Using a Podcast as a Marketing Tool – Small Business Show 228

The Small business show, episode 228 for Wednesday, June 19, 2019. Greetings, folks, and welcome to the Small Business show here at BusinessShow Co, the show that is by, for and about small business owners. Sponsors for this episode include the alternative board.com SBS and textexpander.com podcast. We'll tell you why you want to visit those URLs in a little bit. For now, here as usual in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And out on the west coast, I'm Shannon Jean. How are you doing, man?

I'm good, you know, crazy. But that's. We say that every time. If I went back and like, yeah, if there was something that chopped out all the stuff that was the same between every episode that we did, that'd be good.

Yeah, we have to make it. We'll make a pact. We can't talk about the weather and we can't say we're busy because those are two. Those are two givens.

That's right.

Easy to fall back on because.

That's right. That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, that's cool. But, you know, I. I love doing this show each week. And it's funny is we usually connect and. And talk like a half an hour before, like, oh, we're gonna record it. X. We're like, well, I got to give myself an extra half hour to catch up.

Right, right.

All that stuff. Which is. Which is awesome. And, you know, the thing I. One of the things I love about doing the podcast is, you know, the interaction we get from people being able to talk with you each week. But I have this feeling that we're. And I'm not going to say at the beginning because you've been doing it for, you know, 14, 15 years, but certainly there's a huge uptick in popularity of podcasts in the last, I guess, would you say two years, maybe?

Well, yeah. I mean, we've seen a couple of plateaus. There was. There was one that started maybe five years ago and then definitely again in the last two years. Years. Yeah. And. And yeah, just to rewind a little.

Yeah.

You can say we're at the beginning. I. It is like, if I ever convince myself that I know what I'm doing, that's. That's a bad day. Like. Right, right. Well, I do kind of feel like, yeah, yeah.

Everyone that I talk to, and I talk to a lot of people, but everybody who I mentioned, you know, podcast, they all are like, oh, what, here? And boom. You know, where is it? I want to subscribe and you know, immediately connect with their, their podcast app. And they know what' versus, you know, even a few years ago when we first started this, they were like, podcast, is that like a radio show? Is that, you know, this kind of thing? So, you know, and I was looking up some statistics this morning because it's going to lead into what we're going to talk about today. But you know, over 51% of the population in the US says that, you know, they've listened to a podcast, 31% of them in the last month, you know, and 62 million people listen to podcasts each week. So that's, those are some big numbers.

It's crazy. And that's, that's Tom Webster at Edison Research who pulls all that stuff together. That dude, he has been here in the podcast world since like day one and thank goodness for it because he's been tracking all this stuff. Right. We actually have data back to the beginning, which is unheard of in most.

Yeah, it's powerful.

Yeah, yeah.

And the thing that's, I love about it is, you know, there's, there's such an opportunity in very, very niche audiences. And I've said this before, I didn't come up with this quote, but I do love it. You know, the riches are in the niches and really kind of narrow casting. You know, There are over 750,000 podcasts out there and most of them are, are niche based, very specific topics, which is, which is awesome. And I think that this niche opportunity, or niche, however you want to say it, it's a great opportunity for your small business and for hosting your own podcast. And that's what we're going to talk about today on the Small Business Show.

Sounds good, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's something that's actually something I've never done. Right. I mean I, I've hosted many podcasts, but they're all to inform and be their own thing, not the mouthpiece for a business that's not in the business of podcasting.

Well, and I think that's a really good point to bring up is for your podcast to be successful, I think for your small business, it does need to inform, it does need to add value. Similar to there's this 80, 20 rule where I'm not so sure I agree with that split anymore. But on social media you'll often see, oh, 80% of your posts should just be adding value, informing, not talking about your product or service. And then 20% you should be trying to sell. So I think it's A similar thing with your podcast is.

Yeah.

You want to inform and talk about what you are an expert at.

Right.

And certainly if you're in business, you're an expert at something, hopefully.

Right. Maybe you're like us, you're just an expert at failure, which is. Yeah. So.

Yeah. And that's okay. That's how we thought. We've turned that into a business too, you know.

Yeah. Yeah.

And so I think most.

Most successful businesses are that, but that's a whole different show.

