Blythe Brumleve:
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321 Welcome into another episode of everything is logistics, a podcast for the thinkers in freight. I'm your host, Blythe Brumleve. And today we are going to be talking about what to do if you want to launch a podcast, and 2023. Now, this is really going to be ideal for the founders within the logistics industry, or the one person marketing teams that are really, you know, struggling trying to get brand awareness and to gain some kind of attract traction with their marketing, and then also to connect with their customers and leads on a much deeper level. I recently relaunched my podcast, if you've been listening to everything is logistics, you probably know that, you know, we've had, you know, the podcast was digital dispatch before now it's called Everything is logistics by digital dispatch. So trying to, you know, differentiate between a podcast and the company, and how each one of them now stands on their own. And this situation might not be right for a lot of different companies, especially, you know, if you were just interested in launching a podcast for the company namesake, or if you are interested in, you know, just getting some more subject matter expertise within your podcast that, you know, maybe you don't have anybody from your company working within that podcast or being a guest on that podcast, I've worked with several different of these formats. So I'm going to run through my top tips for creating a podcast based on the goals that you want to see. And that's actually one of the first big tips that we can kind of dive into. And that's determining the type of show that you want to have, you know, considering the purpose of your podcast, and the format of how you want to serve your audience. So there's a couple different ways that you can think about this. From a company standpoint, you really want to have a podcast that has the company name in it, but that can also be slightly differentiated from the rest of your marketing materials. Now, from a company perspective, you want to think about who is going to be the host of this podcast, because I am of the opinion that it needs to be a founder of the company, it needs to be an Executive leader that has been with the company for a while, or a co founder, or somebody that is going to have some longevity within your company. Because what happens is, and I've seen this happen within the freight space is that someone is going to become the face in the voice of your company. And you want to make sure that they're actually around for a little while. And sticking with the company before you put make them the face and the brand of your company because that can have a lot of benefits. But it can also have a little bit of downside if that person ever chooses to leave your company for another opportunity, or maybe to start up their own show. So something to think about whenever you're first developing this podcast is who is going to host it, but also who is going to be the target audience of this podcast, I think it's safe to say for a lot of companies that you're wanting to build up brand awareness. And then you're also wanting to connect on a deeper level with your customers and with your leads. And a podcast is a perfect way to do that I just spoke with Rachel merriness, she is the CMO over at transfix. And that's specifically how they use their podcast is to connect with their customers and their leads much more on a deeper level. So they're finding subject matter expertise from within the companies that are their customers. And I thought that that was a really interesting take on how to you know, create a company podcast that is going to be beneficial for not only the audience, but the audience that you're ultimately trying to do business with. So it's kind of thinking of what is the end the ideal end result goal of your podcast, and then reverse engineering of how that podcast comes to life. And so it should be a company founder if you are going to be launching this podcast. And you might be asking yourself, especially if you're a founder listening well, how am I going to possibly find the time for this? I'm already wearing a ton of hats. And the simple answer is you got to build it into your workday, you got to build it into your work week, you're probably not going to be podcasting, you know, every single day, but at least once a week is a great cadence in order to develop that regular habit of talking to your customers. And then transforming that discussion that you're having with your customers and then moving that into a wider conversation within the company and within the target market that you're trying to reach. So that's tip number one, that it really should be founder led, you can have obviously a lot of help from, you know, a marketing manager, a CMO, a marketing assistant, even an executive assistant, which is what I used to be and I would was tasked with all of the marketing challenges or the all of the marketing roles within the company and so it would if podcast existed back then then I would have been the one to man Digital, but I would have been behind the scenes managing that process of it. And then on the front end, what you see from the brand perspective from the Vate from the face and the voice, you are seeing the company founder, which is probably the best of both worlds, because then you have somebody experienced in media and marketing, ideally, that is handling the project side of things. And then you have the face of the company, which is you know, is spreading brand awareness and really getting that in depth knowledge that you really only get when you talk to customers, when you talk to leads on a regular basis, or you talk to your leaders who are also talking to those specific people on a regular basis. That's where you get the most information. That's where you get the most, you know, sort of content feedback loop