I listen to a lot of podcasts. Whether I’m in the car, riding the train, or even just sitting on the couch in my living room, I enjoy hearing people share off-the-cuff opinions on interesting topics. Conversations are fun — that’s just me.
But I also create a lot of podcasts: Every week on OpenView Labs, we post a new podcast episode on varying areas of company development, often with the help of influential guests from around the industry. There are a lot of reasons why podcasting works. As CMI has pointed out many times, different people consume content in different ways, and it’s important to get your message and brand out across multiple channels. Podcasts can also help add variety to a mostly text-based content strategy.
So obviously, I like podcasts. That’s great. But why should you like them too? If you’re not already creating at least occasional podcasts or audiocasts as part of your content marketing efforts, here are three things to consider.
#1. Podcasts are an easy way to generate guest content
Content marketers talk a lot about leveraging guest content, particularly from thought leaders and influencers. But one of the biggest challenges with obtaining guest content goes beyond simply building relationships with your target influencers. Often, those people are just too busy to sit down and compose something unique from scratch. “I’d love to help, but I’m just too swamped at the moment. Can we touch base again in a few months?” It’s a common response that marketers hear all too often.
But while writing an original article might sound too tedious for some thought leaders, most are much more open to a 15-minute phone call. The next time you’re looking to wrangle a bit of guest content from an influencer, develop a topic and a few questions and ask if he or she would be willing to call in for a short chat to share some thoughts. More often than not, they’ll say yes.
#2. Podcasts are a quick-turnaround format
No matter what type of audio software you use, you’ll soon find that the editing process for a podcast or audiocast is almost always a breeze. (We are partial to GarageBand, but I’ve also used free options like Audacity.) Simply record your conversation, add a short intro (I recommend purchasing some theme music as well), give the audio a listen to make sure the sound is clear and at a good volume, and you’re good to go.
Once you save the audio as an MP3 file, it’s essentially ready to post on your site. Simple as that!
#3. Transcribed podcast conversations are a simple source of written content
Obviously, one of the downsides of audio content is that there’s not much text for Google search engines to crawl. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
Even if you were just slapping an MP3 file onto a (mostly) blank blog post, a well-optimized title and meta-description is still a must. But why stop there? By transcribing the audio of your podcasts, you can not only generate more written content for your site, but also increase the potential SEO value of your podcast content based on the target keywords found in the transcription.
Better yet, say you recorded a 15-minute podcast where you asked a thought leader five questions around a specific topic. By transcribing the audio, you could split each question and response up into its own mini-blog post. Suddenly, you have six pieces of valuable, unique content (the five posts and the podcast itself), all from a single 15-minute conversation.
Obviously, podcasts aren’t for everyone, and traditional written content will always be the bread-and-butter of a successful content strategy. But by choosing the right opportunities to start rolling out podcasting as part of your overall efforts, marketers can easily begin to generate more unique, influential content in very little time.
Image credit to Danilo Rizzuti/Free Digital Photos
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