Archive for the ‘Lisa Hartwell’ Category

I am not going to go into great detail on what podcasts are. A simple explanation is they are online radio shows distributed through RSS feeds (i.e. syndicated online). As a regular Internet user there is a 50% chance you have listened to at least one podcast. As a reader of this blog the likelihood is high that you already subscribe to a podcast series.

If you are wondering whether podcasts are right for you and your business, or want to know whether you are capable of producing a podcast, here are some points to bear in mind:

• Podcasts work best if they are aimed at a niche market. So, examine the people your business targets and decide what would offer them the most useful information and value, and what will keep them subscribed to your podcasts week after week.

• Podcasts are not a vehicle for hard-sell advertising. By all means, mention where people can get more information, refer to your blog or website, suggest further ways listeners can ask more questions or interact with you on a forum, but do not push a product or service at the expense of good content. Listeners can easily unsubscribe from your podcast feed if they are not getting what they expected from you. By providing your listeners with good quality, valuable, and free information and advice you will be establishing your name and area of expertise in their minds.

• Be yourself and do things your way. Don’t try to copy someone else’s podcast topic or style. Find your own angle and presentation style. Part of what brings listeners back to podcasts is the human element.

The techniques of recording your podcast are the same as any other audio product, as mentioned in my previous guest posts, although with podcasting you also have the option of creating the podcast live. This is dependent on your comfort zone and whether you feel happy about just “putting it out there”.

Your podcast hosting options include:

• uploading the audio to your own website and then streaming through directory sites such as Big Contact

• uploading your audio to a free podcast directory such as Talkshoe who will host the audio but usually add their own commercials to the beginning and/or end of the podcast

• paying a small fee for a service that hosts the audio for you, such as HipCast

You will need to weigh up the pros and cons of each option. Hosting the audio on your own site can be expensive if you exceed your bandwidth and have to start paying for any extra bandwidth you use (you will need to check with your web host with regards to your bandwidth allowance and what the cost is if you exceed it).

Listeners to podcasts prefer them to be commercial-free but it depends on the extent of the advertising as to whether the free option is worth it. If you are just starting out and short on funds, this might be a good way to dip your toe in the water!

A paid service is usually best, especially if you expect a large audience, do not want extra bandwidth costs and want all the technical aspects taken care of for you. Most paid services offer different, affordable payment plans depending on your usage.

A more important question you should ask is “Why should I podcast? What are the benefits to my business?” I’ll be tackling those questions in my next guest post.

Why should you even consider podcasting? Isn’t it just another time sucker that will be more hassle than it’s worth? Well, that depends on your business and who you are trying to communicate with.

Recent research has shown than around 50% of online users have downloaded a podcast, with 18% listening to one every day. Podcasts are no longer just enjoyed by the young and technically advanced – more people in the 55+ age range are listening to podcasts than teenagers. Research has also shown that podcast listeners have high incomes, and are more likely to be online buyers.

In my first guest post I mentioned why audio works so well in a marketing campaign and with podcasting these reasons are especially true:

• It’s easier to communicate through audio and video than through the written word, and listeners tend to absorb and retain more information this way.

• In podcasts you are able to convey emotions and subtleties of language that may be lost in your writing.

• Podcasting offers the opportunity to create a more personal connection and convey your sincerity and passion for your subject

As well as these reasons you should also consider that:

• Podcasts are a rapidly growing medium for reaching an international audience and are still seeing significant market growth, but in many ways are in their infancy so there are fewer competitors in each niche

• Compared to other marketing methods, podcasting is relatively cheap to get started and a cost-effective method of continually reaching new people, especially for small businesses

• Podcasts are the only broadcast medium that allow you to truly narrow your focus to a specific target market or demographic. You have a huge potential audience but you only communicate with those who are interested in your area of expertise (unlike radio advertising where you broadcast to everyone and hope a percentage of relevant people hear your message).

