The Company Show

A truly massive content archive will usually cause one of two feelings:Unspeakable delight about the opportunityA sucking dread at the thought of the work involved in repurposing itThe difference between those feelings? Strategy and organization.This episode of The Company Show is all about strategy and organization and how you can use them to make sure your content archive fills you with more joy than terror.My guest this week is past mistress at the art and science of understanding the role that content plays in a customer's buying journey. And her process of content tracking and annual content audits is positively aspirational.Racheal Cook is the founder of The CEO Collective and host of Promote Yourself to CEO and she has helped thousands of women entrepreneurs design predictably profitable businesses without hustle and burnout.We had an amazing conversation that covered a lot of ground. Listen to the episode below or read the blog post: https://podcastingforbusiness.com/77Tune in to the full episode to learn about:effective content strategy and organizationevolving your content and podcastthe power of evergreen contenttreating your podcast as a library of assetscontent management and planningattract listeners through multiple channelsbuilding a nurturing content ecosystemtracking audience engagement and acquisitionDon’t forget to join us for our free monthly strategy calls on the third Thursday of every month!Next Week on The Company ShowNext week, we've got an exciting case study episode coming up with Susan Friedmann, the creator of Aviva Publishing and host of the Book Marketing Mentors podcast.We're going to be digging into her strategy, results, and what she's learned over more than 400 episodes.Need A Podcast?As always, this is Megan Dougherty, and The Company Show was made possible by the team at One Stone Creative.If you know a business owner that you think should have a podcast, do us a favor and send them to podcastingforbusiness.com!Key Quotes“You don't need a massive audience. You just need those loyal people who listen to you every single week and who come back to you again and again.” - Rachel Cook“My job on my podcast is twofold. It's to nurture those people, walk them through this content series where I'm really comprehensive covering a specific topic, but also it's to get them to engage on my website by opting in for something.” - Rachel Cook"A truly massive content archive will usually cause one of two feelings.: one, unspeakable delight about the opportunity, or two, a sucking dread at the thought of the work involved in repurposing it.” - Megan DoughertyResourcesOne Stone Creative | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | InstagramMake sure to check out our free Monthly Strategy Calls!Podcasting for Business Conference 2023 RecordingsLearn about what other business podcasters are doing:State of Business Podcasting Report 2023Racheal Cook Website | Podcast | Instagram | TikTok | LinkedIn | FacebookRelated:Create with Intent to Repurpose with Jaclyn SchiffBringing Order to Chaos in Your Podcast ProcessesHow to Measure the Impact of Your Podcast

What’s the best way to grow your podcast audience? That is a topic that could be debated hotly by pretty much anyone who works in podcasting. But all would agree that if being a guest on other people’s podcasts isn’t the very best method, it’s high on the list.Pitching well, which is to say, effectively and in a manner that results in guest appearances and new professional relationships is one of those things that is simple but not easy.Simple: Find complementary shows, communicate your value, bring your best content and generally be a helpful and gracious guest.Not easy: How do you pitch, are you good enough, will they listen to you, how much research do you need to do, do you have to promote your episode, how long is this all going to take and what if no one accepts you?Maybe I’m the only one who gets a little in my head about it, but it’s not likely.Angie Trueblood the founder of The Podwize Group is one of my very best friends in the industry, and since our very first interview, we’ve been talking, collaborating, workshopping and generally working together to create ways that different kinds of businesses owners can leverage podcasts and podcast appearances.And through these conversations we’ve come up with really excellent use-cases for different kinds of business owners—most specifically, authors. Turns out we also have in common a love of the written word and the people who create those words as a marketing strategy for their companies.So, enjoy this conversation I had with Angie; there have been some changes in both of our businesses since it was originally released. Check the show notes for the latest links and details but the strategy and practice of pitching is solid.There is so much gold in this conversation that will help you refine your own pitching strategy to get more visibility on your show, your book and your business.If you’re interested in that, listen to the episode or read the blog post: https://podcastingforbusiness.com/76Tune in to the full episode to learn about:Benefits of podcast guesting for authorsPitching for Podcasts vs. Other PublicationsShould you outsource the pitch?Overcoming Pitching AnxietyPitching time and schedulingHow to be a great podcast guestLaunching your book with podcastsDon’t forget to join us for our free monthly strategy calls on the third Thursday of every month!Need A Podcast?As always, this is Megan Dougherty, and The Company Show was made possible by the team at One Stone Creative.If you know a business owner that you think should have a podcast, do us a favor and send them to podcastingforbusiness.com!Key Quotes"I want more than anything else to have a guest who is prepared and takes this opportunity seriously. If they proactively send me information that's going to help negate any weird things happening, perfect. I'm your biggest fan." - Angie Trueblood"The more you do, the more people hear you, and then all of a sudden you're being heard everywhere." - Megan DoughertyResourcesOne Stone Creative | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | InstagramMake sure to check out our free Monthly Strategy Calls!Podcasting for Business Conference 2023 RecordingsLearn about what other business podcasters are doing:State of Business Podcasting Report 2023Angie Trueblood Instagram | LinkedIn | Twitter | The Podwize Group | Go Pitch Yourself PodcastRelated:The Ultimate Guest Pitching System with Kris WardPractice Makes Prepared with Meridith GrundeiA Dance of Guests and Hosts: Optimizing Your Workflows and Relationships with Jason CerconeDon’t Leave Your Guest Guessing

Podcasts that look very similar from the outside can actually create completely different kinds of value for the businesses running them. Here’s what I mean:Imagine a standard podcast. The podcasty-est podcast you can dream up. You know what I'm talking about: about 40 minutes long, one host interviewing one guest, released every Tuesday. The Ur-Podcast—there are a lot of them.It’s tempting to think they all sound the same. The more cynical among us might say that they do. But they can be serving very different functions for the companies that run them and making a very different impact based on the Blueprint used and the individual metrics optimized for.Let’s take a look at how a ‘bread and butter’ podcast format can be optimized for very different business outcomes. Listen to the episode or read the blog post here: https://podcastingforbusiness.com/75Tune in to the full episode to learn about:How similar podcasts can serve different purposesHow to optimize podcast for different goalsOptimizing workflows, recordings, and post-productionShould you be concerned about competition?Don’t forget to join us for our free monthly strategy calls on the third Thursday of every month!Let’s ConnectI’d love to know your reason for podcasting—and how you’re optimizing for it! Find me on LinkedIn or Instagram.Need A Podcast?The Company Show was made possible by the team at One Stone Creative.If you know a business owner that you think should have a podcast, do us a favor and send them to podcastingforbusiness.com!Key Quotes“No one has ever found a podcast on a topic they are interested in and said: *That’s it! I have found the one and only podcast on this topic I’m going to listen to; I will never seek out or listen to another one—*that doesn’t happen." - Megan DoughertyResourcesOne Stone Creative | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | InstagramMake sure to check out our free Monthly Strategy Calls!Podcasting for Business Conference 2023 RecordingsLearn about what other business podcasters are doing:State of Business Podcasting Report 2023Related:Does Your Podcast Format match Your Podcast Goals?Using LinkedIn to Supercharge your Relationship Building with Sophie LechnerMaximizing your Creative Energy to Serve Your AudienceCreating Impact with Expert Knowledge with Kachina GosselinPodcasting with Purpose with Fatima ZaidiPFBCon 2023 RecordingsWhether you're a solopreneur, manager of a department, principal at a firm, or a non-fiction author ready to expand into audio, the Podcasting for Business Conference will help you leverage a podcast to meet your business objectives.Missed PFBCon 2023? Check out the recordings!

I’m sure you’ve heard of the Pareto principle, or the 80-20 rule where 80% of consequences or results come from 20% of causes—or efforts.On the one hand it’s great because you’re getting huge value out of some of the work you’re doing…. but which part?That’s the rub and trying to answer that question is the work of entire industries and an important activity for business owners and marketing managers evaluating what they and their teams spend time on.It’s one of the reasons we developed the Business Podcast Blueprints - so it would be easier to see what work was creating what results to facilitate strategic decision making. I remember when we first started One Stone Creative, and I was another one of those marketers who just kind of threw up her hands and said: it’s going to work but we don’t exactly know why.It was only through years of experimentation, data collection and analysis that we started to see the patterns that let us codify the Blueprints into tools that could be used proactively to get specific business outcomes and the attendant clarity—from podcasting.Most of us aren’t just podcasting through, we’re blogging, and posting on social media, making videos hosting events, and creating visuals.And there’s an expert I’m really excited to introduce you to who is bringing a wonderful level of rigor and analysis to content marketing more generally, with a special emphasis on the king of all content—the email.My guest today is Shannon Hernandez, the creator of the Joyful Business Revolution.We’re talking about data, we’re talking about working according to your strengths, we’re talking about email the as-of-yet unseated, most profitable form of communication on the internet, and we’re doing it with Shannon’s specialty—absolute joy.If you want to step up your content creation game and learn more about the power of email, listen to the episode or read the blog post: https://podcastingforbusiness.com/TCS074Tune in to the full episode to learn about:The Content Personality QuizCreating content outside your personalityWhy Shannon is shifting to emailPodcasting and email marketingHow to bring joy to the content creation processCold emails and effective engagementHow Shannon used The Business Podcast BlueprintsDon’t forget to join us for our free monthly strategy calls on the third Thursday of every month!Key Quotes"I've asked myself several times over the last couple of years, did I make a mistake in picking joy as the leader of the brand Joyful Business Revolution? Because early on, we attracted a lot of people who were not joyful at all, and what they wanted was joy.” - Shannon Hernandez“If the only way to keep my business going was an email every 2 hours on Facebook, I just burn it to the ground.” - Megan DoughertyResourcesOne Stone Creative | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | InstagramMake sure to check out our free Monthly Strategy Calls!Podcasting for Business Conference 2023 RecordingsLearn about what other business podcasters are doing:State of Business Podcasting Report 2023Shannon Hernandez Website | LinkedInJoyful Content Creation FrameworkContent Personality QuizRelated:Maximizing your Creative Energy to Serve Your Audience

I have a weakness for walls of text. I really do.See, I love to teach and think and expound and explain, and I do it best in writing. This is, as I have been frequently reminded by my wonderful business partner, rather merciless on the end reader, on websites, in newsletters and emails, and sometimes even on social media.And it's a problem because while the content may be good and fondly like to believe that it is, it's hard to read. This is important everywhere, but it's especially important on social media.And I've never been a huge fan or a super user of it, which means I've never been great at configuring things in the right way to perform the best. But there are so many experts who are so, so good at it, for which I am profoundly grateful because so many of them are so generous with their knowledge.We are talking with one of those experts today, and she's got some strong opinions about the length of content that belongs in LinkedIn, as well as the topics, the relationship building, the role of LinkedIn to business, and how podcasters can take advantage of it.Sophie Lechner is the creator of The Magnet Model, and she helps mission driven entrepreneurs find their audience on LinkedIn and build relationships with them so that they can spread their message and grow their own businesses.If you want strategies that you can use today to improve your LinkedIn game, listen to the episode or read the blog post here: https://podcastingforbusiness.com/73Tune in to the full episode to learn about:The strengths of LinkedIn as a platformHow to make LinkedIn work for podcastersLinkedIn mistakes and best practicesThe ideal LinkedIn post from Sophie LechnerRelationship building with podcast hosts and guestsDon’t forget to join us for our free monthly strategy calls on the third Thursday of every month!Key Quotes"In this day and age, if we want a book, we'll go get a book. You're serving yourself, right? You want people to read it, so make it so the text will just jump into their brain without having to make any effort." - Sophie LechnerResourcesOne Stone Creative | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | InstagramMake sure to check out our free Monthly Strategy Calls!Podcasting for Business Conference 2023 RecordingsLearn about what other business podcasters are doing:State of Business Podcasting Report 2023Sophie Lechner Website | LinkedInCreate headlines here!Related:Learning From ExpertsMastering Facebook Ads for Podcast & Business Growth with Stacy ReedA Dance of Guests and Hosts: Optimizing Your Workflows and Relationships with Jason CerconePFBCon 2023 RecordingsWhether you're a solopreneur, manager of a department, principal at a firm, or a non-fiction author ready to expand into audio, the Podcasting for Business Conference will help you leverage a podcast to meet your business objectives.Missed PFBCon 2023? Check out the recordings!

