Podcast Content Marketing And Building Relationships Through Podcasting - Simon Thompson - FHR #270

Why Dave Decided to talk to Simon Thompson:

Simon Thompson is a podcast content marketer, and founder of Content Kite. In the past he has worked on major content projects for the likes of L’Oreal, Nissan, Disney and Nike to name a few. He now focuses solely on helping B2B companies establish authority and build relationships through podcasting.

Tips and Tricks for You and Your Business:

• How much content is too much and what's the right type of content to produce? (2:00)
• How are you and your clients using podcasts to drive traffic? (4:29)
• Time management with podcasts (6:50)
• The 4 Pillars Content Kite focuses on (8:15)
• Pros/Cons of interviewing vs solo content podcasts (12:45)

Quotable Moments:

"There’s certainly no ‘one size fits all’ content approach."

"Time is obviously the most expensive thing any of us as entrepreneurs have."

"Be a guest on other podcasts. Because other podcasts already have the audience built; you just have to put your message in front of them."

Other Tidbits:

Look at a podcast as a win-win-win. The host is getting exposure to the guest’s audience and vice versa and the listener is getting value.

Links: FunnelHackerRadio.com FunnelHackerRadio.com/freetrial FunnelHackerRadio.com/dreamcar

---Transcript---

Speaker 1:   00:00     Welcome to funnel hacker radio podcast, where we go behind the scenes and uncover the tactics and strategies top entrepreneurs are using to make more sales, dominate their markets, and how you can get those same results. Here's your host, Dave Woodward. Everybody. Welcome back to funnel hacker radio. I'm your host, Dave Woodward. This is going to be a lot of fun today. Ah,

Speaker 2:   00:21     I wanna introduce you guys to a friend of mine basically who has been in the business world, has done huge things in the branding side, working for l'oreal, Nike, Disney, things of that, but now has his own company and is crushing it as far as all based on content, which is one of the main things we talk so much about as far as try to get free traffic and I'm super excited to welcome to the show, the founder of content type, Simon Thompson. Simon, welcome Dave. Thank you very much for having me on the show. It'll be a lot of fun. I've, so if you don't mind, tell people right now as far as what exactly is content kite and why is content so critical these days. So content content is a content marketing agency essentially and for the last two years after I left the corporate world where we're focusing primarily on, on blog content or text based content, so things like white papers, ebooks, blog posts, that kind of thing and had some success with that with some clients.

Speaker 2:   01:16     But as you know, there's kind of this shift that's been happening for awhile now, but it's really sort of becoming relevant now into podcasting and video content as well. Just richer forms of content essentially. And so that's Kinda what we're primarily focusing on now, which we can get into why that is. But um, uh, yeah, I mean we can get enjoined now if you like. So we produce a ton of content. Obviously you've got funnel hacker radio podcast here that you're on right now and people listen to this. Russell has his own marketing secrets podcast, where do funnel hacker TV and we're always throwing a ton of content out there and people are always saying, gosh, you guys have so much content. How do people consume it all and why you guys spend so much time putting content on facebook and instagram and youtube, all these different places.

Speaker 2:   02:03     So if you don't mind turning that over to you as far as how much content is too much and what's the right type of content to produce? Yeah, it's a great question. So I don't think you can ever produce too much content. That content that you put out. Like I follow a lot of it but I probably don't follow all of it and it's probably because like different people consume content in different types of ways. So some people prefer podcasts, some people just do not like listening to podcasts. Right. So it's not like the bale and video is the same text is the same. What I do like about podcasts is when when people listen to podcasts, they listen intently because like they usually doing something else. I might be at the gym or in the car or washing the dishes or whatever it may be. There's certainly no one size fits all content approach and I mean, to answer your question, yeah, I just don't think you could ever produce too much content. There's never too much student debt. There's always a way to give your perspective on things and give some more value to someone and no one's got not enough time for more value. They can always give more of that.