of whatever you're planning on talking about. And that episode might be further expanded in future episodes simply based off on those conversations that you're having with the leaders within your company, and then also the target audience that you're trying to reach, which is your customers and your leads. So moving on to the next one, which is kind of related. But consider that the personal ROI of the podcast determine the goals you hope to achieve through the podcast, and consider how it will benefit your company and personal brand. This is kind of goes back to that reverse engineering of what do you ultimately want the podcast to achieve? It's easy to say, Oh, I just want a ton of leads. But with podcasting the, the reality is, is that those leads might not come through the door for months and months. And a b2b Buying Cycle. We know that buyers have more information at their fingertips more than ever, and they're able to do research on your company, before you ever cold, call them before you ever cold, send a cold email out their way, they might hear of you through the grapevine. But that is where the podcast builds up that trust and awareness for your company to that target audience that you're trying to reach. So let me let me give you an example. So say you have regular you. I mean, if you have a sales team that's having regular meetings with leads each week, hopefully that's happening for your company. And so if that's happening with your company, what you want to do is you want to have a separate document. And I've I call this my lingo library document, it's a Google Drive document, I keep it loaded up, I keep it bookmarked. So anytime I have a conversation with a lead or with a customer, and they're asking me questions, I immediately write down those questions. Because whatever questions that they are asking me is likely a question that I can answer in my future content on my website, and future email campaigns. And then also with future podcast. So thinking about it from that lens of that's where you want to start these conversations, and you want to have these conversations and you want to put it out into the world, before a prospect maybe ever even hears about the services that you offer. I mean, they probably will know about the services that you offer if they're listening to your podcast. But the idea is that you're getting information out and common questions that they might have, or that they might not know they even have until they're in the process of working with you or with another provider. So thinking about it from from that perspective, that can help you to craft that content and answer those sales, those sales questions well, before they ever fill out a form, you know, try to book a call with you, or take that relationship to the next level where they hear about your company, they're listening to your podcast, but then when they are ready to buy, then they think of you first and they come immediately to your website, or they come to your social media channels. And they send you a DM and they say let's hop on a call. And let's talk about this. So that's where the whole sort of full circle of creating a podcast really comes into play. Because if you think about it from the I only want leads perspective, it's going to be a while before you actually get leads that are coming into the into your website and into your social media channels. You have to consistently put out content on a regular basis. So it's multifaceted, but it's also multi beneficial, because you're giving your target audience that information of what they need and maybe the information that they don't even know that they need at the time. But then you're also using those conversations as fuel to the next piece of content that you're going to make or the next piece of content that your marketing manager is going to make. This helps fuel your content marketing plan, especially with having those conversations with, you know those subject matter experts who are all or sales leaders within your company who are already having those conversations with your leads and with your target audience. So that is sort of a goldmine of content, whenever you think about it from the podcast perspective. Now it could be another goal that you might have that just overall brand awareness is what you want to strive for. And that is that is probably what you will experience first before you experience leads. So you will probably gain a greater brand awareness by At least sharing the podcast sharing the guests that are on tagging the guests that's coming on the show. And then they thus share it with their audience, then sharing that content with your team. And you know, wanting that feedback loop not only from your team, but from the customers as well, because that, again, fuels your further content plans. So it could be brand awareness, it could be ROI, and the ROI for you, is probably leads generated. But all of those brand awareness typically comes first whenever you're creating a podcast, and then leads come at a later date. But the ideal goal is that you're starting that conversation with your leads, and they might not even know that they're starting that sales conversation with you. But you are putting your your company and yourself in a position to establish yourself as a leader within your service or with that with within your product that you're offering, well ahead of when that person makes that buying decision. So that when they do have that sent that signal of Let's book a meeting, let's get on a call request for quote, they already have a great idea of who you are as a company. And so when they do book that meeting those meetings close at a much higher rate than if you were to just cold email or cold call and just hope that somebody has heard of your company before. So number three on the list is establish how you will be measuring success, determine the metrics that you will use to track