Why I do a podcast, and why you should consider doing one too.

I can confidently say that podcasts work.

I just completed a four-year experiment that confirms it.

It took 221 episodes and nearly 500.000 downloads for my podcast to become one of the top five ways that I attract new business and a reason why I will be taking it more seriously in 2023.?

Why do I value it so much now? And how can you get your own? That's what this Saturday's email is all about.

Let's go!

Bigger than you think… and less crowded.

Internet numbers are so big that they seem almost meaningless.

Podcast numbers might feel the same. Yet they are worth comparing to other content online.

There are currently around?424 million people ?listening to podcasts in 2022. That's up 10% on 2021, by 2024 that will hit half a billion people.

Yet only 2.4 million podcasts are serving these people. This means that there is one podcast for every 177 people.

Let's compare that to blogs, where there are?600 million of them , with 3 billion posts each year. That's consumed by 77% of people on the internet, compared with 20% for podcasts.

Yet those creating podcasts are reporting that it's their podcasts and not their blogs leading to conversations and new business.

And that has certainly been my case.

My own 4-year journey with podcasting

Like most things online, I have tended to be an early adopter of podcast listening. And I created a few podcasts in my radio days as early as 2006 at Hot 100 in Darwin when I was on the breakfast show and in Hobart on 7HO FM in 2008.

But it wasn't until 2018 that I took the time to create a podcast based on my area of expertise.

I positioned the?Clickstarter podcast ?as an Australian Digital Marketing podcast.

And I took a different approach to it than others in the field.

Generally, tech and marketing podcasts are hosted by one person who invites guests to chat with them in a talkback radio interview-style format. The thought here is that you won't tire of one voice, and you'll always have something new and exciting to look forward to in the next episode.

But this felt like too much hard work and hassle. And as I suspected, most podcast guests had something they wanted to sell. I get bugged by up to 15 of these people a week wanting to be featured on my own podcast.

Instead, I took?my blog ?which I was already writing weekly and turned this into a podcast.

I just read my blog into a microphone that's plugged into my laptop computer, then add a start and end and publish it.

The whole process these days takes me around 15-20 minutes per episode.

And despite this lazy approach, I still get around 5000 downloads per episode.?From a blog post that struggles to generate 50 views a week.

What would you even talk about?

That's what stops many people from starting a podcast. Yet generating topics to talk about should be the easiest thing.

You can use the excellent blog topic tool,?Answer The Public .

You select your country, then enter one or two words about what you do.

I selected “children's entertainment”, and it returned me 8 highly searched questions, 32 other questions, 21 comparisons and 208 topics in alphabetical order about children's entertainment.

So that's where you get your ideas from.

Next. The recording part.

Recording & Editing

You don't necessarily need a microphone to get started. You can use the built-in microphone on your computer. Or get a cheaper microphone?for as little as $16.99 online . I got a $400 Shure microphone because I do professional voiceovers and lots of online classes, so clear audio is essential to me.

Then you need something to record and edit with. The free tool,?Audacity ?has been around since I was working in radio and is an excellent tool that's pretty easy to learn to use and allows you to record yourself, visually edit yourself and save your audio ready for loading up to a podcast.

Distribution to podcast networks

Distribution to podcast networks makes a piece of audio an actual podcast.

But first you need somewhere to load your podcast up that will generate an RSS feed. That's how the various networks like Apple, Google, iHeart, TuneIn, Spotify and Stitcher know that you have a new episode.

I use?Audioboom ?to load up and connect to the many available networks. It puts my podcast on to the channels where people get their podcasts.

Other options include:

• Buzzsprout
• PodBean
• Libsyn
• SoundCloud
• Anchor
• RSS.com

They all have pros and cons, costs and ways of doing it. But they do all work pretty much the same way. And they make it easier to register your podcast with places like Apple (which requires a few extra steps) and Spotify.

Then each episode, you load it up, write a short description and set the time and date for it to go live and boom! You have a new episode going out to the world.

Why do I bother doing it?

As I stated at the start, my podcast hasn't just grown an audience. It's now one of the top five ways that I attract new business.

1: In-person networking

2: My weekly newsletter

3: My network on LinkedIn

4: My podcast

5: My YouTube channel

Notice that not one of these channels involves paid ads.

I do my podcast because it requires minimal effort, gets big reach to the kind of people who need the expertise I have, and costs me only $10 a month to distribute. If I was even more cost-averse, I could distribute it for free.?

Yes - starting a podcast from scratch seems overwhelming, but you don't have to start from scratch. Repurpose ideas in your social media posts, use Answer The Public, use your blogs or even take pointers from other people's blogs.

That's all for this weekend. Just one short read on how a podcast is worth considering in 2023.

If you're not getting value out of these tips, please consider unsubscribing.?

I won't mind, and there are no hard feelings.

Alternatively, if you are enjoying this newsletter, the best compliment you could pay me would be to?share it with one person ?who you think would benefit from it.

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P.S. When you're ready, here are a few ways I can help out.

From now until the end of January 2023, I am running a Summer Series of free online workshops covering various topics, from social media to copywriting and even basic digital tools. You can see the series at the link below.

Summer Series Workshop List

I hosted a class recently showing people how to build their own website with the easiest tool there is Google Sites. You can watch it on YouTube below.

Watch it here

My free Personal Brand mini-course has now been completed by over 300 people. It's quick, delivered via email over five weeks, and free. Best of all, you won't be bugged to buy stuff afterwards.

Get the mini course now