Speaker 3:   03:08     I'm actually trying to find it. I was literally talking with Russell about this the other day. We just produced a piece trying to find it on my desk here. We've talked about this for a long time. No one's going to be able to see this bitch you. And it's really kind of our own little thing as far as free traffic goes. And the idea behind it was, um, we've talked a long time about this, the, and I've heard this probably from Gary v and others where, you know, you go back to the seventies, eighties, there was really only three networks and those three networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC here in the states. And since then, now with cable, everything else that, the attention span has just been so diluted. And so now we're starting to see from a content standpoint, instagram obviously is a big, is a platform that a lot of people play on. So it's facebook, so as youtube and podcasts are there as well. And so it was kind fun. We were talking about, you know, podcasts, they've kind of become the radio show of the olden days where people would tune in as much content. Youtube is kind of like the Sitcom, facebook's more like the talk show. And that whole reality show is kind of like instagram. And so when you take a look at content, uh, and especially with what you guys are doing, yeah, from podcast, how are you and your clients using podcasts to drive traffic?

Speaker 2:   04:26     Yeah. Oh, well I'm in facade is when you produce a podcast, you have access to like these freight distribution channels. So just by putting your show into things like itunes, stitcher, Google play, if you convert it to video, you get youtube, you can automatically just get yourself like 200 listens per month, which was, you know, like not the, the greatest amount of, of listens, but it's exactly. And it's a really, really good start. Um, and like I said before, when people listen to podcasts, they're listening like, so they're really engaged. I mean, to get that condo of amount of engaged viewers of say your blog content, you'd probably need actually about a thousand readers to get like 200 that are actually going to read the full blog price. So that's one way. And then apart from that, uh, every guest, if you have an interview based show, every guest you have on your show is going to be a promoter of your show if you ask them to be.

Speaker 2:   05:19     Because if you think about it, they, they kind of positioned as a, well perhaps an expert or an authority or someone who knows a lot about a given topic and so they kind of, if they share it, they're going to look good because they are kind of positioned in this, in this way. And so if you ask them, hey, would you share this out? Then that's another promoter who's going to, you know, send your message far and wide and share your brand as well. You have 50 guests on over a year that's 50 people who are promoting your brand and your content and if some of them have really big audiences, that's a hell of a lot of traffic that you can drive. You know, it's not going. I appreciate that because I get the question all the time. People go, I have a podcast and they're all seeing, well, so David, is it better when you have a.

Speaker 2:   06:01     is it better to be a guest on a podcast or is it better to be the host of an interview podcast? So what's your take on that? Yeah, it's a really good question. And I don't know if there's a one size fits all answer. What I will say is if you're a business and you just want to get some leads quickly, uh, be a guest on other podcasts because other podcasts already have the audience built, uh, you just have to put your message in front of them and you can get some, some quick leads that way. However, if you want to play the long game and build your own audience who you can market to on a consistent basis when you want to, then you're going to nature on platform and that could be in the form of, of having your own podcast. So it sort of depends on what your goals are.

Speaker 2:   06:45     There's absolutely nothing wrong with just going on podcast after podcast after podcast. But one thing we always recommend is do both. I mean, once you properly delegate and outsource or, or whatever you do when you have your own podcast, it actually comes down to a pretty small time commitment. You can just bring it down to just doing a call itself. And then going on another podcast is just doing a call. And that's like 30 minutes each time. So, you know, most founders or companies are gonna have a lot of calls every week, you know, whether it be five, 10, 20, could be more than that. It's just one more of those or two more of those. So I'm sort of depends on what your goals are really. So Simon, uh, you and your company, you guys help basically produce a podcast for other people, is that correct?

Speaker 2:   07:35     That's correct. So help people understand exactly what that service does for them because time is obviously the most expensive thing any of us as entrepreneurs have. It's the most hardest thing to come by. And so I know for me that was one of my biggest hesitations when I started looking at doing a podcast with, there was no way I was going to spend the time to do all the tech and do all that crazy stuff that's required. So what does content kite provide? What does things people should look for if they want to create their own show? Yeah. So, so I mean, from, from an overall perspective, there's four main pillars that we focus on. Uh, so it's strategy, creation, promotion and conversion. Now I'll focus this around the production component because that's probably what most people are thinking of, but once you've got sort of the strategy, uh, created and what you want the show to be about, the production is really where most of the time commitment comes in.

