lives with exceptional content.
Help establish you as an authority figure in your field Grow your existing blog dramatically.
Scale up your business for the future.
Avoid the website downgrading risks that various search engine algorithm updates may expose you to.
What’s next? Simple. Start a podcast and see how it can revolutionize your online business model.
David Makuyu is the CEO and Founder of David Makuyu Incorporated, Founder of Heave