• Podcasting offers your listeners more choice and control. They can listen at a time that suits them which means they are going to be more receptive to what you are sharing. Not everyone has time or inclination to sit reading at a computer for long periods of time, but they will take a podcast away and listen to it in the car, at the gym or while doing the housework.

• When people download a podcast they are a captive audience. They are really interested in what you have to say and have committed to listening to it. In fact, when someone downloads a podcast they are intending to listen solely to that audio and give it their full attention, shutting out other noise and distractions.

I hope this post has given you a better idea of why podcasts can be so useful to your business marketing and made you more excited about creating your own.

A great method for creating podcast content is through interviews with different experts within you niche. In fact, interviews are wonderful for lead generation and product creation too, and I’ll be focusing on them in my next guest blog post.

Early in this series of guest blog posts, I mentioned that you should work smarter and not harder in your business, and one way to achieve this is to find multiple uses for your audio.

Interviews are perfect for this. They can start as a live teleseminar, then all or some of the recording can be added to a podcast and/or given away as a lead generation freebie. They can be made into products to sell or given away as bonuses. They can be added as content to membership sites. They can be transcribed so that the printed component can also be used for content and bonuses.

9 Tips for the Perfect Expert Interview

1. Research and draw up a list of potential interviewees. Remember to think laterally and include those who may not be experts in your own market but who have something specific to offer your target audience.
2. Don’t be afraid to ask for an interview. People really do want to talk about their areas of expertise and prove their skill in their field. If they have something of their own they want to promote, they’ll be even more eager to be interviewed.
3. Be respectful in your approach. When you contact a potential interviewee give them a brief outline of who you are, what the interview is for, and how to contact you for further information. Don’t inundate them with information nor send a one line request the first will make them resent the time you are taking up and the latter will appear rude and abrupt. If they are interested in being interviewed they will approach you for more information.
4. Always keep the interviewee in the loop before the interview. Let them know when and where the interview will take place and what you will be asking them. You don’t have to give your exact questions but a general overview of the structure of your interview will help put them at ease, and be a good guideline for you.
5. Make sure your recording equipment is in good condition and ready for the interview. Have a trial run with a friend if necessary. Don’t be afraid to run a brief test with the expert before you start the actual interview simply tell them you are checking the recording levels, which is standard practice for interviewers.
6. Do your homework and ask questions that will bring out the best of your expert’s knowledge. Always ask open ended questions that will give them the chance to talk for more than just a few words at a time. For example, instead of saying “You are currently writing a new book about candle making, aren’t you?” which will receive only a yes (or no) answer, you would ask “What can we look forward to in your new book on candle making?”
7. Listen to what is said and respond accordingly. If the expert answers one of your later questions as part of another response remember not to ask it again, it makes you look like you aren’t interested. Also, if something the expert says is really interesting or important, maybe something you hadn’t thought of before the interview, be prepared to ask them to elaborate further and maybe cover topics you hadn’t planned for.
8. Allow them some time to promote themselves, if they wish. You should always give them the opportunity to say how they can be contacted, what their website address is, or what their new book is called and where it is available. The interview should be of mutual benefit.
9. Always remember to thank your interviewee for their time and offer them a copy of the interview. If it is being used on a podcast, give them details of when and where they can access the broadcast they might just spread the word for you.

Naturally, these are just a few tips to becoming an expert at interviewing the experts but they should help put both you and your interviewee at ease. It is definitely worth pushing the boundaries of your comfort zone to become adept at interviews because they make such excellent sources of marketing and product creation material.

Fear of failure is one of those irrational fears that seems to prevent us grasping new opportunities and trying new experiences. If worrying about failing is all that’s preventing you from creating online audio then all I ask is, what’s the worst that can happen?