Stop me if you've heard this one: I want to develop a passive income stream. You've heard it; you might have thought of it—I definitely have.But I've also been in the Internet marketing industry long enough to know that while evergreen, scalable monthly recurring revenue is possible and can over time be largely automated, passive is at best an exaggeration of the work involved in keeping that kind of machine turning—and at worst a damn dirty lie to sell you a quick fix.When people think of passive income or, more realistically, scalable evergreen product-based income, courses are usually at the top of the list. Creating a course is treated like getting your very own golden goose that's going to lay profit eggs for you every single month.The thing is, it can work and be an amazing way to scale your business, serve more people, and make a bigger impact in the world. But it is not a fit for every business, and it is not a fit for every stage of every business.My guest today understands that and has built the criteria for success with courses into every level of her own company. And she has some very interesting thoughts on how podcasts and scalable products like courses and group training programs can work together.Kachina Gosselin is the founder of Founders Path. She graduated from MIT with a degree in aeronautics and astronautics and now specializes in helping experts monetize their expertise and thrive in the creator economy.If you want to leverage your expertise and generate more impact, listen to the episode or read the blog post: podcastingforbusiness.com/the-company-show/ Tune in to the full episode to learn about:How experts can turn into course creatorsThe importance of pricingWhen should you create your own course?The related costs and investmentsThe quality standards that you must meetThe intersections of podcasting and coursesDon’t forget to join us for our free monthly strategy calls on the third Thursday of every month!Monthly Strategy & Networking CallsThis episode was originally a live Strategy and Networking call which we hold on the third Thursday of every month.There was actually another 30 minutes of amazing discussion and Q and A with Kachina about how these ideas can be applied in different contexts and creating community - if you want to hear it, register for the calls, and you’ll have access to the recording.Each one has a training and learning portion, followed by Q and A, hotseats for whatever you’re working on with your podcast, and a chance to network with other podcasters, industry professionals - they’re so much fun, and I’d love to see you there.Learn more and register for free at PodcastingforBusiness.com/StrategyCalls.Need A Podcast?As always, this is Megan Dougherty, and The Company Show was made possible by the team at One Stone Creative.If you know a business owner that you think should have a podcast, do us a favor and send them to podcastingforbusiness.com!Key Quotes"I don't want to be intimidating at all, but I think we do just have to acknowledge those harsh realities, that a course is a really advanced product to sell." - Kachina Gosselin"The standard for what is expected for an audiovisual product. It's getting higher every year—here are fewer and fewer excuses." - Megan Dougherty"Simple is not easy." - Kachina GosselinResourcesOne Stone Creative | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | InstagramMake sure to check out our free Monthly Strategy Calls!Podcasting for Business Conference 2023 RecordingsLearn about what other business podcasters are doing:State of Business Podcasting Report 2023Kachina Gosselin Website | Instagram | LinkedInJoin her Mastermind ProgramSophie Lechner Website | LinkedInRelated:Should You Make an Online Course?How to Outline a Podcast, Book or Course in an AfternoonLearning From Experts

Unless you’re overburdened with free time and a desire to learn a variety of new, highly specific skills or have a team member with the time, interest, and aptitude, starting a podcast for your company usually means hiring a third-party service provider.You’ve got a lot of options for what that relationship can look like. There are solo providers like editors and promoters, podcast coaches and consultants, full-service production agencies, training companies, niche-specific agencies, and recording studios with in-house production—all with their own spectrum of price, quality, and capacity.As you know, hiring a third-party provider can be such a thing. When hiring for a podcast, it’s also fairly high-risk; your show needs to reflect well on your company and help you achieve important goals, and the provider you choose to work with needs to be reliable and produce high-quality work.When you work with a great one, then creating your podcast is going to be a really pleasant part of your workflow. You’ll get to focus on creating interesting and valuable content and won’t have to do much else while the benefits to your business stack up. But when you end up with a less than satisfactory one, it will be one heck of an expensive nightmare and time-suck.Today, we’re talking about what information you should gather from the different providers you talk to when you’re exploring hiring help for your company’s podcast.Listen to the episode or head on to https://podcastingforbusiness.com/71 and read the blog post!Tune in to learn about:Considerations for hiring a third-party podcast production service.Questions to ask potential providers including success metrics, contract terms, ownership of episodes, handover points in the process, and support provided.Understanding the provider's workflow, turnaround time, and use of AI.Importance of trust and clear communication with the chosen provider.Don’t forget to join us for our free monthly strategy calls on the third Thursday of every month!Before we start…We published a version of this back in 2022 in our very first podcast season, and a lot has changed since then—the podcasting industry has exploded.There are so many different kinds of providers and different technologies available to help or hurt your show, and generally, there's just a lot more noise you’ve got to cut through in order to make a great decision for your organization.So, when you’re ready to take the plunge, or less happily, if you took the plunge and sank, then you should probably plan to talk to at least a couple of different providers; the types of services and prices for production can vary really widely.If you have friends or colleagues who podcast, asking for recommendations is a fantastic way to get your starter list, and if you don't know anyone, join literally any podcast group on Facebook, post that you're looking for an editor, and be prepared to receive dozens and dozens of messages from people wanting to sell their services.You will almost certainly find a decent fit within that horde of eager humans. (And you’re warmly invited to talk to us too!) Once you’ve got your discovery calls booked, here’s what you should ask:1. What does a successful podcast look like for your company?2. Do you need a contract? What are your terms?3. Who owns the life of an episode?4. What are the handover points in the process, and where and how are information and content shared?5. Is there any kind of coaching, feedback, or strategic help provided?6. What is your turnaround from raw audio to finished episode?7. Is your company utilizing AI? If so, how?8. What assets do you provide?9. Who is providing the service, and who are your points of contact?10. If you're starting a new show, what is included in a launch? Follow-up: How long does the podcast launch take?11. What type of editing does the firm do?12. How long do their clients keep podcasting?13. What do you do when there are problems?Key Quotes"When you work with a really great producer, production company or other kind of provider, then creating your podcast can be a really pleasant part of your workflow." - Megan Dougherty"What does a successful podcast look like for your company? As a producer, this is one of my favorite questions to be asked because it means that someone is thinking seriously about how to evaluate the podcast as a marketing channel." - Megan DoughertyResourcesOne Stone Creative | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | InstagramMake sure to check out our free Monthly Strategy Calls!Podcasting for Business Conference 2023 RecordingsLearn about what other business podcasters are doing:State of Business Podcasting Report 2023Related:Achieving Business Goals with Podcast Managers with Ted CraggShould You Book a Podcast Studio? with JP DavidsonWorking with VAs for Your Podcast with Kristy YoderPFBCon 2023 RecordingsWhether you're a solopreneur, manager of a department, principal at a firm, or a non-fiction author ready to expand into audio, the Podcasting for Business Conference will help you leverage a podcast to meet your business objectives.Missed PFBCon 2023? Check out the recordings!

There's a persistent myth in the podcasting world that you can use a little bit of someone else's content without facing any potential legal consequences whatsoever. Maybe 45 seconds of a really popular song or a clip from a TV show that perfectly demonstrates what you're talking about. It's not true.There are protections for other people's content in place, just like there are for yours. And of course, that doesn't mean that you can never use other people's content. It just has to be transformative, which is a whole other kettle of fish on its own, and altogether, it's really a complicated issue filled with nuance and can potentially be pretty high stakes.While figuring out all of this copyright, fair use, and intellectual property stuff alone is totally possible…Most of the information is available out there on the Internet, on government websites, and in books, and it's especially accessible if you have some experience with legal terminology. But that can be time-consuming, and honestly, who has a whole week to become an armchair intellectual property expert when you've got the new Stephen King sitting on your coffee table waiting to be enjoyed?No, it's better to get information straight from a reliable source, and on this episode, we've got a bona fide trademark and copyright nerd joining us to shed a little light on the subject.Erin Ogden is an attorney at the law firm Ogden Glazer + Schaefer. Whether she's helping clients directly or working with other attorneys to help their clients, she helps identify, protect, and monetize intellectual property while looking at the business holistically, which is exactly what we're looking for today.So if you're ready for a lot of extremely valuable information critical to the long term success of your company's podcast, listen to the episode or read the blog post: https://podcastingforbusiness.com/69Tune in to the full episode to get answers to these questions:What is fair use?Do I need a trademark? When should I apply for one?What if somebody steals my content?Should I make my guests sign a release form?Can I create my own agreements? Or do I need a lawyer to do it for me?Don’t forget to join us for our free monthly strategy calls on the third Thursday of every month!Key Quotes“If you think it's transformative, assume you need to talk to a lawyer to make sure, because you are not going to be able to make that determination.” - Erin Ogden“If in doubt, get permission or don't do it.” - Megan DoughertyResourcesOne Stone Creative | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | InstagramMake sure to check out our free Monthly Strategy Calls!Podcasting for Business Conference 2023 RecordingsLearn about what other business podcasters are doing:State of Business Podcasting Report 2023Erin Ogden Visit The Ogden Glazer + Schaefer Website | Read the BlogStacy Reed Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn | YouTubePFBCon 2023 RecordingsWhether you're a solopreneur, manager of a department, principal at a firm, or a non-fiction author ready to expand into audio, the Podcasting for Business Conference will help you leverage a podcast to meet your business objectives.Missed PFBCon 2023? Check out the recordings!

