Enterprise podcasting differs from leisure podcasting in virtually each dimension. (The trace is within the adjective.)

So don’t look to podcasts from Trevor Noah, Glennon Doyle, Joe Rogan, and even The New York Occasions for hints on the way to succeed. You don’t wish to be like these individuals.

You’re taking the enterprise podcasting onramp to a special freeway.

I’ve gathered insights from serving to many firms launch and succeed with enterprise podcasts I shared at Content material Advertising World 2023. I’m joyful to share them with you.

1. Perceive the attributes of enterprise podcasting

A enterprise podcast differs from an leisure podcast in objective, format, tone, and target market. Right here’s how:

• Goal: A model’s podcast’s objective isn’t to entertain or straight monetize it. It exists to construct model consciousness and authority, show thought management, improve content material output, and improve demand and (probably) leads.
• Format: Leisure podcasts can get away with a scarcity of construction; enterprise podcasts can not. Create a construction and partially script episodes. Simply don’t go too far. Use a bulleted define of concepts somewhat than studying a word-for-word script.
• Tone: Leisure podcasts typically use a much less formal tone and broad humor and pop-culture references. Your enterprise podcast tone must be skilled and in keeping with your established model pointers. You should use some jargon in case your viewers makes use of that language, too.
• Viewers: Your viewers will not be a mass-market viewers who enjoys podcasts, typically revolving round a social demographic. Your target market is potential prospects, trade friends, or staff (for inner podcasts).

Your enterprise podcast gained’t entice the big viewers some leisure podcasts get. However it might allow you to:

• Overcome content material and useful resource challenges
• Construct relationships with trade leaders, leaders at consumer organizations, and potential prospects
• Co-create content material with the faces and voices of trade leaders.

2. Evaluate the manufacturing course of earlier than you hit ‘report’

Many groups bounce into podcasting for his or her model and find yourself saying, “Wow. This takes a bit greater than I believed it will.” Right here’s what a enterprise podcast requires:

Manufacturing staff

Sure, you want a bunch and an editor, however you additionally want:

• A author to arrange the semi-scripted episodes
• An outreach supervisor to method and schedule potential friends
• Somebody to repurpose the content material throughout a number of media sorts
• An government producer to be the quarterback of choices on subjects, schedule, and so forth.

Your manufacturing staff members would possibly put on a number of hats, however every process should be coated.

Pre-production course of

Within the pre-production stage, the staff decides on technique, scheduling, and gear. Reply these questions:

Technique selections

• Why are you creating this podcast?
• What are your aims?
• What’s the format of every episode?
• What are the podcast’s objectives?
• How will you measure them?

Scheduling selections

• Will you report batches of episodes?
• How will you be sure that your friends are on schedule?
• What occurs if a visitor should reschedule? (This occurs typically when scheduling executives as a result of — shock — your recording isn’t a very powerful factor of their day.)

Gear selections

• Microphones
• Headphones
• Lighting
• Location
• Software program
• Distant platform (Riverside.fm, Descript, Zencastr, and so forth.)

Manufacturing course of

Podcast listeners could tire of listening and go away the episode for one more podcast or to do one thing else. They might not know why they stopped listening. It could possibly be the manufacturing high quality.

Consider it this fashion. You don’t get to go away whenever you’re on a Zoom work name. You will need to take heed to that particular person with the loud air conditioner and the unhealthy microphone. However podcast listeners have a alternative. Psychological analysis finds when an individual’s voice is evident and soothing, the viewers will hear longer.

Be certain to account for these manufacturing points:

• Teaching for each host and friends. An skilled producer will help the host and friends study to current a very good on-camera look and speak into the microphone with out chopping out and in.
• Actual-time high quality checks. A producer ought to be aware when one thing surprising occurs. For instance: “At 5:05, somebody had a coughing match — you should definitely take that out.”
• Modifying. After the recording is full, an editor should optimize it for audio, take away undesirable sounds, organize segments in the fitting order, add parts, corresponding to music, and grasp and equalize the ultimate recording.

