If you haven't already heard, for a B2B technology company that wants to be disruptive in their space, there's a big go-to strategy that everyone's been talking about for the last couple of years:
Create Your Media Company Within Your B2B Company
Instead of thinking about building a marketing team, create a media company within your firm.
Are you in an executive role or marketing or sales leadership role in a B2B technology company? If so, podcasting should be on your radar screen as a core tactic, a core part of your playbook for raising your company's awareness, generating leads for building great relationships, positioning your company as the go-to experts in your space, subject matter experts, and thought leaders.
Podcasting Done Right
There are many great reasons to get podcasting going within your company and look at it as a long-term strategic investment.
However, one of the big mistakes is when I see people approaching podcasts, they think of it as audio-only media. And in reality, for where we are in the world today, what I'd recommend is that you record all of your podcasts first in video, which in the times that we're at right now, more than likely means that you're recording remotely.
It could be using something like Zoom, GoToMeeting, Google Meets. FaceTime, Skype, whatever you're most comfortable with, but record in video.
And because of that, you want to prepare your guests that you're interviewing to let them know that you're going to be doing that, to have them give some thought to what's in their background, they're lighting their audio quality. But record first in video.
The Video Podcast Advantage
The advantage of recording first in videos is that it's straightforward after you edit to go from having video format to audio format. If your videos are in MP4 format, for example, it's very straightforward to extract an MP3 file for you to share that same content on audio podcasting sites.
Audio
So far, we have created video content, and we've created audio content. So not only do we have content that can go on YouTube, and that can be chopped up in smaller pieces and shared on other social media properties.
We now have audio content that can make it onto major podcasting sites like Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and Spotify.
Blogging
The third big distribution opportunity for podcasts is transcribing that content and turning it into print content for your blog. So this way, not only do you have content that's living, for example, in YouTube, so people that like to watch videos can find it there, and you have the same content that's living in Apple Podcasts, for example.
So, people who want to listen to podcasts while they're out and about during their workout, doing errands, whatever they do, when they're driving around whatever they do when listening to podcasts, you have a way to reach them there.
And then you also have content that's sitting on your website, that's based on that same episode of that same podcast, which can start as a transcript, can edit the transcript. You can write some analysis, and it introduces the guest a little bit. And, of course, embed the video and audio files on your blog.
Video Embedded In Your Blog Posts
So this way, you have findability, not only on a site like YouTube, you have findability on a site like Apple podcasts, and in search engines as search engine optimization, type of reasons. And you're creating very high-quality content on your blog regularly that will have expert interviews many times. And of course, by embedding that video content in there, people stay much longer on that blog post than average, much longer on that page than average in most of your other pages on your website, which sends a fantastic signal to search engines that you're nailing relevancy.
Organic Search / SEO Benefits
It gets your session time way up and your bounce rate way, way down. So you have video content from this same interview. You have audio content from the same interview, and you have text-based content from that same interview. So there are a lot of different ways to repurpose that.
To smaller images, smaller videos, smaller texts, but those three formats alone, the video, audio, and text do wonders to fill up your content calendar for sharing great content in your email marketing program and your lead nurturing sequences.
It covers very well what you're trying to do with organic search reach, with growing your search engine authority. When they're looking for help and information on these topics, people are attracted to your website. And it's also fantastic content for sharing those videos, those podcasts, and those blogs and other social feeds.
So again, with your podcasts, you end up with great, helpful, educational content to sit on YouTube and video format to sit in audio format on a site like Apple podcasts, as well as on your own website’s blog.
And with those three formats of content, this gives you plenty of great topics, content, and helpful posts to share through your email nurturing program through a blog sequence, blog publishing email newsletter. So your email program is very well set.
It also gives you great content to be able to use for your organic search engine authority program. So you can grow your website authority and have more opportunities to attract organic search visitors from Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
Spreading Across Social Media
And also, this podcast content sitting on YouTube and podcasts sites, as well as on your blog, gives you great content to be able to share on your social media properties, regardless of whether it's your LinkedIn company page, you, where your employees, LinkedIn com individual LinkedIn company profiles, the Twitter profile for your company individual employees, personal Twitter profiles, your Facebook business page, as well as individual Facebook profiles.
Perhaps you also choose to share on other sites like Instagram, and you can take bits and pieces of the podcast and repurpose it to a lot of different social media sites. Still, at the absolute minimum, it's great for having fresh content to share regularly on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.
So hopefully, I've given you some good food for thought on why podcasting, especially interviewing other subject matter experts, is an incredibly powerful way to fill up the top of your sales funnel with prospects that see your company as the go-to expert on the topics and interest in challenges and problems that are unique to that group of your target market, that you're addressing your ideal client profile, your buyer personas.
And by inserting yourself in the middle of that and using a variety of different formats, you have a lot of different ways to repurpose and get even more value from that content asset on a long-term basis. If you haven't heard it already, the big go-to strategy that everyone's been talking about for the last couple of years is for a B2B technology company that wants to be disruptive in the space, instead of thinking about building a marketing team, create a media company within your firm. So you own all these properties instead of having to go to the toll takers and the gatekeepers constantly.
Bypass the Gatekeepers to Gain a Competitive Advantage
And it's not just that you're trying to bypass the arbitrage. In most cases, those same groups that want to be the toll takers are selling their services to a dozen or two dozen or three dozen of your competitors.
So if you want to be able to gain a competitive advantage and not be where they are and get found in other places where you are not only the go-to expert but the only one that's showing up, it pays to think of these content assets as tremendous long-term values to your business.
Do you lead a B2B technology company? How do you use podcasting? Let me know in the comments below.
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