Podcasting for Small Business (with Ray Sidney-Smith)

I have a special guest for you today. If you've ever thought about starting a podcast, but thought it would be too hard, too time-consuming, you don't have the right equipment, and you wouldn't even know where to get started, you're going to exit this episode knowing your very next steps to getting started on a good idea that you might have put aside. My guest is Ray Sidney-Smith. He is a digital marketing strategist and executive coach, longtime productivity expert, His heart is with small business owners, helping them to navigate this ever-changing digital landscape. And the reason that he's on the show today is because of the book that he's co-authored that releases today. It's called Podcasting for Small Business. We're going to get into the nuts and bolts of helping you get started. I hope you enjoy the episode. Ray, welcome. I am delighted to have you on and hear about this new book that you have written.

Well, thanks so much for having me, Frank. I'm really excited, obviously, to talk about it and always enjoy talking to you.

So Podcasting for Small Business. What, what inspired you to write the book?

Well, let's snap back to probably 2015, 2016, and I had been leading some workshops and seminars on podcasting and many other marketing channels, you know, teaching people about mobile marketing, websites, as well as email marketing, all the various channels small businesses need to be able to be successful in the digital marketing landscape. And I was teaching a workshop called Podcasting for Small Business because it was kind of on the nose and I didn't want to be creative about it. And in about 2018, I had been leading a roundtable, a business roundtable for small businesses in Alexandria at the Alexandria Small Business Development Center there in Alexandria, Virginia. And one of the participants was a new business owner. His name was Steve Orr. And we got to talking about podcasting and he was really interested in podcasting. He was, he's an award-winning broadcast journalist coming out of MarketWatch Radio and I, we just struck up a conversation. I told him I was teaching these workshops on podcasting and that I was interested in potentially writing a book on the topic. We really kicked, you know, just kicked it off and, and decided that we would go ahead and write the book together. So that's kind of how it started.

Sounds great. Of course, you know, I know that there are other books on there, you know, there's a lot been written. So with this book, are, are there any special features that make this one a little unique?

Well, you can only imagine, Frank, it's me. So, so the book has to really have a targeted mission. Most of the books on the market are focused on podcasts generally, and even the ones that are focused on podcasting, they don't focus on the small business experience. And I'm really, really wanting us, you know, Steve and I, to really hyper-target small businesses. And what I mean by that is that Small businesses are basically the business engine of our economy. They are the largest employer of, you know, employer in the United States, and they are also the largest swath of our economy in so many ways. Small businesses are the lifeblood of our economy, and I want to make sure that we are supporting them in every possible way, even when we're talking about podcasting. So the book itself substantively focuses on the business experience, helping small business entrepreneurs, not hobbyists, not influencers. It's really focused on the business. We start off the book making the business case for podcasting, right? Why does a business want to podcast instead of just anybody, you know, podcasting? So that's really the substance of it. In terms of features of the book, we basically have created these characters. I, in my workshops, I talked about these characters, Beth and Monique, and Steve really liked them. And we have created these whole new characters. There's actually a set of folks who voiced a trailer for Beth and Monique. So we have a trailer out there of a fake podcast for our New York City Pastry Pals podcast folks. And so the vignettes walk us through these two entrepreneurs launching their podcast, the decisions they make along the way. And so that really, I think, helps humanize the process in a lot of ways. So we have that kind of story, that narrative that is matched in the book. We also have a set of checklists. We've created a really strong set of checklists at each chapter. Ending, we give everyone a set of tasks that they need to do in order to be able to have that successful launch of a podcast. We've also aggregated that together into a single master checklist in the appendix. It's also available on our companion website, podcastingforsmallbusiness.com, where they can go ahead and download that in multiple different formats so they can make it easy for themselves. And so they just go through the checklist, tick off the items that they need to do so they can go ahead and launch that sustainable podcast for their business. And we also have then the resources library we've created. It's a, like I said, it's on the companion website, but the resources library itself is a living creature. It is a place where we'll, where Steve and I are able to put resources that we know will help you be more successful. We couldn't put everything into Podcasting for Small Business. We put Essential Blueprint in the subtitle for a reason. We didn't want to write a tome, right? We didn't want to write a treatise on podcasting. We really wanted to get people the initial pieces they needed to be able to get that successful podcast off the ground. And so, we were using the resources library to put all that other stuff. And so, the resources library is a great resource that extends the book beyond the physical printed word.

Yeah, sounds great. And of course, I was able to get my hands on a copy a little early. Thank you, Ray, for that. And what I really liked was that checklist. You know, the end of every chapter, here was like a, okay, you've read the chapter, you kind of understand the material. Now, what do I do? What are the actions for me to take?

