Podcasting for Business & Email Marketing Best Practices w/ Christopher S. Penn [@InboundNow #5]

David Wells
David Wells

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christopher s penn In episode 5 of Inbound Now , Christoper S. Penn ( @cspenn ),  vice president of strategy & innovation  over at  Blue Sky Factory  joins us to share some valuable insights on podcasting and email marketing best practices. Chris is an avid blogger and has been in the podcasting game since it's inception in early 2004. 

In this episode we talk about:

  • Podcasting for Business - the dos and don'ts, how to get started with it.
  • Email Marketing Best Practices - How to avoid common mistakes & how to tie social media in with your email marketing.
  • An invaluable twitter search tip that will help you find people raising their hands about your products and services.

Podcasting for Business

Chris is the co-host of Marketing over coffee with John Wall. Marketing over coffee shares some very valuable insights and I highly recommend checking out the show!

John and Chris built up an audience of over 10,000 professional marketers and began to monetize the show with sponsors.

They publish the show every week. “The consistent expectation of time is important.” If you are building an audience get into the groove of having a content schedule that is predictable.

How Financial Aid And Podcasting Came To Be

Chris started the financial aid podcast because the student loan network did not have a large marketing budget, enjoyed by the majority of their competitors.

Chris raised more than $10 million via a new medium and the ROI on the project was great.

By getting more employees involved in the shows creation, it forced people (in a good way) to stay current on the industry trends. Over time they gained thought leadership in the industry by aggregating and sharing the valuable content with their audience.

Starting Your Own Podcast For Your Business

The first thing you need to think about is does your content work in an audio or video format?

An audio podcast on photography or cooking might not be the best way to tell the story.

Ask yourself... Is your audience ready to consume the content and is it something that would be of value?

The proliferation of smart phones is giving people the ability to consume this rich media content in a much easier way.

Just do it. Once you have answered the above questions, start aggregating content from other great sources and start sharing your opinions and industry news.

Don't be afraid to get your voice out there! With practice, over time your shows will flow better and you will start to get the hang of it!

No More Excuses

Think your industry is too boring to do a podcast about it? If it worked for financial loans, it most likely will work for you.

Podcasting is a great way to quickly produce valuable content that your prospective audience might be interested in. 

Make sure to leverage the audio/video content to it's fullest potential and get the text transcribed. This is so you can grab the SEO value from all the fantastic things you are talking about on your show!

Email Marketing Is Dead

Chris agrees that email marketing is dead stating, “It was never alive in the first place.”

The function of marketing is reaching out to prospects and letting them know you exist. If you do this in email, it’s call spamming.

Instead, Chris explains that email marketing is a valuable tool to use to follow up with people who have already raised their hands and opted in to one of your lists. Think inbound marketing.

Email is a great way to keep people coming back to your site.

Think about email as an “alternative sale.” Even though a prospect may be unqualified for being a customer, that doesn’t mean they can’t become a fan, evangelist, or advocate for your brand and help spread your newsletters and content with others.

What Is The Biggest Mistake People Making With Email Marketing?

“Send relevant, timing, targeted, valuable information to people who ask for it. If you screw up on any of these things, you are doing it wrong”

If you can segment out your lists do it! Tailor your content to the preferences of your subscribers.

Provide educational, entertaining content that provides value to the opener. Two awesome examples of email lists would be Chris Brogan's newsletter and Peter Shankman’s Help a reporter out email list

Tying Social Media To Email Marketing

Tell them. Let your email subscribers know that you are active within social media and give them links and a reason to follow you on twitter or like your fan page on Facebook.

Let them know what they are going to get on these social media networks that they are not going to get from your newsletter.

Encourage Sharing. Entice your list to share your emails with their social networks.

Do a contest or giveaway for people who share your newsletter the most.

Make it easy with tools like http://clicktotweet.com/  and other one click sharing tools. 

Three Nearly Guaranteed Moneymaking Twitter Words

People all over the social web are constantly raising their hand and asking their friends, fans, and followers for recommendations on different products and services.

By using a simple twitter search you can easily spot these people and then engage with them to answer any questions they may have.

Try this right now (after you finish watching the show!)

Go to search.twitter.com  

  • recommend keyword -http
  • suggest keyword -http
  • anyone keyword -http
  • keyword ? -http

This will give you back everyone talking about that specific keyword and are actively asking for recommendations and looking either to buy or for more information to buy in the near future.

If you respond in a non "BUY MY STUFF NOW" kind of way and help the person by giving them useful information to help them, it's going to resonate.  More likely than not, this will help keep your company top of mind when that person is ready buy.

Find Chris Online

You can listen to  Marketing over coffee  every week and catch Chris blogging over on  Bluesky Factorie's Blog  & his own at  http://www.christopherspenn.com/ .

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