Share Your Podcast the Easy Way: Get Your Guests to Do All the Work

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Hey everyone, Tracy Hazzard here on Feed you'd brand and I'm giving you a sneak peek into our coaching calls. So we support every single podcaster on our network. Doesn't matter if you pay $49 a month or $490 a month or $4,900 a month, it doesn't matter how much you pay. But we want to make sure to not leave anyone behind. So we have a weekly coaching call that we offer to all of our clients and occasionally we do in them. And actually pretty frequently we do topics that are of interest to just all of you out there and I thought I'd start sharing some of them with you. So I've had my team take off the topic portion. You won't get any of the Q and A that happens ordinarily. For the second half of our coaching call, we usually go about 15 to 20 minutes on any given topic and then we cover all kinds of questions. They could be random questions, they could be related to the topic that we just talked about. Doesn't really matter. We are open to whatever that might be and we sort of rotate the general idea of topics. We cover tech, we cover strategy, we COVID support and other types of help. Throughout there we try to cover guests and topic planning and all of those different types of things that you might be struggling with. So I thought I'd bring you that sneak peek in today into our coaching and support for podcasters.

Everyone, welcome. I am looking forward to talking with you today about getting guests to share your podcast show. This is something that I hear all the time. So I have been doing tons of interviews for center of Influence for Authority magazine and I asked them for ways to get great guests and I've been hearing a recurring theme that it's actually about the follow up and relationship building that gets you the next great guest. So I want to talk a little bit about the technical side of how we do that. Seeing today is sort of a tech topic. So I'm going to talk a little bit about how that works here and how I do that, how we recommend to do that here, the show and Then how we support that with some of the things that we provide for you. I'm not really sure why I have these in right now. I'll put them in after when we get to questions. Why have headphones in when you don't need it? A technical question. So anyway, if you're listening to this in the follow up, just want to make sure that you always know that anything that we refer to, whether it's a link or something like that, they're usually posted right within the coaching call. So if you're a client, they'll be in the coaching call video, they'll be posting on all sorts of messages and everything that you might need will be there. They're all in that resource area. And if you're not a client and you're listening to the edited version that ends up on feed, you'd brand then some of those resources, if they're available to you, will be in the blog post@feedyourbrand.co. so just a few little technical details to get out of the way. So let's talk about getting guests to share your podcast show. So for most people that's the goal, right? The goal of having guests on your show is to expand your audience and get more listeners. And you're not going to get more listeners if they don't share it. So how do we get them to want to share it? How do we get them to share it? That's a critical point. So we want to really get at that. And part of it is of course, having a great show and conducting yourself in a great way, asking great questions when you're interviewing, doing all of that is part of it. But there are some technical and follow up things along the way that are important that can really help increase the likelihood that your guests will probably share it, will share the show, feel like it's not a lot of work to share the show and that's important. So we want to decrease their workload because they're busy people, they're really out there speaking and being the celebrities that they are out there and that's maybe who you're inviting in these high value guests. So how do we get them to do. The other thing is that if you're working with PR agencies, they're kind of lazy sometimes and so providing them with exactly what you expect them to do and all of that all in one place is also really convenient and important. So I want to talk about the front end first. So when I book a guest on my show, I have a follow up email that Happens right after the interview. So the interview is conducted and a follow up email happens. And it gives them an expectation of what's going to happen next, that they'll get an email from me. They'll get something that's going to tell them how to share it. That it also gets my show link right there, invites them to subscribe and listen so that they can be listening for their show when it comes up. So these are some things that I do in the immediate follow up email. That follow up email really is personal. So I took the time to write the template so that it really sounds personal. It sounds like that. It doesn't sound generic. It sounds like it came from my voice and it signed like me. And this is important in any follow up email I do. Sometimes we get lazy and we use the template that's there. And so it might say sincerely, that's not the way I sign my things. If anyone's gotten an email from me, it always says warm regards. So it always seems warm regards Tracy. It doesn't have my full name on it. It doesn't do any of that. It says warm regards Tracy. And then there'll be a footer with my photo and there's a whole foot thing on it. So if I can put it in and sometimes you can't in certain follow up emails that just don't allow you to do all that extra stuff. If I can put it in there, I do. If not, then it just will say warm regards Tracy, and it'll just stop there.

