October 24, 2023
How can you get the most out of a podcast appearance?
Ever since Covid, I have been doing lots of in-person interviews – at BBQ places, Fish Shacks, breweries. Face-to-face presents ways to chat with guests that Zoom just doesn’t provide. Most guests ask how they can leverage their appearance to increase reach and improve brand awareness for their company.
Let me share with you four ways to take advantage of your podcast appearance.
- Tell the story visually
- Be specific
- Make it easy to reach you
- Ask
One: tell the story visually
I realize this is counter-intuitive, but our small human brains react to images much better than audio or text. Studies have shown that your optic nerve is 40x faster than your audio nerve.
So . . .Make sure you have a great publicity photo. I have changed the publicity photo on LinkedIn for clients and have seen their followers double.
Even better, get a photo doing the podcast face-to-face; it’s not that difficult. You can ask the podcast producer if they can record at a conference. The “where” is not important.
LOGO When you do your promotion, people will see the image first. An image of a guest in a Zoom and an image of a guest in front of a microphone with a logo is like night and day.
You need three elements for a successful on-site interview: a microphone with a logo, a professional photographer, and an audio engineer.
MICROPHONE – A “flag” is the logo that appears on a microphone – make sure you have one.
PHOTOGRAPHER: The professional photographer will get you fantastic images for promotion, but also the pictures for your LinkedIn profile, and your website. You can use the pictures when you ask to get on other podcasts.
AUDIO An audio engineer using a directional microphone can bring life to the interview. The listener hears noises in the background, it makes the interview authentic.
Two: be specific in your comments
“It’s the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs.” Hans Solo
In order to be terrific, you gotta be specific. Before the interview, rehearse a short “origin” story and a “customer benefit” story, include details and colorful language.
Example that needs work:
“Yeah, we have been in business for a while now”
Better:
“We were founded in 2016 by two Google engineers who had a better idea of how to manage networks.”
From there, develop statistics about the problem you solve. Listeners will remember the story, but the numbers will make it emotionally comfortable to justify listening to the podcast.
Covid has really had an impact on system administrators managing cloud applications; how has Covid impacted your log volumes?
Example that needs work:
“Many companies have increased the numbers they manage in their logs”
Better:
“Before Covid we were managing 200GB per day in log data; after Covid, we now manage 100TB a day in log data”
Three: make it easy to reach you
“Sure, you can get the PDF at: www.yoursite.com/?/post/2021/12/08/$5982-!#_ref;di(@%”
Last week I was listening to a podcast and, at the end of the interview, the moderator asked the guest, “how can my audience reach you?” Unbelievably, the guest rattled off a class definition of a URL. To wit,
“you can go to H T T P slash W W W company name. D O T C O M”
Too hard to remember. People from large companies and from small companies make this mistake.
Example that needs work”
“Just look me up on Google, my name is Dennis Szymanski.”
Better:
“I got a tough last name, Szymanski. The best way to contact me is with my website, federal tech podcast dot com.”
Difficult name, but companies can be hard to spell as well. Federal Tech Podcast has interviewed companies like Kenetica, Savyint, Ardalyst. Not exactly ear-friendly for a person listening to a podcast while getting in a run.
How to make it easy: register an easy-to-remember website and redirect it to your company.
You can expand this to your call to action at the end of the interview. Once you have an easy to remember website, then have a call to action that will benefit the listener.
Example that needs work:
“Yeah, you can get the PDF”
Better:
“Go to FederalTechPodcast.com and download the scorecard on How to Leverage your Podcast Appearance.”
Four: Ask
Ryan Leveque once wrote a book with a one-word title — “Ask,” let us apply “ask” to your podcast appearance.
Ask the host to mention the call to action verbally and on the show notes page with a link.
Ask the listeners to download the valuable PDF from the URL you mentioned.
Ask your company to include your appearance on the company website – you can slip it into a blog, a press release, or an event.
Ask your social media team to prepare for the release of the interview and then hit hard, especially during the first 72 hours. Personally, for each guest I do 25 Tweets, audiogram, LinkedIn, transcript, show notes with image logo, and link to company: email, paid advertising, and much more. If that is what I do, your team should double my efforts.
Ask your followers on LinkedIn to comment, not like. A twelve-word comment is worth a hundred “likes.” You can prime the pump by asking questions – “What do you think of a software bill of materials?”
Ask to get on other podcasts based on your appearance – now you have a website with a show notes page to reference when you approach other podcasters
Conclusion
A podcast appearance is a fantastic way to increase reach and brand awareness for your company.
Further, it can set up appearances on other podcasts. After, we have over 400,000 podcasts that have more than ten episodes.
Four ways to take advantage of your podcast appearance: tell your story visually, be specific, make it easy to reach your, ask for what you want.
If you enjoyed this article, you may want to listen to Ep. 94 Can Service Mesh Address Federal Challenges?
John Gilroy
John Gilroy moderates the Federal Tech Podcast and the Constellations Podcast. He appeared on National Public Radio in Washington DC for 25 years. He wrote 523 technology columns for The Washington Post. Currently, John is an award-winning lecturer at Georgetown University. Forgot to mention — he has recorded over 1,000 podcast interviews.
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