Podcasting for Business

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Over the last five years, more and more businesses have expanded their online presence to include blogs, social media presences, and columns in third-party reporting websites. While text is often the platform of choice for guerrilla marketing and promotional PR, video and audio are highly valuable, underrepresented avenues for online marketers. From ultra-simple weekly podcasts to full-on series of videos, generating buzz and real marketing traffic through a business podcast is a great way to expand and reach new customers.

Think about how many blogs there are out there. There are millions of blogs in total, with most struggling to amass more than ten regular readers. For every ultra-successful business blog, there are thousands that are barely ever recognized, let alone read with any regularity. The major problem with blogging for business is that it is simply too saturated to be a valuable marketing strategy. Who wants to invest hundreds of hours into something that simply does not pay off? While blogging can be successful, for most businesses it isn’t.

That is the reason why podcasting is such a great way to establish and promote your business. Instead of having to compete with millions of other blogs, you are only ever competing with a small group of podcasters. If you are operating in a relatively niche area of business, you might be the only podcast covering your subject.

You know what that means, right? Whenever someone searches for your topic, you are the sole result to appear. There is no more intense competition to worry about, just dedicated podcast listeners that love to hear what you have got to say. As much as blogging has been praised for businesses, podcasting has been left relatively untouched, giving you a great opportunity to establish something new, unique, and valuable.

Of course, there are benefits to podcasting other than the relatively low level of competition. Firstly, there is the enhanced level of trust. To put it simply, people are naturally cautious on the internet. They hear horror stories about online fraud and shady marketers, and immediately think that the entire internet is out to get them. Podcasting gives your business the opportunity to pre-sell to customers entirely through voice, lending an authenticity and trust level to your business that is missing in an all-text blog post.

Secondly, podcasting gives you immediate, total attention, especially if you are a video podcaster. When someone is reading through a blog post, particularly a long and detailed one, the natural inclination is to skip forwards, only absorbing small doses of the post at once. This leads to affiliate links that get skimmed over, business call-to-actions that are ignored, and great content that is simply sifted through with no focus. However, audio is dynamic and commanding of attention. When your listeners are not able to “skim” through your audio content, they really listen. That gives you tremendous power to influence, build trust, and eventually market your business.

Next time your business is looking to expand into a form of dynamic media, give podcasting a go. Podcasts are effective, potentially lucrative, and a great way for you to market and promote your business.