By: Mary Ann Bautista

So, you have started an audio podcast and you love it! You get to share your views, be the expert and get yours and your company’s name out there. But things are static! You have not seen much growth in listeners or subscribers. 

The challenge is how to get enough of the right audience to listen to your audio podcast so that the opportunity has scale and impact! The existing podcast platforms do not have meaningful tools to advertise your podcast. There are best practices to follow for a podcast show and its title descriptions, but typically a listener is not going to search for a keyword in their favorite podcasting directory. An industrious listener might stumble upon your podcast, but they might not find you. It’s like searching for a needle in a haystack.  

There are a few methods to “advertise” audio podcasts off the distribution platform. 

1. Share the podcast with your current lead list through your customer communications including your website, your newsletters, and your social media. This may help with existing leads and/or current customers who want to expand their business with you, however, it will not attract new ears. 

2. Trade guest opportunities with other aligned podcasts. However, this is a slow process, and it does require some management and coordination.

3. Produce your audio podcast in video where there are tried and true methods for marketing. Video is where you can market your content most successfully. On YouTube your content can be optimized for search. 

It can sound a bit difficult to handle. I am sure what is running through your mind is that you are already challenged enough for time and resources with the creation of the tech for an audio podcast. Who has the time to become a video producer? Well, it is much simpler than you think.  

The first step is to stop thinking of your audio podcast as a “podcast.”  You need to realize that what you are producing is valuable “content.” And that “content” should be repurposed and distributed wherever your target audience exists. In fact, we hope that you are already repurposing the content on your blog, on your website, through your social media channels, and syndicating it to your industry’s trade magazine and sharing sites. Get the biggest bang for your buck with your valuable content. 

Taking your content to video is the next step in repurposing your content. And why? Because that is where your target lives. And how do I know that? Because EVERYONE is on YouTube! YouTube is the world’s 2nd largest search engine. That’s right and it bears repeating… YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine in the world! 

Plus, Google gives YouTube videos, high authority, and high ranking in its search returns. So even if your target is not searching for your content on YouTube, it will find a well-optimized YouTube video and offer it up in the returns. Google loves video! 

There are several creative approaches to creating a video version of your audio podcast and they range from simple to even simpler. 

-Record the audio podcast on Zoom  
-Use basic software like Streamyard or Bandicam to record the show  
-Create a graphics-only video with headshots of you and your guests  
-Create a simple moving graphic with morphing shapes, etc.

We recommend the top two over the bottom two, as we find them more engaging and interesting to watch, but if your “content” is interesting enough, they are not necessary.  

Finally, the video content needs to be optimized and marketed. What does this mean? The first step is to optimize your channel so future publishing efforts will be consistent and well-received by the YouTube algorithm. 

YouTube is not only a video platform but also a social media platform. With proper execution, you can drive organic traffic to your video podcast and your website. How is this done? If you have an existing YouTube channel, you should optimize your existing content so that YouTube’s indexing and ranking algorithms can easily rank your content in search and pick up your content and deliver it to the right audience. 

YouTube Search Engine Optimization consists of two significant aspects: 1.) the on-page and 2.) the off-page. Additionally, you need help to develop new content that predictably will rank for those looking for your target keywords. 

On-page optimization focuses on getting your content ready to be indexed and crawled by YouTube’s algorithm, ensuring that YouTube’s bots understand what your video is all about, and placing them in front of the right audience. The process involves keyword research, content planning, and optimizing titles, descriptions, tags, and thumbnails. Moreover, the YouTube SEO process will also include the optimization of playlists, cards, and end screens. 

Off-page optimization focuses on driving views from external sources such as Facebook, Google Search, Reddit, Twitter, Medium, Instagram, Quora, backlinks, and other social bookmarking sites. These sites pass their domain SEO authority to the YouTube videos linked to them, giving a social signal boost and backlink power. Backlinks are one of the primary metrics Google Search relies on to get your videos to rank. 

Finally, you can “game” the system by doing smart content planning, based on keyword research. When you know what folks are searching for, you can reverse engineer your content to post with the best possible outcome: to get the most targeted traffic to your channel. We recommend starting with the least competitive keywords to drive ranking and views more quickly.  

In summation, video needs to be a part of your content strategy. You are already doing the work of producing great content in the audio podcast form.  

Take your audio podcast content to the next level and drive more views and subscribers with the creation of video! 

 

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