3 Reasons Why Businesses Should Be Podcasting

(guest post by Mike Tanner)

To suggest that I’m a big fan of podcasts would be… a bit of an understatement.

In addition to being the host of 3.5 podcasts (it’s a long story), I provide podcasting consulting, speak on podcasting panels and once had a dream that I was the host of a potato chip podcast called “Chip Off The Old Block” (That podcast should be coming out in the fall.)

I started podcasting because I enjoyed it. But what I’ve discovered about podcasting as it relates to business has left me realizing that I made the absolute right decision when I decided to start broadcasting my thoughts on an audio medium.

So here are three reasons why businesses should be podcasting.

Passive Advertising

I am a big fan of social media advertising. The targeting options available on major platforms are outstanding and things like analytics and retargeting make it a no-brainer to use social to promote your business, whether that’s through the use of paid ads or just a solid social strategy.

But those are active channels.

People need to be paying attention (mostly) if they’re going to interact with your content in any beneficial manner.

And that’s one reason that podcasts are so unique. Here are some of the places and situations where I listen to podcasts:

• Doing the dishes
• Driving 
• Playing video games
• Writing
• Working
• Walking

The fact is, I’m not able to significantly interact with people’s tweets or snaps or status updates while I’m doing MOST of those things. However, podcasts circumvent this by giving us the ability to consume content while doing a myriad of other things and, while this can obviously mean a drop in attention, some attention is better than no attention.

Can you imagine if you could say to yourself “peruse these tweets at 1.5X speed” or “read this blog post at 2x speed.” Well, you can do that with podcasts because they’re consumed passively in whatever manner and at whatever speed you’d like.

Podcasts are More Popular than NFL Football

Ok. It’s true. You can make stats say anything you want them to. But hear me out.

In 2017, 48 million Americans listened to a podcast at least once a week. This number rose by 6 million compared to the previous year.

In 2017, 20 million Americans tuned in to watch Sunday Night Football each week.

So while it’s a bit of a stretch to suggest that podcasts are more popular than the NFL, the point is that a LOT of people are listening to podcasts… and that number is growing by a LOT each year.

As more and more people tune in to more and more podcasts, the opportunity for individuals to help fill niche markets with great information, and thus bolster their businesses visibility, are remarkable.

It’s Really Not That Hard

It’s not that launching a podcast is easy… except… well, it is.

Making a podcast sound great is another story, but it’s much easier to start a podcast than a YouTube channel or most other media platforms you might use.

Here’s what you need to start a podcast: a phone.

If you have a phone, you’re golden. You can get nice microphones. You can buy nice software. You can hire a producer. You CAN do lots of things. But when it comes down to it, you just need a phone. Once, I made an Instagram post about the idea of production quality as it relates to content creation. I said that:

“Gary Vaynerchuck could record a podcast on a speak-and-spell in an airplane washroom because the content would be golden.”

Three months later Gary V launched 'the airport sessions', a collection of podcasts with TERRIBLE audio quality that were absolute fire when it came to the content itself.

The point is not, “do a terrible job, who cares,” but rather you should not hold off on pushing play just because you had a little background noise.

Podcasts are easy and inexpensive to produce, growing in popularity and reach the consumer where they’re at. What more could you ask for in a content platform?

So what are you waiting for?

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