Why Repurpose?
Once you have your podcast up and running, you have a resource most don’t utilise. In this episode we’ll expose potential areas for “free” content. Why would you do this? Other than work for its own sake which I never advocate for, each of these techniques will add to your site’s search engine optimisation. Your site, containing your episodes, will with many of the things we’re about to cover, become more easily discoverable online which is the point of your website.
Not everything that follows will be viable for each advocacy service. These things take time. AI is providing more options for time saving but even then, these things take time. Time you may not have lying around in the stationary cupboard to pull out and use. So I’d pick one suggestion and go with that. Once you have systematised it, move onto another and so on.
Bearing in mind a podcast will be marketing for you for years, even decades once you have it up and running, the suggestions I’m making today are added bonuses from that long term marketing tool known as “Your Podcast”.
- Blog Posts with Episode Summaries and Key Takeaways:
- Detailed Summaries: Go beyond a simple overview. Write a comprehensive summary that captures the essence of the episode, including the main arguments, stories and insights shared.
- Timestamp Navigation: Break down the episode into segments with clear headings and timestamps. This is the same as creating chapters in a Youtube video. It has its place, especially in a longer episode and/or an episode with multiple guests. This allows readers to quickly find specific parts of the audio and drives them to the episode.
- Key Takeaways Section: Create a dedicated section with bullet points highlighting the most important takeaways. This makes it easy for readers to grasp the core message of the episode at a glance. This might be a useful addition to the end of each audio episode too. Summarising and reinforcing the episode followed by a Call To Action based on the summary would be a perfect ending to an episode. This leads nicely onto our next point:
- Call to Action CTA: Include a strong call to action at the end of the blog post, show notes, episode and prominently on your website. The most valuable CTA known to the interwebs is something that collects email addresses. You give away a valuable freebie and in exchange people give you their email address under the full knowledge you will be sending them emails. Make this explicit! Why is an email list important? There’s a few reasons. Hosts go down, algorithms change, things happen over which we have no control so we need a way to contact our listeners directly. So if we change podcast hosting providers and there may be a delay, if we have a function upcoming or if we need to stay in touch with people, nothing and I mean nothing is better for this than an email list. Focus your CTAs on this and you can let people know everything else you want them too through your emails.
- SEO Optimization: I mentioned SEO earlier. There’s a huge amount of, well not ink, but electrons, spilt on this topic. Over the years I’ve tried all sorts of things and come back to one simple solution. “Make sure you are answering a question someone is asking online.” You then use the words from that question throughout the post in a natural manner. It is obvious when keyword stuffing has occurred and google, in particular, takes a dim view of this practice. It’s also painful to read. Be natural, solve people’s problems and you’ll be set.
- Visual Enhancements: Add relevant images, graphs or charts to break up the text and make the blog post more visually appealing.
- Downloadable Transcripts: Offer downloadable transcripts in PDF format to make the content accessible to those who prefer reading or have hearing impairments. Apple podcasts now provides a transcript of variable quality unless you have a “standard” American accent. I shudder to think what they do with a Glaswegian accent, they’re not real good on an Australian. I provide a transcript as the basic blog post to accompany each episode and provide a link in the show notes on the podcatcher. Here’s a tip, not all podcatchers will display all links, especially the “Click Here” type. They will though display naked links: www.jmps.au/s18e1 for instance.
- Infographics and Data Visualizations:
- Data Extraction: Identify key data points or statistics discussed in the episode and create graphs, charts etc to accompany the supporting blog post.
- Visual Representation: Choose the appropriate type of visualisation to represent the data, such as bar charts, pie charts, line graphs or maps.
- Design for Clarity: Ensure the infographic is easy to read and understand with clear labels and concise text.
- Branding Consistency: Use your service’s branding colours and fonts to maintain a consistent visual identity.
- Shareable Formats: Create infographics in formats that are easily shareable on social media and websites, such as PNG or JPEG.