You’ve come this far online; some things you have tried have worked and some haven’t, but you have learned from every mistake and benefited from every triumph. The way we learn as human beings is through trial and error. As babies, if we failed to pull ourselves onto our feet we’d learn from that attempt and try again until we finally managed it. We didn’t feel any shame for not achieving it the first time, nor did we give up trying. At some point in our upbringing, failure starts to become something that should be avoided, that we should be ashamed of, to the point where we often refuse to try something new rather than find it doesn’t work for us.

I don’t want this to become a therapy session, but I do want you to question why you are avoiding creating audio and what will happen if it doesn’t work the way you want it to? In most cases, nobody else will even notice. You can discard the audio immediately and try again, learning from the previous mistakes. Most successful marketers will tell you that they make almost as many mistakes as they have successes, but they learn from them and move on quickly. Stop thinking of it as failure and focus on the learning process.

Anyway, back to the audio.

Another reason you may be avoiding creating online audio is the cost of buying the necessary equipment.

There’s absolutely no reason to spend a fortune to get started. All you need is a computer (which I assume you already have), a decent microphone, recording software and something to say.

And when I say a decent microphone, I’m not talking about an expensive, professional studio mic. At work I may use a $2000 microphone, but that’s because all audio I record there has to be of the highest broadcast quality. At home I simply use my Skype headset (I have one of the higher-end headsets but it still cost me less than $100). I also highly recommend the Snowball USB mic from Blue Microphones that works for PCs and MACs again about $100.

I suggest you begin with a free recording program like Audacity (another cross-platform application). Make sure you download the mp3 encoder too so you can export your audio in mp3 format. This sounds technical but Audacity will usually save things as .wav files, and mp3 is simply the audio format that is best for use online.

Whatever market or niche you are in, I’m sure you have something of interest to say. Make some notes to keep you on-track and begin recording. A few practice runs will help you become accustomed to the equipment and feel more relaxed about recording yourself speaking.

We’ve now covered all the reasons you might have been avoiding recording your own audio for marketing and product creation, except for time and technical know-how.

I can’t really help you find or make more time for this, or your business as a whole. That’s something I’m sure you already have to deal with on a day-to-day basis. All I can add is that once you have passed the initial learning stage and familiarized yourself with all the steps needed for audio creation you will find it happens much quicker and with fewer hitches.

The technical stuff can be a real barrier to getting things done online, and audio marketing is no different. Thankfully, those with the technical know-how have made life easier for the rest of us.

Your initial recording should be a simple task of plugging in your microphone, checking the recording levels of your voice (to make sure you can be heard or are not too loud), clicking record on the recording software, talking, clicking stop and then saving the file as an mp3. Alternatively, you may be recording onto a portable digital recorder, in which case you follow the operator instructions for recording, and then transfer the audio file to your computer.

Yes, there is a lot more you can do with your recording editing, adding music, linking pieces of audio together – but you can survive with just the basics until you feel brave enough to learn more or are in a position to outsource it to a professional.

Publishing audio to the Internet is even easier. Save your audio as an mp3 file and upload it to your website, like you would any other file. People can either download the file or stream it from your site simply by clicking on the link.

If you want an audio player on your website then services like Audio Generator can provide all the technical expertise you need. You upload the relevant file to their site and pop some code on your webpage. They will also help you create audio postcards and testimonials, either by uploading audio directly to them or by sending your happy, satisfied customers to a web page that gives details of how to phone toll-free to leave their message.

If you have a blog, there are numerous audio player plugin options that will enable you to play audio from your blog post, and some even enable you to adapt the audio player to match the colors of your blog theme. My personal favorite for my WordPress blog is the 1 Pixel Out Audio Player Plugin .

The technicalities of podcasts are not much different, but I’ll cover them in more depth in my next post.

I have already mentioned a number of things that may be holding you back from creating some of the many audio opportunities that exist equipment, time, technical know-how and your voice. In this post, let’s tackle the issue of your voice.

Often the only thing holding people back from creating online audio is their voice, or rather their own perception of their voice.

