The Brand Newsroom team gets a bit introspective today. They’re talking about podcasting and whether it’s a worthwhile part of the marketing mix for your small business.

This is episode 148 of Brand Newsroom and the team has learnt a thing or two along the way. So let’s take a look at the challenges, highlights, pitfalls and benefits of putting a podcast together.

Here are some key take-outs:

• Podcasting is still very new, but it’s becoming incredibly popular. In the US, podcast listening grew 23 per cent between 2015 and 2016 and 21 per cent of Americans ages 12 and up will have listened to a podcast in the past month. The podcast audience is 57 million Americans in total. In Australia 15 per cent of Australian marketers are using podcasts as part of their content marketing mix.
• Podcasting is the only sort of content you can consume while you’re doing something else, so it’s a great opportunity to reach an audience at a time when there’s no other form of content they could consume — like when they’re walking the dog.
• Podcasting has opened a lot of doors for the BNR team. Nic now has mainstream media commitments, particularly in radio — which demonstrates the value in it for business owners like him.
• Podcasts create evergreen content. In the case of Brand Newsroom we know that about half our listens each week are old episodes — people will go right back and listen to it from the beginning.
• The secret is consistency. Most podcasts fail because they’re not disciplined enough. People get to six or seven episodes and give up. You have to keep going!
• Accessibility for podcasts is getting easier. You can listen to podcasts in many new cars now, for example — that’s opening podcasts up to a potential audience the size of radio.
• Your audience could well be niche. It doesn’t matter if it’s a small audience if your listeners find the content hyper-relevant.
• Audiences grow. It takes time.
• You don’t need lots of audio production. The important thing is to have a great and engaging conversation. It has to sound authentic, too — not manufactured.

Here are the links you might need:

• Here’s the ‘6 reasons your business should use podcasting’ article James mentioned.
• And here’s another article explaining how podcasting is “the new talk radio”.
• And Nic will never forgive us if we don’t mention his new podcast, The Experts.

On My Desk

• Sarah recommended the Podcasters’ Hangout Facebook group and the Zoom Handheld Recorder.
• James’ recommendation was the Podcast Consumer 2017

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