AP 0204: Which Comes First, the Blog or the Podcast?

AskPat 204 Episode Transcript

Pat: What's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 204 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. Hope you're having an awesome week, and today, this day, is Halloween. Actually, the day it's published. It's not recorded on Halloween. But I just wanted to wish everybody out there who celebrates Halloween, Happy Halloween. I'm going as Darth Vader because my son is going as a stormtrooper, which is awesome. So hopefully there'll be pictures on the Instagram page. You can find me on Instagram.com/patflynn. Actually, I guarantee that there will be some pictures of the costumes.

Beyond that, I also want to thank today's sponsor, which is FreshBooks.com. Amazing company. The easiest to use cloud accounting solution for whether you're doing invoicing. Maybe you're a coach or a consultant, you want to do quick, professional invoices so you can get paid, and, or you want to keep track of all your finances. What's coming in your business, what's going out, so that come tax season, it's just push button easy to get the reports you or your CPA, or whoever's doing the taxes for you. Used by millions of entrepreneurs and small businesses, and that could be you as well.

If you'd like to get a free trial, just go to FreshBooks.com/AskPat and enter “AskPat” in the “how did you hear about us?” section. Again, that's FreshBooks.com/AskPat, enter “AskPat.”

Okay. Now let's get to today's question from Micky.

Micky: Hi, Pat. My name is Micky. And before I jump into my question, I just have to tell you that I think you are totally awesome, and I cannot thank you enough for all that you do. You are seriously one amazing dude, and I really appreciate you.

Now my question is this. I'm planning to start a podcast, but also want to have a blog that features the people who are on my podcast. However, I'm not sure whether or not I should create my blog first, or if I should create my podcast first.

I would like for the podcast and the blog to tie in with one another, but I simply, I just don't know which one to, which comes first the chicken or the egg.

If I create a podcast with no blog, then what do the listeners have to refer back to? But on the flip side of that, if I create a blog with nothing but content, how will I be able to get my future podcast guests to allow me to interview them for my podcast when I don't even have one yet?

Please let me know what you think. Thanks, Pat.

Pat: Hey, Micky. Thank you so much for the question, and I truly appreciate your kind words. Especially the fact that you used “awesome” and “dude” in your question because those are two words that are right up in my vocabulary, me being from California, so right on.

Now to answer your question. Should you start a podcast first or should you start a blog first? I understand the concern because like you said, if you just have a podcast up . . . And you can host a podcast without having a blog. You can host it on SoundCloud, you can host it on Libsyn. And you don't necessarily need a blog, you just need a feed. And so you can use the feed coming from SoundCloud or Libsyn or some other host, and so you don't need a blog to have one up and running.

However, I would highly recommend having one if you're going to start a podcast because that's your home base. You want people on your podcast to come back to your blog because that's where all the action happens. That's where people click on new things, subscribe to your email list, and perhaps, down the road, that's where you are going to sell stuff. And so, yes, you absolutely need a blog or some sort of web presence for your podcast.

Now, you also need a blog, or if you're going to be smart and not use just a service provider to host your RSS feed, you're going to actually have a home base, then you're also going to need a blog before you podcast.

You're going to have to setup your blog, have a specific category for your podcast, and use a tool like PowerPress, and there's a bunch of other ones. I actually have a podcasting tutorial that you can go through if you want to set it up correctly as PodcastingTutorial.com. It's totally free, no opt-ins.

But anyway, every time you publish a blog post and it has this embedded audio file, an mp3 file to go along with it. That is what the directories read off of that category-specific feed. Again, little technical here, we don't have to get into the technical stuff. It's at PodcastingTutorial.com if you want to learn how to set it all up and get all the right equipment and how to get it up on iTunes and so on and so forth.

But like I said, you actually would want to have both. So you start to blog. Perhaps put information about yourself and what you're doing there. Setup your email service provider so you can collect email addresses. Perhaps you'd have some sort of incentive to excite people to get, on your email list and you'd talk about that on your blog. So you want them to sort of work together, like you're saying. You obviously know what needs to be done, it's just want needs to be done first. Well, setup the blog, record your podcast episodes, and you're on your way.

Now the thing is, you're blog, as you, overtime start to build your audience on your podcast, you're actually going to get, if you continue on your blog to write written content too, sort of like how I started out, you're actually going to get people who will first meet you and your brand through the written text on your site.

And then, you can have those people discover your podcast, which is sort of what happened with me. I started with my blog for a couple years. Then I introduced my podcast in July 2010. So initially on day one of my podcast I had X number of listeners, people who had already read my posts, liked it, subscribed, and was willing to give me a shot and listen on the podcast. And 11 million downloads later, I haven't looked back since and it's been an amazing thing for me and my business, starting this podcast. So I'm really excited to know that you are already thinking about that.

But on the flip side, people are going to discover you on iTunes and other directories out there. They're going to share the podcast episodes you put out with their friends and families and people who they feel would benefit from listening to your show. And then you're going to have people come over to your blog because, what you're going to do on your podcast, is give calls to action. Perhaps say, “I have this giveaway if you subscribe to my email list. Here's a specific landing page you an go to at whatever whatever.com.” And then they go back to your website.

That's why it's really important to have that home base, because you want to take control of those listeners and have them finally get to a place where you can understand who they are, collect their email addresses.