Speaker 2:   08:27     So things like editing the audio, you know, publishing it to your hose, get writing up, show notes, putting it on the blog, that's a really time consuming stuff and stuff that as a, as a founder can you, Tom can probably be better spent. So will help a lot in that area. Um, we also do a lot of things in regards to promotion. Uh, so a few things that I mentioned before, so making sure that you're in all the podcast directories for starters, and then promoting it on social media at working in with each guest to find out the best way that they can share it with their audience. And then the conversion point component is sort of multipronged. So we always recommend that every podcast has some sort of lead magnet or content upgrade that goes along with an episode or along with every episode, and I'm sure the listeners are familiar with this. It's a piece of gated content that you can call out on your car, say go to this link, sign up for it and that way you get someone on the email list and then

Speaker 3:   09:25     so let's just do this live so you've got to link. So how would your work and what are they going to get? Again to go to [inaudible] dot com, forward slash

Speaker 2:   09:36     funnel hacker, and that is going to send them to a free podcasting workshop, uh, which we'll go through our entire process, added credit strategy and produce the podcast and promote it properly and set up these conversion mechanisms. And so everyone who goes to that link is going to be added to a funnel. I'm breaking the fourth wall here and you'll see what a sequence like that might look like. Um, there's also, and this might be an entirely separate rabbit hole, which we might not choose to go down, but if you're a B to b business, podcasting is just a great way to build relationships and if you get really strategic about that, uh, then you can start to bring on like prospects who could use, you could potentially work with or referral partners. So that is probably a very deep rabbit hole. But that's kind of another element to this, this conversion component is, is, is building a guest list of essentially people you want to work with or people you want as referral partners, et Cetera. But let's go back to the content upgrade. Um, get somebody, let's stay on that for a second because I,

Speaker 3:   10:44     one of the things, I'm in charge of all of our top line revenue and all of our business development opportunities and so I get approached all the time by people to promote, you know, Dave will promote you if you promote us. And I'm like, well, we don't promote other people's products or services. And they're like, well, there's gotta be some reciprocal going on here. And so I can tell you, for me, and especially for someone, if you're building a list and you're protective of that list as much as we are, um, one of the ways I'm able to protect our list actually is by offering people to come onto a podcast like this to where they know they're going to get some traffic. They know they can basically soft pitch, just kind of like you just did. So I'm aware, you know what you're, they're going to go to content kite.com, forward slash funnel hacker where they're now going to be added to your list.

Speaker 3:   11:28     You're going to have the optimum market. And then obviously in exchange for that, they're going to get something. And so as a podcast host and as someone's trying to protect our brand as a business goes, it's actually a great opportunity for me to be able to bring other people on to give them exposure to our audience without and having a direct promotion. And so you guys who are in the same situation, we are as far as click funnels where you're trying to protect your audience. It's a great way of doing where the reciprocal basically if someone then most likely would end up promoting for us because they know they've got access to our audience and is in a podcast because the majority of most podcast listeners we find typically have higher incomes. They typically are bigger buyers. They're typically a much better client or qualified prospect than someone who might just be on a member of a facebook group.

Speaker 2:   12:15     Yeah, exactly, and that's a really good point and it really can turn into a win win, win. So that sort of mechanism that I talked about before where you bring on a particular type of guests, whether they can benefit you in some way, you're also benefiting them by giving them access to your audience and at the same time the listener is getting value so the listener wins. You win as the host and the guest when. So it's, it's, it's a beautiful thing.

Speaker 3:   12:39     I love it. So I get. The other question I get quite a bit these days is, is it better to have a podcast where it's just you talking and you're providing all the content versus you basically bring in like I am right now where I'm bringing you on and I'm interviewing you. So what are the pros and cons to either being a host where you're interviewing people versus having your own content that you're providing?

Speaker 2:   13:01     Yeah, I liked the interview format for a few reasons. One is, as I just mentioned, it's, it's a great way to just build relationships. So if you interview whether it's your ideal prospects or referral or apartments, whatever it may be, you can build a lot of really solid relationships and if you're in like high ticket database services or a high ticket, anything really relationships of the name of the game. So that's one. The second is if you're doing a podcast longterm as a content marketing channel where your guests like free content that you don't really have to think about too much. Um, so it's, it's, it's just a lot easier. I mean, if, if you're doing a podcast where you talk where you have to come up with all of that content every single week and you know, whether you're scripting it out or not, it's still like a lot to think about and possibly not foremost, but um,

Speaker 3:   13:54     it's just,

Speaker 2:   13:55     I find less engaging to be a one person talking kinda show some people do it really well and it, it can be done really well, but I find when there's a conversation that just tends to be a bit more engaging and less so the top news incredibly interesting and something to share. I'm definitely on a ad hoc basis. You can do like a one off episode and share something that only you can talk about. Um, but in general it just, you can get a much more consistent result. Have you interview people for the, for those stories.

