With everyone from teenagers to high net worth individuals becoming voracious consumers of social media and digital content, it is important to reach out to existing and prospective clients through the channels they use to access information.
In your business builder training, you’ve learned the tools and tactics that empower you to help clients protect and expand their assets. But you may not have discussed the specific activities, if you want to build your business, you need to implement to market yourself. Increasingly, social media is becoming a central feature in the marketing mix.
Writing for Marketing Profs, social media strategist Mack Collier describes how developing and distributing podcasts can be a great way to build up audience engagement.
Consider your target audience when brainstorming podcast topics. Does your ideal client listen to Freaknomics radio? Or download every edition of The Wall Street Journal’s The Daily Wrap? Listen to a few installments to get a sense of the flow, tone and structure and think about how you can work similar styles into your own podcasts.
Collier also recommends drawing up a list of topics and guests (if you choose to bring in voices other than your own) well in advance and setting a schedule and budget. Creating an editorial calendar will help you stay on top of the latest news regarding your topics of choice and help to hold you accountable. The cost and quality of the equipment you buy will be dictated by the scope of the project.
Don’t forget to tell people about the podcast! If you already send out email newsletters, include a link to the file, or if you already have a presence on social media platform, tell your followers and fans about new episodes.
Search engine optimization covers the concept of using relevant keywords in online content to make it more easily found and indexed by search engines. While the likes of Google and Bing do not yet have a method for indexing audio files, there are a few things you can do to derive SEO value from your podcasts, according to Shama Kabani, CEO of The Marketing Zen Group and columnist for Portfolio.
She suggests transcribing the podcasts (either by hand of with the help of transcription software) and then posting them as blogs or alongside the MP3 file. If the discussion covers several questions or topics, consider breaking it up into several posts, which will draw out the content even further.
When tagging the audio file, you can also use an ID3 tag that has a title, a URL within comments, a summary or a transcript, Kabani recommends. She points to a free audio editing program, Audacity, which will let you arrange, edit and clean up the podcast before posting and embedding these tags.