Aligning your podcast with your business goals is crucial for success, which means you need to set clear podcast goals, choose the right format to achieve those goals, and understand industry best practices.Today I have the pleasure of sharing with you a conversation that I had with Beate Chelette, the Growth Architect. She's a business strategist and podcast host who provides visionaries and leaders with strategies to grow their authority so they can scale their impact.Beate and I are talking about changes in the entrepreneurial landscape, having a good understanding of what's going on in your industry and making decisions accordingly, and a good deep dive into the good, the bad, and the terribly ugly of different podcast strategies that we have run across over the years of being in this industry.So we're operating from the same foundation: podcasts can be leveraged within a business in a way that serves the business itself, listeners, and everyone else involved with the project. But we approached many things in somewhat different ways.This was a conversation I learned a lot from, and I think you will too.Tune in to the full episode to learn about:The importance of aligning podcast with business strategyUsing podcasting to build authority and relationshipsFocusing on quality guests and professional production standardsStrategic guest selection and promotionThe long-term nature of podcasting for branding and lead generationPatience and consistency in building audience and reputationDon’t forget to join us for our free monthly strategy calls on the third Thursday of every month!Key Quotes"All you need is one person a year who hears something, who becomes a good client, and everything's paid for.” - Beate Chelette“Who cares if the downloads are small? Most of the shows we produce, we don't even look at the downloads.” - Megan DoughertyResourcesOne Stone Creative | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | InstagramMake sure to check out our free Monthly Strategy Calls!Podcasting for Business Conference 2023 RecordingsLearn about what other business podcasters are doing:State of Business Podcasting Report 2023Beate Chelette Website | Instagram | LinkedIn | Facebook | TwitterListen to her podcast: Business Growth Architect ShowTake the quiz! What's Your Talent Worth?Angie Trueblood Instagram | LinkedIn | Twitter | The Podwize Group | Go Pitch Yourself PodcastRelated:Does Your Podcast Format Match Your Podcast Goals?Case Study: Growing a Media Business Through Podcasting with Rayna RokickiHow to Measure the Impact of Your PodcastPFBCon 2023 RecordingsWhether you're a solopreneur, manager of a department, principal at a firm, or a non-fiction author ready to expand into audio, the Podcasting for Business Conference will help you leverage a podcast to meet your business objectives.Missed PFBCon 2023? Check out the recordings!

Podcasts can come in a lot of different shapes and sizes, and one of the first decisions you need to make as a podcaster is what type of show you want to create.This is one of the biggest early stumbling blocks company podcasters can run into, and the consequences of making the wrong choice can be severe when it comes to actually getting any value out of the project.Often, when people think "podcast", they think: "interview," but it's not that clear cut, and selecting the wrong format for your business goals can mean you invest a huge amount of time and resources in something that will be… sort of okay, but maybe not that great. Depending on which of the Blueprints you're using, and which specific success metrics matter the most to you, not to mention your specific needs around time and budgetary investment, there are styles of show that make more or less sense for your business.The most important consideration is how well a specific format helps you meet your overarching, and specific podcasting goals.Creating a show with the wrong format for your goals means you are putting yourself at an immediate disadvantage when it comes to making progress toward your business objectives, and it’s all too common for businesses to put tons of effort into a podcast - and make amazing content- but not see the kind of bottom-line impact they need to justify the work.We're going to talk about Interviews, Solo episodes, Co-hosted conversations, Panel Discussions, Demonstrative Shows, Documentary style, Clip Shows, and Lives. There are other formats of course, like narrative, fiction, news, and more – but these are the ones most likely to find a place in podcasts that exist AS businesses, or are passion projects. We’re always balancing the desire to create with the needs of a business, and while quality is always critical, efficiency matters too!Tune in to the full episode to learn about:The different podcast episode formatsand when to use them for different business objectivesDon’t forget to join us for our free monthly strategy calls on the third Thursday of every month!Key Quotes"Creating a show with the wrong format for your goals means you are putting yourself at an immediate disadvantage when it comes to making progress towards your business objectives." -Megan DoughertyNext Week on The Company ShowNext week we’ve got a fantastic conversation with Beate Chelette, a business growth architect who is joining me to talk about how and why you should perform research for your show, different ways to leverage one within your business, and some very bad podcasting behavior we do NOT want to see anymore.We agreed on a lot of things - and also had some different ways of looking at certain strategies, which made for an amazing conversation. Here’s a quick preview, and otherwise, can’t wait to catch you next time!ResourcesOne Stone Creative | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | InstagramMake sure to check out our free Monthly Strategy Calls!Podcasting for Business Conference 2023 RecordingsLearn about what other business podcasters are doingState of Business Podcasting Report 2023Related:An Exhaustive List of Different Podcast Episode Formats – and When To Use ThemHow to Choose your Podcast Content (And Format, and Assets and Marketing)PFBCon 2023 RecordingsWhether you're a solopreneur, manager of a department, principal at a firm, or a non-fiction author ready to expand into audio, the Podcasting for Business Conference will help you leverage a podcast to meet your business objectives.Missed PFBCon 2023? Check out the recordings!

On this episode of The Company Show, we’re taking a look at how Rayna Rokicki, the owner of Ladies First Digital Media and the host of the You Betcha She Did! podcast, uses a relationship-building guest strategy perfectly to grow her show and her business.Relationship-building is one of the most popular and effective podcast goals for companies. This helps them create and nurture the connections they need for different kinds of business growth, from new leads, to educating and serving existing customers, to referral partners, to potential collaboration partners, and dare I say, maybe even new friends too.Rayna created a great show and strategically uses it to grow her media business by connecting with potential clients, refining and experimenting with formats to use within the business, and creating awareness of the many amazing women in her area, herself included.It is a fantastic conversation and you're really going to enjoy it.Tune in to the full episode to learn about:Rayna’s team templates and workflowGoal setting and pivotingTech tools and social media strategiesHow all of these helped Rayna achieve her long-term objectivesDon’t forget to join us for our free monthly strategy calls on the third Thursday of every month!Key Quotes"I've definitely learned that you need to throw out perfection, and I tell it to my clients all the time. If you want perfect, this is not the right space for you. You just have to get started, you have to dive in, and you got to learn along the way." - Rayna Rokicki"Just start. Don't get stuck." - Rayna RokickiResourcesOne Stone Creative | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | InstagramMake sure to check out our free Monthly Strategy Calls!Podcasting for Business Conference 2023 RecordingsLearn about what other business podcasters are doing:State of Business Podcasting Report 2023Rayna Rokicki Website | Instagram | LinkedIn | You Betcha She Did!Related:The Ultimate Guest Pitching System with Kris WardA Dance of Guests and Hosts: Optimizing Your Workflows and Relationships with Jason CerconeFinding and Inviting Guests to Your PodcastDon’t Leave Your Guest GuessingWhy Don’t Podcast Guests Share Their Episodes?PFBCon 2023 RecordingsWhether you're a solopreneur, manager of a department, principal at a firm, or a non-fiction author ready to expand into audio, the Podcasting for Business Conference will help you leverage a podcast to meet your business objectives.Missed PFBCon 2023? Check out the recordings!

Consistent practice doesn’t guarantee that everything will go perfectly—but it does make sure that you’ll be prepared for whatever happens. In this episode, director, actor, and educator, Meridith Grundei shares tips and strategies that will help you become ready and confident as a host, presenter, or guest!Meridith is an expert in communication and has spoken to companies like Amazon, AWS, Panasonic, and Merck and was a teacher at the Second City in New York.She has 90,000 dedicated fans on TikTok and was recognized as one of the top ten speaking coaches by Yahoo in 2022. She is the driving force behind Grundei Coaching, where she incorporates improv theater techniques to foster trust, empathy, and creative thinking.Meridith shares so much practical advice and specific strategies that we can use for improving performance as podcast hosts and as guests. And of course, these are skills that you can transfer to sales, to your marketing, to how you pitch yourself, and how you network.I took pages of notes and even took a stab at the half-life exercise she gives us in the call as homework, so you'll get to hear that at the end of the show.Meridith has been so giving of her time and knowledge and her improv skills are so interesting and so engaging and can make such a difference in how you create your content.Tune in to the full episode to learn about:The transformative power of improv theaterHow to enhance presence and mindful communication through ImprovThe power of smiling in podcastingThe Half-Life exercise for condensing communicationDon’t forget to join us for our free monthly strategy calls on the third Thursday of every month!ResourcesOne Stone Creative | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | InstagramMake sure to check out our free Monthly Strategy Calls!Podcasting for Business Conference 2023 RecordingsLearn about what other business podcasters are doing:State of Business Podcasting Report 2023Meridith Grundei Website | Instagram | TikTok | LinkedIn | YouTubeRelated:How to Be a Better Storyteller with Gini DietrichPFBCon 2023 RecordingsWhether you're a solopreneur, manager of a department, principal at a firm, or a non-fiction author ready to expand into audio, the Podcasting for Business Conference will help you leverage a podcast to meet your business objectives.Missed PFBCon 2023? Check out the recordings!

