In this episode of the Wizard’s Roundtable, Bryan Eisenberg and Ryan Patrick talk about the untapped advantages your business could leverage by having a podcast. It’s surprisingly easy to do, and if you can have a 10-minute phone call, you can have a podcast.

Transcription below video

Runtime approx: 22 mins

JOHNNY: So why does your business need a podcast? I thought podcasts were just for listening to long-form stories about solving murders, or I thought it was something that ABC news did for people who are really political wonky, and they want to get into all those details. Why would a business need a podcast?

To talk about that today, we’re going to talk with Bryan Eisenberg, who co-authored several books in the digital space. But the most recent is Be Like Amazon, Even a Lemonade Stand Can Do It, which he co-authored with his brother, Jeffrey Eisenberg. And also with us today, Ryan Patrick, one of my favorite ad writers and marketing strategists, who’s also the host of a podcast called M*A*S*H Matters where we give you the ins and outs of why a business might need that. So to ask Bryan Eisenberg this question: why should a business consider a podcast? And what are the advantages?

BRYAN: Number one, they create their own moat to their own content, right? It’s just like having your own website. You’re creating your own content, you’re deciding what to say on it, how it sounds, how it’s produced, how you come off. Right? And I think that’s a really critical piece to have in today’s marketplaces is to have a place to have your own voice. And you could decide the length: you can have a podcast that’s seven minutes long, you can have a podcast that’s two hours long. If you’ve got the kind of content that can hold people for that you can absolutely go that long. I think that’s a really important piece. A lot of the other social media type platforms really limit the amount of space you have, it also limits the amount of attention you get.

Two, it is such an amazing platform. Obviously in the Wizard world we know the power of audio to connect directly to the hearts of our customers. But it creates such an intimacy because you are usually with that person with their headphones on. They’re there with you, they’re engaged with you. And it’s interesting, out of all the different platforms — I have friends who’ve got great platforms on YouTube and peccary platforms, on Instagram and on TikTok now — but there’s something about the audience of podcasters that are just so much more intimate and involved than just about any other platform out there.

Three, from a production point of view, you can get away with a pretty minimal level production. Creating good video is hard. I’m sure we can ask Bryan to get up and try to do one of the TikTok trends right now. May not be the prettiest thing in the world, right? Not now. Okay. And then we have to figure out how to do all the video editing and video editing is a lot more work.

Number four, you can do kind of what we’re doing. We’re recording podcasts but at the same time we’re also recording some video. And so while you’re doing that you can now grab these little snippets of a video and use them in other platforms to promote your podcast. So there’s a lot of advantages to it. It’s long-form, well thought out, and obviously something that you can chunk up and distribute in other areas as well.

JOHNNY: Ryan, you have a wonderful podcast called M*A*S*H Matters. And I think that’s one of the charms of podcasting as well, you can find your cohorts, your people who are just as passionate. So tell me a little about the journey of making M*A*S*H Matters. And people always want to know how do you grow a podcast? I’ve got one. How do you grow it?

RYAN: Well, first of all, M*A*S*H Matters, our podcast where we celebrate the classic television show M*A*S*H. It was born out of — you know, there are some podcasts out there about M*A*S*H, but none of them really talked about the show itself. They would talk about episodes, but they would never really talk about the show. And so I had a connection many, many, many years ago, made a connection with Jeff Maxwell, who plays private Igor on the show. And I contacted him and said, “What would you think about at least coming on as a guest if I was to do this,” and he said, “I’d love to do this with you.” And so it really started something cool where we can talk about what is my all time favorite show.

I come at it from the perspective of a super fan. He comes at it from the perspective of somebody who was there who can give all the behind the scenes stories. I can talk about what it’s like from a fan’s perspective. And it really works. It’s connecting with a lot of people who love M*A*S*H. People who don’t love M*A*S*H probably wouldn’t like the podcast. And you know what? That’s okay. I’m okay with that. Because we’re just talking to super fans like me. And that’s the same thing with business, not everybody is going to listen to you, not everybody is going to like you. And that’s okay. You only have to impact a very small percentage of the people who are listening in order to make some kind of impact with your business. And a question that you have to ask yourself when you start a podcast for your business is “Who are you? Who are you talking to? Are you wanting to talk to prospective customers? Or are you wanting to talk to other people in your industry?” Those are two completely different audiences. And it will influence what questions you ask, who you have on as guests, and the content that you want to explore with your podcast.