Yeah, well, that's. That's a great. And I have that on my list. So first we'll. I thought we'd talk about the why. Why I think that any small business can benefit by doing their own podcast. And first, I think, you know, it's a new way to connect with your existing and your. And potential customers. You know, not everyone is going to read your blog posts. Not everyone is connected with you on social media. And there's some great discovery by having your content up on these podcast networks. The Apple, you know, the podcast directory, you know, via itunes, which is, you know, going away, but it'll be just a new podcast app. Google, you know, Play, Spotify, all those things are. Are free to upload your podcast to. It's true, and I think it's important. And one more way to get your company name out there. You could have your company name at the end of each episode of the podcast that you do. And I. I think it's relatively easy and inexpensive, and I couldn't think of a reason not to do it. Now, I think there's some arguments against this, like, well, I know I'm not comfortable talking or whatever it is, but we could certainly overcome those. And, you know, we talk about creating your own reality and writing your own story here all the time. And I think that you just have to find a way that works for you. Maybe it's not you, maybe it's one of your employees, or maybe it's you and someone else. I don't think I would have started this, the. The Small Business show on my own. But, you know, I reached out to you and then you brought in a whole level of expertise and we combined up to something that I think is, you know, we're in episode 228, so something's.

Something's working. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. No, and I, I am a big fan of. Of doing shows with. With a co host. I started Mac Geek that way, and it was very intentional, much like you said for you, you know, you didn't want to Start it alone. I knew, thankfully, there were a couple of assumptions I made. Several of them were just dead wrong. But one was that consistency mattered. And it turns out I was that. That I was right on. And I knew that in order that the great way to guarantee myself consistency was to have essentially an accountability partner. And that person is my co host, right? So if I commit to that person that, yes, I'm going to be here on Sunday at 8pm or Tuesday at 10am Whatever it is, it doesn't then sure, either one of us can change, but it requires coordinating with this other person. Not saying at 7:30 on Sunday, you know what, I'm just gonna have another beer and I'll do whatever you're right, you know, like it, it requires, okay, I need to fess up to this other person that I'm gonna, I need to change the schedule. And certainly it happens, right? But, but far less often than just like, hey, you know what? No one will know if I just stay on the couch, like that kind of thing. So.

Yeah, no, I agree. I agree with you 100%. You know, and you know, it's like the gym partner, right? That story I've told her a few times where, you know, you hand the other person your gym bag for the next time because, you know, wow, I got this person's, you know, gym bag. If we're going to the gym, I have to go. Because they won't have their stuff.

Because they won't have their stuff. Yeah, yeah, no, it's right, it's that, it's that exact. That kind of thing. So, yeah, yeah, it works out great. No, it's good.

So, yeah, and I think, you know, it is relatively easy, inexpensive. We'll post some links in the show notes with some, some articles on tips, how you can get started. The barriers to entry, to start a podcast are very, very low. And again, you're already an expert at something nobody knows your business, your niche, your market, your product, your services like you do. And the other thing is people want to hear from you. You may not think they do, but I guarantee you.

Hardest thing to learn.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I guarantee you after doing this show for three years. I talked to him. Oh, I listen, I did this. I listened to you guys here. It's all, you know, it's great. People want to hear from you and it doesn't matter how, you know, don't worry about the size of your audience. Just, just get going and things will happen. And especially if you're a small business, it doesn't Matter. So if you create this, you know, this, this content, you can feature it on your website, you can get it transcribed and turned it into blog, you can create. You know, people come to your website, they can see this. Oh, listen to our founder. Listen to this, listen to that. It, it's, it's, I think it's just a really excellent new way to, to reach people.

Well, yeah, but again, we, we, when we started Mac Observer 20 plus years ago now, we decided, oh, we need to be like the New York Times and in that we need to not be, not have individual personalities. We need this, this, you know, this website to be its own thing and it needs to be professional and all of that. And this was a huge, huge mistake for us. Thankfully there weren't a ton of other websites around, so we were able to survive long enough to realize. No, no, what people actually want is to attach themselves to a personality. Because if, if you're just this bland thing that reports great news and, and all of that, but if there's no humanity attached to it, then it's tough for other people to attach to it as well. It'll just become a thing and you get a bunch of Drive Bys, but no one that says, oh, I want to go and I want to read what Brian Chaffin has to say. Like, and so Brian needs to be allowed to be Brian, you know, and on the show you need to be you. And that's a great thing for your business, you know. Yeah.