Bum, bum, bum.

There they are. Now, I'm kind of thinking about the busy business, small business owner right now. He's got so many hats to wear. He's HR, he's finance. And now we've given him something else to do. He's going to produce a podcast. And I know you cover this in the book. Give us the case. If I'm a small business owner, why is this going to be worth my time? How is this going to help me? Why do I need to start a podcast?

Yeah, there are so many reasons. Let's boil it down to kind of some of the most important ones for me. And I know that using myself as an example is probably, you know, is not always the best thing, but it's the thing that's near and dearest to my heart, which is that I have found through podcasting some of the most wonderful relationships of my professional and really personal life and career. And I think that so many podcasters don't realize the value of the podcast until they're in it doing it. And so I will tell you that everything I can tell you going forward is nothing comparative to once you're actually doing it and feeling the success of a podcast. So there is a a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, metaphorically, once you, once you get yourself going. But here goes the crux of it, though. One is that podcasting allows you to create what we call a parasocial relationship, a relationship that other people have with you that you don't have with them. And so by virtue of you listening to Frank's voice here on his podcast on a regular basis, you have built a parasocial relationship with Frank directly. Frank is in your head. We call that in-head localization. When we listen to something, especially when we have headphones in our ears, our mind thinks that that person, that voice is inside of us. By virtue of doing that, it creates this very intimate, very relatable experience for us. That socialization with a person on a regular basis creates a relationship that I think builds trust, authority, and the ability for you to be able to persuade them in ways that other media does not. Not even video gives us that kind of parasocial relationship within head localization. And so we need to be very mindful of that reality. Two is that it's a less competitive market. We really tend to think of podcasting as everybody has a podcast, everybody's listening to podcasting, video is more important than audio, and those kinds of trite digital marketing trends from folks out there. The reality is that what I care about, what Steve and I care about, is that you create a marketing channel where you are consistent and where you're creating value and developing a good relationship with people. And if you do those things, then you actually become more profitable in your business across the board, right? Rising tide lifts all ships, right? If you're doing a really good thing in one place, then you're doing it in many others. And I know that's the case even with you, Frank, right? Because you make sure that your podcast and your videos and your newsletter and your newspaper article, those are all matched up.

They all match. Absolutely. Yeah, you work smart, repurpose it, and you reach different audiences with each one of those things. Yeah, yeah.

We want to make sure that we're doing the podcast in such a way that we're really maximizing our exposure both to Google as for search engine optimization, to social networks for social optimization. And then we're doing that for the human optimization, right? Getting, getting a persuasion vehicle in place. And podcasting is just one piece of that puzzle, but it's a really, really strong avenue for doing so. So that's the reason I know that It's going to take time and energy. Find help, right? Whether you're finding internal help, whether you're finding external help through consultants or vendors who can help you get that podcast out the door, there's no reason why a small business owner should have the weight of all of this on their own shoulders. Go find the help and know that there are at least two people, Steve and myself, who are cheerleading you on from the sidelines. We absolutely want you to start a podcast. We know that it will be valuable to you. We know that. And we want to make sure that as many small businesses in the country create that content, because when you create a local podcast especially, you are and have very little competition, right? And you're getting to speak to your audience. Most people don't get a chance to speak to an audience of 50 or 100 people every week, right? Most people don't have that experience in a lifetime. You know, what do they say about funerals? Most people would rather be in the casket than giving the eulogy, right? Most people are generally afraid of being in front of people. And podcasting allows you to do that without a lot of the friction and the fear. Because you could just be behind the mic and talk, speak your knowledge and expertise out there into the world, and build those kinds of relationships. And you don't need to worry about all of the nonsense that comes along with, you know, what does my hair look like? And, you know, what am I— what am I— how am I dressed? And that kind of thing. If if it's audio only. And of course you could do video as well as a companion to that. But, you know, goal here is to be able to get the audio in front of the audience that is going to matter and little less competition, greater, you know, ability to syndicate as well as to expand that content and repurpose it and reuse it in different ways. And I think that's, you know, it's just podcasting is always gonna be around. That's the thing that I think I always wanna talk about when people talk about, you know, where is podcasting going, you're going to see venture capital and advertising come and go. And when it comes to any of these technologies, but podcasting itself is an open standard protocol. So the idea is, is that podcasting can't go away, right? As long as the RSS feed exists, we'll always be able to podcast. And so Spotify may come and go, YouTube may come and go when it comes to podcasting. But podcasting itself is not going to go anywhere. And that means people who want to listen to you can always do so. You can't be silenced in that way. And I think that's a good thing. I think it's good for free speech in our country, but I think it's also really a great avenue for small businesses to be able to express themselves and build an audience independent of major platforms.

