How To Start Guest Podcasting

This is one of my favorite ways to start building credibility, relationships, and your business. And I'm going to walk you through the exact process we use, so you can do the same thing.

Watch This Episode

Listen To The Podcast

Subscribe To The Podcast

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• Google Podcast
• Stitcher
• iHeart Radio

Read The Transcript Here

Podcast Transcription

How To Start Guest Podcasting

Today, I am going to share one of my favorite ways to build credibility, relationships, and your business. So stick around. I am Tim Fitzpatrick with Rialto Marketing. Thank you so much for tuning in. And today I'm going to get into everything guest podcasting. And when I say guest podcasting, what I mean is you actually being featured and interviewed on someone else's podcast. It's no different than a guest blog posting where you write an article for somebody else's blog, except you're on a podcast.

So don't assume we're all on the same page and know what that is. But that is what podcasting is all about. I have been consistently appearing on guest podcasts for about the last five or six months and I am really enjoying it. It's just it's one of my favorite things to do each week. And I want to share with you what I've learned as we've gone through this process and show you exactly how we're doing it so that you can do the exact same thing for your business.

So that is what I'm going to do today and I'm going to give you as much value as I possibly can. So first things first one, what are the benefits against podcasting? Why in the world would you want to do this? So the first benefit that I see is that you are building new relationships. It is a great way to build relationships with other people. These podcast hosts, when you are featured on their podcast, you're having a great conversation.

You're just building rapport and adding value to their audience. And you never know where some of those relationships are going to go. Some of them don't go anywhere, but some of them, you're really going to click with those hosts. And those can end up being really, really strong relationships that will help you grow your business in the long run. Second thing is you are leveraging someone else's audience. All you do is show up and have a conversation with someone you know and add value.

You're sharing your wisdom and what you do and how it can benefit their audience. And they are then sharing that with their audience. So you are getting exposure to a new audience that you may not have been in front of before. The third thing is you're building your brand over time, each and every one of these guest podcast spots unless the podcast gets shut down. These podcasts are evergreen. They are out there. And when people get turned on to new podcasts, oftentimes what they the end up doing is they're listening to new episodes.

But when they really like it, they end up going back and bingeing on all of the previous episodes. So this is just evergreen content that you are putting out there. Building your brand name and over time building your business to the other, one of the other benefits is you are improving your search engine optimization. Again, this is not an immediate impact, but if the podcast is doing a good job of producing show notes or notes from that show, you are going to get at least one or two links from their site back to yours, which is a backlink.

And backlinks are very strong SEO signals. They make a big impact on your SEO. So as you do more and more of these, you are collecting more backlinks back to your site, which is going to be great for your SEO in the long run. And the last one is just getting more clients. You are going to get more clients. I am not going to tell you that you are going to get a media business from doing guest podcast spots.

You might, but I see it more of a long term play. And the more content you are putting out there over time, it is going to build and build upon itself. And at some point, you are going to hit this point of critical mass where you are going to start to generate a lot of leads from doing this on a consistent basis. So those are the benefits. What are the keys to success with this? To me, one of the things that we focus on are the marketing fundamentals, you know, you've got to know your target market, you have to have strong messaging and you have to have a plan.

OK, I am going to give you the plan for this guest podcasting spot, how to get more guest podcasts spots. But you really do need to have a firm understanding of your target market. Who are your ideal clients? Who you trying to reach? Because that is going to determine what podcasts you want to be on. If you don't have a good idea of that. You know, just being on a random podcast isn't going to do any good.

You want to make sure that you get on podcasts where the audience is made up of your ideal clients. The second part of that is you have to have good messaging, what you say and how you say it is really, really important. And so you're going to be saying the same things over and over again on a lot of these guest podcasts spots. But you have to have your message really dialed in because you want to make sure that what you're saying is going to be clear.

It's going to be engaging and get people to go. Man, I need to get more information. I loved what he or she said on that interview. So your messaging really needs to be dialed in and you need to understand your target market. If you need help with that, we can certainly help with that reach out. But to me, those are the found the fundamental the foundational keys to success with guest podcasting is you got to understand that target market.

You have to have good messaging for that specific target market to start generating leads from this in the long run. So. What's my plan? How am I going? How do I actually do this? I'm going to walk you through the plan that we have been using. And I will tell you, the stats that we are seeing you meet, your results may vary. I can't tell you for sure, but I'll tell you what we're seeing. For every 10 podcasts that we reach out to, we are getting one booked interview, OK?