And if you don't want to be you and you have somebody in your organization that's got a very outgoing personality or has some have them on there with you.

Right.

And, or have them do it and you can be the guest.

Right.

If you're the founder, you can come on the show and you know, and the key is, is don't think of that. Oh, nobody wants to hear about this. They do want to hear about it because it is interesting. Just think about when you go out and you meet other people and you're at an event or something and you start talking about your business. Most people are like, oh, what do you do? How does that work? And that people are interested. So don't, don't forget that.

Yeah, don't forget it. That's it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then the other question I get when you know, because I, I've talked about a few companies about doing this thing is they say, well, what, what do we talk about? You know, what, what top, what are we going to discuss here? And I think that again, people love Stories. So I think it's great to have a good section of your podcast. It be all about your story and how you got started, you know, why you started the company, interesting facts about your business or your market, you know, this kind of thing and maybe barriers you overcame to be successful. You can even do like David and I do. We talk about mistakes a lot and how we screwed up here and it led to this and the, that kind of thing. So. And ask other people what to talk about. Get, get ideas from your employees and things like that. There's definitely lots of stuff to talk about. You can break it up into little snippets so you don't have to have, you know, a show all about one thing. There's plenty of stuff.

Yeah. And I would say think about ahead of time. The one thing that you really want to be sure of is that you're going to have enough content to deliver on releasing a show on whatever schedule you are going to release it on now.

Yeah.

You're doing this for your business as essentially a marketing tool. I know I'm sort of genericizing it, but you're, you know, we're, we're talking about adding podcasting to your business, not getting into the business of podcasting. If you wind up in the business of podcasting after the fact, that's great. Like, but, but what we're talking about here is just taking what you're doing in your business and adding podcasting to it. So you don't necessarily need to do a show every week. You could do a show every month or you could do a show every week for an eight week season. Right. And then, you know, there's no rule that says you have to wait a year to start the next season.

Oh yeah, you.

But you say you could do a season, it's eight weeks long. You could even plan out in advance what the episodes are going to be. You know, once you get into it, it'll become a whole lot easier. But like anything you start. Okay, let's commit to what we know we can do. Go do those eight weeks, put them out there. You can feature them on your website repeatedly. Right. You can always go and refer people back. Hey, this week a thing happened and it reminded me of what we talked about in episode four, season one of our podcast. You should listen. That's right to it. Right. And, and you can go back to that and then whatever. It could be a year later. But it could also be three months later that you say, great, it's time for season two.

And you could even do a tutorial, right? I mean things about like, hey, we solved that problem back. We did a podcast on it back at this date. Let me send you a link and you can listen to our technician talking about how he fixed this issue. Very, very powerful ways to use this content over and over again.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's good stuff.

Yeah. I have a few more ideas too, Dave, but I think you want to jump in and talk about our awesome sponsors.

I do. The first sponsor that I want to talk about today is the Altern board. Or like we like to call it, Tab. You know, as business owners, our employees expect us to have all the answers right now sometimes you listen to the small business show to get some answers right and maybe we help, but sometimes you need a sounding board and someone to go to with your business related questions. And that's what TAB is for. The Alternative Board. A group of business leaders in your area that you can turn to for valuable advice. And they've been doing this for close to 30 years. Helping CEOs and owners of privately held businesses. Each board is made up of local non competing business leaders. You meet together for four hours a month and you talk about whatever you need to talk about. You help other people, they help you. Plus you get one on one business coaching to help build your business plan and strategy. And you've got somebody that's going to kind of give it to you straight because they're not on your payroll. You know, they're there to help you not tell you that you're great so that you pay them the next time time you know, like this. You, you need someone other than your employees to be your sounding board. And that's what makes the Alternative Board make sense. And one of their surveys shows that their members surpass the average sales revenue of privately held businesses by two and a half times. So like there's some real help here. And, and, and trust us, like this is a, this is a good concept. You, you, you need something like this for your business. So get the support you need and find out if there's a TAB board seat available in your area. Now we have a special URL for you. Go to TheAlternativeBoard.com SBS that's TheAlternativeBoard.com SBS and our thanks to the Alternative Board for sponsoring this episode. Our second sponsor is Text Expander. Textexpander. Man, I don't even know. We just talked to Greg Scout last week at Smile and you should go listen to that interview, but you should also be using Textexpander in your business. We've been talking about it so much lately, it's hard to believe that maybe you haven't checked it out yet. But we get it. You're busy. We said it at the beginning of the show. We're busy, too. There's a lot of things I would like to do. And maybe you haven't checked out Textexpander yet. Well, take the opportunity. Go to Textexpander.com podcast. You can sign up there. They will give you 20% off of your first year just by going to Textexpander.com Podcast. As Greg said, they ask you where you actually heard about it from. So they'll help you drill down. And, you know, you can pick small business show from that list. At least we hope you would. Textexpander is going to let you take all of those bits of text, addresses, directions, customer service responses, long replies, short replies, put them into textexpander now. You don't have to worry about finding them in your sent folder from the past email that you sent. They're right there in textexpander. You can sync them with all your team members or all of your devices. And when you need one, you just click on it or you type a little shortcut and out it comes. That way. You know it's accurate, you know it's what you wanted, and it's exactly right. And it happens so quickly. So go check it out. Textexpander.com podcast are. Thanks to Textexpander for sponsoring this episode.

