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.
Very informative post Carol. As like Videos , podcast can be a very great source for the group of people who wants to read by hearing closing the eyes on their favorite devices. So, i have also tried this part and got approved in apples itunes store for publishing my podcast of each and every blog post i publish, check it (http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/ewebpedia-blog/id511838481). But, yes i haven’t tried to sell anything from my podcast as they are created only for the purpose to help people and give them one more option for reading what i share.
Thanks for the links to those software. I’ll try.
I also want to put podcasts on my blog. This is very interesting. thank you
Hi Carol, Can I raise my hand to being one of those new subscribers to your podcast? lol
I heard your interview with Srini on Blogcast FM and I subscribed right away. Thanks for spreading the good word about podcasting. I think many people need to be convinced of what a powerful format it is for content distribution. btw – the name of my podcast is Ms. Ileane Speaks and you can find it in iTunes. Thanks Carol and best wishes to your success.
Yes podcasts are one of my favourites. I leared English through the Podcasts downloaded from BBC few years back and listening to them. Thank you its a nice article.
I love it. You are making podcasts seem doable. Thanks
Carol, thank you for sharing these tips. I never knew of the benefits of podcasting. I just started conducting audio interviews, but I have not yet moved to the next level. However, the relationships developed as a result of those interviews have grown. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for this wake up call and with tons of valuable information.
I will take a closer look at it and integrate it into my personal blogging.
Great tips. I really like adding podcasts as a premium to subscribers. That’s an awesome idea.
Thank you Carol,
I’ve been thinking about adding podcasts to my blog… My only concern is that when people listen to a podcast they cannot click on a link to my blog/website just like that, can they? I imagine that it means much lower conversion in terms of sign ups to my email list, or?
Thanks –
Halina
I will share my result next week once i’m done with recording.
interesting points Carol, I have noticed it work very well for Big blogs like Smart passive income, I have tried going the video route and will do so more often in future, I think that being in the fitness niche mostly for that niche visual works better than going the podcast route.
I totally agree that your blog should have a podcast! But, as a former radio personality, I know how hard it is to get an maintain listeners. What if you don’t have nice equipment or a quiet space to record? What if you don’t like your voice? VoiceBunny.com can create podcasts for blogs and news sites automatically, using professional voiceover talents. We are doing this right now for Fred Wilson’s blog at AVC.com. For his blog, we upload the audio to SoundCloud and he embeds the HTML 5 widget on his blog. We also make it available for free on iTunes and Stitcher, so it’s easy for people to listen on phones and tablets. Check us out and let me know if you have any questions! Keep up the good work. You can read all about how it works on our blog! http://bit.ly/y9Da9p
Great tips. As a former radio jock (what an admission…) I’d add a couple of tips.
It’s really important to learn how to use your microphone correctly. If you don’t, there’s a danger you’ll sound bad and put people off listening.
Talk fairly close to the microphone – about 6 inches away is usually about right. Too far away and you’ll sound distant and echoey, too close and you’ll get horrible air noises as you pronounce words with a p sound in them.
If you can, position the microphone away from your computer to avoid the noise of whining fans, mouse clicks, and so on.
Before recording, feed your cat. Seriously, you don’t want them meowing for snacks halfway through (been there, not good).
Do a quick test of your recording setup and play it back before recording your whole podcast. Nothing’s more disappointing than to get to the end of a brilliant podcast only to find when listening back that the sound is distorted or your desktop is creaking all the way through.
Hi Carol,
It was a pleasure to have you on my blog and to be part of your podcasts. Just speaking to people does make that relationship grow faster and of course it’s great to feel special and chosen as someone another blogger would like to work with:)
I’ve started doing podcasts too but need to do more! That’s always the way:)
I alternating between, video, writing and podcasting. Keeps things interesting…