With a significant rise in audio, there’s ample opportunity to reach this growing audience while differentiating your content program from others in the industry. So, why audio content? Well, couple of reasons. The first is, written content marketing programs are abundant out there already.
There’s a rise in audio content. Podcasts are popular. Everybody is either starting a podcast or starting a podcast or interested in starting a podcast. There are audio groups like Clubhouse and Twitter spaces, and LinkedIn is getting in on the same Facebook action.
And it’s not just because people want to create audio content; it’s because more and more people are consuming audio content. It’s the one medium you can consume while doing something else, and you can see why people prefer audio.
10 Audio Content Marketing Strategy:
There’s significant zoom fatigue. It’s easier to create less expensive gear, and there’s less post-production, so because of this and you have decided to create an audio content marketing program. The 10 audio content marketing strategy includes:
1. Strategy
So, the first step is strategy; a key element is knowing your audience, and this is where your content marketing mission statement comes in. You want to make sure that you know your core audience target, what will be delivered to the audience, and the outcome for that audience; in other words, which you will serve, what solution your content is offering, and the outcome.
So, the next key element is an editorial calendar, and it helps you be consistent with your content. Still, it’s also a reference point for you and others in your organization on what content is coming up and can help you adjust if you need to.
The next element is measurement; you want to know which content is working, what’s not, and what your audience is consuming now; this is not leads or sales. You are trying to build an audience to provide value, and providing that leads to awareness and consideration of your brands, perhaps your products, and your service down the road.
2. How to Get Topics
The easiest way to do that is to find the top 50 to 100 questions that your customers and clients always ask and answer. And the easiest way to get that is to talk to your sales teams, customer service teams, and customer experience teams.
Once you get all those questions, any team or people who have front-facing interactions with your customers, clients, or prospects, it’s easy to start putting them into batches or topics or segments and then start creating content based on those questions.
But because it’s easier to connect with somebody with podcasting, you don’t need all that gear in terms of video, and writing just slightly different. There are also other opportunities you can have your influencers, customers, and prospects onto your show, discussing the pain points of your industry. Now there is a couple of benefits while you are doing this:
- You can learn about the best practices and the pain points in the industry.
- Can learn while you are interviewing these people.
- Apply everything that you have learned to your organization.
- You have an opportunity to share your brand perspective, and your line of thinking with people in your industry and perhaps build a community around that.
3. Finding your Subject Matter Experts
So, the next tip is to find your subject matter expert. It could be you; it could be someone internal to the business. How about an external subject matter expert with audio form content?
It’s really easy because all you need is to connect with someone who has a laptop or even a phone and just hit record, so if you are going to interview somebody, try to interview that person for multiple episodes.
It’s easier to create many episodes with one person over two to three hours, and that way, you will build your bank of content rather than trying to get a new guest every week.
4. Gear
So, the next tip is what type of gear you need, and in this format, sound audio is king, so you can easily start with your laptop mic or air pods. But it is highly recommended that you get yourself a high-end microphone.
You probably want to provide that high-quality audio that you have heard from other podcasts that your laptop mic or your air pods can’t provide.
In addition to having a mic, you want to look at your environment or where you will be recording. An empty room will lead to a lot of echo and reverb, while a room with a lot of stuff in it, say acoustic foam or even clothes or things on the floor, will have less reverb and less echo.
5. Audio Hosting
So, the next piece of gear you will need is a place to host all your audio content, which then can deliver that content to those podcast platforms like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Stitcher. Some of these hosting platforms could be Anker, libsyn, buzz sprout, and pod bean; many are there.
Now, if you are on a budget and you want, and you are just starting, then you have to go with an anchor because it’s completely free.
6. Batch Mode
So, the next tip is Batch Mode; whether you have guests on or you are doing the show yourself, try to record so many episodes at a time, and it’s way easier to have a bank of audio content than trying to have again to create content every single week or whatever your regular cadence is, for instance, a guest cancels or has to reschedule you already have a bank of content that you can pull from to keep your consistency.
7. Editing and Post-Production
The next tip is about editing and post-production. There are several audio editing software out there audacity, audition, euphonic, and garage band. Now editing audio is easier than editing video.
However, there are still a couple of things that you need to learn, and if you don’t want to do this for every single episode, you can hire people either on Fiverr or Upwork to help you out.
8. Post and Publish
The next tip is about posts and Publishing. Now it’s easy to hit publish on Libsyn or Anchor, and then it distributes it to all those different podcast platforms, apple podcast, Stitcher, Spotify, and so on.
But you do want an extra step; you want to create micro-videos or micro audio about your entire conversation and then post that on the channels your audience is at.
It helps you distribute audio content in a format that’s easily digestible on some of these social channels with links back to your full episode either in comments or not in the description because a lot of the social platforms don’t like links taking people out of the platform to another site.
9. Consistency
So, the next tip is to be consistent. Consistency is the number one indicator of a successful content marketing program or a failed content marketing program. You have seen wastelands of all these content programs with good intentions that have failed because they lack consistency or don’t produce enough.
Think about producing an episode at your regular cadence once a week, twice a week, daily, monthly, whatever it is for at least 12 to 18 months or 50 episodes at the very least. Because that’s how long it takes for your program to gain traction reason is that there’s a lot of competition out there.
In content, marketing consistency is about a war of attrition that can stay and sustain and keep creating the longest.
10. Start
The final tip is to start, don’t worry about production value. Don’t worry if you don’t have that high-end mic or created a room with all these acoustic paneling acoustic foams, and you know you have that awesome rich sound that doesn’t matter.
Just start with your laptop, start with your AirPods, whatever you have, and create content. Don’t try to compare yourself to podcasts that have already been around for years.
It’s an unfair comparison because you are at your first step, and they have already been on their many episodes. If you want to compare, take a look at how their first episode started and compare yourself to that.
Final Thoughts:
So, here seem to be 10 pointers about getting started with audio content marketing; Remember that your first 10 to 15 episodes are not necessarily for your audience. It’s for you, and you are still trying to figure out all the various elements of your program, whether that’s pre-production or post-production; how are you getting your subject matter experts, and how are you interviewing the formats of your show? Are there times when you want to know to do the show yourself and how many guests you have?
