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Hey all, welcome back to the podcast! I hope you’re having a great day. Something I’m wondering about is where do you live and what do you do while listening to podcasts? Are you in the US or another country? I’m in South Carolina and when I listen to podcasts, I love to be on a walk. Walking is my podcast listening time and another spot I listen to podcasts is when I’m alone in the car. I also love to listen to podcasts when I’m at the gym. 

Aside from podcasting and building an online business and of course, my family, my other love is lifting weights! I’ve been in the gym since my mid 20s and I love the challenges of lifting weights and getting stronger. The gym has taught me so much, especially the idea of consistency creating results. If I only went to the gym every few weeks, I wouldn't have much muscle. Similar in building an online business, it’s about consistently putting in the work to reach my next goals. 

This episode is part 2 of how to start a podcast. I want to dive a little deeper into the technical side of things in this episode.

Remember in the last episode I stressed the importance of knowing your end goal as you contemplate starting a podcast. Do you want more sales? More customers? Grow your membership or courses? More partners to join you in your business? 

The reason I want you to really think about this is because podcasting is great and a lot of people want to just start a podcast and share content and value. I applaud that but I also want to tell you that you will burn out fast and fade if you don’t figure out a way to monetize your show. Podcasting takes work and it takes time to come up with content so I highly recommend figuring out how you will monetize your show before you hit record.

Now that you’re thinking about how you will monetize your show, you’re going to want to set up a few things as you’re planning out your podcast:

• Lead magnet and email marketing service
• Website
• Podcast hosting service
• Recording system 
• Editing
• Music 

Lead Magnet

What piece of valuable content will you offer your audience in exchange for their email? It really can be anything, so get creative! A short e-book, how to guide, a challenge, workbook, even a quiz! Whatever it is, you want to craft your lead magnet that calls out your target audience and offers them value. For example, as I mentioned earlier, I have a quiz as one of my lead magnets. 

Email marketing service

This is important because you want a service that allows you to set up a follow up email sequence that goes out to the people who’ve signed up for your lead magnet. I use Aweber and find it to be pretty friendly even if you’re tech challenged. You can also create sign up forms and landing pages with Aweber. They have a lot of resources to help you get started. There are other email marketing services out there so make sure to do your research on which one is best for your needs. 

I believe you need a website. It’s your property on the internet. Your place to share information, sell your products or services as well as where you want your audience to head to. Think about it. This is your internet real estate. You can drive traffic to your site and that’s what you want. You don’t want to rely on social media because as we’ve seen, it can go out at any moment and if you say something they don’t like, well they can...

Have you thought about starting a podcast to get more visible or to boost your sales? I think it’s a great way to build authority and credibility in your space or niche. It’s been an incredible way for me to build my brand. Let me share with you a little bit about my journey.

If you didn’t know, I have another podcast, The Therapy Show with Lisa Mustard, where I help talk therapists grow their skills as well as earn continuing education for their licenses. It all started with an idea to take my skills outside of the therapy room to help more people. It’s been a great adventure and I’ve learned so much along the way. As the show grew, my brand grew. Along with growing my brand, other opportunities have presented themselves. One being the opportunity to start this podcast to help direct and social sellers grow their businesses.

All the things I’ve learned along the way of growing the The Therapy Show are helping me grow this show. However, I’m doing things a little differently with this podcast. The episodes are shorter for one. I’m doing more solo episodes with this podcast where I’m teaching a skill or idea. Plus I’m coming out of the gate with my lead magnet and growing my email list. 

It’s paying off. My sales have increased and I have others reaching out and asking what it is that I do. Now that’s a social seller's dream right? Have people just reach out and ask what you do? Doesn’t that feel better than sending those cold messages and posting content that gets crickets? 

Just like using other platforms to grow my brand and online business, I’m leading with value. But I am doing it with a podcast. 

As I mentioned on the last episode, I was tired of social media. Yet I love creating content for my audience. But I was feeling burnt out on social media so I thought I'd take my content to the podcasting world. And it’s so much fun over here! 

