You’ve probably utilized things like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and email marketing to make strides with engaging your audience with great content. Have you considered what podcasts can do to support your content marketing strategy? If not, it’s time to get familiar with podcasts. They are an excellent way to promote your brand while being entertaining and connective. Providing your listeners with interesting podcast topics delivered in an educational way can help your audience connect to your brand in a personal way.
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Point Your Listeners Back to the Community
If you’ve ever listened to a podcast, you’ve probably heard the episode end with directions to visit a website or send questions and comments to a certain email address. Your podcast is an ideal opportunity to bring listeners back to your site’s community and extend the conversation. Perhaps you have an active Facebook page, or maybe your audience holds discussions on a certain forum. Wherever your audience is, that’s where you should send your podcast listeners at the end of your episodes.
Ask your audience to give their feedback about the episode in that space, so other listeners can respond and form a discussion. This encourages much more engagement than a one-off email. You can also ask your audience to post suggestions for future episode topics in that same area. That way, you’ll get a crystal clear picture of what your audience wants to hear.
Extend Your Podcast to Email Marketing
Your podcast is the perfect way to build brand awareness and develop a relationship with listeners. Once you have those relationships, you can use email marketing as your sales channel. Research has found that consumers prefer to receive promotional content and sales offers via their email above other avenues. Other studies show that when you sell to people who have already interacted with your brand and know who you are, email marketing is one of the most effective sales channels.
While you can take advantage of email marketing for sales, it doesn’t have to be all promotional content. You can also use email to encourage your listeners to engage with your brand. Ask them to send you ideas for future podcasts or to review your previous episodes. You could email your listeners and run a competition with them where they have to interact with you in some way to gain entry. The options for email marketing are nearly endless.
Host an “Ask Me Anything” Show
A benefit of podcasts is the accessibility it gives your listeners. The casual tone helps your audience feel more connected to you, and this sense of connection and comfort makes an “ask me anything” type podcast possible. The easiest way to host a show like this is to promote and publicize it a few weeks in advance. Ask your listeners to email you questions or post them on other social media sites, or wherever they actively engage. Choose the top questions to answer and record your podcast. Your listeners will tune in to see if their question made it on air, and they’ll feel like they are taking an active part in your podcast.
If you’re feeling adventurous, you could even try a special live show. Or, you could still record your show but have a chat room set up while you record that your listeners to engage in during the recording. This allows listeners to interact with each other and for you to answer questions they have throughout the show.
Podcasts Create One-On-One Engagement
The type of engagement that podcasts can create is unlike any other platform. Typically, your audience will listen to your podcast by themselves, which creates a sense of one-on-one engagement. As they get to know you through your podcast, and you deliver information that is useful to them, they will become dependent on you for the information you provide.
As loyalty between you and your listeners grow, they’ll become more open to your marketing campaigns. When you promote a new product or service through your podcast, there’s a higher chance they will act on your suggestions.
Now that you have a loyal listener base, you also have a brand new group of advocates for your show and your brand. If they know others who could benefit from the information your podcast provides, they’ll deliver invaluable word-of-mouth marketing to help you grow your audience.
Engagement Is Key
Engaging with your audience is key for any type of content marketing to be successful. Podcasts allow you to facilitate both on-air and off-air engagement with your listeners, and finding new ways to connect with your customers and audience is vital to keeping your brand relevant and valuable. As podcasts continue to grow in popularity, they are an excellent tool to use to give a fresh spin on your content marketing and customer engagement.