Well, I hope we have converted some people there that they're thinking about it. So, but, but I'm maybe as a small business owner, I'm a little scared about, you know, guy, I'm sure there's going to be a lot of equipment to buy, a lot of setup. What do I need equipment-wise if I'm going to podcast?

Yeah, I would say not much.

I agree.

I mean, the reality is, is that while I started my first podcast, I definitely started with my laptop. I then converted to using, at then, an iPhone. It was one of the first iPhones that came out, and I decided to use the iPhone because it had a better microphone in the iPhone than my laptop. And so I used just my laptop, no additional microphone. It was just the microphone in my laptop. And then I moved over to using my iPhone as my recording device. But that was it. I had no additional equipment when I first started. And again, this is, you know, 2009 when I first started, 2008, 2009 when I first started. And obviously the technology technology has gotten better. That being said, with just a little bit of affordable equipment, you can really level up the quality of recording and also your capacity to record others if you want to be able to do interviews, that kind of thing. So for most people, you're just going to need the equipment you already have. Use that until you get off the ground. If you want to invest, we have inside of the book a set of recommendations for the equipment that you'll need certainly from a beginner level. And again, from a, from a want perspective, really not need but want perspective. If you wanted to set up that the podcast for and with this equipment, we've given you those recommendations. But what you need is very, very minimal. And good minds can disagree on this. I'm sure that even my co-author would disagree with me on what is a want and what's a necessity in terms of equipment. And that's okay. But I know that You can launch a podcast with minimal equipment and maybe the audio isn't perfect, maybe, you know, whatever. As long as you're providing great value to the listener, they'll overcome some of those issues in order to be able to still listen to you and give you a chance to basically upgrade your equipment, build, you know, and most of the people who are listening to you in those early stages are the, what I call F&F, friends and family, right?

The F&F Your mom and dad. Yeah, your first two listeners.

It's going to be your friends and colleagues and so on and so forth. They're going to give you that feedback and say, hey, you know what, Frank, you have great stuff going on on this podcast, but it would be really great if I could hear your voice better, right? Or, you know, there's a clicking background. Is that a boiler? You know, and so—

And you figure it out. Yeah. And of course, the first one is not going to be perfect. In fact, The first one, you probably go, oh gosh, that was bad. And it will be. The first one will be bad. So you go, okay, I got the bad one done. Everything else gets better from here. Everything else gets better from here. Yeah. And for those that are listening to us right now, of course, some are listening to a podcast, audio only. Others are seeing us over on the YouTube channel. They're hearing the same thing. And all I've got, Zoom, a number of different ways you could record, but we're recording this on Zoom. And probably most everybody out there, you've already got a Zoom account, you're a little bit familiar with Zoom. This is just a Zoom meeting where I hit the record button. And when we end this meeting, it will be a recording sitting on my desktop. I've got a pretty decent mic, a Blue Yeti microphone. I've got a webcam sitting there. That's it. And then, Ray, you introduced me to Krisp, Krisp with a K, K-R-I-S-P, that cuts out all kind of background noise. My dog could be barking 10 feet from us and you wouldn't hear it. Cuts out all the background noise. It cuts out the room noise. And just, you know, too easy, too easy not to do. And then, of course, after that, I take the recording and and just pull that into Audacity to give me the MP3, the audio only, upload to YouTube, upload the Audacity to Spotify. So you have to just have an account at both of those, and you're off and running. To me, it was surprisingly easy to do. So, Ray, if somebody, you know, they listen this far and they're going, okay, I'm sold. I want to start ASAP. Tell me, what's the rest of my day look like? What are the next 2 or 3 very simple, concrete steps to get me going?