When you podcast as a passion project, you need to have a why that keeps you going. When you podcast with the intent of turning it into a business, you need a plan to generate income to support the work.When you podcast in support of your existing business you need... well, it depends on your business.But whatever your business is, and however your show supports it, you need to know that what you are doing is working. So, the question we should all be asking ourselves, is: what is my podcast supposed to be **doing for my business?In a perfect world, that’s an easy question to answer, and you have clear data to back that answer up. In this world, most company podcasts are doing a lot of things right and a few things wrong. While it’s plainly successful enough to keep doing it - it’s really hard to figure out why.However, it is possible to identify the specific ways your podcast is generating value for your business and track exactly how much value every month, giving you the clarity you need to make decisions about it.Tune in to the full episode to learn:The importance of identifying the overarching goal of your podcastTracking specific outcomes to determine its effectivenessMetrics for different types of podcastsTracking metrics and optimizing your podcast contentHighlights from the State of Business Podcasting ReportDon’t forget to join us for our free monthly strategy calls on the third Thursday of every month!Effective Value Measurements for PodcastsHere’s how it works:Identify the most important, overarching goal of your podcast. It will usually be one of the Business Podcast Blueprints: Thought Leadership, Relationship Building, Audience Engagement, Conversions or Content.Figure out the specific outcomes that indicate how well your podcast is meeting that overarching goal.Regularly track that outcome as a metric and optimize your podcast to get more of it.Then do it again and again for every different way your podcast is creating value for your company.Easy, right?Easy to say in any case. Doing it when you’re 6 months or a year into production and there’s always something running late is somewhat more complicated.So, let’s run through a couple of examples here, so you can get a solid idea of how this process works. We’ll start with an Audience Engagement Show.Audience EngagementThis is a type of podcast that I think is frequently overlooked in favor of the exponential possibilities in Relationship Building Shows, or the outward-facing nature of Thought Leadership ones. But you’ve heard the adage I’m sure that it’s easier to sell more to an old customer than it is to get a new one. Well, by the same token, it’s easier to nurture a relationship with someone who knows your name than make a fresh introduction, and that is where audience-building podcasts really shine.Shows with an Audience Engagement Blueprint exist primarily to engage people who are already aware of you - it could be clients, email subscribers, social media followers or fans, listeners, or traffic that are entering your orbit from other strategies like paid search or PR campaigns.So, let's say that Company A has this as their main overarching purpose - they want to engage and nurture people who, by whatever means, know who they are.The outcomes that are going to tell them it’s working might be getting input and feedback from listeners on topics that matter to them, and less time spent on customer service because customers are being served and educated by the show.Now we assign metrics to those outcomes:For getting feedback and input, Company A has created different webpages or playlists for each of their podcast subtopics so that people can easily access the content they are most interested in, and the traffic to those pages, and downloads from those playlists are going to provide the data about how much of their audience is interested in each topic, informing their future content creation decisions. For an example of this in action, check out Amy Porterfield’s Online Marketing Made Easy landing page, which we’ll link in the show notes, among many other strategically excellent things you’ll see on this page, is a section where you can choose different topics and immediately see episodes relating to it that you can click through, providing that juice data about audience-interest.For Customer service, Company A already has an idea of how much time they are spending per client on customer service each month, and they have created podcast episodes and segments to specifically address common concerns or problems and trained their team members to provide those segments and episodes to customers encountering those concerns. The change in the amount of time spent on customer service over time will tell them how well their content is helping educate the customers.Now let's look at how we might follow this process for a Relationship building show.Relationship BuildingThese are podcasts that exist primarily as a networking tool so you can meet the types of people who will be great additions to your professional network for reasons like becoming clients, referral partners, co-promoters, collaborators, and all the other good things that come from knowing lots of great people.Company R specifically wants their podcast to be a source of new networking partners that will refer business to them, and that will result in invitations to appear on other podcasts.So, let's assign metrics to these outcomes, and figure out how we track them.Some metrics can be found pretty easily, like the website traffic and download numbers we looked at above, but in other cases, things need to be a little more manual.For new business, podcasters will need to keep track of how many referrals each of their guests sends them every month, and over time look for patterns in the type of guest that was most interested in making those referrals.So, you might track email introductions from your different guests, or ask your new leads on discovery calls how they found out about you. This is good practice anyway, but the key here is to keep a regularly updated document with the information so you can see how much business your podcast guests are sending your way.Now, for invitations to your guests’ podcasts, you’ll have to make sure you are interviewing enough people who also have podcasts and adding a request or suggestion about an episode to some part of your guest management workflow.Just like for tracking referrals, you need a central location to keep track of the guest opportunities that result from the interviews you host on your own show.All strategic elements of relationship building need to be done with one important thing in mind:The relationship is the important part, and even when you have specific goals and metrics for outcomes you want, remember to put the human first!On the subject of doing exactly that, Atiba De Souza gave an amazing presentation at PFBCon in November - all about using podcasting as a tool to generate new relationships and partnerships in your industry, partnerships - it was an amazing talk and he had one particular tip I wanted to share with you today about preparing for when you’re going to be a guest on other shows and how to be the kind of guest that not only gets invited back - but gets invited to do other things.https://vimeo.com/908014795?share=copyI love this idea, and not just for when you’re preparing to be a guest, but when you are preparing for a guest to join you on your own show. (And if you want to hear Atiba’s whole strategy - and that thing that happened to him back last January, you should grab a copy of the recordings of the Podcasting for Business Conference at PFBCon.com.) The principle at play here - taking the time to get to know the person you are talking to and what they care about - is the same when you’re a host as when you’re a guest, and investing in that, no matter what your specific goals are, is going to make it easier to reach them.Now obviously, there is a lot of work that goes into thinking about your podcast in this way - there is strategy and infrastructure required to make it work, and nuances that are going to be unique to you - but if you’re willing to learn that strategy and DO that work, your podcast is going to generate much, much more value for your business - and perhaps more importantly - you’re going to be able to see it happening, and have clarity on what is working and what isn’t.While we’re talking about clarity…Data Highlights from the State of Business Podcasting ReportI wanted to share a little insight my team and I gleaned from last year’s State of Business Podcasting report - there was lots of interesting detail, and we’ll be exploring it over the next few months, but there were three particular takeaways that I think can make a big difference to your strategy right away.As you probably know, every year we pull a list of the top 100 podcasts and evaluate them on about 70 different criteria to help establish trends and baseline best practices for those podcasting in support of a business. There were three particularly interesting takeaways this year:Social Media Promotion: Quality over Quantity. Both the number of social media channels used by the top 100 podcasts and the frequency of posting on them were down on most channels this year. This seems to indicate that podcasters were not finding enough ROI in really aggressive broad social media posting. (Although there certainly are still plenty of daily and multiple daily posting schedules - it’s less than in previous years) The exception is LinkedIn which saw modest growth in usage but a significant increase in posting frequency. Daily posts have increased from 10% to 22% of the shows using the platform, and multiple posts per week have increased from 11% to 28%.Hooks are out. The hook, sometimes called a sizzle clip, is a clip from the interior of an episode played at the beginning before the intro and hello. A couple of years ago more than half of the

Paid social media is a tough nut to crack, but once you manage to make it work it can become a lucrative and dependable source of traffic and revenue for your podcast and business.I have never been able to get to the meat of that particular nut, but a recent guest expert on our Strategy and Networking calls AND speaker for next week’s Podcasting for Business Conference Stacy Reed of Stacy Zeal & Co. has - and she teaches other people how to do it too. Stacy is a Strategic Marketing Consultant and Facebook Ads Expert, who teaches CEOs how to make more money, gain their time back, and rapidly increase their visibility to impact the world.She joined us for an in-depth conversation about the technical and strategic elements of Facebook ads - from what the heck a pixel is, to the different types of campaigns you can run for different purposes.This was such a rich and valuable conversation, that we decided to run it here on the Company show as well. Listen to our conversation below, or continue reading the blog post!Tune in to the full episode to learn:How to use Facebook ads to grow your podcast and your businessEverything you need to know about Facebook PixelHow to choose the right advertising platformThe things to consider before running a campaignHow to choose the best objective for your campaignThe best practices when it comes to copy & creativesDon’t forget to join us for our free monthly strategy calls on the third Thursday of every month!How Stacy Reed Grew Her Podcast Through Facebook AdsLeveraging Her Marketing BackgroundIt's interesting because it's like I've always been someone that I want to be able to create something once and then figure out how can I get the most eyeballs on it. My brain does not like to create new all the time.We're in a content world, so we have to create new content for sure. But I remember just thinking, oh my gosh, this episode was so good and it did not get as many downloads as I was hoping that it would get or so many people just need to hear this episode.It's just so, so good. And then also being an ads expert, my background is in marketing. I've been in marketing for eleven years. I led paid social at Zappos, and so I was really immersed in Facebook ads, Instagram ads, TikTok ads, and all the different ad platforms on some of the social networks.And that's what I teach and that's what I talk about in my business. And I really started to think about how I can use ads and podcasts together. Because volume is my specialty. So being able to say like, I want to drive volume to particular offers or to particular things, then I started to think, how can I use what I'm creating on my podcast to then help me to generate business?Because it gives you the context of how I use my podcast in my marketing because it helps you to understand how the ads come into play.Shifting Towards Lead GenerationSo my podcast is primarily nurturing content. I get a lot of people who love to listen to my podcast. And my goal with my podcast is to nurture people until they are ready to become clients.I post a lot of content about ads, about marketing strategy, about business strategy, those kinds of things. When I started to think about how I can use ads to amplify this or to accelerate my podcast, I started to think about how I can use it to generate leads, because that's really what I need for my business.We all as business owners, are someone who is looking to get brand deals and things like that. This may not be super applicable, and there are other ways you can use ads, but the way that I use them is to generate leads. Where I start with it is using it as a nurture content. But then I started to think, how can I use this as lead generation? What I typically do is I like to create series on my podcast.So I'll create, for example, a series about marketing funnels, because that's one of the things I found. Like, I have a course on Facebook ads, and when I did a promotion last time I found that, I was asking people like, okay, well, why didn't you sign up? And some people were saying like, oh, I don't have a marketing funnel, so I can't run ads.And I'm like, oh really? I could teach you how to run a market, I can teach you how to do a marketing funnel, and I can show you this. So I created a series of podcasts about key elements of marketing funnels, helping people to understand that they already probably have a funnel if they're creating content.If you're a podcaster, you typically have a funnel, you just haven't really set it up yet or defined it yet. So I created that series and then I published some of my podcasts. I took those episodes and I just put them into a PDF guide that just says like, hey, here are four episodes that will help you to create a marketing funnel.Podcast Series as Lead MagnetsI put like a little workbook in there. I pulled something out of my course. I put it in there and then I use that as a lead magnet because now I had to realize that people listen to my podcast and then they become clients. So they like to binge my podcast. They like to consume my episodes. That's where people go when they are really kind of in that place where they're like, I want to work with Stacey, but maybe I'm not ready yet.And I thought, how can I take this nurture content and also turn it into a lead generator? That's really kind of been the journey for me. It's like one figuring out running ads to individual episodes. It's running ads to series and taking those episodes and repurposing that content into a lead magnet.Those are the ways that I've been typically using podcasts. And then I run ads to those things. I run ads to the individual episodes. I run ads to the lead magnets as a series. If you are a business owner and you need to generate leads and you are creating podcast episodes also as a part of your nurture content, you can absolutely take that and put that into a series.Another lead magnet that I had that did really well, especially when I was just starting out, I had created a private podcast series where I worked with someone who would help me outline each episode.I used Hello Audio as the private podcast distributor, but then I ran ads to it like running ads to that actual private podcast. Those kinds of things I think are really effective because people are searching for specific information. Especially with podcasts, you can really give people a well-rounded picture.You can give people one episode, but if you can give people three or four episodes that paint that full picture for them, then that's really tactful. And then you just use that as a lead generator and run ads to it.Everything You Need To Know About Facebook PixelI always recommend that you put your podcast on your site because one, if you're running ads to a podcast player, your Facebook Pixel is not going to be able to pick up on that because your Facebook Pixel is what you can install on properties that you own.So, like your website, I can't go and install my Pixel on Apple's podcast player. For example, if you're running ads directly to the podcast player, Facebook is not able to receive those signals to see, like, is this person actually doing something there?Because your pixel operates like a bridge between Facebook and your website. And so it's always sending signals back and forth. Facebook is sending someone to your website saying, what do they do? Do they take the desired action? If they do, that's great.Then Facebook's going to say, oh, well, Susan took the desired action, so we're going to find more people like Susan. If Susan does not take the desired action, which means, going to the landing page and downloading something or whatever the action is, then it'll also send that signal back to say, like, Susan did not take the desired action.So it's like, let's find people who are not like Susan, or maybe Susan is not in our target audience, so let's find people who are different than Susan. Facebook is always building a profile of who your people are.So you want to make sure that your podcast episodes are posted on your site and that you're actually sending an ad tracker to your site so that you can get an accurate read on the data. SEO also helps.Taking Advantage of Facebook & Instagram’s SynergySo because Meta owns both Instagram and Facebook, you actually would just need one Facebook Pixel and that will pick up your signals and send that back to Instagram and Facebook.One of the great things about running Facebook ads is that you do get two channels in one because you can run the exact same campaign, exact same budget, exact same creative as Facebook and Instagram and Messenger and WhatsApp, because Facebook owns those other channels as well, and it would just come out of the same budget pool.So you really are getting two channels for one. And what Facebook is going to do is it's going to show you an ad on the platform that you're most likely to convert on. You get on Facebook, you see an ad, and then you may see a similar ad from the same person on Instagram or an ad that's maybe a different variation of that ad on Instagram.It's going to show you the ad based on the platform that it thinks that you're going to most likely to convert on that's. One of the things I love about Facebook is that you get both Facebook and Instagram for essentially the price of one.Should you set up your Pixel now?Right away, because what happens is when you install the pixel. So, as I mentioned, it's that bridge, right? It's sending signals back and forth. So whether you're running ads or not, those signals are always kind of happening.What people are doing on your website, Facebook is always building a profile, and you can build an audience that says, like, hey, here's my website traffic. Like, want an audience specifically of people who visited my website in the last 90 days. You can go all the way back to 180 days.I believe you can say like, hey, let me create a custom audience of people who have visited my website over the las

