In this past, I’ve talked about whether or not freelancers should start a podcast to grow their brand. This came as a result of starting the Make Money Your Honey Podcast on a whim.
(Update: Podcasting is a lot of fun and I’m seeing great ROI, but it’s a lot of work!)
But before I had my own podcast, I was on other’s peoples’ podcasts. In fact, I was doing podcast interviews for a couple of years before even attempting to start my own.
Doing these podcast interviews helped me sell books, landed me some consulting gigs, got me some media attention and exposed me to new audiences. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if I go on a tour of podcast interviews again soon as I take my brand to a new level.
With that being said, there is an art to good podcast interviews. Here are some of my tips for using podcast interviews to boost your business.
Get specific about the kinds of podcasts you want to be on.
In the beginning, I used to go on any podcast that would invite me to come on. That worked for a while, but eventually as my brand grew I had to start thinking about ROI. I wasn’t spending money to do these podcast interviews, but I was spending a lot of time.
As a result, I started getting clear about the kinds of podcasts I wanted to be on. My first big podcast interview was with Entrepreneur on Fire, one of the top business podcasts in the last few years. Their audience is huge, and I knew I had to be on there.
From there, I started focusing on personal finance podcasts. Seeing that I’m in the personal finance niche, I knew who the top podcasters were and I pitched them.
Know what your talking points are.
When doing podcast interviews, it’s important to have a set of talking points where you excel. For example, I know I can talk all day about millennials and entrepreneurship so that’s why I tend to talk about on these interviews.
By knowing what your talking points are, you make the podcaster’s job easier and you make your own job easier because you’re talking about things you’re comfortable with.
See it as a conversation.
A colleague of mine runs a local radio show and she mentioned how some guests try to get everything out in one breath instead of taking their time and letting the interview flow. The same happens with podcast interviews. Sometimes people get nervous and want to get it all out.
The key to not letting this happen is to see podcast interviews like natural conversations. The best podcast interviews I’ve done (both for my own podcast and while being interviewed on others) sound like I was just having a really good chat with a friend over coffee.
That means the following: Don’t worry about trying to be perfect, don’t worry about sounding like an idiot and have fun!
