054: Leveraging Your Podcast When Social Media Goes Down
Did the Facebook and Instagram outage make you nervous? If you’ve been using social media as your main marketing tools, it definitely could have! However, if you have a podcast, are you leveraging it properly?
I want today’s episode to serve as a reminder that you have a powerful piece of content that needs to be leveraged. I discuss why you need to have your podcast on your website, creating community, and why it’s important to have a plan when tech doesn’t work. I hope this episode leaves you with a plan to uplevel your podcast and make sure it’s working for you!
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[00:00:00] You have to have a strong call to action at the end of your podcast, and you need to know your customer journey from your podcast to whatever your funnel is and through that funnel, right? And so this is something you need to sit down and really think about. What do you want people to do after they listen to you? Where are you sending them and what does their journey look like once they get there? OK, you've got to have a plan in place.
[00:00:29] Welcome to the Wild Home Podcast, where we talk about podcasting, life and all the wild in between. Join me, Caroline. Every week I share a peek into the world of podcasting and my wildlife as well. Ready? Let's get into it.
[00:00:52] Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Wild Home Podcast. I took a little break last week, needed a podcast, Mental Health Week, so thank you for sticking around and coming back this week to listen. And I am hoping in the future to have a conversation about mental health and running our own business and being able to show up and talk on a podcast. I just think these are all really important things that we need to talk about, especially given the last, what, 18 months, two years that we've all gone through it collectively. So that's definitely on my radar to talk about.
[00:01:25] And today I wanted to talk about something that happened this week, actually. So as you may be aware of and maybe you're not, and if you're not, I'm so proud of you for not being aware of it. But Instagram and Facebook went down for a whole day, and it was really interesting because I didn't really notice. I mean, I kind of noticed and I thought maybe it was my internet and then I was just like, Oh, it's down no big deal. That's fine. I'll put my phone down. I'll survive. It was really great. I didn't really miss it too much, which I think tells me something about what role I want Facebook and Instagram to have in my life and my business. And it was interesting because, after the fact, a lot of my friends who are also business owners and I started having conversations about this very thing and discussing, should we be worrying so much about Instagram marketing? You know, should we have our groups on Facebook? Do we care anymore? And what do we need to do instead of those things? Or what can we do first? You know, those can be like secondary, but what should be the most important things that we focus on for our business and for our marketing? It's really interesting to me, you know, I think we've kind of well, I know that I have kind of fallen into this trap of thinking that Instagram is the end all, be all for me, and that's where I have to be. And it doesn't necessarily always work out.
[00:02:48] You know, we I was actually talking to some people when we were discussing the fact that, you know, I don't think I get a ton of leads from Instagram. It's not like I have people contacting me and they're like, Well, I saw you on Instagram, so I thought I'd send you a thing. Think a lot of my business comes from referrals and it comes from other things like being on podcasts or being in an article. I had an article that sent a few people to us a while back, and so it's really kind of made me think about, OK, where do I want to focus my attention and energy? Because right now I'm focusing a lot of attention and energy to Instagram, and it's not really paying me back. And I don't know that I necessarily want to go through the whole process of like trying to leverage my Instagram when I already have some other really valuable pieces of things that I need to leverage more. One of those, of course, is my email list, but the other is, of course, my podcast and so on. In this episode today, I wanted to really dove into how you can leverage your podcast. And these are things you should be doing all the time. But let's pretend for a minute that social media has disappeared or it's going to be down for a couple of days. What are some ways that you can leverage your podcast so that way it can kind of work in place of that now?
[00:04:08] There is a caveat here. I think the interesting thing about this is we all start to question, well, where is everything hosted? And it is true that, you know, we had Apple have all kinds of issues that really mess with our podcasts. But some of these things, I said, then I'm going to say again are really, really important because you shouldn't just let your stuff live there. It needs to live in places that belong to you. And so that first place where your podcast needs to be is on your website. It needs to be on your website. If you are not creating show notes and having your podcast as a blog post on your website, you're losing a really golden opportunity. But the other reason I love this is because now, instead of sending people out into the world, you're sending people to your website, right? And that's where we want to send people we don't want them to. They think of us as the person on Apple, the person on Spotify, we want them to come to our website. And so when I share my episodes, I don't necessarily share like the Apple Link or the Spotify Link. I share my website link and then I say, I'm also on these other places. But like, if you want all the info on the goods, you've got to go to my website. And so that's really important. Imagine if social media had gone on down for more than one day. Where would you have sent people? Right? We want to send them to our website.
[00:05:28] The other thing is, and I feel like I've been preaching this a lot, I'm actually going to be speaking at an event which I will tell you a little bit more at the end of the podcast. And I talk a lot about this in my presentation, and that is that you have to have a strong call to action at the end of your podcast and you need to know your customer journey from your podcast to whatever your funnel is and through that funnel, right, and so this is something you need to sit down and really think about. What do you want people to do after they listen to you? Where are you sending them and what does their journey look like once they get there?
[00:06:04] OK, you've got to have a plan in place if you're giving people a whole bunch to do at the end of the episode, leave me a review. Follow me, take a screenshot and shared on Instagram Stories that you're listening to my podcast. None of that's going to do you any good. What's going to do you good? As far as converting listeners to followers to clients is having a strong CTA that is associated with your podcast episodes. So what I mean by this is really think about like what the next step would be. So after they listen to your episode, what is the next logical thing for them to do as far as your customer journey? I know that a lot of people who listen to this podcast have either just started a podcast or are thinking about starting a podcast for their business or they're doing it right. And so I'm not necessarily going to share an opt-in or a freebie for you guys. That has to do with somebody who's been podcasting for five years and outsourcing everything. There are completely different audiences, right? And so it's really important to know who's listening to your podcast, where they are and their podcasting journey and what you want them to do. And that needs to be the thing that you say at the end of your episodes. Not 500 million things asking for reviews and follows and screenshots. Again, that's not going to do you any good in the long run, because we want to make sure that your podcast is a part of your marketing strategy and is working for your business. That it's not just, you know, a vanity project, right? Or a hobby. It has a job. It serves a purpose. And so having that strong CTA and knowing your funnel is really, really key to making sure that you're leveraging it properly. OK, next up.