There is not much that the best mic in the world can do about recording in a really sound-unfriendly environment. And some of us live in sound-unfriendly environments.If you are currently looking at your location options for podcasting and only finding places that are loud, echoey, or filled with blank empty spaces, but having the best possible audio quality for your show is important to you, then you might want to consider booking time at an in-person studio.I’m personally quite lucky in that my home office is usually pretty quiet and I have enough fluffy stuff kicking around to minimize echo, but there have been days, I’m particularly thinking of last spring when my next-door neighbor was having their windows replaced - when I would have been delighted to be able to go somewhere quiet and just get my content out in peace.My guest today owns and operates just such a venue - and a production company to boot! JP Davidson is the creator of Pop Up Podcasting an Ottawa-based producer and studio.If you want to learn who should book studio time and why - and what kind of value a live-on-a-call producer can provide, listen to our conversation below, or continue reading the blog post!Tune in to the full episode to:Get a better understanding of in-person podcasting studiosLearn about the different recording options for businessesUnderstand the role of the remote podcast producerKnow what to look for in a podcasting studioLearn which processes should be outsourced vs done in-houseDon’t forget to join us for our free monthly strategy calls on the third Thursday of every month!Pop Up Podcasting: A look into podcast recording studiosJP Davidson runs an in-person podcast recording studio where people can come and record their episodes. Here’s JP’s overview of what that entails:The shows that they serveWe're a production company as well as a physical studio space here in Ottawa, Canada. We're right downtown and close to all kinds of businesses, government associations, and parliament buildings, so lots of different clients come through our space.What’s their setup?We have a four-person podcast studio with three cameras. We handle video, and we have some lighting for video as well, so we can do a video or audio. Then we handle a lot of the technical production as far as editing, setting up distribution for our clients, and that sort of thing.Other servicesWe also advise and consult on marketing and other associated things. Although mainly we're kind of a technical production house.Things to consider when thinking about recording options for businessesI work with a lot of companies that podcast. One of the big things at the beginning of the show is how am I going to capture the best audio to kind of give this project the best effort I can.So if someone's making the decision, should I set up my office to record, should I make a room in my house to record or should I book time with the professional studio?According to JP, here are the things you need to consider when making that decision:Can you do it in the long term?I think a lot of the early kind of conversations around show design and how are we going to record this and all that. I like to bring up sustainability because I think a lot of us in podcasting know it's a long game and doing a short burst and then running out of steam, and skipping the next six months of episodes doesn't do anybody any good.It's really about what you can do consistently over the long term. So that really comes into it. If somebody is like, I work from home, it's really hard for me to get downtown to record or over to a studio space, then for sure we work with a lot of clients who record at home, record from the office remotely.That sustainability question is like, can you get to a studio space or is it going to be way better for you to be recording from home or from the office?How much is your budget?The other question is cost. It's a bit more expensive to record from a studio. We do a hybrid approach where our producers will connect with people remotely and be a remote producer during the call.And that helps a lot of our clients because there is this scary factor of technology when we're recording in our own spaces, with our own microphone, on our own computer. And so having a producer on the line can help smooth those things over.The studio is definitely the highest quality, most reliable way to do it. We double-record everything and back up everything. We have a producer on-site to fix anything that might be going wrong, reposition the microphones, and all that stuff.But I totally recognize that a good number of our clients are remote because it can be the best solution for a lot of people.An additional benefit to physical podcast studiosAnother benefit of renting a physical space outside of your own workspace is there is an amount of accountability to that.I find, especially for the solopreneurs or the owner-operators of small businesses, it's really easy to backburner the marketing promotion work that podcasting often is.But if you're paying, you've got a monthly subscription, you've got three hours of podcast studio time, you're going to go there and you're going to use it and you're going to get your studio time filled.JP Davidson’s take on this:Even just on that micro level. For example, I have an appointment at 11:00 a.m. on Thursday. I'm going to go and get my show done. That can be really helpful.And the remote production that we do kind of has that built in too, because my producer is waiting for me at that time. I should say too, that we do a lot of hybrid. So host in the studio, remote guest, or vice versa. Some shows kind of flip between the two, depending on people's availability.My philosophy is that the host should always sound the best. That's what we sort of have come to expect from listening to the radio and watching TV news and everything else. Whether the host is in the studio to sound great or they're at home and we set them up with a nice microphone and the rest of it, we want everyone to sound great.But the host is the one we can reliably control the most because they're the consistent factor every week or every two weeks on the show.Host vs guest audio quality: Who should sound better?I feel it's preferable to have the guest and the host sound a little more equal if there's a huge disparity.The question is, is it always better to make the host sound as good as possible? Or is there ever a case for making the host sound a little bit worse if it kind of decreases the gap between host and guest?JP’s take:With so many things around this stuff, it's opinion and it's art more than science. It hurts my heart a little too much to on purpose reduce audio quality. It's never really occurred to me to do that to make them match up more.I mean, let's shoot high for everyone, but I wouldn't necessarily draw. We're used to that from radio. A host in a studio and a caller on a bad cell phone. We've heard it looking at you, CBC.Maybe NPR in the States pays for tape syncs and brings people into the studio more. But here in Canada, we don't do that. We're hearing phone audio pretty often on the radio.Considerations for audio qualityOne of the things I think about it is because we have sort of the different podcast archetypes that we work with, longtime listeners will be familiar with the Blueprints, so we've got shows that are forethought leadership for establishing the brand of the company.And then we've got shows that are more relationship-focused. And I'm just thinking of this now in that case, if it really is about building relationships with your guests, that's when I think I'd try to equalize the audio..The guest doesn't hear it, but if it is a thought leadership, IP-focused show, just make everyone sound as good as possible, but focus on that host.Because you don't want to dunk on your guests if they're right. If you're trying to make them the star of the show.What does a remote producer do in an in-person podcast studio?Here at One Stone Creative, we don't do live remote production. So our clients, they record their own audio with their own guests and they send it to us.For JP’s podcast studio, it’s a little bit different:It's largely on the technical side, although we'll also chime in often at the end of the conversation, we'll chime in and say the answer to that question was sort of muddled. Let's retake that. You used this acronym throughout and never defined it. Maybe let's define that.It's the stuff that I was producing podcasts as a freelancer for years. People would record on their own and send me audio and the stuff where I was like, I wish I could have been there to ask them to do this or change this.And it's the same thing. On the technical side, we've connected with clients before and they have the ATR2100x here, the classic podcast USB mic.But we've had so many people have this great mic in front of them, and then the laptop mic is selected or the webcam mic is selected and you're like, you had it right there. Why didn't you flip it on? Or the blue yeti that's tipped towards the mouth instead of the face towards the mouth and sounds terrible as a result.So we did a quick sound check at the beginning and just to make sure that everybody's kind of doing everything they can to sound great. And sometimes it's close the window, I can hear the traffic noise or whatever, where we shepherd people through the process. And it really just came out of my frustration with people's self-taped audio, to be honest.Related:Podcasting for Business Conference 2023Deep Dive Workshop: Audio Quick Fixes and Troubleshooting with Audra CasinoWith a little bit of knowledge and caring, people can do this stuff on their own.There's only so many things it can really be. If someone sounds off, it's going to be your input or your output or your environment for the most part, and occasionally something weird and distressing that no one has ever run into before.You're supposed to be the expert on the