The key to this is not just one outreach. You've got to have follow-up because we're getting booked on the follow-ups, not the initial outreach message.

OK, but for every 10, we get one booking. So keep that in mind. You know, based on what you want to do, start with the results we're seeing. And if you're getting better results than great. So the first thing that you got to do for your guest podcasting we plan is success starts with a list. OK, you've got to create a list of these potential podcasts that you want to be on. The easiest way to do this is to start with iTunes.

We like to start with iTunes and look at the new and noteworthy section, the new and noteworthy section, our podcasts that have not been out for very long. But they are gaining steam very, very quickly. So odds are really good that these new and noteworthy podcasts are going to be very popular podcasts in the long run. So if you can get featured early on, it's a great way to get on a podcast that could be getting a lot of exposure down the road.

But the other podcast sites, podcast listing sites like iTunes, there's Stitcher, Spotify, Podbay is another site that we're using, Poddit, which is P-O-D-D-I-T all good sites. Anywhere that is listing podcasts is a great place to go do a search based on your criteria. So for us, we're looking at podcasts that are in the marketing, business, entrepreneurship type categories. Just find your category, do your searches based on those categories, and you will start to see all kinds of podcasts come up.

And then from there, you'll get the information. You can go to their website, find out who the host is. And then sometimes they list their emails, sometimes they won't, sometimes they want to be reached out directly via email, and other times they want you to actually fill out a form on their website. Either way, it doesn't really matter. I prefer email because I think it's a whole lot easier to follow up on and you can cater the message much more.

But either way, you're going to have to submit based on how they want to receive those submissions. But you'll go to the website, gather the information, you can double-check to make sure that, hey, is this podcast going to be a good fit? You can kind of see past episodes, the types of people that they're featuring, and see whether it's a good fit and then put it on your list of success starts with the list. You got to start with the list first, then you've got to do outreach.

Outreach. This is where your messaging comes in. Why would somebody want to feature you on their podcast? I don't want to make this sound like it's difficult. It's not. There are so many podcasts out there that are constantly looking for guests to be on their show. So it's not difficult. But I think you have a much higher likelihood of getting booked. If you've got a really strong message, why in the world would they want to feature you?

Tell them, hey, I've got an idea for a spot on your podcast. Here's what it's about. Would this be a value to your audience? If so, let me know. And I'd love to talk. But you want to have that pitch dialed in. So one of the things that we focus on is we've got hey, here's an idea. Here's the title. And that these are the three things that we would like to cover or we can cover in this guest podcast spot to help your audience.

But you've got to do that outreach. The third thing, as I already mentioned, follow-up is key. We are rarely getting booked on the initial outreach, on the first outreach. We are getting booked on the second, third, and fourth outreaches. OK, so we're following up. We have an initial outreach email and then we follow up one, two, and up to three times if we don't hear back. After we've reached out to them four times and they're not responding, then we move on because there's plenty of other podcasts.

But follow up is key. The next thing you're going to want to do once you get booked is you need to prepare for the show, do a little bit of research, make sure that you understand the format. Some hosts are much better than others at preparing guests. So some will just will actually give you hey, here's the outline and just prepare. Don't show up unprepared. That's not going to look good for you. The host is not going to be impressed.

And if you want to get booked on more podcasts, you want that host to be impressed. You want to come across a professional. When you do a great job, you're making the host job so much easier and you're going to help make their episode better. So prepare for it. One of the things that I like to do is create a page on our website specifically for that episode. And then we give that link to the host, there's a couple of reasons why we do this.

One, it will allow us to track visits to our site long term from these podcast spots, because we can look at Google Analytics and see, hey, oh, we got five visits to this page that was built for this podcast. That's the only way people are actually going to know that link exists is that it came from that podcast episode. So it'll give us some analytics long term. It's also a great way to add value.

So a lot of the spots that I'm doing. I am talking about marketing fundamentals because that is our differentiator. We help people focus on their target market, their messaging, and putting a plan in place first because that lays the foundation for marketing success long term. So I'm talking about the fundamentals because that is our differentiator. And so I'm digging into each of those fundamentals, why they're important and how to actually do this in each of these episodes. And so I've got free resources on that landing page that we built just for that episode.

