Episode Summary
Over the last couple of years, podcasts have become an indispensable marketing tool. They are practically a gold mine of content that allows you to reach new audiences, drive engagement to your website and provide a ton of value.
But podcasting requires a bit more involvement than just speaking into the microphone. It takes research, strategic effort, and some technical expertise to get your podcast on the right track.
In the latest episode of Recorded Content, Tristan welcomes John Tyreman, podcast expert and host of the Digital Marketing Troop podcast. They get into the technical side of podcasting, how to ensure that you’re consistently putting out quality content and why a podcast is a great way to highlight the experts within your organization.
Guest Profile
- Name: John Tyreman
- What he does: John is the host of the Digital Marketing Troop podcast and the Director of Marketing at Silverback Strategies.
- Company: Silverback Strategies
- Noteworthy: Digital Marketing Troop is not John's first experience with hosting a podcast. He was also a co-host of The Visible Expert Podcast at his previous agency.
Key Insights
- Audiograms are a great way to create buzz around your podcast on social media. John explains why distribution is a critical part of podcasting and how you can get the word out by posting audiograms on social media. These little pieces of content can pique your audience's interest and get them excited. "An audiogram is simply a video with captions and a wavelength visual. We take about one- to two-minute clips, and we put those videos out on social media. [...] And so people saw it, they saw it's a little bit more tangible and digestible, and they started seeing the buzz."
- Podcasting is easier and faster to do than blogging. John explains why their podcast has become the centerpiece of their marketing strategy. Not only is it easier to make, but it's also a rich source of quality content that they can repurpose into other types of content over and over again. "It's easier for our internal experts to come on and record a 20-minute podcast than it is to write a blog post and spend four or five hours doing that. So the podcast has become the hub in a hub-and-spoke flywheel approach."
- There's more to podcasting than just hosting: from market research and content distribution to finding guests and creating buzz around it. John reflects on the most challenging part of podcasting for him — the technical details. "As anybody who launches a podcast knows, getting reviewed by Apple is the biggest hurdle. So that was the biggest hurdle for us: the technical side of getting set up on all of those different platforms because that review process takes so long. And then there were other technical problems like Apple couldn't read our RSS feed, and so we had to troubleshoot all that stuff."
“It’s more than just pushing it out on social.”
John Tyreman
Director of Marketing
Silverback Strategies
Episode Highlights
You Need to Make the Expertise of Your Experts Visible
“We’re a digital marketing agency, and we specialize in search, social, content, and analytics, which are some pretty technical services for marketers. We’re in the business of selling expertise.
Based on everything that I learned about visible experts and selling expertise, I realised that what we needed to do was to make the expertise of the experts visible.
The first year at Silverback, we went through different ideas on how we can take our internal subject matter experts, bottle up their expertise and package it in a way that’s digestible to our target audience.
And what we found was that it’s easier to record a 20-minute podcast episode than it is to spend four to five hours writing a blog post.”
Have Fun With Your Podcast
“When we first started out, we were testing out a few different concepts. So one of them (and this is one that didn’t really work out) was to have two experts that had opposing viewpoints and we wanted to make it more like a debate.
And what happened was that we just had fun with it. We got people together, and we just recorded conversations.
And it’s naturally sort of gravitated to talking about a specific topic in the digital marketing world. So if we’re talking about SEO, one episode may be about keyword research while another episode may be about Google’s Core Web Vitals.”
Podcasting is Also About Distribution
“Really getting it off the ground and then getting internal buzz around it — that’s one of the biggest things [when it comes to podcasting]. When you launch a podcast, it’s great to get that first episode out, but then you’ve got to get people listening to it.
And then if you get folks excited about it, then more and more people are likely to say, ‘Hey, you know what, I’ll be on the podcast.’ And then it starts to snowball.”
Hosting Internal Guests is a Great Way to Ensure Podcast Consistency
“We wanted to have a weekly podcast, and starting out, that’s fairly aggressive. And I’m finding that interviews for a weekly show can be hard.
And so having all our internal experts willing to jump on a Zoom has been really instrumental to helping us hit that weekly cadence. And over the past couple of months, the number one reason we’ve been able to see the show take off is that we’ve been able to deliver on a weekly [basis].”
As a host, I Like to Adapt to the Guests and Their Style
“If you are reliant on subject-matter experts to create content, whether it’s a blog post or a podcast, the process is remarkably different based on the personality and skill sets of the expert.
So every one of our guests on the show prepares differently for the podcast. Some folks want the questions ahead of time. Some folks are like, ‘Hey, cool. Give me a rough outline, and that’s okay.’
With some folks, I’ll give them the questions, and then they’ll go in and write detailed notes, which is great because then it gives me fuel for follow-up questions.”
Podcasting Can Help You to Become Better At Your Job
“I’m in a unique position — marketing to other marketers. And so, to some extent, I fit the profile of our target audience.
So, these podcast episodes where I interview these subject-matter experts, I’m trying to learn more about marketing and digital marketing so that I can be a better marketer.
And I think that’s the biggest benefit for me: I take away these nuggets about SEO, paid media, content strategy, and then I can go and implement some of these things. These experts are helping clients generate leads and new revenue.
So I know that they’ve got the skills and if I can just tap into them a little bit, I can then apply those skills. And I’m curious enough to learn more about it. If I find value from the podcast, I know that our listeners and other marketers are going to find value from it.”