One Stone Creative is a full-service agency that handles most of the non-recording work for the shows we produce, but the role of a podcast manager is such a new one, that we wanted to talk to someone who is specializing in it.The podcast manager is a somewhat more nebulous role, in part because it’s so new in the industry, and in part, because the services they offer can vary so much—often they can provide strategic consultation, project management, freelancer management, and sometimes regular production activities like audio editing, asset creation and promotion.My guest today is Ted Cragg, a fellow Canadian who has been a podcast manager for several years, with a special emphasis on the travel podcasting space. He is also the host of the Travel the World Podcast, and an experienced audio editor.If you want to learn more about podcast managers and how they can help you achieve your business goals, listen to our conversation below, or continue reading the blog post!Tune in to the full episode to:Know your options for podcast productionUnderstand what podcast management entailsLearn how to choose a production option for your showPivoting to podcast managementKnow what to look for in a podcast managerHuman intervention in AI podcastingDon’t forget to join us for our free monthly strategy calls on the third Thursday of every month!The different options for podcast productionWhen it comes to creating a podcast for your company, you’ve got a few options:Do it all in-house, either by yourself or with the help of a colleague or twoHire a full-service agency that will take on all or most of the non-recording workHire specific freelancers for specific jobs, like the editing or the promotionHire a podcast manager to drive the project forward on an ongoing basis.Podcasting In-HouseThis is when everything, from show development to production, guest booking to show notes to promotional materials is all done by you or members of your team.The pros include that it can be less expensive, sometimes by a large margin, than outsourcing some or all of the production work, and you’ll be able to control every detail which I know is important for many businesses.For some companies, it’s also best to keep production in-house if the show is deeply integrated with other business areas and with multiple teams - having all of the information and workflows accessible by the many different people who need them can make outsourcing a more daunting than tempting proposition.Cons - it’s going to take a lot of your time, and that may or may not be a resource you have in abundant supply.Now, you can get a lot of time-savings with automation tools, and keeping your process and assets simple, but we’ve found that many companies that start in-house tend to want to hire a little help as soon as it becomes feasible.It also takes a lot of different skills: figuring out the strategic role of the podcast in your business is a different skill than editing the audio, which is a different skill than promoting episodes, which is a different skill than managing guest booking which is a different skill than SEO optimizing the notes, which is a different skill than project management… you get my drift.It’s a lot of different skills, that can lead you to the door of our next production option, a full-service agency.Full-Service Podcast AgenciesThey are pretty much what they say on the tin - they’ll handle all or most of your production process.Now, this can vary a bit from company to company, and if you’re considering working with one, you should make sure to get very clear on exactly what is included, but most will do something like: take in your raw audio, do all the editing - both content and hygiene, write the show notes, create sharing assets, create a video version, schedule the episode for you, and drive the whole process so you don’t have to think about anything other than talking to people.Some companies will do a little less, and others will do more like providing feedback, doing guest management, or even being live on your interviews capturing the recordings.Pros of working with companies like this are that the main management of the show is off your desk - it is a huge time savings. You also don’t have to learn, or hire for specific skills like audio editing and show notes writing, you get to take advantage of a team of different subject matter experts working together.With the best companies, you can also get strategic support around how to leverage your podcast within your business, tracking the impact of the show, and providing feedback so that you’re constantly improving your skills.Cons can include that it’s the most expensive of the options - having a company take on the bulk of the work isn’t cheap, and having the production process out of your hands also means - it’s out of your hands: you’re depending on other people to keep your release schedule, and that can be scary - and in some cases, disappointing.You also may or may not have your own dedicated account manager and other team members working on your show which can mean an inconsistent output.Hiring FreelancersIf going full-service is a bit of a stretch, or you have a really solid team with the interest and the bandwidth to take on the areas of their own expertise, then hiring a freelancer who specializes in one or two elements can be a great option.There are many highly skilled audio editors who just do audio that you can hire to take on that part of the show. The same is true of guest booking, social media management, writing tasks, and graphic design.The pros of hiring specific freelancers are that it tends to be more affordable than full service, and you are just adding the amount of skill to your own team that you really need, while fully maximizing your internal resources.On the other hand, a big part of working with freelancers is managing them and making sure that everything required from each provider at the right time can be quite a challenge.It also means that each individual contributor’s bandwidth and situation has the potential to disrupt your workflow, which can be a little anxiety-provoking.And there is a professional who can help bridge that particular gap—the podcast manager.Understanding the podcast managerWhat is a podcast manager?A podcast manager is certainly a specialist when it comes to podcasting. You can kind of relate it to a virtual assistant or an online business manager, but someone who really is focused on podcasting and everything that goes into it.They understand the industry, probably they're probably very passionate about the industry. They inherently follow people and newsletters and these kinds of things to stay on top of it.And that's the kind of background and skill set that they're bringing to the role, is that they really understand how to make a good podcast and how to make successful ones, and especially how to sustain them too.What can they do for your business?If someone has a business and they're looking to start a podcast, it's a great idea to look for a podcast manager because they're kind of your go-to person who's going to help organize and keep you the host, the business owner, focused on what you need to do, doing it well, comparing it to other things, and putting it into context in relation because they have that expertise, so they may in turn, delegate things.It's certainly possible. There are a lot of podcast managers who delegate editing or maybe graphic design or the audio, videograms, and stuff like that. They may do that themselves as well. But in essence, they really are the project managers who are going to direct the project for the host.So the show is still the host’s. They're the face and they're the voice of the show. It's the podcast manager who's the one behind the scenes with that focus on the project itself.The workflow of a podcast managerA lot of podcast managers usually start at the very beginning of the project before the podcast has even started. So there's kind of two phases.Phase 1There's the launch phase where you're really planning the show in itself. What are the objectives, who's the audience, what offers do you have and how are you going to deliver those?Thinking about content and making an episode plan, thinking at least a few weeks, if not a few months even. Planning the schedule: are you going to do this weekly or biweekly?Arranging the cover art, the music, the hosting, a website—all of these components that go into the launch.Phase 2You get into the regular recurring production of the episodes.So it is certainly possible podcast exists already. They've already done all that work. They've launched the show and now they're ready to hire a podcast manager to kind of take the reins, perhaps level up and improve the quality and just the workflow and the structure of it.When it comes down to basically putting and planning an episode itself, certainly if there's a guest involved, then you have those guests lined up and a lot of podcast managers, that's one of their tasks is to do the guest pitching.They will pitch people to come on the show. They may pitch the host in turn to be a guest on other shows. There are lots of different tasks that they can do. Then, of course, the recording itself is done.But if the podcast manager is in turn the editor, they're taking the files, they're putting everything together, they're giving it back to the host for a final pass, a review, and then it gets published.Usually, the podcast manager is the one who uploads the file, makes sure the RSS feed and all the technical stuff are working well, handles any bugs or glitches, and then they may certainly do the promotion as well, making those clips and other promotional things.So in any one episode, as we all know, there's a lot of work that goes into it.Having the podcast manager at least the one who oversees that project is crucial again, whether they do it all themselves or maybe they delegate other things, but it allows th

One of the things I believe the most strongly about podcasting is that doing it to support and grow an existing business is different than hosting a podcast for the love of the game—or as a business in and of itself.Your podcast needs to work with the other marketing you’re doing, not to mention all of the other commitments you have to your team, clients, and community. It’s because of this that we hosted the first Podcasting for Business Conference last year—and why we’re about to do it again.On this episode of the Company Show, Tom Fox joins me as we talk PFBCon: what’s coming, what we’re excited about, and the different types of presentations and connections we’re making available this year.If you want to get a little sneak peek of this year’s Podcasting for Business Conference, listen to our conversation below, or continue reading the blog post!Tune in to the full episode to learn about:New and exciting topics for this yearWhat makes PFBCon different?A look into some of our notable speakersA new event, networking opportunities, and a valuable freebieEverything else that you need to know about this PFBCon 2023Don’t forget to join us for our free monthly strategy calls on the third Thursday of every month!The conference for when podcasting is part of the jobSomething that comes up a lot for company podcasters is that it can be a challenge to integrate a show into your workflow, and harder to determine if it’s actually doing anything for you or not.That can be frustrating because successful company podcasts are intensely valuable to the businesses that run them.A successful company show might:Be a lead generation machineCreate a flywheel of content that can be used across business areasShorten sales cycles and improve customer lifetime valueEstablish thought leadershipServe and support an existing audienceIf those are benefits you want to see, then you need to make sure your podcast and all of the activities around it, from planning to recording to promotion, are optimized to meet the business objectives that will make the most impact on your company.That’s the sole focus of the Podcasting for Business Conference, and it’s coming up again from November 13 to 15th of this year.New topics for this year’s Podcasting for Business ConferenceJust like last year, we've got a really good array of topics that people are going to be covering and they're all really directed towards people who are podcasting in support of an existing business.If you podcast for the love of the game or you’re podcasting as a business, you're still welcome, but it really is for supporting a business that exists.Here are some really exciting topics that are new this year:1. Interviewing strategy session on how to really effectively translate information from an expert to everyone else.If you find that you as a podcast host are talking to experts and you want to make sure that your audience of laypeople or people who don't know as much about the topic can really understand it, this is going to be a super valuable one.2. Collaborating with a team.A lot of people podcasting for business, of course, they've either got a member of their team managing the podcast or they're working with a third-party service provider.There are a lot of different ways to talk about, edit, figure out where in the process everything is, project, and manage the whole thing. So we've got a session specifically on collaborating with a remote team about podcasting.3. A different way to think about your podcast reach.Typically you think about downloads, you might think about people who listen, you might think about listeners, you might think about engagement. But it turns out that is just a very small part of your overall podcast reach.And if you properly look at it in a much more holistic way, you see that a business or a podcast that is being used by a business can have exponentially more touch points, exponentially more engagement, and exponentially more use. And these are all social media tools that are available to you at little or no cost.Once you begin to understand the power of your reach, you can start to craft and graft a social media marketing strategy beyond simply the subject matter expertise you want to show or whatever it is you're trying to demonstrate with your podcast.I've been working on this topic for a long time and I finally got some solid numbers. I'm thrilled to share this with our audience because I think it's going to open a lot of eyes and more importantly, get people thinking about the podcast strategy as much more holistic than simply showing yourself as a true subject matter expert.4. A preview of The State of Business Podcasting Report 2023We get to hear the always incredible State of Business Podcasting Report, in which you will preview shiny data with the shiny data that you've been working on.5. Deep Dive WorkshopsThere are going to be deep dive workshops about how to measure podcast success on the fly audio editing and troubleshooting, and the very latest, best practice data for company podcasts from the State of Business Podcasting Report.As Tom Fox said, these workshops are like interactive roundtables where we draw on each other's experiences.Visit this link to see our full speaker lineup and the topics that they’re going to get into!What makes PFBCon different?There's lots of great podcasting information out there. There's amazing training, there's amazing events, there's a fantastic community. But a lot of it really is predicated on the fact that you're doing it for the love of podcasting or this is something that you're doing specifically as a business.And for a lot of podcasters, that's just not the reality.You're podcasting, but you also have a whole business to run or you have a whole day job. And a lot of the information that's provided is kind of assuming that the podcast is a standalone rather than an integrated part of a holistic marketing strategy.And so being able to gather a bunch of information coming from that premise, I think is going to be really valuable to people. And of course, it's all online because we have day jobs and can't necessarily travel all the time.Some of the expert speakers in our lineup1. Mary Ann FaremouthMary Ann has literally blown up her little part of the world with her podcast.I'm so gratified that she's willing to come and kind of share some of her experiences and some of the strategies that she's employed. She works in the recruiting space and working with careers, working with big companies, and working with job seekers.Her podcast, she started it and has been able to leverage the relationships that she's making for business development and also the content that she's creating that's all reflecting well in her business into national radio syndication.So she's going to be presenting specifically on how careful and strategic guest selection can make a really big difference in the results that you see from your podcast. And this is completely irrespective of what your download numbers are.That's something that I'm really hoping we get into a lot and that a lot of the speakers are going to touch on is that downloads and we'll be going into this in our workshop.In our workshop, downloads are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to measuring the impact, value, and reach of a podcast, and very often are the least important part.There are so many other ways to figure out what your reach is and to measure your benefit. And Mary Ann is going to be just a great example of that.2. Danielle Desir CorbetReturning fan favorite Danielle Desir is going to be coming back to do a new event type that we have at the conference this year.She's a podcast marketing consultant. She's a very successful podcaster. But SEO is really one of her superpowers.She's going to be, along with two other experts, in Ask the Expert sessions where it's going to be Q and A the entire time for questions about how to apply it to your business, specific use cases that you want to try out, issues that you've run into.We're going to have a lot of really dedicated question-and-answer time and podcast SEO as if you attended last year and were able to see your presentation can be huge. And we're all making tons of mistakes and leaving tons of low-hanging fruit on the table.Danielle's presentation is going to be absolutely one to catch and some of the other creative ones that we're looking at.3. Jenny BlakeI'm also excited about Jenny Blake, who is doing really interesting things with private podcast feeds to build community as part of her business.She's going to be sharing what she is doing. I'm a member of some of them, full disclosure, and I also help produce, but that's going to be, I think, really valuable for people who do have large audiences and are looking for different ways to engage them.It's going to be a game-changer.4. Jennifer HanWe've got case studies coming from Jennifer Han.She's the marketing officer at Ausha, which is a podcast platform, and she's going to be talking about five real-life examples of how podcasts have really connected brands with their audiences and that's going to have some fantastic takeaways for everybody.Visit this link to see our full speaker lineup!When Will The Podcasting for Business Conference Happen?PFBCon is happening from the 13th to the 15th of November this year.And it's all virtual, it's all online, everything is going to be recorded because you probably have things that are happening during the day. But it's also all happening live, virtually, unlike a lot of conferences where you watch a presentation and then maybe you'll get the chance to talk to the presenter afterward.Every single presentation is going to be followed by a live Q&A. So you can either think about the topic and submit questions in advance if you can't be there, or you can be there live and get an actual response to an issue that you're having in your business.That's in addition to specific networking events and the