So that’s the very first thing that you need to figure out. What do you want to do? And really it’s two things: are you wanting to entice and maybe capture some new buyers? Or are you wanting to maybe increase your stature within the community or within your industry? And if that’s the case, then you can have long conversations with other people in your industry, about the state of your industry, the challenges, the innovations. If you’re talking to customers, that’s a different route. Here’s a suggestion. One thing you can do is to simply ask your staff, “What are the top 10, 15, 20 questions that you’re getting on a daily basis? Time after time after time from our customers?” One of those questions is one podcast. Okay, you break down and you answer those questions because people are calling your business and asking these questions. They represent a segment of the population who have the exact same questions. And so if you can be the expert, and that’s one of the advantages of podcasting is you get to build authority as an expert. You get to be the expert that people seek out and you teach them something, you answer the questions that they’re already asking. And this is also good for just advertising in general. But for podcasting you answer the questions they’re already asking. They see you as the expert and they’re going to be drawn to you, and they’re going to come to you. They’re going to feel like they know you before they even make that first phone call or reach out through your website or walk through your front door.

BRYAN: I want to add that one key thing, because you mentioned about being an expert. You know, my 13 year old son started a podcast a couple years ago. He is not an expert on baseball, right? But through the podcast he has been able to bring on experts and ask the questions. And he’s developed quite a little reputation, and has had some of the top baseball development experts in the universe on his podcast. So don’t feel you have to be the expert, right? You can also use that platform to bring experts to leverage as part of your reputation.

RYAN: Absolutely.

JOHNNY: There’s something to be said for building this repository, this library of information. And people probably shouldn’t get hung up on “Well I put this thing out in the universe and only 18 people listened to it.” To be able to do these things then when a customer comes to you and wants more information on this, or you’re in a conversation with a customer and something comes up, “Hey, listen to this talk about this topic.”

So talk a little bit about audience because it’s not a radio show.

BRYAN: Yeah, absolutely it’s not a radio show. I’ve seen this a number of times. One of my favorite early content marketing examples was Warby Parker. And Warby Parker would go ahead and every single time there was any kind of questions about glasses they’d just create a video on it. They just created a massive library that of course ended up becoming a great search engine optimization tactic as well. And I recently heard another business doing the same thing. In fact, I think it was one of the mattress companies. One of my friends became CEO of a mattress company and they just started doing the podcasting thing. Every question that comes in they’re turning that into another episode and another repository of content. That then could create a page on your website for as well, that’s indexable. It’s indexable by text. And then they’re also taking those same podcasts and there’s a bunch of apps that we can talk about later on that will actually also turn them into videos that they’re putting up on YouTube.

JOHNNY: Bryan, stick with that for just a second, because I think you touched on something there that’s really important is the SEO value of having these things. So if I’m searching for, what’s the best mattress for lower back pain, that podcast is going to pop up in Google?

BRYAN: Yeah. Well, so not only that, so like I said, what what I would do if I had a podcast on that right now, go ahead and maybe bring on an expert on lower back pain and not just let’s say, I own a mattress store, we have to know somebody who wants a mattress store, right? easy for him to kind of go ahead and find some these experts and have some of these conversations about how should someone with lower back pain, talk about this and come up with it, you then go and you transcribe that same podcast, that transcription, then becomes a page with the embedded version of the podcast on there, then you take the transcription and the audio, and there are there are apps out there that will take that transcription and turn it into captions with video, and now you put it on YouTube. So it will likely be found on YouTube, it’ll likely be found on Google when people search it up, because now they’ll have a whole authority thing. And it’ll be way better content than just reading a page about low back pain, you’ll have some doctor on there or whatever talking about it. And of course, if they’re too lazy to go ahead and actually read the page, they can then go and just click right off to the podcast and listen to it on your leisure.

