Using communities to distribute your podcast episodes

Creating content is one thing but distributing it is a whole other ballgame.

Over the past weeks, we have been looking at the episodic marketing framework, a clear-cut process on how to start your video series and so far we’ve been able to cover all the stages which are- plan, produce, repurpose and distribute.

And now we are going to be covering the final step of the distribution stage where we talk about the use of community channels. While we’ve spoken about personal brands and brand channels, we also wanted to mention the importance of communities when it comes to distribution. 

This topic is sort of a nuanced one and it may mean different things for different people but for the context of building an original series and distributing it with the help of your community, the community we are referring to here could comprise of the following groups- 

1. Customers
2. Prospects 
3. Fans of your brand
4. Other influencers 
5. Brand guests 
   

Customers

If you want your clients to share more of your content on social media, then there are a few things that you need to do. First is making sure that your content actually resonates with your customers and is something that helps them solve a particular problem or need. Most people measure the worthiness of content by how much it helps them. If you are helping to solve a customer’s problem, then they would naturally be inclined to re-share your content, whether out of gratitude or just because they believe that there might be others out there facing the same issues and they would like to amplify your content so that others can find you as well. 

And if you notice that your customers might not be relating with your content, one simple thing you can do is to ask. Ask them what they think would be more relatable, engage in discussions with your customers. This shows that you actually care about their opinions and want to listen to their feedback. 

Prospects

Prospects are potential customers or clients who have not yet opted in to receive the services offered by your company. One way to engage prospective customers is by creating content based on their pain points or search queries. For example, if you owned a company that offers digital marketing services to a specific industry, let’s say hospitals or medical practitioners.

You could search for the keywords that pertain to them or for the search queries that they input into the Internet by using any keyword tool. Once you have this, you can then create content with these keywords because you now know what your prospects are searching for. And because your prospects are already having these thoughts and questions, then it would be easy for them to relate to your content as well as share it. Especially if you already have a friendly relationship with these prospects.

Fans of your brand

Ever wondered how most celebrities seem to have an endless stream f likes, comments, and shares for their content? Well, it’s because of their die-hard fans and the support that they show. 

But you might be thinking, you’re no Beyonce and you definitely do not have The Beyhive to share every post that you make as a company so how are you going to do it? The answer’s simple. By creating content that inspires your fans and makes them want to become a part of the conversation. 

And we all know about the benefits of user-generated content and how good it is for drawing organic traffic. Some things that you can do to increase the probability of fans sharing your content are- creating a hashtag around a particular post or series of posts that allows people to follow a trend as well as celebrating and reposting the who actually engage with your content.

Other influencers

There are several ways to get other influencers in your niche to share your content. And as you probably already know, most influencers do not just share the content of others unless they want to or are being paid to do so. So how do you get them to share yours?

First, you have to build an authentic relationship, establish a rapport without asking them for a favor and once you get that going, it’ll be easier for them to help you share or repost your content, especially if it is something that resonates with them. And since friendship is a two-way street, you should also share some of their content or mention them whenever you see anything that could be useful to them. 

Brand guests

So let’s put it this way if you're sharing content from one of your shows as the marketing department in your company, and you're getting your sales team and other members of your team to share that as well, naturally, you would be getting more traffic. Now think about your guest that maybe was on the show with your brand, they could do the same thing on their side as well which would further increase the traffic that you are getting for your content. 

You could maybe even set that expectation when inviting them on to the show or rather after the episode is done by letting them know that one of your goals is to make sure that as many people as possible see the episode they were featured in. And so you let them know that you are going to be sharing content from the episode across it across your different channels and how what we need from them is is to match that by also sharing this content across multiple teams and platforms. 

You should also make sure to leverage all repurposed content that you get from your pillar episodes, especially if it's something that could put their company in a positive light. 

So that is basically the idea behind engaging your community and finding creative ways to actually make other people feel involved and like a part of the show. It could also be a low-key way to showcase expertise in their field so definitely keep this in mind.

We hope that this series of posts on episodic marketing was helpful and you can let us know if you have questions concerning any of the stages. Just contact us with any of your questions or feedback, and we will make sure to provide all the answers you need.