The Podcast Revolution Comes to Content Marketing with Jeff Brown

Transcript: Episode 2 of Brandcasting with Relationary Marketing

Episode Title: The Podcast Revolution Comes to Content Marketing with Jeff Brown

Jeff Brown: I would just say that if this is a place you’re not currently publishing content, you need to really dig deep and ask why is that? Why are you not doing that? There are so many, as we said, a moment ago, places where you could be found that you’re missing out on.

Clark Buckner: That’s the voice of Jeff Brown. He’s the host of the super popular show, Read To Lead. It’s a top 10 business and top three career selection on Apple Podcasts. With over 26 years of radio experience, Jeff has leveraged his skillset as a podcast consultant to the US government and several multi-million dollar companies. So today we’re discussing the why behind podcasting for content marketing. It’s getting harder and harder to cut through the noise and form a connection with your audience. Jeff shares with us why starting a podcast can be the perfect way for you to capture and keep your audience’s attention.

Clark: Welcome to Brandcasting with Relationary Marketing, the show all about how to build a professional branded podcast that delivers on your business’s goals. I’m your host Clark Buckner, partner and co-founder here at Relationary. We’re a turnkey podcast production agency for B2B content marketing. We help brands and agencies create engaging content to establish thought leadership, nurture key relationships, and promote events. For a recap and transcript of this episode and to download our free five-step guide to building a branded podcast, head on over to relationarymarketing.com/podcast. Now let’s jump in.

Jeff: My name is Jeff Brown. My official company name is Brown Knows Media, browknowsmedia.com, or at least formerly brownknowsmedia.com, but most everything I do today is at readtoleadpodcast.com. I’ve been in podcasting for six years next week. 

Clark: Whoa. Happy pod-anniversary. 

Jeff: Thank you. 

Clark: Wow. Man, when I started my podcasting journey, it was around that time, and you have always been someone I have looked up to and learned from over the years. 

And really helped give me the confidence to go out and not only do my own podcast, but eventually create Relationary, which is our own podcast production agency.

And so as Read to Lead’s host, that show you have, you also, I know, do a lot of coaching and consulting. And you can help an individual really dig into the technical details of their own gear and their own production if they’re wanting to do it by themselves. 

What Relationary does is we make it turnkey for maybe an agency or a larger corporation, so thanks to you and your early coaching to me, man, here we are four years later after starting Relationary. 

Man, I’m just so thrilled to get to talk to you about “why” podcasting for content marketing and really just unpacking the why and your belief in this medium, where it’s taken you over the years and finally where you see it going in the future.

Jeff: I’m looking forward to it. 

Clark: Well, how about we rewind it back six years ago, how you made this interesting transition to podcasting. Can you give us a little quick recap of that?

Jeff: Yeah. I used to have a regular job. That ended a little over six years ago. I had been in radio at that time for about 26 years, Clark, working in markets like Indianapolis and Nashville about 50/50, about 13 years in the middle, Central Indiana area and then the latter half in the Middle Tennessee area.

And that last gig came to a close in around June of 2013. I was laid off along with a few others and had a little bit of a severance package, which softened the blow a bit.

But when that happened, interestingly, I had already begun planning an exit. You might say I had a little bit of an inkling of the writing on the wall, and, too, it just felt like I had done everything in radio I set out to accomplish and reached all my goals and I was ready for a new challenge, frankly. 

And had begun planning to leave later in the year. I didn’t realize I was going to be laid off. I had planned to leave by December of that year, but just had to move that plan up about six months when it all happened.

But when it did happen, I had already begun planning a podcast. Around March or April, I began planning the Read to Lead Podcast. And so when I got laid off in June, I just continued with that plan.

In fact, my first interview – I do an interview-based show. My very first interview had already been scheduled and took place two days after I got laid off. That’s how close those two events were.

And then, published, launched the podcast about a month later on July 16th, 2013.

It was a sort of a labor of love, a passion, something that I wanted to do and share. But within about seven or eight months of launching it, I did begin to discover opportunities where I could leverage the podcast to begin growing a business and use it sort of as the wide end of my marketing funnel for this new business I was embarking on.

Clark: Exciting. So, you make this transition from radio into podcasting, and next I’d love to talk with you about the power of podcasting, especially from a business perspective. 

And so for this show that we’re doing here at Relationary, we’re helping folks understand, “How do you use podcasting in content marketing? How do you use podcasting in this larger picture?” 