the success of your podcast, such as the number of listeners or engagement within your content. Now, I kind of disagree with a little bit part of this, because I believe firmly in establishing how you're going to be measuring success. Now, measuring based off of listeners is a little convoluted, in my opinion, because b2b marketing is so much different than b2c marketing, you know, b2c marketing is strictly a numbers game, it is strictly, you know, here's the product, make the sale. But in b2b, there's a much longer buying cycle for what you're trying to achieve. So if you're trying to measure how many leads are going to come from a podcast episode, based on how many listeners that you have, that just doesn't really work that way, in podcasting, there are ways to measure success. However, what I like to really harp on is so simple, it's so cheap, it takes 10 minutes to implement. And it's the easiest thing that you can do to level up your your analytics when it comes to measuring success, not only for the podcast, but just for overall social media. And that's adding the infamous field to your forms. How did you hear about us? It's a simple form. Are all of the forms on your website need to have this question? How did you hear about us, don't make it a drop down, don't make it a checkbox, don't make it multi selection, just make it a free text field, have the user input whatever comes to mind when they think of it. Because if you have a drop down, if you have a checkbox, if you have some other kind of just, you know, almost like a hint as to where you might have heard about us, then that influences the input that the customer or that the lead will input into your system. So what you want to do is just have a free text field, because that's where you get the most just authentic answers, you get the most just valuable answers. I'll give you an example of one of my clients, that they have regular programming, it's safety, focus programming, and they do content every single day. But when the leads come through their door, I'm I'm seeing results of you know, I saw your trucks driving down the highway, I talked to this driver at a rest stop. You know, your employee I met at a grocery store, I heard about you on this podcast, I you know, I saw your LinkedIn post on x, y, z. These are the kinds of insights that you are going to get when you add that field to your form. So add, how did you hear about us make it a free text field and make it required. Because if you are just to sort of back up a little bit, a lot of marketing tactics will tell you, if you add another field to your forms, then it's immediately going to deter people from submitting the form. But whenever you are creating great content on social media through a podcast or through email, when somebody is ready to make that buying decision or make that high intent lead conversion, which is what somebody does, whatever they've known about your company, and then they decide to come to your website, or they go to your social media and they say hey, I want to book a meeting. That is a high intent lead conversion right there. And so what you want to think about is that doesn't really matter with all the extra forms, that one extra form or that one extra field to your forms is not going to matter. So if that person is already a high intent lead, that one field they're almost be excited to answer that question about where Are they heard about you? I have several submissions that are on my website that tell me that they heard about me through the podcast through social media, I saw your LinkedIn posts, I saw you were on this webinar, all of these different things play a role. But the only real way to measure them is to simply put that field on your forms takes 10 minutes to do, it will likely cost you if you have to pay a developer to do it, it might cost you maybe 50 bucks, in order to take care of it, you can get it done in half a day Max. A lot of times with a lot of different websites, you can get it done in about 10 minutes. But depending on the complexity of your website, and how much content you have on there, it could take a little bit longer, say if you have a lot of landing pages on your site, or maybe you use HubSpot and you have a landing page generator, that you there are a lot of different pages within that platform that you would have to add that field to. And a lot of times you can do it at the form level. So if you have that form embedded already on your website, maybe it's on a bunch of different pages, all you have to do is just go to that form itself and add that extra field and then it appears on all of your different pages. So that is the number one way to measure the effectiveness of what you're doing from a marketing perspective, especially when it comes to podcast listeners. Because if you're trying to measure how many leads are going to come through based off of, you know, a select amount of people that are listening to your podcast, it's not going to be attributable, you have to implement a different kind of attribution method and not rely on the stats that you see from your analytics software. Because it's not to pick on HubSpot or Google but we use Google as a bypass to get to where we're trying to get to. Very few people will remember your website URL, URL by name. So what they use is they use Google as the bypass mechanism in order to find your brand. So if the I'm going to digital dispatch, I don't know that it's technically Digital dispatch.io. But I'm going to go to Google and I'm going to do a search for digital dispatch. And then it hopefully, I know for my brand I know anyways, at that mind shows up first unless somebody has some advertising, you know behind it. But the first organic result is going to be my company if you search for digital dispatch. And so keeping that in mind, a lot of these different attribution reports will show that it was Google that sent you that lead. So