A couple of weeks ago, we ran an episode called How to Cheat a Podcast Episode in which I shared some of the strategies you can use to fill a gap in a podcast production calendar. One of those suggestions was doing Q&A episodes.As a little favor to my future self, right after I recorded that episode, I went ahead and recorded five answers to five questions that people ask us frequently when they're getting into podcasting.I typically don't love video, but I wanted to capture the recordings of these answers because of how critical short-form video content is becoming and to address the constant content needs of my wonderful social media team member who's always asking for short-form video because it is getting more and more popular and has a lot of benefits to growing a community online.So join me on The Company Show as I answer these commonly asked (but important!) podcasting questions and get a peek at what other players in the industry are doing.Listen below, or continue reading the blog post.Tune in to learn about:How often should you release?How long should your episodes be?How do you find guests?Should your podcast have its own website?Do you need a video version?Don’t forget to join us for our free monthly strategy calls on the third Thursday of every month.The Top 5 Most-Asked Podcasting QuestionsI came up with the five questions that we are asked quite frequently, and some of this was just from what I'm used to answering a lot when I'm on calls with people, but I also used generative AI (ChatGPT) to help me come up with a list.I think it generated about 50 or 60 for me all at once, and I was able to go through them and modify and edit them so that they were questions that I thought would be very useful to have as a library going forward and that I could provide good answers to. Being able to practice giving a really concise but thorough answer was another valuable part of this activity.So all told, getting the questions together, recording the video, and recording the answers, was all quite easy. It was very fast. I'm definitely going to be doing more of those in the future. Presuming, of course, that this episode is received well and is helpful for people. That is something that only you can help me answer.So without any further ado, here are the five answers to five common podcast questions!1. How often should you release a new podcast episode?This is a great question because when you start to think about all of the work that's going to be involved in podcasting, the preparing, the guest invitation, the recording itself, all the post-production, and all of the project management involved.With all of that, you might think, oof, this is something we had better not do more than once, maybe twice a month. And that can be fine. You're the boss of your podcast and how you're using your podcast in your business is going to be up to you and the rest of the team that you're making those decisions with.But from a best practices perspective if one of the things that you want to do with your podcast is grow an audience and connect with more people or if you need other from your podcast like networking with a lot of guests or having a lot of content to be able to distribute to your other platforms, then you're going to want to be releasing on a more consistent basis.When we do our research for The State of Business Podcasting, we find that the vast majority of podcasts are releasing weekly or more. So if you've got the team bandwidth or the budget to do at least a weekly podcast, I'd say that is the best practice to get into a good flow, a good rhythm.But if you can't manage that, if it just doesn't work, you've got too much going on sometimes. That's with our podcast here at One Stone Creative, The Company Show. It's a bi-weekly podcast. This season we're releasing every other week because that's something that we can manage with our available time and resources.So the important questions to answer are:How much content do you need or how many access points to other people do you need to make the podcast valuable for you?Do I have the resources to support that and will it be fun to do it that much?Some people find that it's just too much work or it's too stressful to try and release a podcast every week. So in that case every other week is fine or even more sporadic if that is the only option for you.But all things being equal, more releases are better in terms of having more content, making more relationships, and growing more traction with the podcast-listening audience.2. How long should a podcast episode be?The answer to that is the same as the answer to the question of how long is a piece of rope. It's going to be as long as you need it to be to achieve a particular goal. That isn't to say that there aren't kind of standards or averages within the industry.When we look at the top 100 business podcasts, we find there's a remarkably consistent result over time of 44-minute-long episodes. But of course that includes the three-hour epic-long podcast episodes as well as the five-minute shorts; all kind of going into that average when you look at making a decision about how long your podcast episode should be, you do want to be reasonably consistent over time.So it's probably not best practice to release a bunch of 30 to 40-minute episodes and then all of a sudden release a two-minute one just because you ran out of content that week, although it's still better than not releasing at all. But for the most part, you want to be consistent in what you are releasing because your audience is going to be expecting more or less the same basic structure and length when they go to listen to a new episode.You also want to make sure that you have enough time with your guest or with your solo content to be able to fully communicate one idea. Now I found with producing podcasts, when a solo episode in particular up to about ten minutes, ends up being a really good length of time to really thoroughly explore and talk about one idea, sometimes it doesn't take all that much time, sometimes it takes a little bit longer.And guest conversations I find tend to go for about 25 to 30 minutes, at least for my show, and to be able to communicate everything that we want to communicate about a particular topic to an audience. There are other podcasts that are really comfortable in the 30-minute range, 40, 50 even, going on into an hour or more, especially when you're just getting started out and you don't have a long history or track record that your audience is going to be paying attention to.You can try out different lengths, you can try out different formats. Going with a seasonal approach and doing different things or trying out different formats or lengths of time with each season can be a really good way to do this because then there's going to be at least consistency within the season reason and you'll slick it to trade all of the different options.The other main consideration is going to be how much time you can invest in preparing for and creating and then investing in the post-production of the podcast. Longer episodes are going to be more expensive for all of those reasons. You have to prepare more, the conversation takes longer, and then so will post-production.So take a look at other podcasts in your industry. What are they doing? How long are their episodes and what type of content and format are they?You don't necessarily want to copy what anyone else is doing, but you can take inspiration for what is kind of becoming the podcast industry standard for your particular industry.3. How do I find guests for my podcast?When a podcast is brand new, it's really easy to sort of shake your digital Rolodex and connect with people that you have preexisting relationships with. Past clients, current clients, colleagues, team members, and even friends who owe you favors or just like to spend time talking to you.But after you’re podcasting for more and more time, it can start to feel like you're reaching a little bit more for the kind of guests who are going to be able to bring real value to your show, to your business, and to your audience. So where do you find more people if you feel like you're sort of running dry with your own personal network and connections?My favorite strategy for finding more guests is to look at other podcasts in my industry that are those sorts of complementary shows that are talking to the same types of people about the same types of things as I am and who's on their podcast.This is a great strategy for a couple of reasons because one, there's a whole world of podcasts who are talking to people out there—a really rich resource in terms of coming up with new guest possibilities.But you also know something about these guests. They know how to be on podcasts, they're interested in being on podcasts and they have at least some experience with the format and being a good guest. So it's a really good way to kind of build out your list of people to reach out to.Of course, the benefits of reaching out to more people who are interested in talking to your audience are many, manyfold. They are guests for your own content, they're potential networks, joint ventures, or referral partners for you.They could even potentially be clients or you could become a client of theirs. So my best strategy for finding more guests for your podcast is to look at who are the guests of other podcasts that are working in your industry that you like and that you respect.There is no harm in inviting the hosts of those other podcasts as well. You know that they know their stuff and that they're talking about something that's going to be of interest to your business and to your community.Related video on podcast guests: https://www.youtube.com/embed/x3X1PcK-LBg4. Does my podcast need its own website?For the vast majority of people podcasting for a business that already exists? No.Your own company website is going to be the best place to hold your

