RYB 886: Should I Start A Podcast or Blog For My Brand? Jam Session

00:01 Yes, what time it is? Friday jam.

00:05 Wait. Hey. Hey, what's up everyone. Welcome to the Rocky brand podcast. I'm your host, Scott Voelker, a serial entrepreneur on a mission to help you. This show is designed to teach you to inspire you, to motivate you, to take massive action and build a future proof business. So whether you're just starting out or taking your existing business to the next level, this is your home. Now, if you're ready, I'm ready. Let's rock your brand. What's up everyone.

00:37 Welcome to this Friday jam session, super excited. You're here. And if you haven't heard me say it before, I'm going to say it right now. This is probably one of the highlights of my week because I get to hang out with some cool people every single Friday and answer some really awesome questions. Now you might be asking Scott, how do I get my question answered? Well, all you need to do is become part of our take action crew. How do you do that? Very easy head on over to take action crew.com. It's totally free. And we do it every single Friday and it is a blast. So what you're about to listen to is one that we did last week. So this way here, even if you can't attend, you can always show up here to the rock, your brand podcast, and listen to our live jam session.

01:25 All right, guys. So sit back, relax and let's jam. All right, guys. Welcome back to another Friday jam session. As you guys know, this is one of the highlights of my week because I get to hang out with some really cool people and we get to answer some really cool questions. And today's topic is definitely one that I have not ever talked about. At least I don't recall talking about it. And that is, and this question came in from the rock, your brand private Facebook group, and it came in from Mark and he asked and he asked everyone really was questioned for all you brand creators. Should I start a podcast? And then he went on to talk a little bit about his current brand. I have a very small PL private label brand with an email list of 2,400 and currently get over 2000 monthly pages on my website.

02:15 What will I get out of starting a podcast? My main concern is that I already have a regular full time job, meaning I have limited time to work on my brand is starting a podcast worth the time and effort. There are already podcasts out there that educate people in my niche. So at least I know there is some demand for podcasts content, glad to be part of this awesome group of take action owners. So love it. Great question. And then immediately we had a whole bunch of comments that came in from this thread and it was a really good question. Actually, Kyle had said, do you want a podcast? Like, I think that's a great question because if you don't want to podcast, it is going to require. Time is going to require you to show up consistently. And that goes for anything. If you're going to start you tubing, do you want to shoot videos?

03:07 If you're going to blog, do you want to post on, you know, a website as a blog post? Like you have to ask yourself these questions, but the thing that I want to do, and that's also what was happening here in this thread was you really have to figure out why you're doing it. And then what does it look like as far as getting traffic? So that's what I want to talk about here now. It's funny. Cause then Mark came in and said, uh, Kyle, uh, I'm toying with the idea of being or of it being another way of gaining traffic. Right? And then Kyle had said, if the, if the thought of doing a podcast gets you excited, then do it. And I agree, right? And then he's, uh, Diane says good advice. But then Mark came back and said, uh, I'm pretty much a one man operation.

03:56 So I'm worried that a podcast takes a lot of time and effort and with a full time job already, my time is limited. Right? And so here's what I want to, here's what I want to say to this. All right. And this is what everyone should understand about podcasting. Podcasting is a great platform to build relationships with your audience, okay. With your, you know, people in your market. Okay. It's a great way to really build a deeper, a deeper connection, a, a different type of relationship. All right. But it's not going to be something that you're going to create an episode. And then people are going to go search and find you. Now, do people go in iTunes or Stitcher or Spotify or any of those and do they search for topics maybe, but not, not as much as people that are referred to a podcast, right?

04:55 Or someone that recommends the podcast, or maybe you just stumble on it because you were doing some research and then you stumbled on a blog post that you also found out that they have a podcast. Right. But very rarely are you going to go to iTunes and search, uh, you know, whatever, how to catch more bass in a pond, right? It's just, it's not that way. All right. So what I would say is, if you are thinking of doing a podcast, number one, you need to commit to it. And I would say one episode per week, just like one blog post per week, one YouTube video per week, whatever it is one episode one post per week. Okay. But if you are thinking to yourself, I'm doing this as a way to get organic traffic, you have to ask yourself, how are people finding you?

05:49 And if it's through the way that I just explained, like going to iTunes and stuff, I wouldn't go that route. I think your time would be better. Well spent on creating a piece of written content that could be indexed by Google, that lives on a member. If you're looking for people to come to your website by an organic search, it's not going to be through a podcast. Okay. Now, if you already are up and running and you are writing blog posts or having them written, and maybe you are doing a YouTube video, or maybe, maybe you're not, maybe you're just doing written content and you're like, you know what? I've got an email list. I want to start really engaging with this email list. And I want to start spreading the word about the podcast. And then what that will do is it will be at build a deeper connection, a deeper relationship, the know like, and trust element for your audience.