And on this topic of the power of podcasting, I really want to play a short clip. This is with Rob Walch. He’s over at Libsyn. It’s the oldest, the largest podcast media host. And I want to play this clip, and then I would love to hear your thoughts to unpack that further.  

Rob Walch: When these people get 500, 1500 downloads per episode, I have to explain to folks that, “Look. When’s the last time you got in a room with 500 people in the room, 500 of your customers? When was the last time you had 500 customers in your room in a chair, where you’re up on a podium speaking to them? And when’s the last time you were able to do that every week for 50 weeks out of the year? 

And when they look at it that way, they’re like, “Wow. Okay.” Now their reach is much greater. And that’s where you have to put things in perspective on podcasts. 

Clark: Take it from there, Jeff. Anything you want to unpack with that further? 

Jeff: Yeah. Rob is, of course, talking there about not taking for granted what may seem like on the surface not a lot of people listening to your show. 

A couple hundred, three hundred, five hundred may not sound like a lot, but as Rob so eloquently stated, when’s the last time you had that many people in a room to hear what you had to say, and on a weekly basis?

I think that’s very powerful and astute on his part to point that out. And so don’t be discouraged if when you start a podcast, listenership is not what you hoped it would be. 

Realize that even 50 or 20 or 60 people listening to your show in the early going each and every week is a big deal. 

And you can certainly grow it from there with consistently publishing, but don’t discount just a handful of people because, again, as Rob stated, that’s something that would be difficult oftentimes to duplicate in the real world face to face. 

Clark: I would love to talk next about value creation from an audio podcast. Now, at Relationary, we are primarily helping what we are calling “the B2B space,” a business to business space. 

So, other agencies – they have clients now that are asking, “Hey, we want to get into podcasting,” for all these reasons.

We have big corporations – they want to mature their content marketing and have another vehicle to use to connect with their audience in a more meaningful way, so podcasting is more and more becoming this option. 

So, I know you’re typically looking at the B2C perspective. You’re a podcast coach. You’re helping a lot of individuals start their own podcasts, whether it’s trying to get their message into the world, maybe it’s a hobby, whatever. They are passionate, and they’re going to do this.

But if you were to think more on the B2B perspective, what value do you see from your years of doing this, coaching thousands of podcasters getting into the space? What value is there for brands and for businesses? Why should they pay attention to this and why should they invest the time and money to do a podcast?

Jeff: Well, as any business or agency knows, and I’m sure you know, Clark, attention is increasingly scarce. 

There are a thousand channels in our TVs, and there are so many things interrupting our day and clamoring for our attention, the dozens, if not hundreds of notifications on our phone from a various number of sources.

Our attention spans as humans is on par with goldfish these days at about seven or eight seconds. So, I think no one would argue that it’s harder than it’s ever been to garner people’s attention. 

And the beautiful thing about audio-on-demand podcasting is that people can engage in your content without everything else having to stop.

If I’m going to watch your video, if I’m going to read your blog, everything around me has to stop while I do that thing. 

But I can consume your content via audio while I’m running or working out at the gym, while I’m commuting to work, while I’m walking the dog – doing any other number of things. Anything you can think of, I can consume a podcast while doing that thing. 

And here’s another interesting sort of non-scientific application of this: A podcast colleague of mine recently was doing some experimenting between video content and audio content and how those different pieces of repurposed content were being engaged with by viewers or by listeners.

And so what he did first – he did a Facebook live, a Facebook live video, into a group of people who had opted into that group saying, “We want content like this.” 

And when it was finished, he looked at, “Okay, what was the average time people who watched it spent watching? What was the amount of the video the average person watched?”

And of this 11-minute video, the average person watched a little over 30 seconds of the Facebook live.

He took that same video and he published it to YouTube. Well, there, the stats were a little better. Of those who watched it on YouTube, the average person watched a little over three minutes of the video. 

So, in the Facebook example, it was about three percent of the video got watched. In the YouTube example, about 30 percent of the video got watched, about 10 times as much. 

Clark: I’m surprised. That’s a lot.

Jeff: It is. It is. He stripped the audio from that video and published it as a podcast in Apple Podcasts. And of those who listened, the average person listened to 94 percent of the podcast. 

The content is exactly the same content word for word. It’s just two were video, one was audio only, and it made all the difference.

And I think a large reason why is, again, because people aren’t having to quit everything else to engage in that content when it’s delivered via audio.

