How Podcasts Can Help to Grow Your Online Business

The podcast is an internet-based audio program. It works like a radio- on demand. Episodes can be accessed for download or streaming via all major podcast services as well. Just like blogging, businesses, and entrepreneurs can host podcasts to provide value, educate and entertain their audience.

Podcasting is getting bigger and more people are consuming audio content. More than 75% of Americans are familiar with podcasts, according to statistics. Progressively popular as they allow you to listen while multitasking. This provides businesses with a great way to get in front of new eyes.

Benefits of Podcasting for Online Businesses

Podcasts have a lot of benefits for an online business looking to reach a wider audience. Advantages of using podcasting in your business model:

Building Brand Authority: Businesses can use podcasts to demonstrate expertise in a specific area. When they give interesting information, they trust those companies. This builds brand credibility, solidifying them as a thought leader in their industry. Podcast episodes can establish credibility over time.
Engaging Your Audience: Podcasts are a very personal and conversational way to reach your audience. Audio is very intimate, which makes the listener feel as if they are in it with the host. It creates loyalty – it keeps them coming back for more. This is something businesses can also make use of to build relationships with customers.
Reaching a Wider Audience: Not everyone is interested in reading blogs or watching videos. Podcasts draw in customers who want the narrative thanks to audio content they can listen to while doing other things. Businesses can tap into this podcast-watching crowd, a wider demographic. Broadening your audience results in more exposure and leads.
Cost-Effective Marketing: You can start a podcast without spending thousands. Low-cost equipment and on-farm platforms have made it more accessible for smaller users. It is your cheapest way of getting PR with a long potential to scale. And you can do so without spending a fortune.

Content Ideas for Business Podcasts

There are lots of different types of content businesses can create with podcasts. These content ideas can keep you covered with a ton of engaging podcast episodes.

Industry Insights and Expertise: Offering insights into the industry as they pertain to your business. Trends, challenges, or bindings per industry. Providing tips and advice are other strategies to gain the trust of your followers. And it establishes you as a subject matter expert.
Interviews with Experts: It makes your podcast much more credible and in-depth to interview with industry experts. Provides new insights on topics of interest from thought leaders. That way, their audience can potentially find your podcast as well. This will get a better quality of content if you choose to collaborate with experts.
Customer Success Stories: The customer success story of customers who have successfully used your products. They are what we like to call Social Proof and establish confidence in would-be buyers. Real outcome reassures the brand’s humanistic look. This is a great and strong way to display the impact of your business.
Educational Content: Produce instructional episodes that provide tips or how-tos for your target market. When you teach certain skills, you establish yourself as an expert. Listeners naturally stick around longer when they are actually learning something valuable, which is typically the case with educational content. These are the kind of episodes that can intrigue and reel in a listener.

Creating High-Quality Podcasts

It can be overwhelming to start a podcast. Just focus on providing quality content and being consistent to keep the listeners engaged.

Equipment and Tools: Buy a good microphone and headphones for quality sound. Easy to use editing software such as Audacity or GarageBand for free sound. If your podcast sounds like it was recorded on a tin can connected to a string, that is not going to get you high marks. Turns out, for a fraction of the cost, you can equip yourself with affordable tools to get started without having such large upfront costs.
Podcast Hosting Platforms: Podcast hosting and delivering platforms are required. For a business, Buzzsprout, Anchor, or Libsyn are all great alternatives. They distribute your episodes to major platforms i.e. Spotify and Apple Podcasts. The wide distribution enables you to access your target audience easily.
Planning and Structure: Structure your episodes in advance to keep a constant flow. Each episode should be well organized with a defined opening, middle, and end. The clearer and more concise your information, the more coherent your message will be. However, it is proven that a regular release schedule builds anticipation.

How to Promote Your Podcast

Effective promotion is the key once your podcast is live. Check out these proven tactics to get your podcast more visibility.