Good sponsors, man.

I agree.

Both of them.

We're lucky people. Yeah.

Yeah, we are. We are. Okay, so more topics to discuss. I talked about this 8020 rule, and I'm not a. I'm not firmly sold on that, but I think that certainly you want to obviously be talking about your products and services, but perhaps you kind of frame it. Less facts and more story. You remember you having this narrative and so not all the specific little tiny details about it, but on a more broader sense, new products and service announcements, things you're doing, customer stories related to using your products and services, and certainly customer testimonials are all great things to talk about that are interesting and people want to listen to them. The. The other thing is, I think you need to talk about your. Your team, the people that work for you that really make the magic happen. Not only is are you sharing stories that people like to hear about, but it's a great, you know, way to kind of recognize your employees. And hey, I want to have you come on the show this week. You know, you did this thing or whatever this is, you know, can be kind of a reward to come on and get a little exposure. Everybody likes to talk about the themselves.

Absolutely. Right.

And so, you know, maybe you have somebody on each episode or every other episode, something like that, and maybe you let them talk about problems that they've solved using your product or services or customer service, that kind of thing. Just, you know, any kind of customer interaction. And I. And I would mix this stuff up again. I don't think I'd have a really long single episode. I have. You know, one of the things I'm going to mention is, you know, maybe having 10 minute episodes, 15 minutes longer, certainly as you get. You get going. If you're comfortable and it sounds, you know, it's interesting, you want to keep talking about it, but you don't have to have these, you know, lengthy episodes to get rolling. And you could break up these little snippets. You know, a story about the business, something about a product and service and maybe a visit from an employee or a customer. Customer testimonial.

Yeah, I have. Okay, so I'm going to throw you a curveball. Okay. Because we're friends here.

Yes.

Okay. You have this, this business that you started a few years ago. In fact, you talked about it here on the show as you were starting it from your phone. You've got this Shannon's Closet on Poshmark. Right, right, right. So. Which is great. Sure. It's okay that I mentioned the name of it, right? You've mentioned that before. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's on Poshmark. It's rebounded. R E B O U N D E D if you search for rebounded, you'll find our store up there.

Okay, there you go. So it would make sense that you could do a po. A podcast about this business. But you are. I know you and your wife work on this together. I don't know if you would do the podcast with her or if you would do it solo. But what kind of topics would you talk about on. On this show? Just to. Just to have a real world example here.

Yeah, yeah. So you could talk about what's trending on Poshmark, how to get started, you know, how to set up your social connections. I mean, there's a wealth of information. You know, what. What's selling the best in your store. You know, what do you see happening with certain brands? I mean, it just on and on and on.

If you just sit down and think.

About it, there's always ways to come up with topics. Now my shift has been a little bit different because now we've had some success and the experiment I think worked pretty well. And now what we're working on is ways to help other people succeed on Poshmark and onboarding businesses and creating some content for small businesses. So matter of fact, we've talked about starting a podcast to help onboard those small businesses. So the topics are endless if you just think about it for a little bit.

And that's why I wanted to put you on the spot with this. Just to show that if you just stop for a second or don't stop, don't think about it, just let the ideas roll. There's plenty of things to talk about. And like you said, your episodes could be, you know, five to 10 minutes long. There's nothing wrong with that.

