Is Podcasting a Good Idea for a Small Business? (2023)
6 minutes read
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What is Podcasting and How Can It Help Small Businesses?
Podcasting is the process of creating and distributing audio-based content over the Internet. Podcasts can be used to share stories, provide information, and promote products or services. Creating podcasts has become an increasingly popular way for small businesses to reach their target audience and engage with them on a personal level.
With its low cost and wide reach, podcasting is a great way for small businesses to market themselves effectively. This article will discuss how podcasting can help small businesses and how to get started with your own podcast.
Table of Contents
Exploring the Benefits of Podcasting for a Small Business
By creating a podcast for your small business, you can:
- Establish yourself and your brand as a though leader within your industry
- Network with other professionals in your field (interviews are a great excuse to meet hard to reach people)
- Strengthen relationships with existing customers
- Reach new potential customers
Small businesses can use podcasts to share valuable information that potential customers need. If you start a relationship with a potential customer by giving them valuable insights for free through your podcast, you will probably build a great deal of rapport and trust that you can later leverage during sales. Podcasting is a powerful tool for small business owners to boost brand awareness generate new warm leads for their business.
In the following sections we will expand upon each of the benefits of podcasting for growing a small business.
Podcasting as Content Marketing
Content marketing is a form of digital marketing that focuses on creating and distributing valuable content to attract, engage, and retain customers. Podcasting has been on the rise as a new form of content marketing. Nowadays its very common to see brands (small & large) have their own podcasts, and its not hard to see why.
Content marketing has been proven to be more cost-effective than ads. The high return on investment (ROI) and the potential for growing yields as content gets shared more & more make content marketing a great growth strategy.
Podcasting content marketing is an entire world of its own, but reading What Content Marketers Need To Know About Podcasting and this guide on How to use podcasting in your content marketing campaign are good places to get started.
One downside of content marketing is that its a long term investment. Seeing results could take months. If you are looking for immediate results, another strategy might be better suited for your needs.
Brand Authority
Fast Company hailed branded podcasts as the "The Ads People Actually Want To Listen To"
Podcasting is an effective way to increase the perceived authority of your brand. Whether you want to boost your small small business' presence online or build a personal brand, podcasting can be a boost to your company's status within your industry. If people listen to your podcast episodes you can increase brand awareness and establish trust with potential customers, which in turn can increase the perceived value of your products or services. By creating a podcast, you can demonstrate expertise in your field and establish yourself as an authority figure, which will ultimately lead to higher prices for your products or services. This is true for solopreneurs, indiehackers, freelancers, and consultants alike.
Networking
Podcasting is a powerful tool to help you network within your industry. Have you been meaning to find an excuse to knock on the doors of some C-Suites or high profile individuals within your industry? Interviewing people gives you the perfect rationale for cold emailing an industry leader and gain insights and knowledge from them through in interview.
An interview podcast can enable you leverage your knowledge and expertise to reach out to high profile individuals and build relationships with them. Furthermore, people who participate in your podcast are likely to refer you to other good interviewees which establishes a positive feedback loop for you podcast's content. Finally, high profile professionals are likely to have big followings on LinkedIn, industry newsletters and the like. If you record an interview with one of these individuals and ask them to share the content with their communities you can quickly boost the listenership of your podcast.
To get started with this strategy checkout this article on how to land great podcast guests.
Podcasts can be repurposed for your blog
Repurposing podcast episodes into blog posts and other kinds of social media friendly content can be an effective way to reach a wider audience, increase ROI and stay ahead of the competition. Podcast interviews are usually rich in content, making it easier to repurpose them into multiple types of content. This can help businesses save time and resources while still being able to create high-quality content quickly.
Here are some ideas for repurposing your podcast interviews:
- Transcribe your episodes i.e. converting the audio into text, so that you can quickly take highlights and convert them into a blog post. Which btw, we at Caproni offer automatic podcast episode transcriptions 😉
- Use a service like Headliner to easily generate short video clips out of your audio so that you can share them on Twiter, LinkedIn and other social media sites.
- You can use a service like SquadCast to easily record video while doing remote interviews, so that you can publish a video version of your podcast on YouTube.
SEO
Podcasting can also be a great way to improve your website's SEO. If you post the transcriptions of your podcast episodes on your site or better yet you turn your episodes into blog posts, you can start ranking for a great deal of new keywords on Google. Additionally, podcasting can help you build backlinks from other websites. If you ask people who participate on your podcast to link back to your podcast's website you can start accumulating a good number of high authority backlinks. Furthermore, if while you plan your podcast episodes you take into consideration keywords your potential customers are searching for you will generate more leads not just via your podcast but also via your website.
btw.. at Caproni, we offer free podcast websites for all customers who publish their podcasts with us.
How to start a small business podcast
Starting a podcast for your small business can be an exciting and rewarding experience. It can help you reach out to more potential customers, build trust with existing ones, and create an engaging platform for your brand. But before you dive into the deep end of podcasting, there are some things you need to consider first. From choosing the right microphone to finding a good podcast publishing platform. With the right equipment and a bit of knowledge, you can record from home or office and get started on your new podcast journey today! Feel free to checkout Caproni. You can book a meeting with one of our podcasting experts and we can help you get started, no commitment required, no strings attached.