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As an award-winning podcaster, Daniel J. Lewis help others launch and improve their own podcasts for sharing their passions and finding success. Daniel creates training resources (like SEO for Podcasters) and podcasting tools (like My Podcast Reviews); he offers one-on-one consulting and group training (Podcasters’ Society); is a keynote speaker on podcasting and social media; and Daniel hosts a network of award-nominated shows covering how to podcast, clean-comedy, and the #1 unofficial podcast for ABC’s hit drama Once Upon a Time. Daniel also writes about entrepreneurship and technology.
“Goals without plans are merely dreams that will never be realised.”
-Daniel J. Lewis, The Audacity to Podcast
Two sides on Marketing and Podcasting:
1.) Marketing the Podcast itself.
2.) Using the Podcast to market something else.
- While The Audacity to Podcast teaches people how to launch and improve their own Podcast, it also markets Daniel’s products and services.
- Most people are using a Podcast to market something else, maybe an affiliate program that they have or their sponsor’s or another product or service that they have outside of the podcast and when you have, especially, a digital product or service outside of the Podcast there is no limit to what you could earn from that.
- Your Podcast becomes the marketing arm for that product business or service that you’re running, which is great, but you don’t have to have a product or service in order to have a successful Podcast.
Any other potential podcaster has as much potential in accomplishing success if they work hard enough and if they have enough leverage.
Daniel’s Cornerstones of a great Podcast:
- Content – What makes your content better?
- Presentation – How can you present the information better?
- Production – How can you produce this in a way that enhances all of these?
- Promotion – How can you market this to grow your audience? How can you promote the Podcast, and promote the community?
- Monetization (optional) – For the podcast where to approach it from a business perspective, and how to monetize it?
Inspiration in Podcasting after 8 years:
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“It’s the community really. For one thing, there is a business side of this because my podcast are part of my business. So my business, helping podcasters, could not exist if it wasn’t for my podcast. The other aspect is the community and this is what really energises me.”
Marketing routines:
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“The first important part of my marketing is not to look at the marketing but to look at what am I marketing? So I want to ensure that I have a very high quality “product” and that is the podcast episode. The content I’m presenting, how I’m presenting it, and how I’m producing it.”
- When I know I have something good then I’ll feel fine to promote it and market it. So my marketing steps after making something high quality is to enable my audience and ask my audience to share it as well. The best thing my audience can do is tell someone else about the podcast so I equip them to do that by putting easy social sharing buttons on the website.
- I’ll also go into communities where they’re talking about podcasting and when appropriate and relevant I might share my episode there.
Biggest surprises in marketing for podcast:
- In 2013, when The Audacity to Podcast won the International Podcast Award for Best Technology Podcast of 2012.
Favourite stories of Podcasting:
- I love hearing the stories of a podcast enabling someone to do something cool or amazing. Whether that be getting their dream job or launching their own business or I’ve heard of two listeners, of another podcast, getting married because they discovered that podcast and started listening and met each other through the community.
Podcasting is much more authentic and much more personal and because of that, I think, the ability to impact for the good is much greater.
Tips on Marketing for Podcasters:
- Find your target audience and try to find ways that you can reach them. Engage first with a relationship. Don’t go into groups or tweet people first. Talk to them first. Same thing in communities, participate in communities, engage in conversations so that when you do share something, people already trust you and have some respect for your providing value to the conversation.
- You need to make it easy and equip your audience to share your contents as well and to engage with you.
- Look at your podcast networking as in-person networking as well and what looks like good manners versus what looks like self-promotional and bad behaviour.
How do I improve my podcast?
- We all have different goals. Your plan is how to get to that goal. Goals without plans are merely dreams that will never be realised. You have to have some steps you’re going to follow to reach that goal or else you’ll never reach it.
- I would recommend that we really look at, Where is it you want to be? How can we get there?
Vision:
- I see it more and more portable.
- It’s already very portable with mobile apps and such but Android is really lacking. The main thing really that I see is, think about podcasting as new media and everything else that we know as traditional media, every time there’s been a new media introduced, internet, blogs, TV, radio, anything like that, it’s always required a marriage between that new media and traditional media of that day and I think we’ll see that marriage between podcasting and traditional media, it’s actually already happening now as more and more major media outlets are getting interested in podcast and interested in new ways that they can connect with their audience or ways of reaching the new audience through podcasting.
- I think with that marriage will come some things we may not like. Just like in a regular marriage there’s certain rules that starts to emerge. That is all a sign of a maturing process. Look at a child when they’re young, there aren’t as many rules that they need to follow at any moment of the day. We start to mature and with that comes more structure and it’s okay.
- What is the birth that will come from this marriage between podcasting and traditional media?
- I’m excited about is to see the individual person having a global platform no longer having to rely on radio stations or publishers and such but that they can reach a global audience on their own and reach their own definition of success whatever that may be.
If you’re thinking of getting into Podcasting:
- Jump in! Don’t worry about making it perfect. Don’t worry about getting the perfect technology. Deal at what works, get in, and start doing it. Don’t keep the world waiting on your message.
- Jump in with a plan. Know where you want to go with your Podcast. Make a list of your next 25 episodes. That list could be 25 topics that you want to cover or 25 guests you want to interview.
The best place to learn more about and to reach Daniel J. Lewis:
