This guest post is by Carol Tice of Make a Living Writing.
Are you having trouble keeping your blog readers interested in what you have to say?
If interest is waning, it may be time to add some variety to what you’re giving readers, besides just writing blog posts, week after week.
Back in July 2011, I started doing monthly live training events for participants in my membership community, which I record. Then, I began editing down short excerpts from those hour-long events and using them as blog posts. I’d write a short intro, and then just let people listen to a short podcast of five minutes or so.
Free software such as Audacity and free webcasting platforms such as Anymeeting make it easy to record your voice and create short audio trainings for your audience.
If you’re on WordPress, the Audio Player plug-in also makes it super-easy to install a podcast right inside a blog post. All of which definitely helped me, since I’m not technically gifted.
In short, if you’re intimidated by adding video interviews to your site—maybe you don’t feel you’d make an attractive, poised talking head?—podcasting can be a great way to go.
Adding podcasts achieved my goal of helping me keep readers and grow my subscriber base—I added about 1,000 new subscribers in the first six months after I began podcasting.
But I’ve gotten much more from podcasting than a bigger, more engaged readership. I discovered there are some powerful fringe benefits of podcasting, too. Here are five unexpected benefits of podcasting.
1. Stand out from the crowd
Instantly, when you add podcasts, you have separated yourself from the unwashed masses of bloggers. You’ve got more going on than most—you have tasty audio recordings people can listen to. Since some people learn best through listening rather than reading, you can capture another segment of readers who might otherwise might not be interested in your blog.
2. Make useful new friends
Most good podcasts aren’t one person talking, but two or more. I’ve found that as a podcaster, you can approach nearly anyone about appearing, and many top bloggers will agree. Once you’ve featured them on your recording, it’s often the start of a deeper relationship that may lead to any number of additional interactions, including your guest posting on their blog.
Since hosting them on my podcasts, I have appeared on the blogs of many of my podcast guests including Renegade Writer Linda Formichelli and Successful Blogging’s Annabel Candy.
Many A-listers may not have time to give you a written guest post, but you can post their podcast or an excerpt of it on your blog, effectively turning your well-known guest into a guest poster on your own blog.
3. Create products
Every time you create a recording, you have a new product in your hands. There are myriad ways you can make use of this valuable property, including:
- Offer it as a premium freebie for your blog subscribers.
- Offer it as a bonus when readers do an earlybird purchase of your paid product.
- Offer it as a bonus when readers buy an affiliate product through your link.
- Bundle it with other recordings on similar topics to create a free or paid online audio course.
- Get it transcribed and turn it into an ebook.
- Use it as part of the content for members of a member community platform.
4. Get interviewed
Once you have audio samples of how great you sound doing audio podcasts, it positions you as a strong candidate for being interviewed on others’ podcasts. For instance, I ended up featured on Blogcast.fm. This can help expose you to new audiences and also bring in more readers.
5. Gain affiliate opportunities
I believe my podcasting success led to my receiving several offers from top bloggers to affiliate-sell their lucrative products. These were situations where only a handful of affiliates were given the opportunity. I made over $2,500 selling just one of them.
How does podcasting help here? Bloggers know one of the best ways to get readers interested in a paid product is to first offer them some valuable training in a related topic through—you guessed it—a live podcast or Webinar. With demonstrated podcasting experience and an audience that’s been trained to consume live information, you’re in a better position to get these sorts of exclusive affiliate-sales offers.
How are you keeping readers interested in your blog? Leave a comment and let us know.
Carol Tice writes and podcasts on the Make a Living Writing blog, and serves as Den Mother of the writers’ learning and support community Freelance Writers Den.