if you were making buying decisions, or marketing decisions, or campaign decisions, advertising decisions, based on that report, of all of my leads came through, but they also pass through Google, so they must be finding us on Google, the logical next step of what we used to think and marketing is that oh, I have to invest significantly more in SEO, because that's Google organic search is where all of our leads are coming from that's not necessarily the case, you have to dive a little bit deeper into how people are finding your brand. And typically, and where I've seen the most success is adding that simple field to your forms. How did you hear about us? Now another piece of context to keep in mind is that vanity metrics are not the same as real time metrics. If you are trying vanity metrics are, if you're trying to compete with the Kim Kardashians of the world or the Mr. Beasts of the world, you're those are impossible levels to compare your brand on. Because those are vanity metrics, those are going viral every single day metrics. Now from a business perspective, just because you didn't have you know, maybe you had 100 people attend a webinar, which is very good for a b2b webinar, if you have 100 people on it. Now, if you have those 100 people on it, most likely those people are within your buying market, they are your ideal buyers. And hopefully you are hoping for maybe you know, 15 to 20% of those people that viewed that webinar, which is also a very high number, if you have the move next in the buying cycle to create that private meeting to connect with your sales team. So that is the ultimate goal. But if say you had 12,000 people that were watching this ad and none of them are going to buy from you. What kind of sense does that make? So thinking about it from the vanity metric perspective, don't worry about the vanity metrics, worry about the right metrics, because that is where you're going to find much more success is if you're talking to your target buyer, instead of trying to talk to the masses simply for those vanity metrics, because a lot of times those people are not going to buy from you. So you're much better, you're much better suited to focus on the smaller amount of people that will buy from you and talking specifically to them of what they care about the problems that they're experiencing the questions that they have now and then maybe answering some of the questions that they might not know about and being that trusted source prior. So those are a few tips. Let's go on to the next one. Identify the host equipment and talent needed. Determine who will host your podcast and choose high quality equipment including a microphone own recording software and headphones to ensure your podcast sounds professional. Now, there is a thing with this tip that exists a call the fear of equipment, the the belief that you need top of the line equipment in order to make a podcast you don't. But you need to start, you need to start somewhere. There are microphones that exist on Amazon right now where microphones have come a long way. And you can find a really good microphone. For 2025 bucks, I just bought a new microphone that plugs directly into my phone. And if you're watching the video of this, you can kind of see an example of this, but I'll describe it for those who are listening to audio only. But it is a two pack microphone with a little I guess the dongle, the bluetooth dongle that plugs right into your phone. And so this would allow me to take a microphone and plug it on myself, take another microphone, plug it on a guest, and then I could record a video podcast directly from my cell phone, this cost me $25 For this little kit over on Amazon, I think you'd actually still have a deal going on. So if you wanted to head over there and get it. But from a price range perspective, you're looking at about 50 bucks or less in order to get a decent quality microphone. Now that is for the cellphone purposes, from the desktop purposes, which is what I use, I use a Shure SM seven b that is about $300 for this microphone, but you do not need to have a microphone of this level. In order to make a great podcast, you do have to have a microphone. And this is kind of, you know, against the advice that I used to give that you didn't necessarily need a microphone, the more important thing was to just get started creating a show. But I the audio matters because of competition that's entered into the market. Immediately you are already you know competing with other podcasts that are out there. So if you don't have a good audio experience, then most listeners are just going to shut it off, no matter how good the content is you so your content has to be really good. And your microphone should be at least a decent quality not built into the webcam that you have. Not your air pods. A a standalone microphone that you select from your computer is hands down the best option, but then being able to have something that can be a little bit more travel friendly, then you can buy one of these bluetooth headphones and plug it right into your phone. And then that way you have the video and then you also have the audio, I also highly suggest that you start with a video first podcast, because even though this show I'm recording video, first, I will prioritize the audio in this show. So what will happen is that the audio goes out first. But then after the audio goes out, and the audio is or edited and ready to publish or ready to upload to my hosting provider, then that next step for me is to go back through and then to create those social media clips. And that's where the video comes into play. Because then I use short clips from this conversation in order to promote out on social media. In order to point people back to the podcast, I do have plans to upload these full length shows to YouTube in the future. But YouTube is a whole different beast, we can cover that in another episode of how