How Authors can Leverage Their Success Through Podcasting

Once you‘ve published and launched your book, run the promotion and engaged your readers, you might be wondering what’s next? How do you use it to leverage yourself into new audiences, new markets and connect with the people you need to meet to help your business grow?

There are lots of ways you can go about it – you can focus on getting your book into retail stores, use it as a promotional tool at conferences and other events, guest post and be on podcasts talking about it – and, of course, all of the strategies Lynn develops for you! But while you’re at it, you should give a little thought to podcasting. Transforming your book into a podcast is one of the most effective ways to grow your audience, get new clients and even develop the materials for larger projects like digital courses and more books.

1. Engaging Your Audience
2. Network with promotional partners and clients
3. Create the content for a course, membership community, or new book.

Let’s discuss each of these.

Engaging the Your Audience

The thing about a book is that as a standalone – it’s kind of a one and done. You put a huge amount of work into the front end, and get a fantastic product, but once people have it – they have it. Many of those people are going to want more from you, however – and that’s where a consistent, ongoing content generation platform like a podcast can come in extremely handy.

Podcasts, either weekly or bi-weekly give you a regular opportunity to provide more value to your audience. You can expand on ideas you presented in your book, answer questions that people ask you about it, and even engage directly with your audience by including them in the development, launch and ongoing production.
The reason this is so effective with podcasting is because it’s the ultimate “pull” marketing platform. Unlike blogs or videos, where your audience has to, effectively go to a place on the internet and stay there while they are consuming the content (which is valuable in it’s own way, of course!) a podcast is with your listener when THEY want it to be there, and it can become a real part of someone’s schedule. From a knowing and liking perspective becoming someone’s date while they cook dinner every Wednesday is powerful. People feel like they get to know the podcast hosts they listen to – and we all prefer to do business with people we know.

Networking with Promotional Partners and Leads

While solo shows (where it’s just you and the mic- no guests or co-hosts) are definitely on the table, an interview-style podcast can be a networking powerhouse. There’s something about the question “would you like to be on my podcast?” that opens doors quickly. Inviting someone to be a guest on your show gives you around 5 touchpoints to built the foundation of a relationship with them: your initial invitation, the call confirmation, the interview/conversation itself, the thank you, and the performance report are the most common.

I explain the different touchpoints in more detail in this short video about the biggest mistake people make with their podcast guests (spoiler: its not intentionally leveraging the relationship building opportunity!)

Content Development for Large-Scale Projects

Now, the thought of writing another book so soon after the last one may have you thinking: “Hahahahahahaha. No.” And that’s fair – it’s so much work! But if you’re podcasting, you’re creating content every week anyway, so why not begin with repurposing in mind? Courses, membership communities, additional books; they can all be created using the material you originally develop for your podcast.

This takes a little planning at the outset. You don’t want your show to be an exact replica of what you’re building (just like it shouldn’t be an exact replica of your book) so rather than create episodes that will be repurposed word for word think about the concepts and topics that are going to be included, what you currently know about them, and what you still need to flesh out. With your podcast you can address topics from different angles to explore variables, establish case studies and round out your ideas. You can get insight, quotations, and examples from other experts that you’ll eventually include. You can engage with your audience to find out what their sticking points and concerns are so they can be addressed in the next project as well.

As you listen to the episodes you record, you’ll get as close to an “outsider’s ear” as you can with your own work, and that will be a huge help in terms of making sure you’re clear, concise and thorough.

And of course, when it comes time to launch your new project, you’ll have a nice built-in audience to promote to!

At the end of the day, podcasting isn’t a small project – doing it well, just like writing and promoting a book is an investment of time and money. Of all the different promotional channels, however, a podcast is the most efficient in how it allows you to create content for now and later, network, and nurtre the relationship you have with your audience.

Megan Dougherty is the co-founder of One Stone Creative, a content agency that specializes in creating podcasts and online courses for businesses. If you’re wondering if a podcast is the right next step for your you, you can download a free copy of “Turn Your Book Into a Podcast” which lays out all of the steps, details and considerations for you.