- “Quote Cards” for Social Media:
- Quote Selection: Choose quotes that are relevant, differ from the norm without being incorrect or thought-provoking.
- Design Aesthetics: Use eye-catching fonts, colors and graphics to create visually appealing quote cards without punching people in the eyes. Stick to your brand colour scheme if you have one.
- Branding Elements: Include your service’s logo and website address on the quote card.
- Attribution: Clearly attribute the quote. Credit where it’s due.
- Platform Variation: Adjust the size and format of the quote card to fit the specific social media platform. I’d pick one platform and master that first. Say Linkedin and learn the system there. Trying to cover everything from Linkedin to Tiktok will drive you mad or, at least, take much of your time.
- Scheduling and Consistency: Schedule regular posts of quote cards to maintain a consistent presence on social media. Remember: Consistency has a power of its own.”
- “Behind-the-Scenes” Content:
- Recording Session Snippets: Share short clips of the recording session, showing how the sausage is made. Bloopers have their place but be aware, humour is a tricky thing.
- Episode Preparation: Offer insights into the research and preparation that goes into each episode. You can take this too far but once in a while this sort of episode has its place.
- Guest Introductions: If you have an interview upcoming, introduce the guest before the episode airs, sharing their background and expertise. A blog post or a “bonus” episode of a few minutes to prime the audience and raise excitement might be a useful thing to do.
- Team Introductions: Introduce the team behind the podcast, highlighting their roles and contributions.
- Q&A Sessions: Host live Q&A sessions on Zoom, or if you had no other choice, Teams to answer listeners’ questions about the podcast. You could and probably should record this and edit into an episode. Do not leave the “It’s great to see NAME from LOCATION here today” parts in, they provide no value and waste the listener’s time.
- Email Marketing with Podcast Updates:
- Personalised Subject Lines: Use personalized subject lines to increase open rates.
- Episode Summaries: Provide brief summaries of the latest podcast episodes, highlighting key takeaways.
- Call to Action: Include a clear call to action, such as “Please share this email with your friends”
- Link Tracking: Track click-through rates to measure the effectiveness of your email campaigns.
- Develop Slide Decks for Presentations or Workshops:
- Content Organization: Organize the content from the episode into a logical and coherent slide deck for later use in presentations.
- Speaker Notes: Add speaker notes to each slide to provide additional context and information.
- Branding Consistency: Maintain a consistent visual identity with your service’s branding.
- Downloadable Resources: Offer the slide deck as a downloadable resource in exchange for an email address.
- Develop “Mini-Courses” Based on Podcast Content:
- Curriculum Development: Create a structured curriculum that covers the key topics discussed in a podcast season.
- Downloadable Resources: Include downloadable resources, such as worksheets, checklists or templates and links to the episodes for deeper immersion in the subject.
- Interactive Exercises: Incorporate interactive exercises to reinforce learning. Checklists for learners to follow and create their own content, quizzes and feedback forms would all be examples of these.
- Community Building: Create a community forum or group where participants can connect and share their experiences. Create a virtual classroom/cafe, in effect for the sharing of info and questions.
- Course Delivery: You could use email automation to deliver the mini-course content and engage with participants. There are any number of WordPress plugins for course creators that would do the job for free and would have the students returning to your website for each module. That’s a great way to keep them involved with both you and their course.
That’s a brief overview of the just seven possible content repurposing options from your podcast. From the basic accompanying blog post/transcript to socials to mini courses, the choices are only limited by your imagination. As I stated earlier, pick one option and perfect that before branching out to any of the others. The key thing to remember is your podcast is a long term marketing tool. It can provide the backbone of your marketing efforts while fueling these repurposing activities.
If you’re ready to start your service’s podcast I’ve put together a checklist to give you some idea of what’s involved. Link in the show notes: https://jmps.au/list1/
Checklist to get you started in podcasting!
Thanks for listening and I’ll be back next week.