Clark: Yeah, we have clients – that’s been one of the most exciting things. 

They’ll spend so much money on this beautiful shiny video content, and the engagement is – you know, 30 percent is pretty good for video. I don’t know if they’re even that high.

But this is a global brand I’m talking about right here and we were talking after season one with them. You know, they were so excited about the engagement. 

And of course, the metrics are a little bit limited right now in the podcast industry. But Libsyn does show us – you can access the Apple podcast, you know, amount, and you can see some insight, but we’re seeing at least 80 percent consumption. 

Which is still – you compare that 5, 6 percent to 80 percent, they’re getting the message. They’re getting nurtured. They’re listening uninterrupted at least 20, 25 minutes. 

That is unheard of for someone to be passively consuming and paying attention to something in their daily routine. They’re not changing the routine to actually consume this message that they’re enjoying.

Jeff: Yeah, they’re not having to change their routine in order to do it. 

And the amazing thing when you think about it is despite the fact that attention spans are shrinking – and experts, video creation experts will tell you, “Make your videos short. Got to be less than five minutes or got to be less than three minutes. Got to short bite-sized content.” 

In the audio space, as I just Illustrated, your content can be 30 minutes, can be 45 minutes, and people will listen to most if not all of that content when it’s delivered via audio-on-demand, whereas in other formats you have so much less of their time. They’re going to spend more time with you on average if it’s delivered via a podcast. 

Clark: We talk a lot about how audio compares to video in this context of podcasting. Let’s talk next about an audio podcast versus text or audio versus just a blog post, audio podcast of course.

So, when you think about how audio podcasts compare to the opportunity that used to be around with blogs, any thoughts that you would like to share about that? 

Jeff: Yeah, I think there’s nothing quite as powerful as the human voice. 

And certainly, there are arguments to be made for SEO and written content, and I do summaries of each of my podcasts on my blog. I call them show notes pages. And so those show notes relative to that episode are being cataloged by Google, and that’s certainly a good thing.

But when it comes to reaching people, I believe there’s nothing more powerful than audio content, the voice, versus reading something you’ve written and hearing something you are saying.

There are things missing in the text version of that that have to be heard,  nuances like enunciation and vocal inflection and intonation and all those types of things that get left out in the text-only space. 

That doesn’t mean that text shouldn’t be a part of the equation, but I think leaving out the ability for people to hear from you, literally hear from you, is a huge mistake. 

Clark: I love that, and certainly, like you’re saying, you can definitely still incorporate text. Many folks call these the show notes. 

You can include text on the blog post that the audio is on, whether that’s a full transcript – some people just like to read the transcript. 

Maybe they want to hit play, listen to the audio just to kind of get a vibe on who is talking, what do they sound like, what’s that vibe and then they can kind of read the rest on their own.

People consume content differently, but having that text transcript, maybe it’s just a synopsis blog post for Google juice, you still can incorporate it, but you add that podcast layer. 

I love how you talk about the intimacy, how strong the human voice is. It’s really neat. 

So, podcasting is almost 15 years old now. Why do you believe today is the Golden Age in podcasting? Why do you double down on podcasting? 

Jeff: Well, whether it’s audio, video or text, I think all are going to be here for a while. I have, just in my own experience, seen too many good things come out of doing a podcast for six years now not to continue doing a podcast.

I’ve seen companies start them. I’ve seen individuals start them to great success. I’m beginning to see more requests from companies who either want to start podcasts or, as you said, want to help their clients start podcasts, like you guys are doing. 

I think everyone, virtually everyone, is seeing the value here. 

It’s not something you can just dip your toe in the water of. If you’re going to do something like a podcast, it needs to be something that you plan on doing consistently for a good while because that’s when you’re going to begin seeing the benefits from it.

That consistency is huge. People are subscribing to your content. And when you decide you’re going to do, say, a weekly show and you’re going to publish on Tuesday, every Tuesday they expect you to be there or to at least have a reason explained in advance why you’re not going to be there. 

Even though it’s content they can listen to anytime, if that day of the week comes and you’re not there, they’re going to let you know about it, again if you’re being consistent.

And that’s a good thing. If listeners are responding that way and they miss you, that’s great. That’s because of the consistency you implemented in the first place.

Clark: I love that. We totally agree, and when you zoom it out even further, a lot of these companies have a content marketing strategy in place. They already have a content calendar. 

