Using podcasts as a way to build your own personal brand with Ashley Levesque

Episode Summary

There are many different ways to build a personal brand – from publishing social media posts to establishing yourself as a keynote speaker. However, there is one method that not many marketers use to its fullest potential – podcasts. So why and how have podcasts become one of the most powerful ways for building a personal brand?

“Podcasts give me access to people smarter than me,” says Ashley Levesque, the VP of Marketing at Banzai and the Host of SaaS Breakthrough Podcast. Ashley believes that podcasts help both marketers and brands learn about cutting-edge tactics through genuine conversations. Podcasts also enable hosts to meet many inspirational people and connect industry leaders with their audience.

In this episode of Rep Your Brand, Ashley Levesque and Nick Bennett, who used to co-host a podcast together, talk about personal branding and the best ways to engage with your audience through social posts.

Guest Profile

Key Insights

Personal branding is about people leveraging themselves as economic products. Ashley finds inspiration in Donald Miller's work, from whom she learned a lot about branding, marketing, and the importance of simplicity in conversations. "I like to steal from Donald Miller, who says that value-driven, successful people viewed themselves as economic products on the open market. This is how I think about personal branding on LinkedIn, the most common platform we think about when we talk about personal brands. It's a highly visible and engaging channel where people leverage themselves as economic products by creating content that matters to other people, content that engages or connects them back to their market, to the industry that they're working in."
Podcasts are an exceptional way to build relationships. According to Ashley, podcasts are the best way to engage with your audience and create a personal brand. In fact, they are more powerful than blogging or writing because they promote two-way communication. "Podcasts are communication platforms that go both ways. And I think it's a great opportunity for marketers to practice those skills. As a host, I am a sponge of these incredible people I talk to every day, who level me up as a marketer and a leader. I'm learning things I never would be able to learn. Podcasts are like these inside looks, like these intimate peering behind the curtain of what's going on in other people's businesses and departments that you wouldn't otherwise have access to."
My posts are in the form of questions because I am curious. Ashley posts actively on social media, and her posts are not like everyone else's. She describes herself as a curious person, and her posts are in the form of questions, which helps her become better at what she does. "I want to understand how the world works. I want to understand how people work. I think that makes me a better marketer and certainly a better leader. I like to make observations about things, and I like to pose them as questions in order to learn if anyone else is observing the same thing and seeing if people have solutions."

“I’m a big believer that brand and culture are actually the same thing.”

Ashley Levesque

VP of Marketing

Banzai

Episode Highlights

A Recipe for Success – Simplify and Win

“I’ve always been a Donald Miller fan, all the way back from StoryBrand. I think he teaches us and reminds us of the power of simplicity and how messaging, conversations and communication can be boiled down and should be boiled down to their simplest form. And I think a lot of other marketers empathize and relate to this. Brené Brown says, ‘Clear as kind.’ That’s one of the mottos of leadership, which I think is what Donald Miller says, ‘If you confuse, you lose.’

The idea is that we need to figure out a way to more clearly communicate with one another, whether that’s internally or externally, and for successful businesses and successful leaders, it has to be both.”

Podcasts Can Help Leaders and Marketers Improve Their Skills

“I think a lot of marketers start their marketing career with written work. I think a lot of people start from writing blog posts, writing email copy. And I think what we lose is comfort and confidence in actual engagement marketing and building relationships through engaging two-way platforms. Podcasts are an exceptional way to do that. Both as a host and as a guest, you get used to clarifying your message in a conversation, active listening, being able to respond appropriately to the questions that are coming your way, and being able to have a real conversation with somebody.

Podcasts helped me by giving me access to people smarter than me. That’s my goal in life. I want to be in a room where I’m not the smartest person in the room constantly. And I want to talk to people who have something to teach me, and everyone does. Everyone has something to offer someone else. Some of the opportunities I’ve been presented to learn from some of the smartest people in our industry, everything from marketing skills, sales skills, business skills, leadership skills, soft skills to how to have hard conversations. All of this has been a great opportunity, and I feel very lucky to be able to do it.”

A Video is Worth a Thousand Words

“What we love to do more than anything are video snippets because, again, podcasting is a two-way communication channel. And I think video is the visualization of that. Some of the things are lost in audio form, but that’s why we do video. We post that on all of our social channels, including YouTube, as it makes it more accessible for people to see whether this is going to be something that’s valuable for them or whether they want to engage with a full episode.

Video gives them great insight into the types of guests and the host. This is also what I do for webinar promotions. We don’t want to be in a position where we’re pulling the wool over people’s eyes. They show up, and it’s something different than what they expected. So, I think video is such a clean, easy way to show them what’s coming.”

Ask Questions in Your Posts to Understand How World Works

“I think one of the best things that we can do as marketers is continuing this growth mindset of not needing to have all the answers. And one of the things I struggle with on LinkedIn is people showing up consistently with just answers. They only have answers, and they’re posting about it on LinkedIn to share how smart they are with the rest of LinkedIn.

And that’s fine for some people. I’m not super interested in that, mostly because I don’t have any answers, and I don’t want to pretend like I do. But I do have a lot of opinions, and I do have a lot of questions, and those are usually the things that lead me to what I’m going to post. I like to be controversial sometimes, and I’ll post about why we’re not publicly posting employee salaries.”

A Valuable Piece of Advice for Anyone Who Posts for the First Time

“Post something that you are experiencing personally, and don’t worry about what everybody else is talking about on LinkedIn. Don’t feel like you have to join someone else’s conversation. Just start your own. Post something that you are witnessing, observing, experiencing, and feeling. It will be more authentic that way.

If you can speak to your own true experience, it will make you feel more confident rather than feeling like you have to conform to somebody else’s topic, industry, or format – just do your own thing.”