Let’s face it, even if no one has ever criticised our voice in the past, we still hate the way it sounds when it’s played back to us. It doesn’t sound how we expect it to sound.

The truth is your voice is never going to sound the same on a recording as it does in your head. This is simply a matter of physiology. When you speak you “feel” as well as “hear” your voice. You hear your own voice through the air but at the same time you experience the sound resonating inside your head, conducted through your bones. In most cases you will sound higher-pitched in reality than you do in your head because higher frequencies are not conducted through bone as efficiently.

The only way to overcome your fear of broadcasting your own voice is to, in the words of Nike, just do it! Like so many things, you will learn through trial and error, which is why practice recordings can be useful and help you gain confidence.

Begin by recording yourself speaking on a familiar topic or reading a section of your ebook, and then listen to the playback. Be critical, but in a positive way. If you think you sound too high-pitched or you talk too quickly then these are simple things to identify and work on in the next recording. Forcing your voice to sound too low-pitched can be damaging to your vocal cords over time, so don’t push it too hard. The most important aspect of this exercise is to make you more familiar with and accepting of your own voice.

Worried others will hate listening to your voice as much as you do? Don’t be. In general, the only people we find it hard to listen to are those who have nothing useful to say. Our ear adapts very quickly to voice pitch, accents, and styles of voice, but if the speaker is boring then we won’t listen for long. If you are passionate about your subject and have something useful to contribute then that will be communicated to the listener.

Yes, you may come across people who criticise your style or the way you speak, but please don’t take it to heart. There will always be folks who criticise what we do, write and say. As a professional voiceover I have often had people criticise my voice sometimes this has been constructive criticism and other times it has been downright rude. One thing you learn very quickly as a voiceover is not to take it personally – you cannot be all things to all people and shouldn’t try to be.

If you do have a strong accent it shouldn’t be a deterrent but you will probably need to slow down your natural speech unless you have a slow Southern drawl, in which case you may want to pick up the pace a little. Not sure if your accent is strong or if you speak too fast? Record yourself and ask a trusted friend to take a listen and give their honest opinion.

More importantly, you need to work on sounding natural in your recordings. If you sound like you are reading a script or if your voice is stilted (often a result of nerves) you will not draw your listener into what you are saying or create that vital personal connection. Talk as if you are speaking to a close friend over a cup of coffee. Being word perfect is not a vital component of online audio, but sounding sincere and “human” is.

In the first blog post of this guest series, I wrote about why audio is so important in marketing and also highlighted a few of the reasons you are probably shying away from using it. In this post I will be explaining some of the many uses of online audio and, hopefully, stimulate your interest enough for you to start seeing the possibilities for your business.