RYAN: That’s not only valuable for onboarding customers, that’s also valuable for onboarding employees. You are now building a stockpile of training audio that they can listen to and learn from. So when they’re going out and selling your product or your courier service, they’ve heard directly from you how they should do that. And back to Bryan’s point, I think the warmth of audio and that intimate conversation that’s being had, it tells customers your character. Who you are, what you’re about, how you how you respond to things, and I think there’s a big value there.

BRYAN: We buy from people buy from people, right and just an ordinary page, even the fast great content, if I can connect to the person that I created trust. Absolutely. You’re gonna have a better chance of converting

JOHNNY: Ryan if I’m a business and I look at the mysterious podcast world and I think “Oh my gosh, that’s the hardest thing I could possibly do. There’s no way I could ever have a podcast.” Talk a little bit about some of the profoundly easy tools that are out there. I think it was your idea to turn Wizard’s Roundtable into a podcast and it was so stupid-easy to do that. I’m kicking myself for not thinking of it sooner. But the internet wants you to have a podcast.

RYAN: Well first of all, everybody is pretty much walking around with a recording studio in their pocket now with their with their smartphone. You can find microphones right here that you can plug into your smartphone, you should invest a little bit of money in some equipment like he said a mic. I agree you need a microphone, don’t just start don’t just push the voice memo button on your phone and start talking on your phone get a microphone. The next thing that’s probably under $70 USB mics you can find you can find good quality USB mics for under $100. Just go to Amazon and or you can just go on Google and search what are the best microphones for podcasts. And you’re going to find a variety of options and a variety of price ranges. You don’t need a $300 microphone. You don’t need it. Find something that has good reviews and plug it into your computer and start recording.

There are free resources online to record. You can download things like Audacity and if you have a Mac, if you have an Apple product you should already have GarageBand on your MacBook. If you are going to do interviews with people who are not in your community, if you’re not going to be able to do one-on-one,  especially in the age of COVID that’s becoming more and more prevalent, obviously you can use Zoom. Even we have used Zoom for our podcasts, a lot of podcasts are using Zoom. There are also things like we use Zencaster for our podcast. We’ve used the Ringr, there’s Squadcast. There are different options where you can record online with somebody if you’re going to do a guest.

And then I agree that especially when you’re getting started, just start working on it and seeing what you can do. If you don’t know audio editing then you can learn it. For one thing, it’s fairly easy to learn at least the basics of it. So you can get online and you can do a little bit of playing around with that, or find somebody who does know it. Contact your local radio station and say, “Hey, can I talk to the production guy?” Because let me tell you something, they’re not making a lot of money, okay. And if you could throw them a few bucks to edit your podcast and make it sound polished, and professional… Remember, whatever audio you’re putting out there, people are a little more forgiving sometimes with audio, as opposed to video, but you still want a good polished sound, okay? Because it is a representation of your company. So the last thing you want is the representation of your business being really crappy sound, you want a good sound. So maybe find somebody in your community, start with the radio station, the local college, check with the production team over there. There’s somebody who is ready, willing and able to take your audio and make it sound good.

BRYAN: And you throw them into third party services as well that are

RYAN: Oh, yeah. Now as well. So that’s not that’s not too hard as well. Yeah. So if you’re thinking, “Oh, I don’t have time for this,” I understand you’re running a business. Of course you don’t have time for this. So find somebody who can do it for you find somebody who does have the time to do it, it’s going to make your job easier, it’s going to make their job easier, it’s going to make the listening experience a lot more enjoyable as well.

JOHNNY: Bryan, how often should a podcast come out? Talk a little bit about consistency and frequency and those those important details? Or is it important?

BRYAN: No, consistency definitely is important. If you want to do it every two weeks, if you want to do a longer one at once a month, again, depends on the topic. It depends on what you’re trying to cover. If you just want to do a short one every day, one of my favorite podcasts is one called Justin Su’a, right? He puts out a podcast in under three minutes every single day. And that works. It’s great for him. My friend Joe Ferraro, who does One Percent Better, he does once a week.

