I know you’re probably looking at growth options for this year.
YouTube. Paid traffic. Whatever social media app Gary Vee is talking about lately.
But here’s the weird thing, maybe you’ve noticed it, too.
For many people, marketing and social media have become the same thing.
Their entire marketing plan is based around creating content and engaging on social media in real time.
It’s like they live every day hoping a big social media company will put them in front of more people for free.
Does that make sense?
I recommend a very different approach, especially if you’re on the introvert side.
Starting in 2015, I put podcasting front and center. Social media was last on my priority list.
I’m a natural introvert, so podcasting was a perfect vehicle for me.
And with the growth of my first podcast came attention on social media.
Best of all, other people were sharing the podcast.
So I got attention on social media in the most authentic way possible – word-of-mouth.
In this article, I go deeper and break down the 5 reasons to base your marketing on podcasting, not social media.
—>More of an audio learner? Click HERE to listen to the audio podcast version of this article.
Let’s jump!
- Podcasting is not subject to an algorithm just to get seen.
Remember Facebook Business Pages?
We were encouraged to build those up, and many of us invested time and energy to build up our pages to thousands, even tens of thousands of followers. Some even ran targeted ads just to build Page likes, all under Facebook’s approving eye.
Then BAM…our pages had their effectiveness wiped out almost overnight by algorithm changes.
On the other hand, when a new podcast episode goes live, our subscribers get that episode downloaded to their device automatically.
There’s no algorithm hiding our content and dictating who sees it and who doesn’t.
No extortion to pay cold hard cash to reach the people who have already subscribed.
Podcasts are also available on multiple platforms, including YouTube if you choose, so your risk of getting de-platformed, shadow-banned or squashed in the algorithm is low.
- Podcasting has a very long shelf life.
Episodes are searchable, discoverable and shareable long after they are created. People actively go back into podcasts they’ve subscribed to and look for older episodes to listen to.
I see this every time we update our podcast clients on their stats.
When new episodes come out, we see a spike in their download numbers. But 30, 40, 50% of those downloads aren’t the newest episode. Those other downloads come from people getting the new episode, then going back to older episodes and binging on their content.
On my real estate podcast, I still get hundreds of downloads and YouTube plays of episodes we recorded in 2015 and 16.
Social media posts have a much shorter shelf life, yet we’re expected to put time and energy into them as if they had a long shelf life. The amount of effort people put into getting attention today on a social media post that disappears is time they could be putting into content that is discoverable months, even years, later.
- Podcasting is based on timeless principles.
Most people are following the same marketing gurus, trying to capitalize on change.
They spend their time looking for a slight edge, a tactical advantage, that gets them free traffic.
I’ve done the opposite and taken a Warren Buffet approach to marketing.
I build my marketing system around things that don’t change.
When we work with clients, we recommend they follow our Weekly Podcast Formula.
This formula combines 3 types of episodes: Authentic conversations with fellow influencers, Solo episodes (where you deliver your message straight to the audience) and Success Stories where your best clients share the results you’ve delivered for them.
These 3 types of episodes are all based on timeless formats that have existed since radio and teleseminars.
Legends like Tony Robbins, Dan Kennedy and Jay Abraham feel right at home in podcasting formats because they’ve been doing the same things over tele-conference lines and cassette tapes for decades.
I don’t want to base my marketing system (and business success) on the whims of social media companies.
And ultimately, we know what social media companies want.
They want us on our devices, creating content and engaging with one end goal – more ad inventory and private information to sell.
So right now, big social media companies are pushing us to create new content and engage in real time, for hours and hours a day. That’s what they reward with attention and traction.
Extroverts might be able to do it over the long run, but it burns introverts out.
Podcasting allows you to focus on timeless principles.
People will always want to hear what key influencers have to say, in long-form conversations.
People will always want to hear success stories of those who take action on what you teach.
And people will always want to hear from you, delivering your message straight to your audience.
I believe that kind of content will never go out of style, even as the technology for how people listen, subscribe or consume that content evolves.
- Podcasting allows you to spend more time with your audience.
The average listener, once they start an episode, listens to 80% of that episode.
Even with business podcasts moving toward the shorter, 30 minute episodes, that’s still far, far more time with your audience than a social media post, or even a week’s worth of posts!
There is no other form of marketing, including YouTube channels, that allows you to spend so much time with your audience.
For my real estate podcast, we took off on YouTube first and it took over a year for iTunes to catch up and overtake our YouTube channel. So YouTube was a big part of our initial traction.
Even so, during the time we were taking off on YouTube, our average watch time was 12 minutes. That includes people binging on full 60 minute episodes and playing our show in the background while they work.
Compare that to podcasting, which gives you the opportunity to spend 20, 30, 40 minutes or more with your audience on each episode. And like any relationship, the more quality time you spend together, the deeper that relationship gets.
So YouTube can be very powerful, but it still falls far short of podcasting in the amount of time your audience spends with your content. And no other form of marketing even comes close.
- Podcasting helps build the ultimate asset of any expert business- the audience.
In old school direct mail marketing, the mailing list was everything. If you had a great list, you had a great business.
Today we don’t have one consistent way to reach people (like a mailing address) so the asset is no longer the mailing list. The asset is the audience itself – the people who follow your content online.
Whether they live in your email list or subscribed to your podcast or follow you on social media.
It’s the scalable relationship you have with a group of people. The people you want to serve and impact.
Podcasting allows you to reach new people online, develop a deeper long-term relationship with them, and convert them into ideal clients over time.
So there you have it, 5 reasons to base your marketing around podcasting, especially if you want to enjoy life as an introvert and still grow your business!
If you’d like to explore launching a podcast with our agency, click here.
Want all of our tools and templates to do it yourself? Check out the MicroFamous FastTrack here.