Postproduction course of

After the file is prepared, the postproduction actions kick in — publishing, repurposing, and selling the podcast.

Publishing

Repurposing

• Create clips to repurpose as audio and video grams.
• Create social copy for the clips.
• Flip episodes into articles.
• Function episodes in your publication.

Promotion

• Assist your friends promote their episode.
• Ship emails.
• Add it to the web site journey.
• Repurpose the podcast.
• Publicize it on social media.

Given the significance of promotion, I’ll go into element about the way to get probably the most out of every.

Assist your visitor promote their episode: The screenshot under exhibits an instance of what I ship within the “visitor content material pack” to individuals who seem on my podcast, The Enterprise of Advertising.

The e-mail thanks Seth, notifies him the episode is reside, and supplies hyperlinks to the episode web page on the Content material Monsta web site, a shared folder containing video snippets, graphics, photographs, and a hyperlink to the video on YouTube.

On this case, we didn’t write the social copy (as a result of nobody can write for Seth Godin). However Seth wrote about his look and linked to it on his weblog. You may think about the hyperlink juice from a web site like Seth’s weblog — all as a result of we included all of the content material to make it straightforward for him to do.

Promote the episode to your e-mail subscribers: We ship a short e-mail to our viewers each episode. It typically reads, “On this episode of The Enterprise of Advertising podcast, we talked about these three useful issues” and highlights them. So, we give some worth within the e-mail and embrace a name to motion to take heed to the podcast or learn the abstract. We additionally all the time embrace a picture.

Right here’s the e-mail for the Seth Godin episode:

It says:

Hey Alex!

I’m so excited to share this with you. Every time I interview somebody who’s extraordinarily well-known, my purpose is to ask them questions that I genuinely need their tackle.

That isn’t all the time straightforward after they get interviewed day by day.

I determine, if I’m curious and I would like the reply, perhaps you need the reply too.

And someway, miraculously, I recurrently get the respect of listening to, “Wow, I’m by no means requested that!”

That is a type of circumstances.

To begin Season 3 of The Enterprise of Advertising Podcast with a bang, I chat with advertising skilled, instructor, blogger, and Founding father of the Carbon Almanac, Seth Godin!

Seth is an entrepreneur, best-selling creator, and speaker. Along with launching one of the vital common blogs on the planet, he has written 20 best-selling books.

In case you’re on this e-mail listing, odds are you already know who Seth is. If not, simply Google “Seth” and he’ll seemingly be the primary consequence.

Here’s a video of our dialog the place we talk about confidence, creativity, and focus.

Don’t neglect to take a look at previous episodes of our podcast with advertising gurus from across the globe, and keep tuned for the wonderful lineup we have now this season of the present.

Yours in Content material,
Lee

TIP: Use your name to motion to drive site visitors to your web site, to not Apple or Spotify.

Incorporate your podcast into the web site journey: You’re not in radio. You’re not in podcasting. You’re making an attempt to drive enterprise. That makes the web site journey a very powerful promotional tactic.

I drew this idea one afternoon so I wouldn’t lose the thought. These doodles have been in my shows ever since. First, level all of your exterior property to your web site.

As this doodle exhibits, every social media put up, e-mail, and even hyperlinks throughout the podcast on Apple or Spotify level again to an internet web page for that episode that features the podcast participant and a transcript or an article about it.

Be certain your web site hosts a “pod roll” web page with an inventory of your podcast episodes — just like a weblog web page with an inventory of articles. Put the label and hyperlink on the prime menu of your web site (below Sources, for instance).

Web site guests can binge-listen to the podcast with out going to Spotify or Apple.

Now, right here’s the key sauce. Put a kind on that web page. We get subscribers and leads from The Enterprise of Advertising podcast as a result of we embrace a kind on each podcast episode web page.

