Are You an Effective Podcast Guest?
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Imagine you are watching a movie trailer, but they barely tell you it's a movie trailer. You're seeing these interesting scenes and actions and dialogue, and then the trailer just ends. They don't have the name of the trailer. They don't have when the movie's gonna be in theaters or how you can watch it.
That's kind of like what happens when you go on a podcast as a guest and you don't have a clear call to action. You spend all of this time delivering value to somebody else's audience, and then you don't tell them how to get in touch with you.
So, today, I'm going to pose the question, are you an effective podcast guest? And how you can convert even more of other people's audience into your audience.
Welcome to the Profitable Podcaster where I help coaches, course creators and authors launch and grow their podcasts to help them build authority, generate more leads, and sell more through actionable advice and expert tested systems.
I'm your host, Joe Casabona, and I've been podcasting for over 10 years. I've generated millions of downloads and hundreds of thousands of dollars from my shows. I'll teach you everything I know here on The Profitable Podcaster.
Hey, everybody. Today I want to ask you, are you an effective podcast guest?
Much like podcast swaps, podcast guesting is a great way to grow your show, but you need to do a good job. And so I'm going to tell you three things that you can do, probably like three plus things that you can do to be an effective podcast guests. And I'll just say like right off the bat in Podcast Mastery, right. We are wrapping up our podcast swap cohort. It's been great that people of ours have participated, have a system in place now. And if you want to check out everything we're doing over there, you can go to [podcastmastery.co]. That's [podcastmastery.co].
All right. So how can you be an effective podcast?
The first thing you need to do is provide value. Don't self-promote too much. Instead, ask the host about their audience, what their problems are, and do your best to offer actionable advice. This is something that really goes a long way because again, you are not trying to sell your self. You are trying to legitimately help the listeners. So if someone reached out to you to have you on the show, nail down the topic before going on the show. Be prepared. Right? Maybe have some stats at the ready. I've internalized a lot of the stats that I generally give when I do a podcast guest spot, but brush up on a few important talking points, and you should also be able to try to stick to one area.
A mistake that I've made several times as a podcast guest is jumping around a lot talking about course creation and then automation, and then podcasting. These give people mixed messages, right? I think I've said before, you don't want your car mechanic to also be your surgeon, right? You want them to be really good at their area of expertise. This is the message you want to communicate when you go on other people's podcasts as well. You want to tell them that you are a tried and true expert in this one area. As a result, you want to have one to two takeaways for the audience. All right? You are not going to have their full attention.
Recent stats came out saying that almost 50% of people listen to podcasts on their commute. About 40% of people listen to podcasts while they're at the gym. 36% While cooking or baking. I listen to podcasts while I'm cooking dinner for my kids. So I'm trying to pay attention, but if someone's screaming or asking me a question, I'm probably going to miss some stuff. So you wanna have one to two clear call to actions. And make sure to repeat them throughout the episode. That's also really important because again, you don't want them to miss those points. You're gonna see at the end of this, I'm going to repeat everything I said.
So, number 1 Deliver Value. Know what you're talking about. Deliver value. I guess it's one A through one C. Know what you're talking about deliver value and have 1-2 clear takeaways.
Number 2 Don’t self-promote too much. I think I already said this, but you don't wanna come off as salesy or smarmy the whole time. if you're only pushing your own stuff, you are not providing value. And it's obvious. I've done podcast episodes, interviews with people where they brought up their product or their book, just a little too much for my liking. And I end up either editing it or not airing that episode because I want the value to be there. I don't wanna feel like my audience is being sold to. And it's pretty obvious when someone is trying to sell to your audience or when you are trying to sell overtly to an audience.
Usually, what will happen is the host will give you an opportunity to tell people where they can find you or ask them to take some action. I know I do. If I have a good interview with somebody, I say, “Hey, you know, you mentioned your course earlier. Where can people sign up for that? You've provided a ton of value for us.” And I'll get to that more in a minute because I think…because I want to end with what is the most important part of being an effective podcast guest as far as building your audience.
But I do…Again, I have a couple of subpoints here. There's a lot to unpack. Don't worry. In the show notes over at [profitablepodcaster.fm/314], I will have all of these links. They should also be in the description wherever you're listening to this. So, definitely be sure to check those out because there's written material. I'll have the summary. Don't worry. I wanna make this as easy for you as possible.
But along with not just selling and delivering value, there are a couple of things that you wanna make sure of especially if you're like doing a podcast. I'm just gonna run through these really quick.
Get a good microphone, right? You need a good microphone. Better sound quality helps you establish trust more quickly. It's according to Norbert Schwartz. He's done a study on this. And it's because people aren't struggling to hear you, so they can focus on the actual things you're saying and not trying to understand what you're saying. Get headphones. Get headphones. I insist on headphones for my guests because there's going to be an echo and it's going to reduce the sound quality. Make sure you have headphones. Designate a quiet place to record.
Again, you wanna build your authority. Uou wanna make it sound like you are prepared for this interview. Review instructions from the host, and then let's get to the big centerpiece here.
So, to recap what I've talked about so far:
1. Provide value by knowing what you're talking about and having 1-2 actionable items for people to take away.
2. Don't self-promote too much because you're gonna come off as salesy and smarmy.
3. Make sure you have good microphone, headphones, and a quiet place to record.
And finally, the most important thing that you can do to make sure you are building your own audience when you go on other people's podcasts is have a landing page to send listeners to. And I know I've already told you, don't self promote too much, right? But the key is to provide a ton of value, then invite listeners to learn more. So you spend a bunch of time telling people everything you know about your area of expertise but there's more, or there's a template or there's a PDF that you have. This is where when the host invites you to share when people can find you. You can have a super clear call to action.