Speaker 3:   14:28     That's interesting. I appreciate that. I know I've been going back and forth myself. I my times becoming, I'm getting smaller amounts of time these days to do podcasts and yet at the same time I'm still trying to provide a lot of content and so I'm starting to intersperse now some of my own thoughts just to be able to do it at whatever time of day I want and that's freed up. That's free things up for me and I've appreciated that. I don't know if my listeners like that or not. We'll see as the downloads, uh, whether they prefer me or my guest, but the other thing I've seen and I think you made mention of it and it sounded, I really appreciate it and that is especially in a B to b type of environment. The great thing about the relationships there, I was talking with Markus Maura, exactly how a podcast we just did.

Speaker 3:   15:15     And he's a guy who basically he has, he's done, you know, 40, $50,000,000 now and this whole business is selling franchises in assisted living for a senior type of, of care. And it was interesting. He goes, you know, Dave, I don't know if I should do a podcast or not, and I'm like, man, if I were you, because he targets is really, really specific as far as his prospects that he wants there typically people in the medical field, but typically people who are currently working as a pharmaceutical representative and these are guys who were driving around, they got a ton of time. They're probably listening to podcasts and so it'd be really easy for him just to bring on his success stories and they're gonna be excited to share it and they're going to share it and typically they're going to share it with their other people who were the same place. Thank you. From pharmaceutical reps and so it's been interesting to see, as you mentioned there, the relationships that are created and the ability to share those because everyone loves to brag about I was on a podcast or I was on this or something like that, so I think that's super critical. As we. I want to talk to you real. Go ahead yet some middles.

Speaker 2:   16:14     No, no, no. I was just going to echo your point. I'm in as channels like all day, email and called outrageous. Just get less and less and less effective. Just having a white to be able to access your primary audiences is more important. Yeah,

Speaker 3:   16:31     I love that. So tell people how they can get started because I know that's always the hardest thing. It seems like this overwhelming task. I know it was for me. I was, I remember I went through, uh, John Lee Dumas, of course, a paradise podcast, podcaster's paradise, try to learn all that kind of stuff and I realized, you know, I don't have to learn all this stuff. Somebody else can do it for me. So what if a person, obviously you mentioned there's four different pillars. One of them was the strategy aspects far as identifying what your podcast is going to be about. What are some of the things people need to do and how, how can they get started? If a person wanted to have a podcast out in the next month, what would they need to do?

Speaker 2:   17:05     Yeah. So the first thing I would say, and I know the word strategy can sound like really wishy washy at times, but just like put something down and committed like one page, who do I want to speak to is the audience and who do I want to get on as my, my ideal guests? Right? And you just start to map that out a bit. That will just, you'll find it will help you in. It will inform so many decisions down the track when when you sort of go, should I do this? Should I do this? Once you have that going on, so do that for status and then from there it's literally just download, zoom.us what we're using right now to record this and start having conversations with people. You can get fancy box if you want to, but you really don't have to like at the end of the day, you will wait given for sub optimal audio quality at the start, just get a feel for whether you like it the next spot, the production process.

Speaker 2:   17:54     Maybe you want to edit your own episodes. I just don't recommend doing it. If you plan on being consistent with it, you might have all the fire in the world when you first get started and you're like, I can do this every week, but you will notice if you're a founder of a company or you have any sort of other job, asshole, you just want to consistently like, well, maybe I shouldn't say you just want, but I have never ever seen it done consistently, but someone edits Aaron show and that have a show that goes for more than, well, I think like seven episodes is the magic number, like 90 percent of shows drop off, popped off to seven episodes. So find someone to delegate all of that nitty gritty production work to um, and, and, and just be focusing on the content itself and having the conversation. And then from there it's just promoting it. So asking all your guests to share it out, uh, creating a lead magnet that you can call out on the show to, to turn listeners into leads and a happy days. It's not that simple.