[00:07:49] Now here's something to think about. Maybe it's time to create a community and a place for listeners to connect with you. Now, I'm obviously not talking about a Facebook group because Facebook went down, but where would your community be for a lot of this? Unfortunately, it is social media, so maybe it's time to think about something else. Maybe you have a really great email newsletter. Maybe you have a mighty networks or something like that, but you need to have a place where listeners can connect with you outside of all of these things. My number one pick and you know, we've been talking about this, me and my friends, is it should always be your email list. And I'll be honest, I don't think I've been putting enough emphasis in my email list. Honestly, email marketing just kind of overwhelms me a little bit. And so I feel like a lot of times I'm just winging it like, Oh, it's Tuesday, I should send an email. I really don't have a good strategy behind it, and this is one of the first things I'm going to be changing. Moving forward is making sure that I do have a really good strategy for collecting and growing my email list because that's where I want people to connect with me.
[00:08:57] Now I do have a community, I have a Facebook group that I haven't closed, but it's been my intention for a while to close it and to move everybody over to my networks because I wanted to get off Facebook in the first place, which is really interesting now that this has happened because I just really felt like Facebook was so distracting. I get on Facebook and it's just like ad and post post. I mean, it's just it's like a overwhelm. I get very overwhelmed by everything to look at and usually get sucked in. Frankly, I'm easily distracted. It's true. And so I kind of wanted to move that off of there anyways. And so I've been thinking about what I want that to look like. How do I want people to connect? What do I want them to talk about once they're there? You know, how can your listeners get more of you? Maybe that is Instagram right now, and that's totally fine. Maybe that's where you do your thing, and that's fine. But making sure that they're also being able to connect with you on an email list or something like that? And then the last thing I wanted to touch base with is just having a plan when tech doesn't cooperate. So there is definitely going, this is probably going to happen again, although I'm sure that Facebook is super mad at whoever sent that code. I read something that explained how it happened, and I really didn't understand it, but definitely human error. From what I understand, I could be wrong. So when this is published, if I'm incorrect, I apologize.
[00:10:21] But you know, these things can happen again. Apple could go down tomorrow. Fine. If I could go down tomorrow. I mean, please do not. Apple and Spotify I'm spending is sending you all the good vibes. And so what's your plan? You know, when the tech doesn't cooperate, do you have a plan? Again, our plan is always, you know, to send people to your website and to communicate with your listeners via email. And so letting them know like, Hey, this is how we're going to. Communicate from now on is through our emails, so we really highly recommend you come here. Just having kind of that SOP that covers when things don't quite work because there is going to be a moment where things aren't going to work and episode isn't going to record correctly, something's going to happen, and an episode is not going to be published when it's supposed to. There's just a myriad of things that can happen. I mean, it's tech, and the first thing to understand is that it happens to everyone. So it's not just you. So take a deep breath, but then think about what you're going to do.
[00:11:19] The nice thing about having your podcast on your website and having a strong email list is that you can email people the link to your website and be like, You can go listen here right now while all the other tech is having issues. And so that's a real positive. And so really thinking about what your plan is and how you're going to tackle it and how you're not going to let it overwhelm you always have a plan A, B and C. If this episode isn't going to go live this week, I can take a break or I can do a rerun. You know, having those kinds of plans in place are really important. And so making sure that you have kind of tech issue plans, we can think of a better name for that. We'll come up with a better name is really, really important. And so that's kind of my thing that I want you to think about.
[00:12:05] So when we're talking about leveraging your podcast, we want to have it on your website, have a strong CTA, know your customer journey, have a place for listeners to connect with you and then have a plan when things don't cooperate.
[00:12:16] So before we go, I wanted to let you know that I am speaking in the Boardroom League virtual event. I am so excited about this. I am going to be talking all about sharing your message and growing your business with a podcast. So this is a really great, great presentation to listen to. If you have a podcast and you're wanting it to grow more or you're wanting to use it for your business more, I talk a lot about marketing and the funnel. And so I really enjoy it and I think it's great there's a freebie associated with it. So anyways, I highly recommend you check this out. So the event is actually going to be from Monday, October 18 through Friday, October 22nd. It's virtual. There's going to be 25 plus professional service providers teaching you the foundations of business building. You don't have the time to master as you start and grow your business, right? So this event is actually designed for busy CEOs, so I love that it's very specific to that. And if you sign up, if you register, you actually get a box in the mail. This is pretty cool. So this episode is coming out on the 7th and you will need to have that registration done by the 8th, I believe, or I think you can register after that and still get the box, but if you want it before. Be sure to register. So we will have a link in the show notes. And I would love to see you there and let me know if you signed up so I can look for your face during the presentation. And yeah, I'm super excited about it. I love sharing this message and I just think it's it's so cool that I get the opportunity to talk about podcasting, which I love so much and just think it's such a powerful medium. So anyways, all right, I will be back hopefully next week. I'm making no promises because I'm exhausted as all get out. Thank you so much for listening and I will be back next week with another episode. And as long as Instagram is up. Be sure to swing by and say hello @wildhomepodcasting. Have a great day.
[00:14:12] Thank you so much for listening to the podcast. To stay in the know, head to wildhomepodcasting.com. And be sure to connect with me on Instagram at @wildhomepodcasting. See you next week!