Making sure that that all looks really personal is important. It needs to look like you sent it. Of course, if they really investigated, if they really knew, they knew you didn't send it because it happened at exactly one hour after the interview. But at the same time, we want to believe what we get, right? We want to believe that someone took the time, and at least I took the time to make it personal to begin with and not leave it generic. And that's really important. So making sure that you personalize anything that goes through and comes from you, even if it's coming from us or from any other agency or any other poster or some or your VA or anything like that, thinking about that, making sure you add your personal touches and they're very clear about what goes into these things. So that's always really important. So the other thing that I've done is I've also planned at the beginning so when I interview someone on my show and if it's not a video show, if it's not a Livestream show. I record the introduction and the outro. Not the outro, like your music bumper outro, but like my closing statements, I record those two things. My introduction of the guest and my closing statements, wrapping it up. I record those two things immediately after the interview. When it's a podcast only non video show, I do that because it allows me to have interview the person and maybe learn something more about them than what was just written in their resume. And so that helps me just personalize those two things and it helps me do a better job of framing it, which is what that introduction and that closing statement is for, framing it for being relevant to my audience. Now an important part of that is if you're one of my clients or if you've listened to our show and you know about ego bait, you know that a quote is going to need to be pulled out of here somewhere. And so if a quote needs to be pulled out of here, typically I will have said it in the introduction or set it in the close. I save it for the close when there's something that has to be said that the person has to say. And so I know that that came out of the interview. I might make a little note about it. I might, you know, that oh, she talked about X. And so I want to make sure to mention that in my close. So I might make a little note of that while I'm conducting the interview. So I always keep a little sketch pad kind of to the side and we'll track that. So I'm always working to make sure that I'm framing up and giving that quote. So it's easy for my team to pull a quote that sounds in my voice that is actually complimentary and does what I want it to do. So I'm going to just give a short ego bait refresher. Ego bait is what I used when I couldn't get people to share my show and usually it was to share my article. I couldn't get people to share my article and so I would send out this follow up email and it had links and it had a graphic image and that's where it came from. And I would pull a quote. Now when I wrote the article, I could write it and think about it, but when I conduct a show, I have to think about it either in advance or right before I make my closing statement. Right. So you have to think about what you want that to say. And what I found worked best wasn't to use a quote from the guest that's not egobate because if I said it and I post it on my page, then it's kind of self promoting. But if the host says it about the guest now I can send that out to my audience and it's someone else said it about me, so I'm more likely to share it.

So thinking about that is something that you really want to do. You really want to make sure that you are stating something that not only gives it relevance to your particular show and show topic, but you are giving it so that you're putting it in a way that it's very flattering and it makes the guest want to share it because it made them sound brilliant and it wasn't a sound bite, it wasn't something that came off of their talking points already. It's your viewpoint about them and the relevance to the audience because that will also do one more thing for you. It will help attract the right people who are part of their audience to come to you because you have shared a little bit about your perspective and what interests you. So that's how we structure a really great quote. So a lot of times when I write about someone or when I'm interviewing someone, when I'm interviewing a podcaster. So for instance, today I interviewed a Latinx podcaster and I hadn't interviewed one before. I've been doing a lot of diverse podcasts, but she was my first one and some of her shows are three hours long, incredibly long podcasts, deep dives, and she has passionate listeners. And so what I said about her in the close was that I'm so excited to be exposed to so many different podcasters with so many cultural perspectives on the world because it's adding depth of knowledge, depth of understanding and increased relationship building in the world today. So that's what I said about her. And she is going to share that. She's going to love that because it's exactly what is her core value that her show is about. So that's one of the things you want to touch on. You want to make sure that whatever it is resonates with something that's of core value, of tremendous interest to the podcast guest. So in other words, if they're extremely interested in making an impact on the world, then you need to put the word impact in there somewhere. If they're extremely interested in particular type of charitable organization, maybe they have a passion for helping children in need, whatever that is, you might want to work that end. Are they coming from their heart? Are they adding tremendous technical intelligence to the world? Artificial whatever it might be? Right? You want to make sure that you're tapping into that thing that they are proud of, because then they're also more likely to share it. So these are some of the things we want to make sure that we're doing when we're introducing our guests or when we're summarizing what we just heard in a closing statement. And the reason we do that is just so that that quote that we share out is personalized and is impactful and will do what you want it to do and get them to share it. So now that we're trying to go for the email follow up, that's truly what egobait is, right? It's the email follow up that has that graphic in it. So that's important too, because we need to customize that email as well. So it's a bit technical. If you've ever seen one of our Ego baby emails, if you've ever been on the recipient of one as a guest, it has a graphic that's being shared, it has links, it has all kinds of code, it has HTML code in it. So there's a section of it that you can't change because it needs to share the body of the information, give the links, give all those details and everything. But what you write above that and what you write below that you can personalize. And it matters again, how you greet someone, how you would greet that guest, remembering that you had a conversation with them, make that greeting more personal. Then you also want to have it be a close, right, that matches you. Like I said, warm regards. These are things that we want to do. We need to make sure that these things get personalized so that they do really feel like it came from you. So what happens is that I send one, it goes out right after the episode airs, and then seven days later it goes out again as a reminder. It's the same email, but it got a little reminder added onto it. If my guest didn't share it. Nine times out of ten that reminder gets this kind of response from people. They will respond back to me, send me back an email saying, I'm so sorry, I was out of town or I got busy and I forgot to share this, but I'm on it. I will get this shared. Thank you so much for a wonderful interview and I just love this graphic. So thank you for that as well. So it will be some variation of that, but typically that's what it is. Sometimes they'll send it right away and they share right away. Especially if it's an agency, the agencies usually, or publicists Usually really appreciate that we've given them everything all in one place, that they don't have to go hunting, they don't have to click through links to get stuff, grab stuff and build a post together. They have everything they need to build a great post right there. So they really appreciate the time savings and they usually always respond with a thank you as well. So those are things. Now if you have a booking agency, it's very common for them and they understand that, that they're in receipt of this email. And so because they booked the call, so they're on the calendar, their email address or whatever it is. And sometimes those especially celebrity guests are hidden in the process. So that's okay. To still address the email directly to the guest, they will typically forward it on and then a lot of times that will elicit a direct response back from that guest. So it's a great way to make that personal connection to them as well. So don't be afraid of like the weirdness that happens if you don't exactly have your guest. I always put my guest name in when I put up the post, even if I know that that email is an agency. That way it will auto fill in the formatting in the automatic email settings. So just do that. It's a good practice. Most PR firms, most publicists are really comfortable with it. It happens all the time. They know that that's not a mistake. They expect it. And that means that when they forward it though, it has that personal feel again.

