AP 0091: Is It Wise to Make Podcasts Out of Blog Posts?

AskPat 91 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey everybody, what's up? This is Pat Flynn, and welcome to Episode 91 of AskPat. I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions five days a week.

Today we have another question from Mariam, but before we get to that, I want to mention today's sponsor which is ZipRecruiter.com. If you never heard of this site before, it's awesome, because if you're looking for anybody to hire, you're looking to fill a position in your business, doesn't matter how big it is, you go to a website. You put a job description, you get people to submit their resumes, and all that whole ordeal. You might get a few from each site that you go to, and it takes a while. Well, with ZipRecruiter.com, you put in your job description and the kind of person you're looking for in one spot, and you click a button, and all of a sudden it goes out to fifty of the top job-recruiting sites for you, and it also helps you select, or see or sort of engage with the top recruits that you have, and you can go from there. So it's a very, very convenient way to hire people for your business, so if you would like to check it out, you can at ZipRecruiter.com, and make sure you go to ZipRecruiter.com/pat. You can try it for free if you go to ZipRecruiter.com/pat. Thank you for that, now let's get to today's question from Mariam.

Mariam: Hi Pat, I have a question. Is it wise to make your blog post also a podcast, so with the same content?

Pat Flynn: Hey Mariam, thank you so much for your quick question, and this is a really interesting question because this is something that we're starting to see a lot of, and I think this is a trend, at least as far as I know, that was started by the guys over at Internet Business Mastery, Jeremy and Jason, from InternetBusinessMastery.com. For a while I noticed, because they primarily have a podcast, but every once in a while I would see a podcast, but in the title it would say audio blog, and I wasn't really sure what that was, but then I started listening, and then I started to notice that when they had put that in the title that it was actually a reading of a blog post that they had posted on their site, and so I never really thought anything of it. I thought it was just kind of cool. I never really questioned the strategy. But their primary platform was a podcast, so I kind of figured that's why they did it, but in a recent presentation I saw from Greg Hickman over at MobileMixed.com, he actually talked to the guys, Jeremy and Jason, about the statistics of doing these audio blogs or reading their blog posts and turning them into podcasts, and the numbers pretty much blew me away, so when Jeremy and Jason would post a blog post, it would get less than 10,000 views, organic web traffic or traffic from their subscribers on their RSS feed or on their blog. However, when they would read the blog posts and send it out to their podcast feed, it would get nearly 30,000 or sometimes more downloads or listens, which is huge. You're reaching a far bigger audience, and it blew me away, and it made me consider doing that as well.

I know a lot of people have started doing that too, so you might want to consider reading your blog posts and putting those into a podcast, because the truth is some people don't like to read, and they only have time to listen, and there is a huge convenience with listening in the car or at the gym, on a walk or on a jog, that's when I listen to podcasts, and I'm not going to sit there on a treadmill and try to read or try to do a bench press and read something, but I can listen to content at the same time, and so it's very convenient. So in that way, you're adding value to your audience and potentially reaching an audience that wouldn't have found you otherwise or wouldn't listen or consume your content otherwise if it was only written text.

Now the drawback is perhaps there is somebody who reads the blog. Well then, they're going to get the same exact content in the podcast, and it's not going to be quite as valuable because it's going to be the same thing. However, you're also giving people different options for ways to consume content, and I think you need to be very strategic with how you are sharing that if you are actually doing it, so I think the guys at Internet Business Mastery did it very smartly. They tested it on their own podcast feed, and what they did is they actually took all those out and are continuing to add new audio blogs or reading their blog posts type podcasts, in a completely separate podcast. So they have their normal podcast, which is typically between forty-five minutes to an hour in length. I still listen to the show, it's great, but they also have another podcast called IBM AUDIOblog. You could look it up, Internet Business Mastery AUDIOblog, and that's a completely separate podcast show and a completely separate feed that somebody could subscribe to. So for example, if somebody does like their brand and discovers they have blog content but they only like to listen, they'll still be able to get that same content, so that's very smart, and also you're taking advantage of the New and Noteworthy when you set up your own podcast and completely different, potentially different, search terms that you could be found for and things like that, so I really, really think you should consider it.

Now there is a little bit of extra work involved, not quite as much work as actually doing a regular podcast where you're just speaking off the cuff, or you have an interview, or something like that. You're just reading, and so it might be a little bit more easy to do and more streamlined, and you can put it in your system. You might even have an assistant read it for you or somebody who perhaps works for you or you've hired before for voiceovers. That way, you have to do even less work to be able to provide content in this way, perhaps reach a new audience, but also give your audience another option for reading a blog post in the form of listening.

Mariam, I hope that answers your question. I'm not going to tell you it's what you should do, but I am going to say it is trending, I am interested in it, and it's working really well for a lot of people who are doing it. So Mariam, thank you so much for your question. An AskPat teeshirt is going to be headed your way, so expect an email from myself or an assistant very soon, and any of you out there, if you have a question you'd like potentially featured here on the show, just head on over to AskPat.com. You can ask the question right there on that widget right on that page. You can just use your computer microphone or a little headset or whatever you have. It doesn't matter. I want to hear your questions, and I want to help answer them. I'm getting a dozen or more questions a day, which is amazing, but I'm always looking for great questions to answer, so thank you so much.

Of course, I want to mention our sponsor once again which is ZipRecruiter.com. You guys are amazing. You guys are making it so easy for anybody to recruit for their business. It's just so simple. You go into the website, you go to ZipRecruiter.com/pat. You could try it out for free. You put in one job description for a type of person you're looking for, and boom, it gets sent out to fifty of the top job sites, and you get people responding from all of those different sites in one spot. It makes it incredibly, incredibly convenient. You don't have to waste a ton of time going to every single different site, and they highlight the best candidates for you so you can hire the right person fast, so once again, ZipRecruiter.com/pat.

As always, I end with a quote, and today's quote comes from Steve Jobs. This is a little bit longer, but this is one of my favorite quotes from Steve Jobs. He says, “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something—your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.” Steve Jobs, you're awesome. RIP. Take care, all of you. Appreciate you. I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat. Peace.