So, not only on the audience perspective, which is probably the most important in this case, but on the business side, you want to keep your content calendar organized. You want to be able to deliver and keep track and not fall behind.

And that’s why when you launch a podcast, we certainly encourage having at least three or four episodes in the can already totally produced. Hopefully more than that, more content has been recorded, but you want to scout ahead as much as you can. 

So, we like to call it a Pez dispenser, so you can keep on track whether it’s every week, maybe every other week.

So, anyway, love it, love it. And one of the final things, as we’re starting to wrap up – any other thoughts on how podcasting is a good fit for a marketing strategy, for a content marketing strategy?

Jeff: Well, Apple Podcasts, that directory, other directories, places like Spotify – wouldn’t you love to be in those places? Stitcher, Google Podcasts?

Clark: “Hey Alexa, play the podcast,” right.

Jeff: Yeah. Alexa. There’s audio on demand, and you take into account new car dashboards, where video and written content is not an option at all but audio content is. The potential is huge.

And so going forward, think about all these other places you could be interacting with your customers that you’re not currently interacting with them because you’re not doing a podcast.

All those directories I just mentioned, when you take into account new car dashboards and the apps available on the dashboards there, and apps, Pandora and Spotify and in the past Stitcher, making deals with automobile manufacturers to have their apps just show up in the dashboard. 

Whether that app is on your phone or not, people who’ve never heard of a podcast, don’t know what a podcast is, are going to have the potential to see that app on their dashboard and go, “Gee, I wonder what that’s for. Let me touch that and see what happens,” and suddenly realize they have this plethora of audio-on-demand content at their fingertips. 

You know, I would just say that if this is a place you’re not currently publishing content, you need to really dig deep and ask, “Why is that? Why are you not doing that?”

There are so many, as we said a moment ago, places where you could be found at you’re missing out on. 

Clark: I love it. It’s interesting to see so many of – several of today’s largest influencers in the business space believe in voice, believe in where voice technology is going. 

Data shows us that at least 50 percent have at one point listened to a podcast. There’s still people – it’s still growing, but data has only shown us how that’s continuously rising. 

And that’s a great point with vehicle functionality. With podcasts being baked in, that’s only going to contribute to that rise. 

Well, Jeff, how can someone learn more about you? And certainly, if someone wants to start their own podcast, they want to do their own thing, buy their own gear, that is certainly an option. 

We’re primarily serving the agencies. We make it turnkey for these large businesses, but you’re helping thousands of podcasters. 

And we believe in this medium. We love this medium. That’s why we do so much with the Podcast meetup in town here in Nashville and so much more.

And you are, I think, one of the best, most trusted resources to send someone who wants to do this on their own. 

So, how can someone learn more about those options and, of course, listen to Read to Lead? I know you’re closing on 300 episodes, is that right? 

Jeff: Yeah. Episode 275 releases – that’ll be the six-year anniversary episode, episode 275, so we’re getting close to three hundred. 

And when I work with individual podcasters, equipment and tech is a very small part of the process. Those things are very easy to figure out, especially with individuals looking to launch podcasts.

I spend quite a bit more time helping them with things like writing and interview skills and how to do what we called out a moment ago: leverage the intimacy of the medium in a way that individual listeners feel as if you’re having a conversation with them, each and every one of them feels that way. 

These are some powerful techniques you can leverage to really take advantage of that.

So, to engage with me, the best place is readtoleadpodcast.com. My email address, if you want to reach out, ask a question or tell me I’m dead wrong about something, jeff@readtoleadpodcast.com. 

Clark: Thank you, Jeff. As always, we really appreciate you taking the time to do this, and I can’t wait to connect with you again soon.

Jeff: Thanks for asking me, Clark. It was a lot of fun.

Clark: Hey, thanks so much for listening to Brandcasting with Relationary Marketing. We’re a turnkey podcast production agency for content marketing and we’d love to hear from you. For a recap and transcript of this episode and to download our free five step guide to building a branded podcast, visit relationarymarketing.com/podcast. And if you enjoy this content, please follow, rate, and review the show wherever you get your podcasts. We’ll see you next time.

Clark: Brandcasting is a production of Relationary Marketing. This episode was produced by Darcy Mack and executive producers Clark Buckner, me, and Chuck Bryant with editing support from Dylan Carrow and music by Jess Grommet. Additional production support is provided by Anthony Luciani, AJ Meyers, Riley Wallace, and Jasmine Meriweather.