Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Foreign.
[00:00:06] Hi there and welcome back to the Confessions in the Home Office podcast. I'm Wendy Hill, and if you've ever stared at a blank screen wondering, should I write this in an email, should I make this a blog, should I start a podcast, or should I go hide somewhere because all this seems too much? Today's episode is for you. Each week I bring you an episode about business ownership, marketing, working from home, all types of things.
[00:00:33] We're going to work through this topic because people ask me, clients ask me all the time, and then friends will ask me when we're out somewhere, what should I do? I'm trying to build my visibility. I'm trying to share what I know, what should, what type of content should I be creating, and what are the pros and cons of each?
[00:00:55] So there's really no one size fits all answer, but there is a right fit for you, depending on your goals, your audience, your strength, and, let's be honest, how much time you have.
[00:01:07] So let's start working through this.
[00:01:12] Let's talk about why.
[00:01:14] Before you choose a platform, before you make a decision, I want you to think about what you're trying to do.
[00:01:20] You don't start a newsletter just to have a newsletter or a blog or a podcast. Are you trying to get more visibility so people even know you exist? Are you trying to show off your expertise and establish credibility in your market, in your space? Are you trying to connect more deeply with the people that are already paying attention to you just so they know you better and that they'll buy from you or refer you?
[00:01:43] These goals really matter. They shape how you show up and where you show up.
[00:01:48] Someone who wants to become a thought leader and get speaking gigs might lean more towards podcasting.
[00:01:55] Someone trying to rank on Google and drive organic traffic might go the blog route.
[00:02:00] And if you're a service provider and you're just trying to nurture potential clients, a newsletter would probably be the best place to start. So I'm going to walk you through all three options.
[00:02:11] What's great about each, what can be hard about each and every, and how to know which one actually fits into your business and into your life.
[00:02:20] So first, let's start with the newsletter.
[00:02:23] Honestly, it's really the unsung hero of online marketing.
[00:02:29] Newsletter newsletters get treated like an outdated tool. I had this conversation with Client a couple of weeks ago. He was saying, I just don't feel like people read emails anymore. People don't read newsletters, but email marketing is still one of the highest ROI activities you can do in your business, believe it or not, it's a direct line to your audience. There's no algorithms, there's no crazy dancing, not a huge production to do it. It's just you what you have to say and sending it to them through email.
[00:03:01] So you do have to give people a reason to open. You need a decent subject line. You can brainstorm that. You can use AI for that. You can save other people's email newsletters that come in your inbox and put it in a folder and use some of headlines down the road. You need to offer value, insight, maybe a little bit of entertainment, but you can say that in words a lot easier than dancing on a reel.
[00:03:26] But the big win here is that you're building a list you own and this is your audience. It's not Instagram, Facebook or TikTok's audience.
[00:03:34] And if something happens and your account goes down, and I feel like I say this about every second or third episode, if your social media platform gets reported or, you know, the other day, Instagram just disabled a whole bunch of accounts with no reason, you still have your list.
[00:03:52] So even if you're not going to do a newsletter this second, I would encourage you to think about how you start collecting email addresses so you have a way to get in touch with people.
[00:04:02] It takes time to build up that list, especially if you're not out there shouting, subscribe to my newsletter every day. Or click the subscribe button every day.
[00:04:11] But if you're already on social media or you already have some traffic, come to your website or you're networking and asking people if it's okay to add them to your newsletter list. It's just a natural next step.
[00:04:22] Sending out emails is a great way for people to stay on, stay top of mind. Especially if you have people in your audience that are not big at checking things on social media.
[00:04:32] This way they know what you're up to.
[00:04:34] It's a great thing when you're launching something new or you have a change and it gives your audience kind of behind the scenes things they wouldn't see on social media that you can put in your email.
[00:04:45] So I have a LinkedIn newsletter. I am starting an email newsletter this year for my marketing virtual assistant education program. But with my audience, a LinkedIn newsletter makes more sense.
[00:04:57] It's a great way to build relationships in the business. And as I add connections, they get an invitation to join my newsletter and it just steadily kind of takes up the number of people who subscribed.