I'm exploring YouTube and how I'm going to be prioritizing YouTube more in 2023. But right now my biggest priority is getting into a good process a good system for my podcast before I start adding other things to the mix was also another tip that I think most of you should follow is to write down your process for each step of what happens when you have an idea for your podcast. If a management system for managing all of the ideas that you have. So a lingo library might fit into that process of having just a place where you can store all of your ideas, and then having a place that you can move them into an actionable step. So what my process kind of looks like is that I have an area I use clickup to manage all of my ideas. I also use Google Docs, they're linked together, they kind of play within each other so I can kind of take notes with Google Docs, but then add all of those ideas and make them actionable using clickup. And so after I have you know different ideas of what I want to do, then I move them into what I call the interview in the show coordination section of clickup. And so the interview in the show coordination is am I going to record this solo or am I going to invite on a guest that is a subject matter expert within that topic that I want to discuss. So it's one of those two things that I'm going to tackle with an episode is approaching it from that lens. And then I use squad cast. I use a company called squad cast. It's it's similar to Riverside if you've ever used Riverside kind of similar to zoom but much more capabilities from a recording standpoint, especially when it comes to editing and put Post production, Zoom is fine. But recording separately from Zoom is how you get that much better video quality, much better audio quality. So I record separate from zoom, even though I'm not against using zoom for, you know, more community building type webinars, things like that I'm not against it whatsoever. And I probably will use Zoom, you know, in the near future for hosting sort of client chats, and get togethers and things like that. So we can have more of that q&a style, when it comes to, you know, different show formats. But right now, my main show formats are, you know, that solo show, which is what you're listening to now, or an interview based show, which is what we have, you know, typically at least once a week, but thinking about it from that lens is, okay, so we recorded the podcast. Now the next step is the editing process, are you going to be handling the editing within the office? Or are you going to handle it yourself? Are you going to find a freelancer that can handle that. So writing down each step of the process, especially when it comes to distribution, because distribution comes after the episode is edited and ready to be published. So all of those different steps, you have different processes in place for each one of those, write those down, figure out what you want to do figure out what you want to outsource. And that's how you can get a really good system in place, starting right off the jump. And then that way, you can hone in and alter and really, you know, tweak that process as you move forward. And as you start getting into a better groove, but it's important to have at least some kind of an idea of what that process is going to look like. And what kind of equipment and software is going to play a role in each parts of those phases. Because if you're not going to be editing the podcast, you don't need to go by editing software. So figuring out there your steps and your processes first is key to saving time and money. Because you don't want to spend, you know, a day and a half, you know editing a podcast, when you've never edited a podcast before, it's so affordable to go to fiverr to go to Upwork and say, Here's my podcast file, I want you to edit it for me and giving them editing instructions. And so that brings me to my next tip. And that is mapping out of what the show format is going to actually look like. So plan the show itself, consider adds products or services that you want to promote, as well as the music, the intro, and the outro that you're going to use, and then creating show art and branding and to set up a landing page on your website. So that's another big one, I have a landing page on my site for the podcast that all of my new episodes upload I up. So the way my process works is that I have the landing page on the website, I also have a tool that we developed and tweet in order to as soon as I upload a podcast, to my podcast host, then it talks to the best way to describe this is that the podcast host talks to my website, they come together they create a blog post on the website, complete with show notes, the audio player show art, all of that good stuff. So it's already all included on a blog post. And then further automations can be set up after that you have more much more flexibility than just, you know, maybe taking the embed code from your podcast player and adding it to your site. So you kind of have a little bit of a frame of you know all of your past episodes. Or maybe it's just one episode. That tactic that I just explained of my podcast host talking to my website is a way for me to automatically create a blog post every time a new podcast is published. Because then from that blog post, I have that unique URL that I can then send out to social media and email campaigns. And it just makes it much more user friendly, especially in the b2b space, where most of us are still operating off of a desktop, specially in logistics. So it might not be conducive to your work day to you know, stop what you're doing and listen to a podcast on your phone. But if you're listening on desktop, then it makes it much more easier to listen in another window while you're doing your work. You can hit pause, you can start your phone conversations, you can kind of go back and forth and listen to a variety of or multitask, I