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In this episode of The Content/SEO/Social Flywheel Series, I share the exact strategy we are using to book me (Tom!) on other top podcasts in the B2B/SaaS marketing and entrepreneurship niches. I cover whether you should pitch your product, how to find perfect shows for you to appear on and then how you convince even the most protective show host... to bring you on as a guest :)
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In this episode, we are gonna jump into how to get yourself on other people's podcasts and leverage this channel to grow your brand.
All right. Thank you for tuning into another episode of the Confess. Of a B to B marketer, and more specifically, a content seo, social flywheel, or in other words, the content machine journey that we're going on. And so just to quickly recap, in episode one, I explained what the thing is, what the journey is, and then in episode two, I outlined what the plan was, the tools, who's in the team, and what we're actually planning to execute.
And so in this episode, episode three, we're gonna jump into the. Deep dive into one of the workflows within the content SEO's, social flywheel, and this specific workflow is in the guest content section. Remember, we had own content and guest content. So own content is things like hosting things to your own social channels and uploading content on Joan.
In the guest content, there's actually just two. The first of which is being a guest on someone's podcast, and the second of which is writing written content to be put on someone else's blog. So let's jump right into the strategy and the first thing I wanna talk about is who. Does what? Well, actually probably before that, we should talk about what we're actually gonna be doing.
So essentially we're just gonna run an outreach campaign to relevant shows within our niche, and then we are gonna experience some kind of conversion right from the outreach to getting booked. Then you or someone within your team, typically the thought leader within the BTB company is gonna go onto that show to be interviewed as a guest, The host of that show or their business will do all the editing, create all the assets, and then we'll also be helping them promote the show after.
So that's what we're gonna be doing. But who does what? Remember I mentioned in the team section that we had a full-time admin slash outreach person, so this person is gonna be responsible for finding the shows that we should be on with our instruction. And when I say, ah, I mean you, the person listening, which is typically gonna be someone within the marketing team of the B2B company or the founder, or.
So we're gonna create the instructions for this person to find the shows. We're then gonna review the shows just to check that they are in line with what we think would be good for us to go on. Then that person is gonna run the outreach process and then when people start to reply and accept, and we can kind of take on that communication, and then we or someone else, the thought leader is gonna jump on the show, be the guest, and then we are also gonna help promote that episode.
So question one is, how are we gonna find the right shows to. Now a really, really simple way to do this is to simply go to a website called wl tail.com and I'll link that below in the show notes, and then simply search for the names of one of your competitors. And ideally if the competitor is relatively well known, they're gonna show up and our tale's gonna list all of the podcasts that they've been a guest on.
It is a really fast, awesome Shay, and the, it actually helps with one other thing that we'll talk about a bit later, but that's the first way. The second way is to go to the charitable category rankings for your country. So for this show, Confessions of a B2B marketer, the category that we are within and want to rank in is marketing in the.
So we can go to the UK marketing rankings and see the top 250 podcasts in our category and then build, add those into the list. So once we have that list, and we can start by building a list of 50, you can just put this into a Google sheet and well instead of you doing it, I would give it to the admin outreach person to do, but you'd give them the instructions I just gave for you there.
Add 50 into the sheet. You can go and review and just check that. For example, they've released episodes in the past six months or check. They're not competing with you for. So let's say that pushes us down to 45. We're then gonna start with the outreach. So we typically recommend reaching out both through social channels and through email almost at the same time.
And so we're gonna create Google Doc. And in that Google Doc we're gonna add the outreach message. And I'll put example outreach message in the show notes below. But essentially what we're gonna be saying is we heard this other person on, on the show. And remember, AL'S help can help us with that because we've already.
Episodes of their show where our competitor's been on. So we say, I heard Jason's episode on your podcast and really enjoyed it. Are you open to having another guest to make sure it's one of your most downloaded episodes? We will do. And then we're gonna list three to four things of how we're gonna help them promote the show.
If you're interested, we're then gonna cover, or we could possibly cover these different topics, and then we're gonna list three to four topics that you can cover that are gonna be relevant to their audience. Let me know if it makes sense. That's like the email version, the social, or like the LinkedIn outreach version is gonna be a much more shortened, essentially.