Using Social Media: Use your social media channels to push new episodes. This is where you can share snippets of your book, a teaser or quote from the story, or behind-the-scenes content to build excitement. Use appropriate hashtags to attract a wider audience. Tweet attractive content and have your followers watch it.
Leveraging Email Marketing: Add podcast updates to your email newsletters. Promote new episodes and link to the content. Since email subscribers are (presumably) already fans of your brand, you have a captive audience. Consistent promotion can grow your podcast audience.
Collaborating with Other Podcasters: Collaborate with other podcasts and a larger audience. Hosting each other introduces your podcast to a new audience. Collaboration can aid in building credibility and relationships throughout the industry. You never know who can help you with an opportunity for mutual promotion.
SEO for Podcasts: Ensure your podcast title, show notes and descriptions are SEO optimized. Add product descriptions with keywords for higher ranking. Search Maps can also index episode transcripts. It will drive more traffic organically.

Monetizing Your Podcast

After your podcast takes off a bit, you can begin to monetize it. Ideally, you have plenty of ways to monetize your podcast.

Sponsorships: Collaborate with brands trying to reach your audience. Essentially, sponsors pay to have a product or service mentioned during episodes. Once your podcast has passed the infancy stage, these partnerships can be very rewarding. Verify that sponsors are on brand and relevant to your audience.

Selling Products or Services: Advertise your products and services inside the podcast. Thus, it can possibly help to convert your engaged listeners. Gives authentic recommendations, which are less intrusive and more natural in this format. Leverage episodes as a chance to give people a taste of what you create.

Merchandise Sales: Design swag around your podcast. This may even be t-shirts, mugs, or stickers. If you have loyal listeners who love your show they might also want to buy stuff! The products also will help you diversify your revenue and open another stream of income.

Offering Premium Content: Create premium subscriber-only content. Such additional offerings as bonus episodes, behind-the-scenes, and early access lure in the listeners. Proprietary content is one of the biggest revenue drivers. The subscriptions help to make money on your podcast every month.

Repurposing Podcast Content

Reuse content from podcast episodes. Let’s look at how to provide multiple touch points around an episode life of value.

Turning Podcasts into Blog Posts: Write out podcast episodes and create a blog post out of them. This involves making your content readable to the readers. They can also help with SEO, ultimately increasing your site traffic. Repurposing content increases the overall efficiency of the whole production line.
Creating Social Media Snippets: Use smaller clips of your podcast to create content for social media. Use these as teasers to entice listeners back to entire episodes. Another catalyst for engagement and shares in quotes or soundbites. Your podcast content will have a longer shelf life with social media promotion.
Expanding into Video: Turn your podcast into video format. Share them on YouTube or another video platform to reach a new audience. These are best for markets that like visuals more than the audio, and video content industry. Going to a video is a game-changer — people like to watch!

Building a Community Around Your Podcast

A podcast community creates listener loyalty. Let’s see how to go deeper and build a fanatical audience:

Encouraging Listener Interaction: Ask listeners to join Q&A or feedback round-ups. Great ways to get feedback from listeners are through social media and comments. It allows for listener interaction and is the most relatable way to connect with your audience. It solidifies their relationship with your brand.
Creating a Podcast Community: Create a community center for your listeners to interact. It can be a Facebook group or any other online forum. Fostering exposure to your podcast can motivate a steadfast community. Interaction builds long-lasting rapport with your audience.

Conclusion:

In general, podcasts have become a powerful way to grow businesses online. They are an excellent way to establish credibility, expand your reach well beyond the core audience, and cheer less-engaged customers. Small businesses can podcast easily with inexpensive tools. Consistency and Creativity are the main driving factors of a podcast.

For the maximum impact, both promotion and monetization must be done by businesses. Podcasts are big business – whether it’s advertising or selling stuff. Turning your podcast into different forms of content enables you to reach even more people. A prosperous podcast is one that has a loyal community around it.