Podcasts are growing fast and technology is easier, and the opportunities are still plentiful for aspiring podcasters. Currently the amount of people listening to podcasts has increased by 122% and 88 million Americans listen to podcasts monthly. As podcast audiences continue to grow, there's no better time to create an audio podcast. 

Have you thought about creating a podcast to grow your business? You’ve thought about it many times but perhaps you get stuck on the technical stuff or maybe even what to talk about on your podcast? I totally understand as I’ve been there too! I’ve got good news for you though! I’m offering podcast coaching and if you’d like to learn more about it, there’s a link in the show notes you can click on and learn more about it. Let’s connect and get you started on upping your brand and rocking out your sales. Click here to learn more.

Before we talk about the technical aspects of podcasting, let’s discuss the most important piece - what is your end goal? What do you hope to achieve or accomplish by podcasting? 

Is it to increase sales? 

Is it to get new clients?

Is it to sell your products?

I recommend thinking about this long and hard before you hit record on your first episode. 

For example a recent client has the goal of selling more of her books and courses so her content is geared towards those goals. She creates content that gives value that anyone can listen to but her call to action is to buy her book or course to go deeper in her subject.

The great thing about podcasting is that there are plenty of listeners out there who are eager for your content. You just need to create the content to attract them. 

The technical aspects include how will you...

Hi friends, welcome back to the podcast. I’m excited to share this episode with you because I'm hearing from a lot of people that they would like to market their social selling business in other ways aside from social media. 

Before I dive into this episode’s topic, I want to share some exciting news! I’m taking on new podcast coaching clients. So, if you’ve ever thought about starting a podcast, then you’ll want to check out the link in the show notes to schedule a call with me. 

Have you thought about creating a podcast to grow your business? You’ve thought about it many times but perhaps you get stuck on the technical stuff or maybe even what to talk about on your podcast? I totally understand as I’ve been there too! I’ve got good news for you though! I’m offering podcast coaching and if you’d like to learn more about it, there’s a link in the show notes you can click on and learn more about it. Let’s connect and get you started on upping your brand and rocking out your sales. Click here to learn more.

First, I want to talk about the end results you are trying to achieve. I’m going to assume one of your end results is to grow your sales which means you need to create return buyers or find new customers. Aside from social media, what are some ways you can do just that? 

So, as I’m sharing these ideas, keep your end results you are wanting to achieve in mind.

I’m going to talk about email marketing, blogging and podcasting and how you can use these mediums as ways to grow your sales. But before I jump into the details, you need to know one thing. Utilizing these strategies requires consistency of action and testing and retesting ideas and content. This isn’t start a blog or podcast and voila, instant overnight success. These methods take time and patience. But if you’re in this for the long haul of growing your direct sales or social selling business, then you should be good to go with this notion. 

Each one of these ways to market will include one thing - a lead magnet. A lead magnet is a valuable service or piece of content that you create that your customers then exchange their email address or phone number in return for that content. It’s then up to you to send them the content you’ve created. I want to encourage you to start thinking about what lead magnets you want to create for your ideal customer. Lead magnets can be anything as long as they offer value or help solve a problem. Checklists, planners, recipes, workouts, business tips, templates, etc. 

First up is blogging. Blogging is self-publishing content on owned property which would be your website and blog. It’s writing content, sharing pictures, and other media that’s self published. Is blogging still a thing? Heck yes! Blog posts can be optimized to rank on google search engines. This is how people find you on the internet. Now I'm not a blogging expert or pro but I’ve created success with my few blog articles. When you write up a blog post, you’ll want to include your lead magnet in the text. I’m sure you’ve seen examples of this when you’ve read your favorite bloggers' content. 

People get on google every day looking for solutions to their problems. You will want to craft your blog posts to solve those problems. Write good SEO content and eventually your people can find you. This takes time and patience, but it is doable. Here’s a FREE course on getting started with blogging.

Next up is Podcasting. You will drive traffic to your website with audio content. This is similar to blogging yet you’re doing it all on audio. Share value, offer ideas and support, and create calls to action. If you listen to my intro, midroll and outro, you’ll hear my CTAs or calls to action. I’m inviting you to engage...