And tip of the day, whatever it is.

One thing I would recommend for someone starting a podcast now is think about video. There is, especially if you're doing, you know, a 10 minute or less podcast. There is so much interest on YouTube right now and so many people, you know, if, if, if you are out there and you haven't got gotten caught in YouTube world where you're just going from one, you know, thing and suddenly, you know, four hours have gone by. Well, lucky you, right? But, but there are those of us that, that, that you know, occasionally that happens to. I haven't really done it for four hours, but sure, I certainly get lost on there. And if your shows are, you know, in that less than 10 minute length, you may wind up just getting in front of people that otherwise you would never have found you. So, and there's nothing you have to do like just record. When you record your podcast, put a camera on your face and make sure your background is okay. It doesn't need to be pristine. You don't need to be in front of a green screen. You can be in your bedroom, you can be in your office, just walk.

Around your warehouse, you know, go out, go out to the job site, maybe at a client's place, that kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah, but add and you can.

Also and, and, and then also release the audio. Right? You can put it up as audio and video and you're good to go. Yeah, that's right.

So I think it's great and I think the, you know, the key to getting started is like everything else you just have to start. And I know it's like, oh, it's one more thing, I don't have time, whatever. So again, maybe you don't do it, maybe someone else can do it. And we're talking short little snippets here of content that you can use over and over and over on your website, on your. In your social media channels, LinkedIn, on YouTube, all that. All this stuff is, you know, you can set up a library of content that you can push out there to capture maybe an audience that you haven't connected with yet, but just start. And I think that when we first started the small business show, one of the things, Dave, you said, hey, we just need to start recording. We're not going to release it publicly. I think if you look back, our first episode was actually like our fourth episode.

Right? That's right.

And I didn't know anything about it. I still don't know much, but, I mean, I certainly knew a lot less 227 episodes ago. And so that really helped me kind of get my feet on the ground and get comfortable talking in front of the microphone and pacing.

Yeah, because you can just make. You just go and make some mistakes. You're the only one that's going to hear it. In fact, even as we record right now, if something went sideways, like I asked Shannon about, about, you know, doing a podcast for his Poshmark business, he might have said to me, oh, dude, dude, we can't talk about that on the show. Right, Right. Okay, that's fine. Like you, you can. Even now, four years in, we can take chances and go with it because no one's hearing it until we decide. Okay, yeah, they can hear it. Yeah.

Do you publish it?

Right.

And, you know, like, what we do on the show, there's not, you know, much production values in it. You know, we're going to post some links in the show notes here that'll help you get started. So it's not a tremendous effort. I mean, if you're recording 10 or 15 minutes of content, you can have that ready to post in. In five minutes. Yep. So, you know, the barriers are just not there. And I think it's a great thing to try. I think consistency is really important. Don't try to do one every day. Or maybe you can't even do it every week. Maybe it's once a month. But, you know, if you did one bi weekly, let's say, at the end of the year, you'd have 24 episodes of content that you could repurpose and use in different ways. You could have it running in your lobby of your building. I mean, just on and on and on. And I think it's a really worthwhile thing to try out. If you already do one, we'd love to hear from you. Feedbackusinessshow Co if you're thinking about doing one, you have questions that same email. We'll be glad to answer what you have before we go today. One thing I'd love to ask folks to do. If you enjoy the show, go leave us a review. It's one of the number one things you can do to help us out. Go to BusinessShow Co Review. It'll take you over to the Apple Podcast directory and you can leave a review for us.

Yeah, thanks for remembering to do that, man. That's good. Yeah, yeah. Gotta do it more, no? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We all need to leave those reviews, please. It truly does help us. It takes you a couple of minutes. Unfortunately, we can't get you right to the form, but that businessshow Co review link will get you as close as we possibly can. And then just click on open an Apple Podcast and there you go. So yeah, you should be able to from there.

Cool.

All right, man. That's.

Yeah. Thank you, Dave. Thank you everyone for listening and enjoy the rest of your week. We appreciate you stopping by.

Yeah, it's good stuff and you know, keep living that charmed life. And if you do have a podcast for your business, tell us about it. We would love to listen and maybe we'll even share it in the show. There you go.