If you’re struggling with getting podcast hosts to accept you as a guest, this is something that you wouldn’t want to miss!On this episode of The Company Show, we’re joined by Kris Ward—a master in guest pitching (among other things). How is she a master, you ask?She developed a guest pitching strategy with an 80% acceptance rate.Kris Ward is a systems person to her bones and has built a company around helping people build the teams and processes they need to make all areas of their business, including podcasting and podcast pitching, smoother and less time-consuming. She is the author of Win the Hour, Win the Day, and host of a podcast by the same name.If you want to learn and use her strategies for yourself, listen to our conversation, or continue reading the blog post!Tune in to the full episode to learn about:How to streamline and batch your podcast pitchingWorkflow tactics for effective relationship buildingThe right way to grow your network through podcastingPitching and relationship-building mistakes that podcasters makeDon’t forget to join us for our free monthly strategy calls on the third Thursday of every month!Podcast Guest Pitching: An OverviewIt’s no secret that one of the best ways to get listeners to your podcast is to be a guest on other people’s shows. There are a couple of reasons for this:If you’re a guest on someone’s podcast, they’ve already validated that what you have to say will be of interest to their audience.It’s much easier to get a podcast listener to add a new show to their roster than to explain to someone how podcasts work and how to listen to them.But pitching can be time-consuming and sometimes, fraught with rejection, awkwardness, and asks within the process that seem downright unreasonable.Good systems and processes make everything in your business easier - podcasting is no exception, and neither is getting more traction and visibility by appearing on more shows.If you’ve been podcasting for more than a minute, you’ve probably received plenty of pitches. I’d wager most of them have kind of sucked.While there are excellent, high-quality podcast booking agencies (Like Angie Trueblood’s company, The Podwize Group, many PR and other promotional firms offer guest pitching services that amount to no more than a copy-and-paste message emailed to literally every podcast with the right category on Apple or Spotify. They suck, and they’re annoying, and the conversion rates can’t be that good.With that said, here is how you can streamline and batch your podcast pitching process.Kris Ward’s Highly Replicable Guest Pitching StrategyYou or someone on your team researches complementary shows, either by Googling or by following the trail of other podcasts your own guests have been on.You listen to the shows that are of the most interest - at least a couple of episodes, and determine what topic would be a great fit for each one.Write an honest review on Apple or another platform about why you like the show.Record a short video using Loom or your phone, depending on your setup, with the podcaster's name in the frame, and their show on a computer in the background. In the video be sincere about what you liked, why you think you’d be a good fit, and what you’d like to talk about.Send the video to the podcaster via LinkedIn or email.The Advantages of Kris Ward’s Unique Video PitchWhen I received Kris Ward’s video pitch, it immediately struck me as sincere. She had genuinely listened to at least an episode, which is a huge one, since a lot of people skip this step.Kris’s videos are purposeful, well-crafted, and highly curated.Here’s how Kris does the videos:The first thing she does is hold up the host’s name on a tablet. She then goes: So you see, this is not a generic pitch. Here's your name. Obviously, I put effort into this.She also has a computer behind showing their podcast. It implies she was in the middle of listening to it and turned around and did a pitch. The guest is going to be stimulated by the fact that there's your name and there's your picture.Then when the host opens the video, she opens up with something like: What I'm about to say, I think, has a lot of weight to it because I would describe myself as a podcast junkie. And when I tripped across your show… and then she starts listing the things she like about the host’s show.“If you can't find something to like about their show, then don't pitch them. But I believe you can always find something.”She then goes: Listen, I think you and I could have a really meaty conversation that would be of great value to your audience. She then mentions her book, the backstory, and how it would really lean into the host’s bigger messaging.An example is when she’s pitching somebody about a marketing show. The host might think systems and processes and building a team and getting 25 hours back a week aren't about branding or marketing. But Kris tells the host that she can help their people get time back so they can do the marketing that you want to talk to them about on the other shows.In short, Kris leans into the host’s bigger message instead of saying all the things that she could talk about.Kris’s Networking Spreadsheet That You Can ReplicateKris Ward has a spreadsheet called Kris's Network. After the show, whether she’s hosted it or she’s been on it, the person will be added to the network.Now, here are some things that are really important. Kris will put their name, and she’ll put an interesting or fun fact about the person. Her team will then take a picture of the guest/host and put that on the spreadsheet. Because we often forget names, but we remember faces.(This was prompted when Kris had two marketers on her show. Both had red hair, both their names started with M and she got them mixed up.)This spreadsheet has been a game changer for Kris Ward as it allowed her to maintain relationships in a more personal way because of the personalized notes that she has.One way she utilizes the spreadsheet is by going through the whole list and sending the guests/hosts a personalized message about something she remembered about them, or a message of hope or luck for an endeavor that they talked about.4 Mistakes Podcasters Make with Guest Pitching and Relationships1. Spammy referral practicesThere's this whole thing where people refer you to a podcast, and then they ask you for four or five referrals before you even meet them, and then you start getting blitzed. It's insane, it's abusive, it's spammy. Definitely avoid this.Referrals should be done in a very strategic and gentle way. Your awesome guest or host knows other awesome people but you shouldn’t force the connection. But if you do get it, that also strengthens your relationship with them.2. Rotating your relationshipsAfter a new episode, we can become best friends with the host or guest for a week or two. But then another guest comes and we lose touch with the previous person because there was no reason to connect.This is not the way to maintain relationships. You could be losing relationships just by being too busy or occupied. One way to battle this is by using a networking spreadsheet just like Kris’s.3. Being genericPeople put a pitch out and it's so generic because they're trying to cover everything and they're listing all their accomplishments and all the things that they could talk about, which may not fit the show at all.Your personality should always shine and you're not getting any of that from the written page from somebody else. No one wants to read long paragraphs filled with links. A solution to this is Kris’s video pitch method.4. Saying too muchDon’t focus on how great you are and show all your accomplishments. Show the podcast host how your or your knowledge fit into their agenda. The less you say, the more powerful it is.The Philosophy Behind Kris Ward’s SystemsKris believes that your business should support your life, not consume it—and it should be fun. Otherwise, you could have stayed at the job that had better hours or a higher hourly rate because you're not working as many hours you had no overhead.She also talks about the 60-40 rule. We should be in 60% creative mode and 40% admin mode. And we always want to be compressing the work so we can move on to the next creation.That's what an entrepreneur is all about—getting to the next idea and getting that idea into execution. Somebody doing better in business than you is just getting their idea to execution faster. They're not smarter than you, but they're not held up.Kris Ward’s Takes on Podcasting for BusinessWhy podcast?For me, my podcast is a funnel to grow my network, which grows my net worth and to be maintaining relationships and growing my community even if I got no business out of it, which has not been the case.But even if I didn't, now I am connecting with more and more people who have had a significant interaction with me. And as long as I maintain those relationships, it really is unbelievably powerful.The other benefits of podcastingI get free coaching from fascinating people on subjects that maybe I wouldn't even have known, never mind to ask. Like, sometimes I'll learn stuff that I didn't even know I didn't know, and I'm getting it for free. And I'm building a relationship with these people. So my network has grown considerably.What podcast should support your business?I wasn't going to make a podcast that would be about productivity or efficiencies or systems because the people who need that are not going to listen to that. Somebody who's in shape does not listen to fitness hacks and podcasts, and they're in shape.So then we decided to make my podcast anything from sales to social media, that it was really just going to be me talking business. And frankly, what it's turned out to be is the biggest gift to my business ever because we set it up a couple of different ways.ConclusionThe processes don’t stop at the pitch! If your main goal with your podcast is relationship building (as many are), then the pitc

There will be days that you have an episode due to meet your production deadlines, but no guest lined up and no real idea of what to talk about. This is an unenviable position to be in, but we’re all there from time to time.In a perfect world, you’ll have plenty of runway for episodes going into the future by a couple of weeks, or evergreen shows ready to be inserted at the drop of a hat. But we don’t always have them, despite the best of intentions; and it happens to everyone.Join me on The Company Show as we explore the different strategies you can use to make sure that you always have an episode ready to go. (Add this to your cheat sheets!)Listen to the episode or continue reading the blog post.Tune in to learn about:How to prepare for unexpected production woesFour strategies to help you generate an episode topicDon’t forget to join us for our free monthly strategy calls on the third Thursday of every month.How to maintain consistent episode uploadsSo what do you do when a deadline needs to be met and you’re staring at the proverbial blank page with your microphone starting accusingly at you from the boom arm? First, if you are currently a podcast producer who will lecture clients at length about the importance of runway and backup episodes you give yourself a bit of a stern talking to.Here’s how that conversation might sound:There are always going to be things that go catawampus. Guests can cancel last minute, you can lose power in a storm, and work emergencies can crop up. The list goes on and on, and eventually one or more of these things will happen, possibly all at the same time.But if it is at all possible, you need to maintain your release schedule. As Tom Fox from the Compliance Podcast Network says:Your podcast is a promise to your audience, when you say you’re going to release, you must do so.The best way to be prepared for the unexpected is to prepare for the unexpected! You do this by creating a recording runway, where you’re recording episodes now that are going to be released a few weeks in the future and that gives your whole workflow wiggle room.The next best thing to do - and ideally this is in addition to recording with a runway - is to have a couple of evergreen episodes you’ve recorded in advance that can be slotted into the calendar if you ever need a last-minute episode. You want to make sure they really are evergreen and don’t make reference to things that are happening in your business or the news that will be out of date if you end up using the episode 6 months from now.Finally, you want to have a list of episode ideas, or really good friends that can be tapped if you ever find yourself on recording day without anything to say. You should keep a running list of episode possibilities in your episode guide that you can deploy as needed.All sounds very simple and sensible, doesn’t it? It sure does, and it is—but it’s not always going to happen. Like it did to me on the date of recording of this podcast episode. I told you it happens to everyone.4 ways to generate podcast episode topicsSince the show must go on, here are ways to get out an episode even if you’re not sure exactly what to talk about.1. Ask someone for an ideaIf you have coworkers or a cohost, they’re your first and best bet. When I was thinking glumly about the big “record The Company Show episode” on my list of to-dos for the day, I was feeling utterly uninspired, and more than a little irritated with myself. So I sent a Slack message to my friend and business partner, the inimitable Audra Casino explaining my plight.She hit back immediately with:Do an episode on how to cheat an episode when you don’t have any ideas.Your colleagues and partners will have the subject matter expertise to have topic ideas kicking around and can let you know what THEY would like to hear on the show. This can be a great way to jump-start your motivation.If you don’t have someone on your team or in your network you can ask on zero notice, then you can ask Chat GPT! You might want to prompt it with something like: ”Can you suggest 15 episode ideas for a podcast about widget manufacturing?” or “What are 10 questions business owners might ask before starting a podcast.”The AI can be a great assistant and get rid of that blank page paralysis that causes so much difficulty in creating content.2. Revisit an old episodeIf you’ve been podcasting for a while, you’ve probably recorded a few that could use an update. I did this a few weeks ago with our episode Leveraging a Podcast in Your Business, which was an update to one of the very first episodes we’d ever released on the show.I’d say it’s good practice to spend a little time with your episode archive every year to see what you’d like to update, expand on, or correct, if things have changed. A gap in the editorial calendar is a great time to do it.3. Seek Inspiration from other podcasters in your spaceYou’re probably not the only company podcasting about what you’re podcasting about, so if you’re scrambling for an idea see what your fellows are talking about.You don’t want to replicate their content by any means, but you might find topics you have your own opinion on, ideas you want to respond to, or just get inspired by the good work other people in your industry are doing. And it never hurts to give credit in these instances.4. Search your inbox or your social media channelsLook for questions that people in your industry are asking about your industry. If you’ve got a sales or customer support team, they can be great to tap into for this too.If someone cares about an issue enough to make a post about it, they probably aren’t the only one, and it could become part of your own question-and-answer library that you can have on hand when it comes up again in the future.Between these four ideas, you should be able to get an episode out the door in short order. And once you do, do what I’m about to do, and record an additional episode that you can pop into the bank and pull out next time the inevitable happens.Key Quotes"You’re probably not the only company podcasting about what you’re podcasting about, so if you’re scrambling for an idea see what your fellows are talking about.” - Megan DoughertyResourcesOne Stone Creative | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | InstagramMake sure to check out our free Monthly Strategy Calls!About Megan DoughertyMegan Dougherty is the Co-Founder of One Stone Creative. She has been a digital marketer for over a decade, with a strong focus on digital course creation, content marketing, and multimedia content production. As the co-founder, she takes pride in high-quality, on-time work and helping people get their messages to the people who need to hear them.She likes spreadsheets, deadlines, and creating online experiences that are good for both the creators and the end-users. She hates jumping out of airplanes, mushrooms, and hyperbolic language in messaging. When not helping to produce podcasts, courses, and videos, she bakes pies and watches Star Trek. (Janeway forever.)Find her on LinkedIn!Related Episodes and Media:Is My Podcast Topic Too Saturated?Will AI Replace Writers? with Karl SonaPFBCon 2023We’re starting to get ready for this year’s Podcasting for Business Conference, and we’re currently looking for speakers! Go to PFBCon.com and click on “Become a Speaker” to share your idea! It’s happening this November, all online.