guess it's probably the best way to put it is that you can multitask a lot better when you have a blog post URL for your podcast. So thinking about it from that is how you're going to plan the not only the distribution of the show, because that's more of a distribution point that I just made. But from the show itself. There are major components to a show that you want to think about. How are you going to introduce the show? How are you going to conclude the show? For me personally, I have different intros for each episode, but I don't start the intro until I start the actual show. So the intro that you heard on this show is the one that will play, I won't record a separate intro for this episode, but what I will do is I will have pre recorded advertisement spots that are placed periodically within the show. So I choose about two to three ads per show, because that's the format of how I am running my show I, you know, 30 minutes to an hour is typically my sweet spot for content. And so I will typically have about two ads per show for that format. So knowing that I plan those ad breaks from the jump. And so it's, even if you don't have sponsors for your podcast, you're probably promoting something within your company within your business that you can create a separate advertisement for. So maybe you just offered a maybe you just have, you know, a new line of equipment, maybe you have, you know, and flatbed trucks instead of or maybe you just added reefer trucks, in addition to your flatbed lineup. Or, you know, maybe you just added a new, synchronous or API integration between your TMS and another provider. So any of these different offerings that you would send out, maybe a press release about or you would post about on social media, you can instead create an advertisement in your podcast and put it into the podcast. And then that way, you are promoting still about your company within an authentic conversation that you don't have to say, hold on, let's stop the conversation. And so I can read this ad know you keep the conversation going. And then you can insert those advertisements in those sponsor spots at a later date. Now for my show, I also have a pre recorded outro this plays at the end of each episode, and that I record once and then it lasts probably about a quarter. And then the next quarter, I'll update it to something new unless you know something else comes up. And I need to really, you know, just make sure that I get this updated very soon. So the outro typically will stay the same. And we just edit that in at the end of the episodes. So that's a little sort of a peek behind the curtain for my podcast. Another thing that I really prioritize, but this is not necessary for any other show, I prioritize music, I hired a custom beat maker within the Jacksonville, Florida area. And he was able I took I made a Spotify album playlist of different songs and beats that I like. And that I think would be good for a podcast. And I had also a separate list of podcasts intro music that I really like. And so I sent all of these as sort of like a creative package to the beat maker. And he was able to send over five to six beats that I can now use as sort of the music underbed of my intro of my outro of my advertisements that I'm reading in the future, I'll use them for social media messaging, just to create that familiarity and that signal to the listener, that you know, this is an advertisement. So it's going to have a little bit different music than the intro or the intro and the outro, we're going to have the same music because I want to invoke a certain kind of relaxation, like a mood that somebody as soon as they hit play, I want them to settle in and listen to the episode. So I think that music is not a necessary component to a podcast. But I do think it is an extra nice touch that is very affordable to do and that it will create a lasting effect. And you can use it in a bunch of different areas within your marketing mix to create that brand familiarity. It's not necessarily like a commercial jingle. But it is created in the sense or I guess in the spirit of creating a commercial jingle, so that you have a familiar sound, in addition to the voice and the face of whoever is speaking on behalf of your company within the podcast. So consider the ads and the products and the services that you want to promote and plan the show itself. So are you going to have a solo show? Are you going to have an interview style show? Are you going to do a combination of the two, that's what I would suggest is doing a combination of the two, because then it gives you an opportunity to share your subject matter expertise, your industry knowledge, and then you can use, you know, interview guests and other conversations to really sort of drive home of the connections that you have the customers that you're speaking to the questions that they have the questions that your leads might have or just in general overall expertise. Say you're a trucking company, you're busy Running Your Trucking Company, but maybe on your podcast, you have somebody that works in trucking insurance, come on your show, and then they're talking about the nuances of what they do and what they offer. And that's very important to you, your drivers, the rest of the company and the rest of the people that you are hoping to reach is having those important conversations that you're might not be necessarily an expert on. So invite those other expert As in that way, you can have a great conversation. It's kind of like the same conversations that you're having in a boardroom, or you know, around your monthly meetings or whatever kind of sort of cadence that you have. But you're recording those conversations, and instead, sharing those with your audience. So plan the show format of what you want it to be. And then that way, it'll help you know, with the promotion, it'll help with, you know, further brand awareness, it'll