[00:05:09] They probably don't open every one Looking at the stats, but they see my name regularly. I do get a lot of opens, I get messages, I do get comments on LinkedIn about my newsletter.
[00:05:19] And when they're ready to buy, and they're seeing that in their inbox once a month, sometimes more, there's a higher probability they'll think about me.
[00:05:29] So that's the power of email marketing.
[00:05:31] Let's move on to the next one. Blogs. Blogs have been around forever and, and sometimes people dismiss blogs like they're kind of past their prime. So sort of like email.
[00:05:41] But blogs are still really effective if you're playing the long game. Blogs are great for search traffic. You can write blog posts today and a year from now, two years from now, even longer, your blog's still up, people will still find you. And that's not really true with social media content because we know how fast our feeds move every day.
[00:06:02] And that, you know, social media post just does not have the shelf life that a blog post would.
[00:06:09] But you do need to know a little bit about search engine optimization. Not a lot, but enough to understand how people are searching for information and how to write the content. The answers are questions and you have to be patient. You can't post a blog post and expect the phone to start ringing immediately. It's just not a typical instant ROI situation. It just builds over time. And once again, my husband's parakeet, soon as I start recording, they start yapping. So if you hear that in the background and this doesn't get edited out, just know that James and Dolly are trying to talk to you.
[00:06:41] So when it's done well, blogging can really pay off. So if you're in a very niche industry like law, wellness marketing, home services, it can really drive traffic and get clients.
[00:06:55] But if you're going to blog, I want you to have a plan. And a plan for blog doesn't take a day to do or even a half a day to do. But I've seen people write a couple blog posts and then they just stop for a year or two years and you go back and you say, this is great content. Where's the rest of it?
[00:07:11] So a lot of people will start a blog, do a few things, and then they, they see the shiny object and they run away.
[00:07:19] But I really feel it's like they just didn't have a plan.
[00:07:23] So if you write out topics and when you're going to write them and when you're going to publish them and just have some spreadsheet or word document, when you have a plan you don't have that fear factor of what am I going to do and what am I going to do next and how long is it going to take? And I haven't done it in a few weeks. Your plan's right there. Put it in your calendar and put it on your task list and just get it done.
[00:07:48] So you don't need to post every week. I would say if you put up a post a month, you're doing well. If you want to do more than that and do bi weekly or even weekly, that's fine, but that is more of a time commitment.
[00:07:59] But one post a month, that's not bad at all.
[00:08:03] One solid blog post per month that ranks on Google is way is worth way more than 20 random little updates that people didn't ask for.
[00:08:14] So now let's talk about the elephant in the room. Podcasting, it's really personal. It's a really quick way to build trust, because people hear your voice, they hear what you have to say.
[00:08:25] And if you're recording video, which I do off and on, here and there, they get to see you, too.
[00:08:30] They hear your tone, they hear your pauses, side comments, they learn your sense of humor, and you're in their ears while they drive, while they walk, do laundry, or sitting, waiting at the doctor's office for an appointment. And that kind of connection is just hard to replicate with sending out text or posting with a blog.
[00:08:52] If you are someone who likes to talk things out more than writing things, a podcast might be where you need to go.
[00:08:59] And if you work with clients or if you teach or you coach, it's just a really easy way to show people what it's like to be in your world.
[00:09:08] People want to work with people they know, that they understand and that they can relate to.
[00:09:14] Now there's the whole production element to it. Not as much as you would have with a newsletter or blog. You need a mic, you need some editing, you need hosting, where you're going to host all your episodes and then push out to all the platforms that you want to be on. And you have to have some type of publishing schedule. Like, my podcast comes out on Mondays, and I get it ready on Sundays. The. The social post and getting the files ready, and it gets edited several days before that usually.
[00:09:43] But it doesn't have to be fancy. You don't have to have a recording studio, of course. You know, I started this podcast in my home office, and I'm sitting upstairs right now recording.
[00:09:53] And you figure out what your budget's going to be if you're going to advertise it, or if you're going to pay someone to do the editing and production, or if you're going to do it yourself. And I've kept it going because it works. I'm not in the top 10, of course, but I haven't really tried to be. I've done mine more for search engine optimization reasons. And if you go out and Google Wendy Hill or Confessions in the Home Office or Market Momentum, the name of my agency, the first several pages are post and podcast episodes and that type of thing. And that was my goal. So that has worked for me. And my next step is to start growing it more and so I'll get more listeners.
[00:10:36] So my podcast starts conversations. People ask me how I do it and what the process is. It has also gotten me several other podcast clients. They need help with production and thinking through planning and posting and that type of thing.
[00:10:50] And here's a secret.
[00:10:52] Here's my confession. For the week, I turn a podcast transcript into a blog post and put them on Market Momentum website, and I also use it for my LinkedIn newsletter content. Now I have to go through and do a lot of edits and it's a different audience and I'll change things up. But it's a great way to take that podcast transcript and turn it into two other things where people that may not listen to the podcast, where they'll actually read about that content.
[00:11:19] So the biggest challenge with podcasting is just being discovered. You can't just publish and pray. You need to promote each episode through email, social networking, telling all your friends, asking your friends to repost it.
[00:11:33] Podcast players don't do the work for you. They just host it and they put it out there. It is a long game. It takes a lot of work. People get very frustrated and go away.
[00:11:44] And I think once you hit like 22 episodes, you're in like the top 1% that have of people who reach a certain level with a number of episodes because people quit after five. Some people quit after one episode, some people quit after 10 episodes and go through Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast and look at some of the shows you might be interested in. And you'll see that a lot of those, they stopped two years ago and they've never come back, which they may have many reasons why, but it's something that you need to do and do consistently.
[00:12:18] I'll say with my podcast, I put it up on a platform and turned on monetization and it comes and goes, but it's pretty consistently I have national brands that advertise on my podcast at the beginning. So they may not do every episode, they may not do all week. They may. It's the hosting software takes care of all that for me. But I'll see things from Indeed and American Express and Granger. I'll hear all that. And it's exciting to see that I'm getting plays and make some money off of that.
[00:12:49] So, you know, it's a long game, it takes a lot of work. But don't be afraid of hard work. It can pay off.
[00:12:55] So what should you do if you're still not sure where to start?
[00:12:59] The honest answer is start where you're going to show up consistently. If you like writing, start with a newsletter or blog. If you like to talk, start a podcast. I like to do all of it. So if you're not sure, test one out. But don't test it out for a like a week. Test it out for, I would say a quarter, 90 days. You can even start with one format, turn it into the others, try to get creative and see how many times you can reuse the content.
[00:13:23] You could record a 20 minute podcast episode, turn it into a blog post, write a short version for your newsletter that links back to the full episode.
[00:13:34] That's three platforms, that's one piece of content.
[00:13:37] So consistency and what is what builds momentum. That's what I talked about last week on the podcast.
[00:13:43] And that may not be sexy, that may not be fun, but knocking it out week after week or every other week, or knowing that you have to do something once a month and getting it done, not doing all the things, but doing something over and over again with intention, you will get there.
[00:14:00] So again, I want you to commit to one platform for 90 days, give it some really good effort and you're going to learn a lot about what works for you and what your audience responds to.
[00:14:12] So should you start a newsletter, blog or podcast? I think you should. It helps people get to know you and what you offer. But I want you to pick the one that fits your brain, your business and how much time you have.
[00:14:25] I don't want you to get hung up on what the experts have to say. I want you to choose the one that you connect with and the one that will help you connect with real people. Because at the end of the day, that's what moves your business forward.
[00:14:39] People hiring you that you can bill, that pay you.
[00:14:44] So thank you for hanging out with me in the home office today that this is the end of the episode. If it helped you figure something out, share it with someone else who may be stuck.
[00:14:56] And let me know if you want to dig deeper into marketing or you need help figuring out one of these the email newsletter, a blog or podcast. I'm always happy to talk to you.
[00:15:08] My contact information is always in the show notes, so I'll be back soon with more and because I always have something to talk about.
[00:15:16] So have a great week. Thanks.