Right here’s the web page for the episode that includes Seth Godin. The subscription kind sits on the fitting subsequent to the hero picture and podcast participant.

Web site guests will hear or learn concerning the episode and say, “You understand what? I wish to know extra about this info.” Or “I wish to hear extra from this firm.” They fill out the shape.

At Content material Monsta, we get extra leads or kind fills from some podcast episode pages than from a few of our weblog articles.

Repurpose your podcast: Take into consideration how a lot content material you may create past the podcast. Choices embrace:

• Video highlights (two to 5 minutes) for YouTube, Fb, and LinkedIn
• Micro-videos (60 seconds) for YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, LinkedIn, TikTok, and so forth.
• Micro-audio as audiogram waveforms or audiogram textual content animations.

You may as well use this abbreviated content material in your emails, in your web site, and in social posts.

Schedule your repurposed property over time. We promote an episode on launch day, then every week, a month, three months, eight months, and a 12 months later. Even when we don’t produce new episodes, the content material advertising machine retains transferring and pointing again to the web site.

This chart exhibits our repurposing workflow. It begins with a produced episode and graphics.

The primary part entails distribution — RSS feeds through Apple, Spotify, and so forth., audio embeds on the web site touchdown web page and friends’ web sites, and publishing within the publication. The second part consists of creating the audio clips and social copy. Within the third part, the visitor content material pack, which incorporates content material for a number of social posts and publication mentions, is distributed.

The fourth and remaining part entails figuring out content material in your web site the place it is smart to focus on the podcast episode. In case you’ve revealed an in-depth article on a subject addressed within the episode, you could possibly embed the audio or video file on that very same web page.

How far more are you able to derive by the podcast to serve the viewers alongside their journey? Take into account these choices:

• Develop publication editions about podcast subjects to teach potential prospects.
• Reply vital questions on your model’s choices in podcast conversations.
• Host prospects as friends, and you’ve got prompt testimonials.

With this enterprise podcasting technique, whenever you speak to your CMO and CFO about getting a funds, you’re not asking them to pay for a podcast. You’re asking them to help a content-making machine for the model.

Metrics and extra enterprise podcasting pitfalls to keep away from

You understand somebody will ask what number of downloads or listeners the podcast attracts.

Strive your greatest to disregard these metrics. It’s OK if individuals devour the promotional content material with out ever listening to the podcast. Listenership isn’t your purpose — enterprise is. Don’t measure listenership as your finish purpose. Your podcast is a supply, not the top product.

As an alternative, give attention to metrics that matter to the enterprise:

• Model consciousness
• Authority
• Web site engagement
• Elevated content material output
• Influenced pipeline

One strategy to assess the podcast’s influence is to incorporate UTM monitoring on each hyperlink to the podcast. Then, you may attribute all of the associated hyperlinks and site visitors that come to your podcast. For instance, a hyperlink shared in a LinkedIn put up will get attributed to the podcast, not LinkedIn, as a result of with out the podcast, the put up wouldn’t have been revealed.

Among the many different potential pitfalls and fixes:

• Considering one particular person can do all of it: I laid out the 5 important podcast roles however acknowledge you might want multiple particular person in every function.
• Including video with out contemplating high quality: Please don’t report your Zoom calls and say you may have a video podcast. In case you’re not able to decide to high quality video, simply do a very good audio podcast.
• Believing a very good microphone is nice sufficient: You have to work with somebody who understands audio properly sufficient to combine it so it doesn’t ship listeners away.
• Internet hosting the podcast in a silo: Be certain to incorporate the podcast within the advertising combine.

Path to podcast success

In case you take one factor from this text, let it’s this. Making a podcast isn’t your purpose. Getting listeners or podcast subscribers on rented platforms isn’t your purpose.

Getting the fitting individuals to your web site the place you may feed them the fitting info to make them motion is your purpose. A enterprise podcast and its many content material byproducts could make that occur.

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Cowl picture by Joseph Kalinowski/Content material Advertising Institute