If you just simply have a feed coming from SouondCloud or Libsyn or some other hosting platform, you're not going to know exactly who your listeners are. You need a place for them to go to and to collect their email addresses and to start to build that community. And what would happen if, for example, Libsyn were to go away and that's where your feed was setup and then all of the sudden they go away or they get bought out for example. Stitcher was just got bought out and a lot of people aren't really sure what's going happen with Stitcher right now. Did they buy them out to sort of get rid of them, or did they by them out to integrate them into their existing business? I don't know. More information on that later, but you never know.

So you want to have control of your people, and so having it all happen on your website, that's your home base. Again, that's where all the action happens is the smartest thing to do.

Now Mickey, to address your other question about, okay if you have a blog, but don't even have a podcast yet, how are you going to get guests on your show.

Well, you're presented with the same problem as you start your podcast whether you start your blog or not. So you're going to have to find people who will be willing to become guests on your show. And we've done episodes in the past with Smart Passive Income, my other podcast, or AskPat, talking about how to get guests to come onto your show.

And just a quick rundown. You want to start with people who have been on shows before. Essentially, you want to start with what they call the low-hanging fruit. People who you know will be more likely to say yes.

Now of course you've got to ask, and you don't get unless you ask. But who you ask is very important. And so if you find that you’re asking sort of A-listers in your niche who have never heard of you before and they're all saying no, it's going to be hard, especially because you don't have a podcast yet and a lot of those people are very picky with where they spend their time. They don't want to spend their time on a podcast that isn't necessarily proven yet.

So you want to go to the people who you know are more likely to say yes. I would start with your network. If you know anybody, perhaps you are somewhat known in a niche or have relationships with other people in your space, you can get them to come onto your show as well, especially if they're friends and they're willing to give you some help. Once you start to get those few first episodes in, it's going to be a lot easier to asks other people to come onto your show.

Other people you can ask to come onto your show are people who you see have already been guests on other shows as well. Those are people who are familiar with the process. You already know it's something they do.

Beyond that, and even better and a more likely chance they would say yes, is if they are either authors, they have books, or something, some sort of program to promote, or perhaps they're in the middle of a promotion right now. Those people want to get in front of as many people as possible. So a lot of times these people who are promoting stuff are in the middle of a launch or maybe their book's coming out soon, and they might make space for you even if you don't have your show up and running yet.

Now what's really cool is once you start to get these people coming on your show, start to build an archive, perhaps a lot of those people in that archive are well-known people, authors that other people know. You can then name drop when you contact other people to come on your show. You could say, “Hey, so-and-so, you would be an amazing guest on my show. I would love to have you and feature you in front of my audience. I've also featured other guests like Name A, Name B, Name C.” Whatever the case may be.

Then, they will be more to at least consider going on your show because you have a “track record.” I learned that strategy from Derek Halpern a couple years ago when he was talking about how he was able to get some great guests on his show, on his podcast, Social Triggers Insider. So it was a really genius idea.

Another thing you could do is ask people who are in your audience. That's one thing I looked to because I don't just feature people like Gary Vaynerchuk and Tim Ferriss and these sort of online business entrepreneurship startup world.

I like to feature people who my audience can more relate to, people that nobody's actually ever heard of before, but they have amazing success stories that nobody's ever heard because they just aren't given any opportunities to share.

So if you are starting to build an audience on your blog, for example, or perhaps you know some people who are in your niche who may not be necessarily the “experts,” but they're succeeding with what you're teaching about, then you can talk to them. A lot of times, because they're not given very many opportunities, they're going to be likely to say yes as well.

Of course, you always want to make them feel comfortable. You always want to make sure you tell them what's in it for them. And a lot of times when you do that, they're going to want to come onto the show. If they aren't ready yet or they just want more episodes in the back before they say yes, you've got to respect that. You totally got to respect that. Just keep pushing forward, keep asking, and don't give up. That's the biggest thing. Just don't give up, don't quit.

Awesome. Micky, thank you so much for the question. I hope that answers it. For everybody out there listening, I appreciate you.

If you have a question you'd like potentially featured here on the show, just head on over to AskPat.com. And if you get your question featured here like Micky, you will get an AskPat t-shirt sent your way. So Micky, can't wait to send you your shirt. An assistant of mine will be in contact with you very soon.

I also want to thank today's sponsor, which is FreshBooks.com.

When I first started keeping track of my fiance’s money back in late 2008, I was using a spreadsheet, like Excel. I think it was Numbers on Mac. And it was just such a pain. And so I'm so glad I got hooked up with FreshBooks eventually. You got to do it because it's just going to make your life so much easier so then you can focus on what you need to focus on to provide for your audience. And not just on the little things like organizing your finances, which is obviously very important. But there's a lot of software and things that can help you automate that process and just make it completely easy, especially come tax season, which is going to creep up on us very soon.

So for those of you who would like to get a free trial of FreshBooks, just head on over to FreshBooks.com/AskPat and enter “AskPat” in the “how did you hear about us?” section.

Awesome. And to end today's episode, and to end Halloween. This isn't a Halloween related quote, but it's a quote from Lance Armstrong, and that is “Pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever.”

Cheers. Take care, and I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat.