How To Start a Podcast For Your Business
Podcasting is the next marketing frontier. The shift to mobile and people’s lack of time are two reasons why podcasts are increasingly popular. We may all be too busy to sit down to read a book, but it’s easy enough to consume content during times that would otherwise go to waste. If you want to learn then listening to a podcast or an audio book during a commute, when exercising, or cooking and cleaning is a great way to make time to do so.
There are far fewer podcasts than blogs. So, there is less noise, and podcasts are a good way to communicate a message to a wider audience.
That’s why I decided to create the podcast Brand Tuned – Successful Brand, Successful Business.
Purpose of the Podcast
I want to support founders to create better businesses on stronger foundations, and one way to do this involves developing a powerful brand that uses distinctive brand elements. Your brand is one of the most valuable assets your business will produce if it’s a success. A brand is fundamentally comprised of intellectual property. Did you know that the name, imagery, shapes, colours, logo, music, messaging, campaigns and so on which make up a brand, are all IP?
You can add significant value to your business by ensuring these elements are distinctive.
Unfortunately, it is not well understood what the IP requirements are when it comes to creating distinctiveness. For example, people often select names that they can’t uniquely own. Even big creative agencies can make this fundamental mistake because they are not focusing enough on the legal requirements when it comes to naming a brand. Nor do people realise why this is so important to the revenues and market share that they can acquire.
That’s why an interdisciplinary approach to branding gives you the best return on your investment.
As a long standing business owner, I’ve developed my knowledge of marketing and branding to such an extent that I can combine brand protection with brand creation to teach founders how to create distinctive brands.
How to Get Started With A Podcast
You can take your time as you create your podcast. The way I went about it was to create 10 episodes before launching the podcast. I then launched 4 episodes, and followed that by releasing 2 episodes a week while I created content for future episodes. Like that you can ensure you have a few podcasts in case you become too busy to record an episode one week. I intend to produce a weekly episode.
I was, and still am, very much outside my comfort zone interviewing guests. As with everything in life, practice makes perfect. You have to be willing to start and then put in the effort whenever you approach a new skill. I’m sure by the time I’ve interviewed the 100th guest, if not before, I’ll be a lot more comfortable with the format, and who knows I may create powerful content.
I decided to stick to a 30-minute episode format initially, and approached some guests using a standard template which I gradually developed and improved.
My first conversation was with Daniel Priestley. Daniel runs business accelerators for entrepreneurs, which provide a combination of training and accountability, peer to peer group networking, mentoring and access to tools and resources. His company Dent develops entrepreneurs to stand out in noisy marketplaces and scale their businesses to their full potential.
I was keen to discover how his approach to branding shaped his business because the brand is quite cult-like in the evangelism it attracts within his community. Daniel has many qualities, one of which is his great sense of humour, and generosity of spirit.
Guests
You can approach people over time and record sessions gradually.
My next guest is a lady who has made storytelling the centre of her business. Storytelling is hugely relevant to brands and so Susan Payton was a logical choice as a guest for the podcast. She has also trained under Donald Miller of Story Brand fame and is a certified Story Brand guide. We discussed how stories help businesses to articulate what they do in a way that customers can relate to.
James Bridgman was my third guest, someone I’d come across in BNI years ago. He is a marketer with lots of experience in branding. During our interview we discussed his approach to supporting start-up companies and why it is so important for companies to do some of the groundwork before working with an agency.
He looks at different ways a brand communicates with customers, employees, partners and joint venture partners, taking them through 3 separate phases – vision and mission, visual design, and execution. He believes that start-ups should focus on core beliefs to move forward and it is vital for them to be able to clearly articulate their values.
My next guest David B Horne was a longstanding Facebook friend. I happened to watch the video of his book launch for Add Then Multiply which is why I was keen to bring his methodology for scaling businesses to my podcast. He uses the acronym FACE, which stands for: Fund, Acquire, Consolidate, Exit to describe his approach to helping businesses grow at levels that are not normally achieved.
We also discussed the importance of IP and brand in the evaluation of a business and how after acquisition, rebranding two companies need to bring the cultures together to unify them.
Timescale
I began preparing to launch a podcast back in January. The interviews took place gradually between February and May, so it’s very easy to create a podcast when you give yourself plenty of time to prepare. You grow in confidence interview by interview.
My fifth guest was Stephen Willard who discussed his unique employee focused approach to all things brand related. Although I knew him from before, Stephen caught my attention on LinkedIn when he mentioned his company Emblaze’s approach to supporting employees to move into career flow where they are highly appreciated, earn good money, work on stimulating projects, are progressing in the company and build good relationships.
I’ve known the high-profile lawyer Ronnie Fox my next guest, for many years and decided that his professional career would provide useful lessons to others looking to develop their personal brands. Ronnie founded two law firms – Fox Williams which he left to form Fox and Partners, his current law firm.
He began specialising in employment law work and subsequently partnership work and explains his approach to niching. Ronnie’s own brand is a running fox and he keeps a bowl of Fox’s Glacier Mints in the meeting room to reinforce the branding.
As my podcast is all about developing a brand, I decided to include a few creative agencies in the show, and invited Stephen Fenton of Zeke. He focuses on brand creation and brand development for high-end home and interior clients. He has also been involved in creating virtual showrooms for clients using 3D 360-degree scans that allows visitors a virtual tour of the premises and enables the business to keep trading effectively during lockdown.
Laura Janes founder of Uniquity is another creative agency guest I invited and her focus in on building brilliant brands for financial services clients.
And last but not least is my guest Will Critchlow who I’ve known since 2005 when he had just started his business. In the early days, the business was known as Wandd. He and his co-founder rebranded it to Distilled after a year or so. They went on to build up the business to be a respected international SEO consultancy which was recently sold. So I wanted to find out how he had approached branding.
Interestingly Will didn’t consciously create a brand strategy. For him, reputation came first ahead of the brand. As the business grew and they hired additional staff they looked at what the whole organisation stood for, what was their meaning in the marketplace as that was necessary for recruitment and retention of the right people.
Moving Forwards
I have an interesting array of guests for future episodes and will also do some solo episodes on topics such as naming, which are important for businesses to understand.
Please keep listening and learning and let me have feedback. If you’re enjoying and benefiting, I would really appreciate a quick rating and review of the podcast. It makes such a huge difference to have reviews.
I encourage you to create your podcast
If your marketing involves creating content then you will understand the value of podcasting. Creating a podcast allows you to reach a brand new audience: people who might otherwise never find or consume your long-form content because they prefer the audio format.
You don’t need to be an established content creator or have a blog to become a successful podcaster. A podcast is an excellent way to build an audience from scratch and position yourself as an authority in your industry.
In addition, podcasts also provide the potential to drive traffic back to your website or store. Every podcast directory gives you a link back to your website, and since it’s your podcast, you can direct listeners to your website at the end of each show. If you decide to launch your own podcast do let me know when it’s up on iTunes and I will listen to it.