help with leads with understanding not only the kind of content you're creating, but the kind of services that you offer, too. Okay, we got a couple more here, establish a set recording schedule, I cannot stress this enough that you have to build this into your workday, if you want to prioritize creating content for your business, which I absolutely believe that you should. Businesses that are not actively creating content are going to be left in the dust, especially in the coming years. So you have to with all of the competition that is out on the market, you have to find a way to differentiate yourself. And in a world of AI and chat, GPT. And you know, all of these different software capabilities that are going to help people make content much faster, it's going to help them make the mediocre content much faster. The way to combat all of this different software coming into the mix and sort of being you know, creative writing and ideas and things like that being commoditized is to be authentically yourself, and to promote your company and what you do, and being the face of it, that's how you're going to stand out logistics and supply chain relatively has relative to all other industries still has a long way to go when it comes to content creation. So you can still be that big fish and a little pond with little pond is pretty much how the entire world operates a supply chain and logistics. So I think the last count I saw was 60 podcasts within supply chain as a whole. Now that number will probably move over the 100 mark by the end of 2023. But my argument is, unless there is an actual category within Apple podcasts that says supply chain, there is still a tremendous amount of opportunity for you to grow and for you to create your messaging and to create that brand awareness around your company using a podcast. So thinking about it from that lens, you need to make sure that you're setting a dedicated recording schedule, you have to build it into your work week, your work month, I could say that, you know, recording once a month is doable, and it is but I would suggest once a week, I would suggest building it into your work week, maybe it's a cadence of every Wednesday morning, you're going to record a new episode. And then that way you're releasing a weekly episode that your sales team can use that your marketing team can use that you yourself can use if you're wearing a ton of hats, and you're trying to get more awareness around your company, which I mean, obviously, who isn't trying to get more awareness around their company. So building it into your workday is extremely important. Now there's two different ways that you can sort of tackle this, you can record every single week. And you can just build that into your workday like that. Or you can decide, okay, we're gonna have a 10 episode season, we are going to interview, you know, seven of our top customers and then three sales leaders within the company. So if you did it that way, then you can have seasons instead of a regular weeks. And then that way you can knock out, you know, maybe you spend a week and you knock out a bunch of different episodes all that week and having those conversations and then you can release them at a cadence later on that's comfortable for you. And it could be that weekly cadence, but you're bulk recording. So then that way, it's less time intensive for you to dedicate, you know, once a week. But if you're in the business of sharing industry expertise, if you're in the business of sharing industry updates, and you're regularly sharing those conversations with your customers, it's more than likely that that should be a podcast, because by the time that you do your bulk scheduling, and you do your bulk recording, some of that information might be out of date. Now there's there's value in both of those different formats. And I think you can do a combination of both of those different formats just to make sure that you have that regular content being published. Even if you're not able to record. Let's say you're going to you know, the summer conference season where travel is very high for a lot of folks within our space, going to different conferences, and you're probably not going to be able to hold to that weekly commitment of recording. So you spend one week so you record as much as possible and spend that one week batch recording and then you have episodes that can drop during the times that you're extremely busy. So that's the kind of the way I like to think about it is using a combination approach of batch recording and regular recording. I personally build regular recording every week. So on typically on Wednesdays is when I record now I'm on freight waves now at 10am. So it's super easy for me to jump Apart from having those discussions at 10am, and then at 10:30am, I'm jumping right into an episode just like this. There are other ways that you can handle as well as, as I've kind of already laid out for you. But that's just a couple of different ideas. But whatever you do, you need to stick to a recording schedule. Because once you've stopped publishing, you're forgotten about. So if you want to keep up with the keep up with the Joneses, or keep up with a regular sort of brand awareness campaign, it needs to be you that is recording or managing the process of recording and getting those people together to record on a regular cadence, so that you can be releasing at least one episode every single week, I think that that is the strongest case for cadence wise is once a week, once a month is a little I don't think it's enough. But you could stretch it out, say if it's an impactful webinar, that's an hour long, then you could cut that up into different social media clips, and use that to really drive at home, maybe once a month, every two weeks. But if I'm recommending any company out there, with the influx of all of this different content with the influx of AI and all of these different