Content Marketing – Diary of a Solopreneur

Recently a client told me that he would stop hunting clicks with articles that might get eyeballs but wouldn’t help his bottom line.

This was music to my ears. I have a very long (and complicated) relationship with this client and had attempted to get him to stop writing “click bait” off and on for longer than I can remember.

Click bait is, if you don’t know, anything that people have to click on. You’ve clicked on it yourself. We all have. For businesses it’s a waste of money.

A little while later, he sent me something he wanted help with. It was an update of an article that had nothing to do with the services the company provides.

More importantly, it had already been written a few years ago, and had been a big success for his website. (If you define success for click bait as “lots of people read it.”)

All he had done was pay someone to rewrite it.

We’re at peak podcast, as the kids say.

Actually, we were supposedly at peak podcast a year or two ago. And now there are more podcasts than ever.

There are so many podcasts I don’t actually know how to keep track.

So you know what you shouldn’t do in 2021 in order to promote your business online?

Start a podcast.

Someone Already Has a Podcast for Your Niche

There are so many reasons not to use a new podcast to market your business.

But the best one is that, more than likely, someone else is already doing it for their business.

Before you create a new podcast, search all the podcast apps to see if there is a similar podcast out there.

I bet you’ll find more than one.

So, unless you can do it better than the preexisting podcasts, this is a huge waste of your time and money.

There is No YouTube for Podcasts

Another reason why you shouldn’t use a podcast to promote your business online is because there is no YouTube-equivalent for podcasts.

Where do you go for video on the internet?

Most of us go to YouTube.

And if we don’t go to YouTube, we go to Google, which shows us YouTube videos. (Because Google owns YouTube.)

YouTube is a video platform, a social network and a search engine all rolled into one.

But where do you go for podcasts?

Well, there are a whole bunch of competing apps/websites.

And not everybody knows about or uses all of them. Quite the opposite.

So, if you’re using a podcast to market your business, you need to think about this crucial question: how will people find my podcast?

Podcasts Don’t “Rank” Like the Written Word

A primary advantage of content marketing – creating content on the internet to promote your business – is that the search engine robots “read” your content and use it to “index” your website.

In English: words on your website help potential leads find your website through Search Engines like Google.

You know what these search engine robots can’t do?

They can’t listen to audio. (Well. Yet.)

So, when you create audio content for the internet, the search engine robots don’t understand it.

You need to tag it appropriately, which helps.

But, more than that, you actually have to write content to get your podcast found by search engine robots.

So you’re doing this backwards: you’re creating audio and then having to create blog posts and pages to get the search engines to find your audio content.

Just be a Guest

If you’re really desperate to use podcasts to market your business, just become a guest on already established podcasts.

Make a list of podcasts that serve your niche and reach out the creators to see if they will have you on.

It’s like going on the radio only the appearance stays on the internet in perpetuity so, in that way, it’s better than going on the radio.