I like my call to action to be my website, podcastliftoff.com/the name of the host. There, I will make a custom landing page with an opt-in based on what we talked about.
So, I have three or four, maybe five now, different opt-ins. And based on what we talk about on the show, I will basically in the moment decide which one I'm going to put on that landing page.
So if we talk about being a consistent podcaster or an effective podcaster, I'm going to make the opt-in my podcast planners. If we're talking about podcast swaps, I'm going to make it my podcast swap database. If we're talking about automation, I'm going to make it my automation pack. But the important thing is that the opt-in is relevant to the audience you just spoke.And then what else is gonna be on that page? It's gonna be the opt-in to get them on my mailing list. It's going to be links to my own podcast and my social media areas so people can follow me wherever they want.
But this is the most important thing. Set up a custom landing page, that's my website slash the host name. I'll have an email opt in there based on our conversation links to get to my podcast and ways to get in touch. This is extra work, but it's also a nice welcome for new members.
I'm currently experimenting with video now, right where I record a short minute or less video, specifically welcoming the audience of that show.
Now, if setting up a single landing page for every show, it is a lot of work, which it is, right? I'm a web developer, I have a system in place for it. It's really easy for me to do that. But I wanna give you a piece of advice that Christina Nicholson, the Media Maven, gave me when she came on my podcast, How I Built It.
Now, as this episode comes out, her episode's not out yet, but I will give you this little piece of advice that I really like from her. Buy a short-custom, easily speakable domain for you to share with the audience.
So one of hers is like 16steps.com. Amazing. She got that URL because it's really short and I thought for sure it would be purchased already, but that redirects to one of her landing pages on her website with a much longer URL. So the key here is a short URL that is easily speakable.
Another piece of advice I got from another interview that's coming out in the near future. It's from Chris Davis of Automation Bridge is, If you're going to do that, make sure to include UTM codes so that you know where the traffic is coming from.
So there's a lot of ways that you can do this. I like to use switchie.io to create these custom redirects. So one of my domains is podlift.me. And so, that's not the most speakable. I usually don't use that one on shows, but, I have a couple, right? And so the point is if I do use like podlift.me, it will be a redirect and it'll be to a longer URL with UTM code. So, it'll have like the name of the podcast. The campaign will be podcast guest, and that way I can tell Who's hitting that page from what show? What shows are converting the most, and go from there, right? Because again, I wanna make sure the podcasts I'm going on are super effective. The opt-ins I'm promoting are super effective. And so there's a lot of experimentation that you have to do here.
But again, if you're not doing the landing page, just start there first. Just create a landing page to send people to an opt-in. Don't send them to your homepage, or don't just say follow me on Twitter.
If they go to your land or your homepage, they're probably not gonna know what to do from there, right? Christina Nicholson makes this case as well. You're sending people to your generic homepage where maybe it's like, buy my thing or whatever, or maybe it's just your bio. Send them to a landing page that very clearly gets them onto your mailing list. Or very clearly guides them to subscribing to your own podcast.
The landing page is the big map with the X on it. This is where you gotta be. This is what I want you to do. And so if you're not doing that, just do that and experiment from there.
So again, to recap the big picture things that you need to do to be an effective podcast guest:
1. Provide a lot of value. Make sure you have 1-2 takeaways for the audience.
2. Don't self-promote too much. People will know if you're trying to be salesy or smarmy.
3. Make sure that you have a good microphone and headphones and a quiet place to record.
4. Have a landing page to send listeners to. Make sure there's an opt-in on it. And then maybe there's some buttons to subscribe to your own podcast.
But that's it. Let me know if you're doing a lot of podcast guesting. Ahat you are doing that is working for you.
If you want more guidance on how to do podcast swaps or build a landing page, you can find all of that in my Podcast Mastery program over at [podcastmastery.co]. Along with that, you'll get an hour with me one-on-one time, so we can, if you're like, I don't even know how to get on other people's podcasts, that's what we can talk about.
And if you like, I don't even know how to build a landing page, that's what we, I can guide you through that one-on-one. So again, that's over [podcastmastery.co].
All right. Let's do the episode idea of the week. I'm really trying. It's like, of the month, really. I'm trying to be more consistent about it.
But podcast episode idea of the week. your process for networking, right? Whether or not you're going on podcasts or not, right? Or whether you're doing podcast swaps. Surely you have a process for networking and people within your niche, other professionals within your niche, or even potential clients might want z look, want some insight into how you do it.
And so, go through your networking process. How do you find people to meet? How do you find events to go to? What are your follow up steps? I know one of the things I like to do is take a picture of the business cards. They automatically get added to my notes app with…they pull the text from the email and then a task gets created in my task manager to follow up with them about three days after the event.
So, what's your process for networking like? Share that with your audience. They'll love it. And it'll be really helpful for them and hopefully good content for you.
But that's it for this episode of The Profitable Podcaster. I hope you liked it. For all the links and show notes. You can head over to [profitable podcaster.fm/314].
Again, check out [podcastmastery.co]. If you want even more in depth, step by step video tutorials as well as some one-on-one time with me and live cohorts for how to become a profitable podcaster who uses their podcast to build authority and generate leads.
Thanks so much for listening. And until next time, I can't wait to see what you make.
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