tools, you really need to be focused on once a week. And then that way you can keep up with the insatiable demand for not only just content, but also just information in edutainment, which is a kind of a combination of, you know, entertainment, and information, educational content. So mashing those all together, sort of think about it as like your Venn diagram, and then hone that in lock that in with a dedicated recording schedule, and you will be miles ahead than the overwhelming majority of companies in this country that are trying to and they're spending probably 1000s, sometimes millions of dollars on advertisement that you could be getting, you know, the exact same benefit. And all it costs is your time and a little bit of an investment, you know, from an equipment standpoint, or a software standpoint. And when I say a little bit of an investment, from an equipment standpoint, you're probably looking at about, I would say 200 bucks, a decent webcam, your cell phone can serve as a webcam, but the microphone is extremely important. And then after that, you really sort of judge your costs based on if you have somebody internally that can handle the editing process of your shows and of your content, or you just outsource it to a freelancer, which that's becoming increasingly affordable. I have seen prices anywhere from, you know, 400 bucks to 1000 bucks a month. And what they do is they watch your content, they pick out different moments within the show that you're speaking really passionate about something, or that you make a really great point about something, and they will isolate that clip. And that's your social media clip. So then that way, ideally, from a founder perspective, or from a marketing manager perspective, you can wake up in the morning, and you can look at a Google Drive folder or dropbox folder. And you can just see a list or a full folder filled with clips of whatever you're feeling that day. And you can pull that clip, upload it right to LinkedIn, upload it to Twitter, tick tock, you know, YouTube shorts, whichever your platform of choice, and you can add a bit of commentary to it. And then that's your entire distribution process, you build it into your workday, and you are going to succeed at a much higher rate than the majority of your competition, because the overwhelming majority of your competition is not doing this right now. So that's how you can gain a leg up is by having these different processes in place. Don't let the fear of equipment or the fear of perfection sort of hold you back. And then you will gain more information from your customers from your leads and from your prospects that you can further enhance and tweak your process as you move forward. But building it into your workday is probably the most important tip that I can give to anyone is to build the podcast, have it at the forefront of your mind, build it into your work week of the recording schedule. And then from a distribution standpoint, you can think about it from when I wake up in the morning. The first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to pick a social media clip. And I'm going to write a quick caption not quick, but the text that you accompany with the video is just as important as the video itself because no one's going to watch the video unless the text is intriguing to them. So having those different things added to your content marketing mix, and building it into your workday is the best place for companies to be in 2023 If you're trying to create a podcast with the goal of getting leads at the end of the day, but there's still all of the work that has to be done such as scheduling guests coordinating topics, you know, getting the editing process down distributing to social media. All of these are, you know, key parts of getting someone to come to your website and eventually becoming a lead. So but once you have those different processes ironed out, then it makes things much more smoothly and you can get into a really good groove because podcasting is like any other thing. The only way you're going to get better at it is to keep doing it and to keep doing it and to refine your processes and tweak them along the way. And that's kind of encompasses my final tip and leave room to improve your processes. Continuously assess and refine your processes to ensure that you are using the most efficient and effective methods. Remember that what works for you or a client may not work for everyone. So be open to trying new approaches, you know, a show like this, all of this or an episode like this, all of this might not be applicable to your process to what you want to do things, but they are merely given as ideas, that if you already have started a podcast, or you're thinking about starting one, that this is a really good place where you could start. And then that way you can tweak it as you go, so that it benefits you it benefits your company. And obviously, hopefully, it benefits your audience because then that audience turns into brand evangelists or they turn into customers, which is ultimately what we want at the end of the day. Now that about does it for this week's episode, be sure to tune into everything is logistics.com, you can check out that website to find all of my socials. And also I'm going to link in the show notes. We have a course on digital dispatch.io, where you can create a videocast. So if you want this in more of a structured environment, I have a free course on my website. I'll link it in the show notes. It's how to create a video cast and it basically encompasses everything that we just talked about, but in much more of a structured standpoint. And then from there, you can really hone in on what your process is going to look like and how you're going to achieve your podcasting goals for 2023 and beyond. So hopefully you enjoyed this conversation. Once again, my name is Blythe Brumleve And I hope to see you all real soon