Hey, I heard X's episode on your podcast. Are you open to another guest? If yes, I have an interesting proposal, please share your email address. And then ideally we get the email and we send that email that I just explained to you. So what's happening here? First you have to understand what a podcast space wants is typically two things.
A, they want to grow their. So right of start that message we're saying, This is how we're gonna help make this one of your most downloaded episodes. So we're speaking directly to their biggest need, really, which is to grow their show. And the second thing they're concerned of is like, am I gonna be able to create good content for my audience?
Is my audience gonna enjoy this? And so that's why we're lifting different topics that are gonna be relevant to their audience in that email as well. So we've seen pretty solid, like responsive to this kind of outreach. Now you've obviously you're gonna, the conversion rate of your outreach is obviously dependent on how like ambitious you're going.
Let's say you tried to book on Tim Ferris's show. It's like basically impossible unless Tim comes to you. He very rarely would take inbound. But if you are hitting up like the number 245th ranked marketing podcast, then you're gonna have a much greater conversion rate on the. So once we have that process up and running, we have the message template in a Google Doc.
We have, we're tracking all of the hours in a Google Sheets. We just need to ensure that we're doing a consistent number of outreach per week. Now we typically have this around 10 to 20 outreaches every week. And if we do this, you should ideally be booking after a couple of weeks. You should be booking one to two shows per week, and you should really be recording one approximately one show every.
The other thing I'll add here is that especially when you're starting out, it doesn't matter if the shows that you're going on do not have that much popularity, and there are a couple ways to do this, but to really get to the bottom of that, you have to look at the number of racing them reviews. You can go into a tool post data to understand how many, if they're ranking in any of the categories.
You can look at the social followings of the host and the host business, and then you can also look at the organic traffic or referring domains to their website and their podcast. But it doesn't matter at the start, especially if you are jumping on shows that are not that popular because you need to practice.
The more you practice, the better you'll get and say, Well, when you do go to that bigger show, you're gonna have a much bigger impact. Because the way you talk and the way you're able to share your ideas is gonna be much more polished off. You've done 10 shows that a little bit more like not great following, but you've been honing your.
So that is the outreach process. That is how we're gonna get booked onto shows. Again, the templates are gonna be below. I'll probably also put a template Google sheet, so you can just use that as the tracker. How are we gonna judge the success? So we're gonna be looking obviously at the funnel for our outreach.
So how many have we outreached to, How many people have replied, how many have booked, how many have recorded, and how many have released? So that's the outreach funnel. There's five steps I say that sometimes is the difference between recorded and released. Because you may go on a show and they may not like you and they might not release it.
It's completely up to them if they wanna release it or not. It rarely happens, to be honest, but it could happen. So those are the five steps. And we're probably looking, if we outreach to a hundred, we're probably looking for like 10 replies. We probably should get three to four booked, three to four recorded, and I ideally three to four released.
After that, we're gonna be looking for qualitative feedback from the market to understand whether this campaign is having an impact. So to do this, if somebody pings you on LinkedIn saying, Heard your episode on x, would love to connect, that is good quality feedback. If you have a proposal or a demo form on your site and you have a free tax field asking people where they found you, ideally we are looking for podcast or on XPO in those fields.
In terms of other metrics, we'd also, I guess we'd see some organic traffic increases on branded terms and maybe even increase in direct traffic, but it's very hard to tie that to anything. So a big part of the content machine, it's not gonna be directly attributable via. Metrics or ebook downloads or website visits.
But what we are looking for is a more of the revenue you're generating is gonna be influenced by these activities, which is why the possibly the best way is to ask with a free text field on your signup form, et cetera, where people found us, and that is how we can do the attribution. And just some final tips here when you are actually on the podcast that you are being the guest.
I typically would try to avoid pitching in any way or really mentioning your product in any way unless it's embedded into a story that you're telling The host is not gonna want you to pitch. None of the listeners want you to pitch, but it's still obviously good for you to mention your product, but just not in a way that's obvious.
So let's say I just came on a show and the host asked me like how I got into podcast. I would simply tell a story of how in 2017 I started a podcast with a business. It went really well. But then I also was head of marketing at B2B SaaS Company in like 2019. We started a show and then it went really well.