06:42 Right. And it's pretty easy actually to do a podcast. I say easy. It's not hard, right? I mean, they make it super easy nowadays. Like you can literally just grab a decent mic for a hundred bucks, 200 bucks. You know, you don't need an elaborate setup. You can buy a mic for a hundred bucks or less a little stand, right. And you can record right into your computer, on garage band or, uh, you know, there's a few other ones that are free out there. Um, but it's not that hard. And the quality can be pretty clean. Okay. That's not the hard part. The hard part is, are you going to be able to commit doing this also without the expectations that you're going to get floods of traffic from it. Now, the other part of a podcast is in order to get your podcasts out there, you either a need an email list to then let them know that you have a new podcast, because what this will do then is it will help you rank inside of iTunes or Stitcher or wherever.

07:40 And then that will give you more eyeballs. Okay. Because if someone's searching or listening, let's, let's not even say searching. If they're listening to a podcast and yours comes up like related podcasts, that could be a way to get traffic. Right. Um, but I wouldn't say it'd be more of a search. It'd be more of like, if you like this podcast, you'll like this, it's kind of like a related one. Uh, so that's just some things to think about. All right. But I do like it. If you're looking to take this longterm and build a relationship, but if you have the email list, it's a great way for you to show up and then be with that audience. And they really get to know you, like you guys that are listening to this right now. And if you're listen to this on the podcast and you know what I mean?

08:26 Right. You know, a lot, not about me. You can hear the inflection in my voice, you know, the type of person I am, you know, if you like me or you don't right. You know, a little bit about my personal life, you know, I just had a new granddaughter, you know, you know, you know, I've been married for 26 years. I've got three kids, you know, all that stuff that it takes the level of trust up a notch. Right. But if I'm starting from scratch, I'm not just starting a podcast because that, that doesn't yeah. Necessarily get me found in. Okay. So what I ended up doing with this podcast, when I first started, it is there was no expectations that I was going to do anything as far as like, as what I built it into. Now I had no idea. I just knew that I already had my other stuff running.

09:12 I had other online businesses that were providing, you know, uh, you know, freedom for myself and my family. They were paying the bills and we were doing good. Right. The podcasts was more of a hobby for me at that time. I'm like, you know what, I'm doing this thing over here, I'm going to record it. I like jumping on the mic. This is a jam session. I like to be in front of people and helping people. Right. It's a stage, it's a platform. So I'm just going to do it and have fun with it. And wherever it goes, it goes like that was it. Wasn't like it was going to be a huge time thing for me. Right. It was something that I was looking forward to. Cause it was fun. Okay. And then from there I allowed the podcast to grow with the email list that I was building and then let people know about a new episode.

09:55 But the other thing that a podcast will do for you is it will open doors in your market. So if you wanted to do one episode a week and interview someone that's in your market, well, now what this does is yes, it gives you a piece of content that can be on a podcast. You can also turn that into a video, put it up on YouTube and you can transcribe it or have show notes made where then you put it up on your blog post. And you're having people that are in the industry come over to basically share their knowledge and their expertise. Right. So you have to ask yourself that question. And that's the same question that Kyle asked, you know, do you want to do a podcast? And if so, why? Well, you know, market said, I want to get organic traffic. Well, if that's probably not the best use of your time is what I would say.

10:43 Right. But if you have a little bit of time and it doesn't take long, I mean, if you're, if you're talking, if you have an, an extra hour per week, you could start a podcast. Once you get the setup done, it's kind of like, if you do Pinterest, right? If you get everything set up after that, the running of it is pretty simple. It's just the setup. Once you're building a website, right. Getting it set up, it takes a little bit more time. Once it's set up, now we just add content to it. Right. So always the beginning stages are a little bit not hard, but they just, they take more time once you get it set up. And it's like, okay, like right now I'm recording this episode. It's going to basically, uh, it's going to end. And then it's going to go up into a Dropbox folder.

11:27 And then from there, I'm going to have it edited. And I'm going to have the show notes created and it's going to be basically scheduled. Right. So I'm not after I'm done here. I'm pretty much just downloading this file, uploading it to Dropbox. And I'm done because I've had that outsourced. Right. So it doesn't, it's not a lot of work for me. I'm sitting down here doing this and then I'm going to publish it and that's it. I'm done. Right. But now there's also going to be a blog post that's created for this. That's going to reside on the website so people could find it that way. Or I can direct people there. There's also going to be people listening to this that are like, Oh, Scott, I was referred to you by so-and-so because I heard you on another podcast, which is another point that if you have a podcast, it's, it's a lot easier to then get exposure on other people's podcasts.

