Ep. 101 How to leverage your podcast appearance

This is John Gilroy

It is hard to believe that I have done over 1,000 podcast interviews.

Some guests get four hundred impressions on LinkedIn, and some get 4,000.

How do you explain the difference? -- keep listening . . .. Hit the music, Manny . . .

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Ever since Covid, I have been doing lots of in-person interviews – at BBQ places, Fish Shacks, breweries; we have had fantastic success; most guests ask how they can leverage their appearance to increase reach and improve brand awareness for their company.

Let me share with you four ways to take advantage of your podcast appearance.

· Tell the story visually.

· Be specific.

· Make it easy to reach you.

· Ask

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Number ONE Tell the story visually – I realize this is counter-intuitive, but our small human brains react to images much better than audio or text. Studies have shown that your optic nerve is 40x faster than your audio nerve. So . . .

>Make sure you have a great publicity photo. I have changed the publicity photo on LinkedIn for clients and have seen their followers double.

> Even better, get a photo doing the podcast face-to-face; it's not that difficult. You can ask the podcast producer if they can record at a conference. The "where" is not important.

LOGO When you do your promotion, people will see the image first. An image of a guest in a Zoom and an image of a guest in front of a microphone with a logo is like night and day.

>You need three elements for a successful on-site interview: a microphone with a logo, a professional photographer, and an audio engineer.

MICROPHONE – A "flag" is the logo that appears on a microphone – make sure you have one.

PHOTOGRAPHER: The professional photographer will get you fantastic images for promotion, but also for your LinkedIn profile, and your website. You can use it when you ask to get on other podcasts.

AUDIO An audio engineer using a directional microphone can bring life to the interview. The listener hears noises in the background, it makes the interview authentic.

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Number TWO In order to be terrific, you gotta be specific. Before the interview, rehearse a short "origin" story and a "customer benefit" story, include details and colorful language.

Example: Yeah, we have been in business for a while now.

Example: We were founded in 2016 by two Google engineers who had a better idea of how to manage networks.

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From there, develop statistics about the problem you solve. Listeners will remember the story, but the numbers will make it emotionally comfortable to justify listening to the podcast.

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Covid has really had an impact on system administrators managing cloud applications; how has Covid impacted your log volumes?

Example: Many companies have increased the numbers they manage

Example:

· Before Covid we were managing 200GB per day in log data

· After Covid, we now manage 100TB a day in log data.

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Number THREE Make it easy to reach you.

>This is equally true if you have a big company or a small company.

Example: just look me up on Google, my name is Dennis Szymanski. That's hard. I have interviewed companies like Kenetica, Savyint, Ardalyst

How to make it easy: register an easy to remember website and redirect it to your company.

Example: I got a tough last name, Szymanski. The best way to contact me is with my website, federal tech podcast dot com.

My name is hard to spell, but the fundraiser is easy: bike for your beer dot com.

You can expand this to your call to action at the end of the interview. Once you have an

easy to remember website, then have a call to action that will benefit the listener.

Example: Go to FederalTechPodcast.com and download the scorecard on How to Leverage your Podcast Appearance.

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Number FOUR Ask.

>Ryan Leveque once wrote a book with a one-word title -- "Ask," let us apply "ask" to your podcast appearance.

>> Ask the host to mention the call to action verbally and on the show notes page with a link.

>> Ask the listeners to download the valuable PDF from the URL you mentioned.

>> Ask your company to include your appearance on the company website – you can slip it into a blog, a press release, or an event.

>> Ask your social media team to prepare for the release of the interview and then hit hard, especially during the first 72 hours. Personally, for each guest I do 25 Tweets, audiogram, LinkedIn, transcript, show notes with image logo, and link to company: email, paid advertising, and much more. If that is what I do, your team should double my efforts.

>> Ask your followers on LinkedIn to comment, not like. A twelve-word comment is worth a hundred "likes." You can prime the pump by asking questions – "What do you think of a software bill of materials?"

>> Ask to get on other podcasts based on your appearance – now you have a website with a show notes page to reference when you approach other podcasters.

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Conclusion: how to leverage your podcast appearance.

ONE Tell the story visually, not verbally.

TWO Be specific.

THREE Make it easy to reach you.

FOUR Ask

I'd like to thank our guest, John Gilroy, moderator of the Federal Tech Podcast. . ..