Should your businesses create a podcast?

Podcasting has become one of the biggest sources of consumed audio. According to PodcastStatistics.com,  44% of the US population has listened to a podcast, and of those 44%, 80% listen to 7 or more shows a week.

Getting creative with your content remains to be one of the only ways to obtain organic traffic that can eventually convert to sales. Making decisions about what type of content your organization is going to put out needs to be well thought and very strategic. It could harm your brand if you regularly start and stop different tactics that have the impact putting out a podcast does, but it can also be detrimental if you don’t continually try new methods of showing up organically on the web.

If you are a regular reader of my content you know that I’ve created the We Are Better Men podcast that is currently doing quite well in the fatherhood\men’s mental health awareness space, and I’ve also recently started up the WebPunx podcast where we talk about all things geeky and marketing related.  While the Better Men podcast is doing quite well and is up into the thousands when it comes to listens, the WebPunx podcast is still relatively new and we are experimenting a bit more to obtain organic listens in the space it’s in.

Some tips for you if you are thinking about starting up a podcast for your business:

1. Make sure you figure out a specific niche for your podcast’s topics. You want to find a topic that is broad enough you can consistently put out content, but the idea of a broad podcast is not appealing to listeners. They are seeking out content specific to subjects they are interested in.
2. Make sure you have resources allocated. You need to put out a podcast weekly, and it needs to be produced well.
3. When it comes to production, you can keep it natural and don’t pressure yourself to make it “radio station” quality, but ensure that you don’t have such poor equipment it’s un-listenable.
4. Ensure you have a digital strategy to support and promote the podcast (website embeds, banner ads, social media , etc…). A podcast works best when integrated into a 360 digital approach.
5. Have fun! Podcasting is a great way to interact with your teams or community.
6. Stick with it – it takes podcasting several months to start indexing (if done properly) in google, and even longer to naturally\organically pick up subscribers. Give yourself a solid year before you start measuring if it is worth it or not.