12:14 Because now you can say, Hey, I'll be on yours. If you'll be on mine, right. You can start to trade that and you build connections in your marketplace. So if you wanted to promote your podcast the best way to do that, which I actually got to do a better job here. I kinda slacked a little bit over the past year is getting on more podcasts. Right. It's just getting yourself out there on more podcasts. Cause if people are listening to podcasts, right, they probably would want to listen to yours if you're interesting. Right? So those are some things to think about. Should you start a podcast for your brand? And the next question would be, why do you want to start a podcast for your brand? Right? And then what are your expectations? Right. If you're thinking, I'm going to start about guessing, I'm going to get hundreds of thousands of downloads, right.

13:00 That's probably not a realistic, you know, out of the gate, like, you know, projection on what you think you can do. Okay. It's just not. And honestly, if you get a thousand downloads a month, just think about that. That's a thousand people that are listening to you. That I would, I would definitely say that those people are more interested in listening longer than a YouTube video. We all know if you're watching YouTube, you're like, look, and you see how long it is. And you're like, Oh man, that thing's like 12 minutes. I don't have 12 minutes to listen to that darn thing. Or you start listening to it. And then all of a sudden you see something else that catches your eye or you get a notification you've listened to the podcast. It's usually on a walk at the gym, in the, in the airplane, uh, in the train, in the car, whatever, you're just, you're in the podcast, you know, feed.

13:49 And that's it. There's not really a lot of distractions other than, you know, maybe your wife or your husband coming in and going, Hey, dinner's ready. You know? And then you're like, Oh, okay, I'll be right there. I'm just gonna finish this part of the episode or whatever. Right. So it fully definitely. And I've, that's what I've found. It definitely helps to build the relationship deeper. Okay. So just understand that is a huge, huge part of a podcast. And I would encourage you to do it if you are looking for the long term effects of this. Okay. Also, it's a great way for you to get questions. So I'm doing this podcast off of a question, right? So this question came in, you know, should I start a podcast? The title of this episode is, should I start a podcast for my brand? Right. So this came in from Mark.

14:38 Now, get, it gave me content ideas on what I could create. Now I'm creating it. This piece of content will live on it's on the podcast, it's on the, it's on the, uh, uh, the blog. Right. And, uh, yeah, so it's going to be there and now I can, I could post on Facebook about it, let people know in the group that I did, you know, that I, I, I talked about this, right? So there's all of these things that come with it, but you got to ask yourself, why do I want to do it? And if you're doing it just for the organic traffic thing, I would probably say, don't do it. And do do the other thing first, do the, uh, you know, the blog post, maybe some Pinterest to amplify the content, right. Maybe a YouTube video that could then also add to the blog post.

15:25 But the podcast thing, that's kind of like out there a little bit, because it doesn't give me a direct, you know, organic search is what I'm trying to say. All right. So again, think about that. If you're thinking about starting a podcast, ask yourself those questions. Okay. And if the answer is, yeah, I want to do it, or yeah, I think it would be fun. And, you know, I would love to connect with, you know, some people in my, in my audience then by all means do it, you know, it's, there's, there's nothing you're going to lose from it just a little bit of time. But if you, if you think you would enjoy it, then do it. You know, there's nothing stopping you. But I just want you to think about those things before you end up committing to one more thing. All right.

16:06 So I hope that helped you. If you do want to create one. Well, let me know. I'd love to listen to it. And, uh, I'll let you know how it is. You can always post that in the rock, your brand, private Facebook group. If you're listening to this on the podcast and you want to be part of our Friday jam sessions, all you need to do is head over to brand creators.com forward slash R Y B. And that will take you over to the group. You will have to request to join. And then from there answer a few questions and we'll get you approved. All right. So just head on over there and join. I'd love to see you there on our Friday jam sessions. Alright, well, I hope that you enjoyed that Friday jam session. And like I said, in the beginning, if you want to attend one of our live Friday jam sessions, all you need to do is head on over to take action crew.com.

16:54 That is where we show up every Friday, 10:00 AM, Eastern time, and you can join us. You can ask a question and then, uh, I can answer it and we can go ahead and also publish it here on the podcast. So once again, I just want to say, thank you so much for listening. This is always one of the highlights of my week. And until next time, remember, I'm here for you. I believe in you and I am rooting for you, but you have, you have to come on, say it with me, say it loud, say it. Proud. Take action. Have an awesome, amazing day. And I'll see you right back here on the next episode. Now go right your brand.