Well, it's probably to read Podcasting for Small Business, but no, but the next few simple steps are really to decide on what the podcast's core mission is going to be, right? What's the goal of the podcast? I think that's something that people generally need to figure out. Why do you want to podcast? And we talk about that as purpose in the podcast and really understanding who's going to voice the podcast. Many times small business entrepreneurs, they immediately think themselves as the primary voice of the podcast. And that's not always the best circumstance. Sometimes it is best to have someone else be the voice. And that could be having a hired voice. It could be someone else on staff who's going to be doing that. But you could also decide that it's going to be a group of people so that you're not all doing the podcast all at once. So figuring out who's going to be the voice of the podcast, who's going to be presenting, is a really core piece. And then ultimately, what is the cadence? What is the editorial schedule going to look like for the podcast? Start thinking about it. You don't have to develop it necessarily, but kind of mapping it out, because then once you circle back and do all of the interior pieces, you start to understand kind of thematically. You want to have, I think, of having a year theme, then a quarterly or seasonal theme, then monthly themes. That really helps create an arc of your brand narrative, right? Making sure that you're doing that kind of framework for yourself so that you're not having to come up with new ideas every year. The year repeats itself. You know, every year you're going to have spring, summer, winter, fall, and that means you're going to have increases and decreases in your service lines or product lines. Look at your accounting data to be able to tell you what's most popular in particular seasons, right? And then back it off a little because you have a sales cycle in, in addition to a purchase cycle, right? So when you make a sale is different than when you are pitching people for that sale. So if you have a, what is it, 18-week or 20-week sales cycle, right? You want to be putting out podcasts 18 to 20 weeks before? Because that's when people are starting to make decisions about that product or service that you're selling, right? So that's going to dictate the editorial schedule. So starting to give that some thought is really important in the early days of you planning out the podcast. And so I think, you know, figuring out those few things are really helpful. And then, and then read Podcasting for Small Business, and we will detail for you the step-by-step process of being able to figure out what the next immediate actions that you need to take in order to be able to get the podcast off the ground.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, and just thinking in terms of solo, that, you know, you've touched on that. You know, here's an example of where this is an interview with me as the host, you as the guest. Most of the episodes that I do, it's just me giving value to my audience. I'm very comfortable speaking. Some small business owners are not comfortable behind the mic. So a co-host kind of thing. You know, I think back to, say, Johnny Carson and Ed McMahon. You know, so here are the two of them. And so Ed's able to ask Johnny questions and that conversation back and forth with everybody eavesdropping on there. So, you know, I could certainly think of a small business owner who's not comfortable talking to the microphone, but has a teenage son who is. And it's the son and his dad, and they've got the questions all, you know, lined out ahead of time. And, Dad, I understand you've got a new product coming out. Could you tell us about that? And it just, and it'd be wonderful. How do you promote this? Yeah. Okay. So mom and dad are listening to my podcast and a few close friends. How do we grow this where it's really reaching a large audience?

Yes. So there's some misnomers, some myths about how podcasts grow. And so we have to eliminate some, some myths here. No one's worried about virality, or you should not be. Worried about virality regarding your podcast. Your podcast is a slow burn marketing channel. It is about steady and consistent production of value. And so I typically talk about this as voice and value, right? You want to basically have the voice on the podcast giving value. And so one is Google and the other search engines. Now to some extent, we'll probably see generative AI, you know, the chats, chatbots like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude and otherwise starting to bring more of that to the table. But right now, Google, which dominates search, is the way in which most podcasts are found. And the way in which they are found well for a small business owner is basically through good search engine optimization. Each of your podcast episodes becomes a page on the internet, right, on the World Wide Web, more specifically, and you want to optimize that content for being able to be found by Google and therefore being found by people who are searching for topics that are of interest to you. Every time you put out a podcast episode, you have to think, what is someone searching for? What are they trying to find a solution for? And how can that podcast be optimized, search engine optimized-wise, for being found? And that's something that I learned very, very quickly on when I launched my first podcast, which was Prod Pod, those little 2-minute podcast episodes that I was putting out. I quickly realized that if I had a website dedicated to each of the episodes and I just published the content there on the pages, then Google would pick up on them. And what I found is that as often as I had been featured on Apple Podcasts, I was getting way more traffic just from Google on individual episode pages.. And so when a lot of people would search for things, they would find an episode and they would listen to those episodes. They were not subscribers to my podcast. They were listeners of my podcast. Yeah. But there was a much larger audience. It, it paled in comparison when I saw the difference between who was subscribed and listening. And then of course over time, you know, more and more, you know, thousands and thousands of people started listening to my podcast. And, uh, and yet at the same time, it was still being highly ranked on Google for particular episodes and getting a lot of traction there. So first is search engine optimization, really making sure that your podcast, which is basically a blog with an embedded piece of media, is well optimized on whatever the website, you know, or content management system that you're using for the podcast. So making sure you're doing good SEO for each episode. That's number one. Number two is that Then we use all the vehicles of promotion that we would otherwise do for marketing our business. It's a little bit of a change, right? Because most of the time we're out there talking about our business, right? Come buy from me. Here goes my products and services. And now it, it changes the paradigm because what we're really doing is consultative sales. We're using our podcast episodes as mechanisms for telling people a brand story, but we're also telling that brand story from a perspective of here are some problems you have and here goes the solutions we have to solve them. Right? If you don't know how to market your business, well, Frank just provided you with a channel, podcasting, by virtue of this episode. We're talking about it because we know it can help you. I know it can help you. Steve knows it can help you. And, and now Frank is helping you understand that it can help you, right? It's a problem with a direct solution. And when people search, how do I, you know, market my business, they're going to see this episode show up. If it's well search engine optimized, and they're going to be able to do that. But now when I go out to the broader world, when Frank goes and talks to any audience and they say, hey, you know what, I'm a small business owner and I'm thinking of ways in which I can, you know, do a little bit better with my marketing, Frank can say, you know what, I've got a podcast episode you should listen to. You know, I interviewed this, this, you know, small business expert. He has a topic that he is really near and dear to his heart, which is podcasting. And you should go listen to this episode. Now, instead of you saying buy my products and services, you are building a relationship by problem solving for your audience. And you could do that in many, many different arenas. That is the way in which podcasts grow. They grow by word of mouth. They grow typically by seeding the concept into individuals who then propagate that out to the world. Because if you help that one entrepreneur, that one entrepreneur knows other entrepreneurs. It's the It's just, it's the nature of the beast, right? And if there's someone that you want to be a customer or a client, then they're going to naturally gravitate toward you. You're going to naturally gravitate toward them, and they're going to have other folks like them who they're going to tell about you because they're going to have a good experience with you. So you want to be able to do that kind of work. So it's going to require social media. It's going to require you going out there and potentially doing advertising, email marketing. All of those elements are ways in which we promote the podcast. Over time with consistency that then grows the audience and begets the success that you really need to come out of the podcast.

