Guest blog from Rachael Botfield- The benefit of starting a podcast for your small business

Podcasts are extremely popular these days. Everyone seems to have one. What I want to do is look at the real benefits podcasting can bring to your business.

Firstly, let’s look at some stats…

In the UK 50% of adults have listened to a podcast and 25% of adults are regular listeners. Spotify has identified that there was a 57% increase in listeners in 2021. The podcast market is growing exponentially! (If you’d like to check out these statistics you can here. )

This means you’ll be reaching a lot of new people from different countries and age ranges.

Some worry that the market is over-saturated. This is a common mistake. Let’s think of it compared to blogs. The blogging industry is massive! Globally there are 500 million blogs in 2021 and over 77% of internet users read blogs regularly.

This doesn’t stop people from creating blogs; they are superb long-form content that increases your SEO and delivers your message to your audience.

So, in turn, don’t let the number of podcasts out there affect your decision to start one. You will create a podcast that is unique and authentic to you which will appeal to your particular audience.

Let’s look at some other benefits:

Podcasts are great for increasing your visibility and building your brand awareness. Your content will be available on a wider range of platforms for your ideal listeners and potential clients to find you.

People consume different types of content; some prefer reading or video, and some prefer podcasts. By having this audio form of content available you’re opening yourself up to that section of people.

Podcasts are a great way to deliver content to those people who are on the go as they can be consumed hands free easily.

They can improve your SEO! If you’re not sure what SEO is, it’s Search Engine Optimisation. The more content you create, the higher your SEO gets. This is a simplified explanation of SEO but you get what I mean.

Long-form content that contains keywords from your chosen topic is especially beneficial. Think about the different podcast platforms as mini search engines. Ensuring that your podcast titles and show notes contain keywords will increase the chances of your ideal listener organically finding you.

You will be building your authority in your field. By creating content that establishes you as the expert, (and remember folks, to be an ‘expert’ you only need to know more than the average person who’s in the same room as you) you build your credibility and the know, like and trust factor.

Your podcast is a great way to show your knowledge and what makes your business unique.

People will get to know your voice, (or face if you have a video podcast as well) how you come across and will allow them to get to know you better.

This helps to grow your community for your business. You can form deeper connections with your audience by engaging in the reciprocal relationship that’s initiated by the podcast. Perhaps you have a Facebook group to go and chat with them live after an episode goes out? Perhaps you answer audience questions in the podcast. There are some really beneficial things you can do to build these relationships that benefit your business.

You’re creating a content bank! You can get so much lovely content gold from every episode you make. These can be repurposed into blogs, audiograms (taking a snippet of audio and using a static image) videograms (taking a snippet of video from your episode) creating long-form posts, creating short-form posts, a carousel with key points, creating reels or stories with pieces of key information on. The list goes on!

Much of this content will be evergreen, which means it will continue to be relevant to your audience so you can tweak and reshare it on a regular basis.

Repurposing is such a valuable tool to use, and a big time saver! And we all could do with that!

If you consider these parts, you can see how a podcast can really benefit your business!

If adding a podcast to your marketing is something you would like to know more about then connect with Rachael on Instagram where she shares her years of podcasting and media experience tips and tricks for small businesses just like you.