So I left, They became a client of mine, and then we just took their process, posted it to 30 other clients, and that is how I got into podcasting. And so in that story, um, bringing up the topic of the service that I sell, which is fame, the podcast. Also super important. If you have your own show, it's very important to mention that at the end of the episode, when they ask you, they typically, at the end, they'll say, Where can the audience find you on the internet?
You would say Your social profiles, your website, your email address, and make sure you say your podcast, because if these people are listening to a podcast in your niche, that means they're primed. These people like podcasts, and so it's a really good way to grow your. Typically, a host will link to you.
Typically, every podcast will release a blog post on their domain that will have show notes that will link to the guests. So here, here's a really good back link opportunity. And so ideally we're trying to get a back link to every one of your domains that you have. So if you have multiple businesses, ask for a back link to both.
I would ideally put your focus social channel, so LinkedIn, Twitter, your podcast and your website domain. If you can get all those links, great, and you probably will be able to, you just have to mention that to the host. Either by email before or after, send them all links and be like, It would be awesome if we could add these all into the show notes, and that is just gonna be great for your general SEO presence.
Now we come to the promotion and most guests won't actually do any promotion. Well, most guests will probably share halfheartedly on social, but they won't do anything else. And so what we are gonna do to set us apart here is actually. Remember, we are trying to build relationships with these people anyway.
They have an audience of the people that could be your customers and therefore it's great to build relationships. A really good way to build relationships is to add as much value as you possibly can at the start of the relationship. So this person, Nova, you are one of the good guys. And so a couple of ways that we're gonna promote, and you'll see this in the template, is if you have any blog posts on your site that talk about podcast within niche is pretty good strategy anyway.
So you just put the top podcast in your niche on your blog. Those pages typically ran quite. So what we're gonna do is we can offer to put their podcast in that list if it's not there already. That's one thing. Obviously we're gonna share organically on your social profiles. The way we do that is we're gonna pull out the biggest insights, the most controversial, valuable, interesting.
Give the whole insight in the post and just as an afterthought link to the full episode from the comments below. Those posts actually are gonna get the most engagement, and we'll talk more about that when we talk about social posting organically. In a future episode, we're also gonna offer to run paid spent.
Typically on Facebook and will give a small amount, say $50. This will be in the outreach email. So if you offer, you're gonna offer to link, offer to share, offered to paid, promote. It is gonna drastically improve the conversion rate and the outreach, but it's also gonna build that relationship. Cause you actually probably end up having a very well downloaded episode.
They're gonna like you, they're gonna refer you people, they're gonna bring you on again in the future if you would like. The final point is any feedback you get about the. People coming to you on dms or you potentially even landing a customer from that, always send that back to the host that makes them feel good about the value they're adding to the guest and about their whole show.
So there we go. That is the overview of how to run this first workflow of the SEO content social flywheel. And it's podcast guesting. To summarize, we're gonna run essentially an outreach campaign. We're gonna aim to do 10 to 20 outreaches per week and ideally aim to record one episode per week and therefore over a bit of time or release one episode per week.
We're gonna set ourselves apart from everybody else reaching out to them to be on the show by saying when actually promote and by offering topic that we know their audience are gonna engage in. Also in the outreach, we're making it clear that we've actually listened to their show cause they're calling out an specific episode that we.
And then we're going to aim to get as many backlinks as we possibly can from the blog posts that they release. We're not gonna talk about our product during the episode, and then we're actually gonna promote as this is gonna build the relationship with this potential partner, which will always lead to great things over time.
So I hope that was valuable. In future episodes, we're gonna be digging into other workflows within the content machine. If you did enjoy the episode, it would be great if you could. Your review in the form of an Apple Podcast rating and review. Simply search for confessions of a B2B market day in Apple Hop podcast, or actually in Spotify.
Now leave an honest rating and review. I will start calling out reviews in future episodes. So if you leave your name in there, I'll definitely give you a shout out. Actually ping on LinkedIn or drop me an email Tom fame.so, and I'll make sure I can get that read out. And I'll also give a shout out to your.
At the same time, free advertising. Thank you so much for listening.