Yeah, yeah. Ray, I know there's so many, whether it's blog or YouTube channel or podcast, where people get started and after half a dozen episodes, it just, it just dies. And I was going to ask you, but you really already covered this, you know, how to keep that from happening. That you're planning, that you've got episodes that you know a month, 2 months, 3 months or more even what you're going to be doing. And like, just for full disclosure, what people are seeing right now, we're actually recording this in early November, knowing it's going to release in early December. So when life happens, it's not like, oh my gosh, we got to record a podcast episode today because we've got to get it published today. No, we're working ahead. We're working at our own speed. So as we wrap up, tell people, when will this book be available?

How do they get their hands on it? Sure. Notwithstanding kind of breaking the fourth wall with the fact that we're recording early, the book is available today, December 2nd, and it's available on Amazon through— as a Kindle book. It's available in hardcover and paperback, and so it'll be available in those senses. You can actually pick them up from local bookstores, like a Barnes Noble, I believe you can go to. You can call ahead and just let them know that you want to purchase a copy, and they usually will have it there overnight the next day. So they're not on the shelves of those stores, but you can order them directly from those stores, and that includes a lot of independent booksellers as well. So just call them beforehand, let them know you'd like a copy of the book, and then they'll go ahead and order it and have it available for you to purchase, typically the next day or within the next few days. And, uh, yeah, so it's available today in ebook, hardcover, and paperback for folks to be able to access.

Absolutely. And, and what I'll do in, in the blog post, I'll put the Amazon links to it and then to your website and, uh, to the podcast that you've done. And of course, folks listen to what we're doing here. You may be friends, you're tuning in because you're a friend of Ray. You've never heard of Frank, but now Frank is saying, hey, come over to frankbuck.org, my website, click on the blog, get all these links. And then while they're there, they're going, oh, look at these other things that, that are there. So, you know, one thing kind of spurs another. So all of this, plenty will be in the blog post that accompanies this. Ray, again, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me about the book. Again, I've read it already. I love it. I think it's going to help a lot of people.

Thanks so much, Frank. Really appreciate you having me here on today. And hopefully folks really understand the value of podcasting is not in the technology. It is in the human-to-human connection using podcasts as a bridge from mind and heart to mind and heart of other people. And I think that voice is a powerful mechanism for us to be able to do that. It's one of the most powerful things that we have to be able to communicate from human to human. And so podcasting is just one of those bridges. I just think it's one of the most powerful ones. And so I hope that the business owners that are out there listening take that to heart and create a podcast. And let us know. Let us know if you create a podcast.

We'd love to listen. All right, everyone. Thanks for stopping by today. This has been Frank Buck with my guest Ray Sidney-Smith, helping you get organized and make it look easy. So what do you think? Are you ready to start your own podcast? While it's fresh on your mind, go to podcastingforsmallbusiness.com. That's podcastingforsmallbusiness.com. Thanks to Ray Sidney-Smith for being my guest today. This has been Frank Buck helping you get organized and make it look easy.