RYAN: Speaking about consistency, whatever schedule you decide to use, maybe you’re going to do weekly, daily, every other week, once a month, whatever. It is just that’s another that’s another choice you need to make right from the get go. Whatever it is, stick with it. That’s the consistency part. Whatever you say, if I’m going to do if I’m going to release a podcast every Tuesday, then by golly, every Tuesday, you show up with a new podcast. You might be editing the heck of that thing Monday night at 10 o’clock. But it’s going to come out on Tuesday. Because that’s consistency. People get used to release dates. They start looking forward and they’ve anticipated it. And so if you’re not there, that’s another thing that speaks to your company. If you’re not consistent with the release dates — if people start seeing that you’re just very sporadic with when you release podcasts — well maybe they start thinking, “Well, what else are they sporadic about?” Things like those little details matter, and people connect dots.

JOHNNY: Podcasts have existed in some form for a good 10-15 years. In some ways. It’s been around for a while, and a lot of ways, it’s still in its infancy. When you look at the growth that’s already happened in the gross that is about to happen.

BRYAN: Yeah, I think we can point to — whatever you think of his podcast or not — but Joe Rogan being paid to come on Spotify’s platform and bring his podcast on there is a good illustration of how mainstream podcasts have become as opposed to traditional Morning Show radio. I think we’ve seen it in TV for years and in audio we’re seeing that as well. And so there’s research by Edison Research, my friend, Tom Webster shared it with me,
where there’s an estimated hundred 92% of the US population 12 and above have listened to online audio, like,

JOHNNY: and that includes a lot of things in addition to podcasts, but it just it just continues to grow each year.

BRYAN: Yeah, and investments still haven’t like, there’s still not a ton of investment in NACA, there’s a handful. So like you said it is still in its infancy.

JOHNNY: And the goal isn’t to become a podcast star. The goal is to share who you are with your potential customers or within your business category. To build that expertise. That’s really where the advantage is.

RYAN: I’m just going to go ahead and tell you you’re not going to become a podcast. Okay, just get that out of your head right now it’s not going to happen. what your job is to do is to inform, educate, and be the expert. And or host the experts. And maybe you’re listening to this or watching this and saying, “You know, I’d love to do this, but I don’t know that I can do this right now.” That’s okay. Maybe though what you can do — because you are an expert if you own your business — you can always reach out to other podcasts in your industry and offer your services to be a guest on their podcast. I’ll tell you, a lot of podcast hosts are just clamoring for guests. So if you reach out and say, “Hey, I do this, I offer this. If you’re interested, I would love to be a guest on your podcast.” And that might help you get a little bit of traction and also give a little bit of experience with podcasts. Or maybe you just say “You know what, I love podcasts. But I don’t know that I have the chops for it.” Why not seek out some podcasts in your industry or some local podcasts that you really enjoy and advertise your business on their podcast. Again, podcasting is not a money making venture in itself. So there are a lot of podcasts who would love to have sponsors for their show, and would love for you to sponsor their podcast.

BRYAN: It’s a lot like writing a book. You don’t make money from the book, you make money because of the book. And it’s a podcast, right? You’re not gonna make money from the podcast, you’re not gonna get wealthy on it. One of my friends had Manscape come in, they were willing to sponsor his podcasts. Not gonna get wealthy on that. But you know, you may get a better shape somewhere I don’t know their perks I guess.

JOHNNY: For a lot of the things that were mentioned today, there are links in the comments section and in the show notes, and this YouTube video is also a podcast that you can subscribe to so that you can listen to it anytime if that’s more convenient for you. Just another way that we’re getting this information out and your business can do it too. If you have any questions please leave them in the comments below. You can also send us an email. Here is how you get in contact.

More about Ryan Patrick: www.timmilesandco.com

More about Bryan Eisenberg: www.bryaneisenberg.com

M*A*S*H Matters: www.mashmatters.com

Recording software: www.audacityteam.org or www.apple.com/mac/garageband/

Options to record interviews: www.zoom.us www.zencaster.com www.skype.com

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