So I'm just adding value. I'm giving free resources. There are some calls to action on those pages as well so that we can hopefully generate leads as people go to those pages. But that's one of the other ways that we're helping prepare for that episode. Next thing, you want to give a great interview. So that is, again, it's about being prepared. But I think the more you can tell stories. Share as much valuable information as possible.

Don't be afraid about giving away your trade secrets or anything like that, give people as much information as you can. Be vulnerable. You know, we're not perfect. Nobody expects us to be perfect. So if it comes up and you need to be vulnerable, then do it. I think people are going to find you more relatable when you do that and give value, like I already said, and have a call to action, have a clear call to action.

If you've got a new book, if you've got again for us, it's the call to action is go to that landing page and get some free resources to help you implement those marketing fundamentals that we've talked about on the show. But have a call to action. If you don't have a call to action, people aren't going to do anything. You know, give people something of value that they're going to want that's going to get them to take that action, to go visit your site and start to come into your world.

After the interview, there are a few things that I would recommend you do. One, I like to connect with the hosts on social media. Most of them I'm connecting with on LinkedIn because there are other business people. So that's the main place that I connect with them. But there's other social channels that are appropriate for your business. Connect with them on social media after that. Leave a podcast review for them. All podcasts are trying to get reviews, leave a review.

You're adding value to the host. That's just another way to help solidify that relationship with the host. If you feel like the interview went really well, I would highly recommend that you ask the host for a review. So we're sending hosts an email that's got a link to our Google My Business page where they can leave a Google review. No, they're not a customer but guess what, they've had interaction with us, they know that we know what we're talking about because we've added value to them.

So there's somebody that can leave a review for your business. Why not take advantage of that? The other thing that I like to do is I like to ask the host a few questions. One, I like to ask them if they are looking for any other hosts or any other guests to be on the podcast. A lot of them are. And this is a great way for me to add value to the host of the podcast. But it's also a great way for me to add value to other people that are in my network because I can connect those two people and I'm helping both of them out.

The second thing I like to ask is do they know any other podcast hosts who would benefit from the information that we've discussed? That's a great way to get a referral for another podcast that you can be on. And then the third thing that I like to ask is just when is the episode going to be live? OK, because that gives us an idea, some of these podcasts are scheduling out one, two, sometimes three months in advance.

Others are just a couple of weeks out. So that just gives us an idea of when to expect the episode to go live. So that we know when we're going to start to promote it, which is that last step you got to take advantage of. This content that you just spent time producing, you need to promote it. There are multiple ways to promote it. One is you can promote it to your email list, OK? The second is you can promote it on social media.

All your social media channels, you know, promote the episode, get it out there, mention the host, mention the podcast or the business that that host is involved in, that's going to help initiate some initial engagement on each of your posts. But get this stuff out there again. When people start to see that you're being featured on podcast, it really does help build your credibility and your authority for your audience. A lot of people, it may not be difficult to get booked on a podcast, but a lot of people think, hey, if you're being featured on a podcast, you must know what you're talking about.

And most people that are featured on podcasts do. So get out there and promote it on social promoted through your email marketing channels, but you got to get out there and promote it. So that is the plan that we are using. I hope that helps. If you need more outside eyes on this to really help you implement, don't hesitate in reaching out. We can certainly coach you through this and give you the outside eyes so that you can put this in place and start using it for your business.

But like I said, I've been doing it for about five or six months. I love it. I am going to continue doing it because I think it is a fantastic tactic to grow your business, get more clients. So thank you so much for tuning in. Again, I am Tim Fitzpatrick with Rialto Marketing. If you want to gain clarity on where to focus your marketing efforts right now, hop on over to our website at rialtomarketing.com.

That's R-I-A-L-T-O marketing.com. Click on the get a free consult button. I guarantee you will get a ton of value from the call and walk away knowing exactly where you need to focus your marketing efforts right now to get the best return. Remember, marketing your business should not be a challenge. All you need is a plan. Till next time, take care.

About the Host Tim Fitzpatrick

Tim Fitzpatrick is the President of Rialto Marketing. At Rialto Marketing, we help small businesses & entrepreneurs eliminate the confusion of marketing by focusing on the fundamentals. As a marketing partner, we help clients put in place and manage a simple marketing plan so they can grow. Marketing your business shouldn't be a challenge. All you need is a plan.