We’ve often talked about the proliferation of digital marketing channels and how companies need to think outside the box. Here’s a thought – in an age where we’re moving beyond simple text and images on the web, a podcast may be just what the doctor ordered for your company.
Thought Leadership for the Ears
Essentially, the Internet has become this mass of text-based information. It’s dressed up with various features and accessories, but it’s still overwhelmingly visual. A podcast, on the other hand, can be a way to reach into your customers’ heads and start a dialogue that’s verbal – where they can hear you, the inflections and tone of your voice, and get a better idea of your corporate culture and personalities.
Some Best Practices
If you’re going to start a company podcast, here are some quick tips to help you become more successful with this rapidly emerging new marketing channel. Make Sure Your Platform Works Well Too many startups and small companies start a podcast and only record one or two or three sessions, because they get frustrated with the less intuitive controls or limitations of a particular platform. Just like with anything else, you have a lot of choices. You can go with a lower cost DIY type of product, or a vendor platform with more bells and whistles. Choosing the right fit will help you to stay the course when it counts.
Create a Catchy Title and Tagline
One of the original sins of bad podcasts is where people just turn out an uninspired title and enter the audio track glibly without setting the stage. To the extent that you can create taglines and slogans and other introductory items for your podcast that grab people in the first few seconds, you’re more likely to create that earworm that gets you listeners. Music helps, too.
Look at Time and Scope
Some podcasts are an hour and a half long, but those tend to have a lot of narrative information. People don’t want to sit for an hour and a half and listen to other people just chatting – they could do that themselves. So unless you have some longer-form journey in mind, you may want to keep your initial podcasts to about 10 to 20 minutes. You can always extend them later if necessary, but you can never correct the first impression that your people are just blathering on into the microphones, and that’s going to get you in trouble with an audience. With these tips in mind, go forth and conquer. WebSubstance can help you with this and many other aspects of your digital marketing campaign. But your company has to come up with the creative ideas to base your podcast and channels on, so that you can compete in an atmosphere where many voices clamor for attention.