So those are just some of the technical tips. I want to make sure that you have variety in what you do. Like, this is critically important. Whether it's the image or it's the emails or it's what you're doing in these places is that you need to make sure that the guest feels special, like they got something that was unique to them and that it wasn't a generic, that it wasn't something you do for everyone, that you don't say the statement, your quote the exact same way every time, that you don't format it the same way. That's why we put out at least three different styles of Ego Bay images. That way, if they were looking before or after, if they saw what you post, their colors won't be the same as the last one. Like all of that's changing. So that's one of the reasons we have a mandated variety on all of the graphic work that we do and that we do not repeat two weeks in a row, any kind of color or graphical style. So you want to do the same thing with the words that you use and the quotes that you use. Make sure that you're not repeating yourself again and again, that you use your words differently. You don't use brilliant every time. You don't say awesome and amazing every time. Even if that's kind of common for you. You want to really try to mix it up and use different words about like impactful or switch it up so that it's really personalized to this guest. So being thinking about that at all times, that you always want to make sure that they feel that they are special and that they aren't just treated like any old guest. Right? Because your goal here is to establish a relationship with your guests. And for some of you, your guests are the goal. It's not actually the listening audience. So building that deeper relationship with your guests is really important. Many of our clients have been able to get speaking engagements, have gotten further, deeper interviews, been able to get articles and other stuff from their podcast interviews because of not just the rapport that happens on the show, but the follow up that happens afterwards shows what a true professional you are and that it can really bode well for the future of what you want to do for a relationship that you want to build with this person. So who doesn't want to do business with someone who's a true professional, Right. Who does what they say they're going to do. All of us want that. So that's why I really am stressing a lot of these things. Because when the process isn't smooth, especially when we have so much automation and so many things that aren't excuses for how we do our show, whether it's setting up in guest calendars, the follow up notifications that are automatic using our ego bait system, and all of those things are really important and they make you look great. And that's what you want to have is you want to just make all of this seem seamless and effortless so the true professional that you are can come through and, and your heart can come through right into connecting with your guests. And that follows through in that future relationship where I now say, as your guest, I'm so excited to share your show because I know that you're going to represent well. So that's our ultimate goal here with getting guests to share your podcast with all of the advice that I've just given you right now and shared with you. So everyone, we've touched on so many topics today. We talked about how to get great guests and make sure that they're sharing your stuff, right? Make sure that they're sharing your show. Because that's our old goal with putting guests on our show. So we wanted to look at all of those technical things and we looked at some of the conceptual things as well, and making sure that we're putting all of those things together with a strategy in place. And that's what we're all here about. At Feed your Brand, we're always looking at the strategic plan for what we do. We don't want to do stuff that's a waste of time. We don't want to do stuff just because every other podcaster does this. We want to do it because it has a purpose and it's right for our show and right for us, right for our audience at the end of the day, because our show is always in service. So if you have any questions, if you want to know some more, if you want a deep dive into ego bait or anything like that, we'd love for you to reach out to us. And you can do that at FeedYourBrand Co or anywhere on social media FeedYourBrand. And if you have a suggestion, a concept, something you'd like to talk about in an upcoming episode, then please share that with us there as well. This is Tracee Hazzard and I look forward to hearing from you. And I look forward to talking with you again here on Feed you'd Brand.

You've been listening to the Feed you'd Brand podcast. We'd love to hear your comments on today's show, as well as suggestions for future topics and guests. Visit us online at FeedYourBrand code or on social edyourbrand. Thanks for exploring content marketing and podcast influence with us.