Slate’s executive producer for their podcasts, Andy Bowers, calls the medium, “the Internet’s most unsexy success story.”
It’s “the tortoise in a never-ending race with fresh waves of hares,” plodding along for over a decade while other online fads have come and gone. “In fact,” Bowers argues, “by common online measures, podcasting shouldn’t work at all.”
Podcasts require a big time commitment from listeners, audio is notoriously resistant to going viral, and even the most successful podcasts rack up downloads in the hundreds of thousands while videos count their views in millions.
Nonetheless, podcasting has quietly and steadily expanded its reach to the point where it’s a smart choice for marketers looking to diversify their content marketing tactics.
Reach a Diverse Audience
Podcast listeners are a diverse group; as you can see from the infographic excerpt below, they are fairly evenly distributed amongst age groups.
They are also split evenly between men and women, so you have a strong chance of reaching your preferred audience through podcasting.
Put Your SEO Skills to Good Use
In order to find podcasts to fill their commute or gym time, prospective listeners need to use podcast-specific search engines on the Apple iTunes store or other services like Stitcher.
For content marketers with a strong understanding of SEO principles, you can put them to work against less competition to get your podcasts found.
To rank well you need to work to get your number of subscribers up (iTunes weights this count against your number of casual listeners) and encourage listeners to write reviews, but you can give yourself an early advantage simply by using keywords in your podcast descriptions and creating appealing cover art.
Offer an Alternative to Written Content
Not everyone likes to get their information by reading it, and podcasts offer an alternative means of consumption.
Having a podcast available lets you reach members of your audience who are doing something that keeps them from reading (like driving), as well as those who just aren’t interested in taking the time to read your latest article.
Use Podcasts to Drive Content Creation
Successful podcasts can also be a great starting point for a whole stream of content, minimizing the time you need to spend brainstorming and researching new topics.
When you find a topic that appeals to your audience you can spin it quickly into blog posts, an infographic, and visualized quotes, all of which should be appealing if they’re based on a high-performing podcast.
Attract Influencers to Your Brand
Having a podcast means you can offer influencers the chance to be interviewed or to talk about their latest book without a lot of time commitment.
We talk about twice as fast as we write, so a podcast interview will take much less time for an influencer to complete than a written interview or a guest post.
Ready to get started? Buffer has a great guide to podcasting for beginners. We’d love to hear about your successes in the comments!
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Via Salesforce