Speaker 3:   18:55     Well, I can say I went through the same thing. So from a strategy standpoint, when we originally created this, it was a funnel hacker radio, actually, it was click funnels radio at first, and so it was clickfunnels radio and we want to basically, it was going to be clickfunnels listeners and I was going to interview success stories. That was our strategy. We ended up changing it to funnel hacker radio as we kind of did a rebranding with funnel hacker TV and funnel like a radio, um, but, uh, it then grew to expand to be other people who might be able to provide added content or benefit or value to our listeners, you know, people like yourself who could then help them in building their businesses. And it's been interesting. Uh, I did, I think I edited my first three and then I was like, I'm done. I tapped out, had to have someone else do it because it was just too much time and everything that, uh, so I, I appreciate what you've been mentioned that you think you're going to do it at first. And it's like, you know what? This is a waste of my time.

Speaker 2:   19:51     That's just it. It's not the best use of your time, like you know, if you're a founder or partner in a company, it's like you got better things to be done than editing mode here.

Speaker 3:   20:02     I totally agree. Well, as we kind of get close to wrapping things up here, tell me what are the, any other tips, tricks, things you'd recommend people who want to get to a podcast up and running what they should do? Yeah, sure.

Speaker 2:   20:14     The main tip and the main takeaway I would say to people, and I just don't think a lot of people do this when they have the podcast, is it just asked every one of your guests if they will share the show. Um, it, it is just the number one way to get a show out there. They used to be this kind of playbook, like if you google how to get a podcast, listen to the way you know how to get a ton of downloads via your podcasts. There's kind of like this playbook of, you know, ask all of your friends to write and review, get a bunch of people to subscribe and you'll get into new and noteworthy in itunes and then just happy days and thousands of listeners that doesn't work so well. It can work, but it's not, it's not like a shore thing anymore, so you need to get a bit more inventive with how you promote the show and the number one way that we found is just to have every guest to be a promoter of the show. Aside from that, the other thing which I've already mentioned is just get strategic about who your guests are. If there's someone who can first of all offer something to the audience, then start to think about, you know, could I build a relationship with this person? And then could that relationship turned into a potential partnership or a sales conversation down the road. And as long as it's a situation where everybody wins, you know, there's nothing wrong with you. Also benefiting from that relationship as well.

Speaker 3:   21:36     I love that. I think that's probably the biggest mistake I made was I never asked anybody to promote it. You'll be my first ask, I guess a 100 percent, but no. Honestly I think that's, for me, that was probably the biggest mistake I made. I would encourage others to to make sure they do ask you. It's just such a win win. I think it's an opportunity and I think a big reason that

Speaker 2:   22:01     that people don't do it as is they think they're putting the other person out or asking something that they want, want to do, but like they generally want to do it because as you said before, like they look good in the podcast and it's like that. They might as well people share things that make them look good. By having someone on a podcast, you make them good, so it's not a big ask.

Speaker 3:   22:22     Well, I mean I'm over 250 episodes in and I've never asked, so we'll make this inefficient. My first one I'll do, I'll do a better job or my assistant will get. I will. Not that you didn't add additional listeners, but definitely we always do it again. I appreciate your taking the time.

Speaker 2:   22:41     What was that call to action one more time for people that were wanting to find out? Yeah, so it's content kite.com, forward slash funnel hacker, and it's a free podcasting workshop which basically takes you through eight is zed, how to start a podcast that gets listened to and producers leds.

Speaker 3:   22:58     Awesome. It'll be in the show notes as well, so again, I appreciate everyone's listening. Simon, thank you so much for your time today and we'll look forward talking to you soon. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it. Jason.

Speaker 4:   23:08     Hey everybody. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to the podcast. If you don't mind, could you please share this with others, rate and review this podcast on itunes. It means the world to me where I'm trying to get to as a million downloads here in the next few months and just crush through over $650,000 and I just want to get the next few 100,000 so we can get to a million downloads and see really what I can do to help improve and and get this out to more people at the same time. If there's a topic, there's something you'd like me to share or someone you'd like me to interview, by all means, just reach out to me on facebook. You can pm me and I'll be more than happy to take any of your feedback as well as if people would like me to interview more than happy to reach out and have that conversation with you. So again, go to Itunes, rate and review this, share this podcast with others and let me know how else I can improve this or what I can do to make this better for you guys. Thanks.