9: Should you start a podcast for your online course community?

Welcome to the Course Creators MBA Podcast. I'm your host, Destiny Kopp. And in this podcast, we're covering actionable tips to grow your online course business. And today we're talking about whether or not you should start a podcast for your online course community. And recently I switched from blogging to podcasting as my main content marketing strategy, and I absolutely love it. But I will say that this was a very difficult decision for me to make. And the thing is, I love to write. It's easy for me. I can generally crank out a new blog post in no time. I also use Pinterest to drive traffic back to my blog post to my website. So blogging is a great way for me to get traffic to my website. I also wasn't a big podcast listener until recently when I got my new car that had Apple CarPlay Play. And I will say that this was a game changer for me. And once I started listening to podcasts instead of music or doing other things, I found that I could spend my, you know, one, one, two hours or plus per day in a car that I spent driving my kids back and forth and actually be productive with my time. But what I love about podcasting is that it gives me the perfect opportunity to connect with my audience. I feel that you're right here in my office and I'm chatting with you on a one on one basis. I mean, seriously, what could be more perfect than that? There's something just so personal about hearing someone's voice that you don't get from a blog post. I also like doing podcasting over, like, over even, like, Facebook lives, because in my experience, it's been so difficult to catch someone on the Facebook highway, and when they're so busy like you and me, you almost never catch them. But with this podcast episode and with the, you know, when you have a podcast, it's right there for them. It's on their phone. They can listen anytime that it's convenient for them. It's also important from a marketing perspective to produce regular content for your audience. It's the way that you help your ideal customer. You're providing value to them. You can answer questions that they may have as they move along their journey. And the challenge that a lot of us have is getting our ideal customer to hear our message and even just view our content. I mean, can you relate to. This is such a noisy market out there. But with a podcast, you know that you're reaching the right people in the right way. For me personally, I have committed to podcasting weekly and Research has shown that people use your content, the content that you produce in your business, to make purchase decisions. And with a strong content marketing strategy, you can answer these questions or any questions that they have, you know, at various stages of the journey, whether they're at the kind of the beginning stage and the awareness and just getting to know a little bit about you, or the consideration stage, where they're actually looking at, you know, different options and solutions, or if they're at the end and they're actually going to be making a decision soon. And sure, right, you can use social media to answer these questions, but in all of the social media platforms, it can be hard to get their attention or even have your post shown to them by that particular social media platform. But with podcasting, it's another way to get your message out in the world. And a podcast study that was just released found that 50% of homes are podcast fans. And that's over 60 million homes and 62 million listen to podcasts weekly. And that podcast listeners are loyal, they're fluent, and they're educated. So I would ask, are your ideal customers listening to podcasts? And I can tell you unequivocally that I know mine are. And I bet if you did a search on the topic or the niche you cover, there are podcasts out there that cover it. And if not, I would just have to say that you're very lucky. You can be one of the first ones. But truth be told, I was very apprehensive in the beginning about starting a podcast. And the reason for that was, was the workload. I am so busy with my life, my four boys, and we all are, right? We're all very busy. And adding more work to my workload was not appealing to me at all. But I did a little research and I wanted to see how I could get started in podcasting, number one, without costing me an arm and leg. And I also needed something that was super, super easy. And then I found the anchor app. And then really, the only thing that you need to get your podcast up and running is to name your podcast. And obviously I selected the course Creators MBA Podcast, which tells my target audience exactly what, what I'm going to be covering. I went on to create my podcast logo in Canva, and I think that took me about five minutes to do. And then I recorded my first episode just using my iPhone and their app, and it was really that simple. Also, they will distribute it for you and get you up and running on all the major podcast platforms like Apple Podcasts or aka iTunes, Google Play Music, Overcast, Pocket Cast, Spotify, and I know there's a lot of others out there. I couldn't believe how easy it was. Now I will have to say I don't think that I have a super fancy show. In fact, I don't even really do any editing. So what you hear on my show is how it was recorded and that has definitely worked for me. And I do think that for many entrepreneurs out there, podcasting is the new blogging. So if you're listening to this and you're thinking, oh yes, I'm going to give it a try, shoot me a note and let me know the name of your new podcast. I really want to support you along your new journey. I hope you enjoyed this episode today. This episode is sponsored by my brand new free training for five simple ways to find your students for your online course without breaking the bank. And you can register for that free training on my website. The link's going to be in the show notes, but it's also destinycop.com destiny with an I@n c o p.com I hope you enjoy this episode today and bye for now.