11 Ways to Use Audio Online

1. Website Greetings: Personally welcome visitors to your website and point out the most important features of the site. The benefits this offers are two-fold firstly you are creating a personal connection with your visitors, and secondly you are directing them to take the action or actions you most desire
2. Audio Testimonials: In the same way that your voice can add sincerity to your message, so too can the voices of happy, satisfied customers. Despite our attempts to make written testimonials as transparent as possible with photos, full names and locations they are still often perceived as being fabricated by the website owner. An audio testimonial from a customer immediately removes the doubt from a potential buyer’s mind.
3. Audio Guarantees: Guarantees are an important aspect of any selling process. Imagine if, instead of seeing a standard written guarantee, your potential customer heard you explain the guarantee and make the promise out-loud of what you will do if they are not happy with the product or service. They are more likely to believe you, and subsequently more likely to buy.
4. Audio Postcards: These can be sent as a link within an email, and offer another method for reaching your customers and prospects that will stand out. The audio postcard can be a simple holiday greeting, a new offer or testimonials from your happy customers whatever is most appropriate at the time.
5. Audio Books: Do you have an ebook that you sell or give away for lead generation? An audio book has a much higher perceived value than a standard pdf ebook and can be a higher-priced product on its own, a packaged product with the ebook, a bonus product, or an upsell.
6. Interviews: Interviews have many uses and if you know an expert or number of experts in your field then you could be sitting on a goldmine. You can use interviews to create podcasts, audio products to sell, lead generation products, and bonuses. They are also an excellent way to create a product quickly you can record and upload an interview in a matter of a few hours.
7. Podcasts: Podcasts are an excellent lead generation tool and a way of keeping in contact with your current leads and customers. The important aspect of any podcast is to offer something of value and not use them simply to sell to the listener.
8. Teleseminars: These are another method for generating leads and new customers, but can also be used as bonuses (either live or recorded) or to enhance a membership program.
9. Audio Tutorials: Again, this is a matter of increasing perceived value and/or connecting with customers. Offering a tutorial program in both written and audio files (and video too, if appropriate) will appeal to more people and enhance their experience of buying from you.
10. Seminars/Conferences: If you hold a conference or feature as a guest speaker at one, a recording of all the speakers or just your presentation can be made into a product in its own right or offered as a bonus. You could even stream the audio on your website or blog as a teaser for the next conference you are holding or speaking at (with an affiliate link, of course!).
11. Video: OK, not strictly audio on its own, and I did say in my last post that I wouldn’t go into detail on video, but simply adding audio to a series of pictures can make an effective video for posting on the video directory sites, like YouTube. It doesn’t even have to be your voice you can use royalty-free music instead. All you have to do is upload it, add your website link, create a good description, and put in some keywords, and you have another traffic generating string to your bow!

I hope this list of ideas has whet your appetite for using audio online, and has helped you think creatively about how you can apply some of these applications to your own business or niche.

The wonderful feature of all these applications is that the audio can be used more than once. If you are looking to work smarter rather than harder online (and you should be) then audio is perfect. Just one interview can be used to create material for a podcast, a sales product, an audio postcard and even an eventual bonus product sometime in the future. An audio testimonial can be streamed on your sales page and as an audio postcard. Teleseminars can be used for lead generation, packaged into a sales product, used as a bonus or upsell, edited for a podcast, or added to a membership site.

Imagine the possibilities!

In this series of guest blog posts I’d like to explain the importance of using audio in your online marketing: why you should use it, how to overcome your fears, and some of the best applications for audio to promote and enhance your websites.

Why Bother with Audio?

There are several reasons why you should be using audio and video within your websites and to promote your business. I’m going to focus on audio in particular, as there are many more qualified than me to tackle video, but the reasons for using them are the same:

• The Internet is all about communication. Sound is one of the best ways in the world to communicate because people can hear your passion and sincerity
• You may be an excellent writer but people respond and learn in different ways. Some prefer the written word, some audio, and some video. You want to attract and talk to as many people as possible, using the method they will respond to best
• The written word can be powerful, but you will make a more personal connection and increase confidence and trust by letting folks see and hear you. Developing a relationship is key to marketing and your potential customers are going to feel they know you better if they hear your voice and see your face
• You may not be a great writer and your personality will likely come across better in audio and/or video
• Audio and video offer you the opportunity to spread yourself around the Internet and utilise websites and directories that thousands or even millions of people search every day

What’s Holding You Back?

We all come up with reasons why we never quite get around to doing the things we know we should. When it comes to creating audio, the main reasons seem to be:

1. It’s time consuming to learn the technical aspects and create the audio
2. Not having the right equipment, either because of the cost or because you simply don’t know what to use
3. Not having the technical ability to create and distribute the audio
4. Your voice. Let’s be honest, we hate hearing our own voices on recordings and we assume most others will too (if you like your own voice then you are probably already using it)
5. Fear of failure. Like so many new and untested experiences, we often fear failure enough to prevent us even attempting them.

I’ll be addressing all these issues in future guest posts and hopefully helping you see how easy it is to create audio and publish it online. I’ll also be giving you some ideas of how and where you can use that audio.