Ewom Marketing

First of all I must apologise for the lack of posts in the last couple of months, it’s been all go, but things seem to be settling down.

For this blog I’d like to spend some time focusing on podcasts. We often receive emails from not just from businesses, but people looking to promote online radio shows and podcasts. Of course podcast are an effective marketing tool, the easiest part is creating and publishing a podcast. The hardest part is getting people to listen to it. Therefore in this blog I have listed some effective methods I have used in the past to increase listenership:

1) Sell the visitor your Podcast & make it Search Engine friendly: Like anything you put on the internet which you want to attract people to, you need to ensure its search engine friendly. There are two key ways that people come across new information online: a link or through Search Engines.

First time visitors want a quick and summary about the podcast prior to investing their time listening. This summary will act as a sales pitch to try and convince visitors your podcast is worth their valuable time.

Make sure you subscribe to Your Podcast. By subscribing to your own podcast in Yahoo, MSN, Google Reader, and other online service will help the service knows that feed exists, If they have one customer subscribed to a feed, which means your feed is indexed by that service.

2) Use Press to promote your podcast: The use of online Press release services can help promote podcasts if there's an interesting angle in one episode of your podcast. If you have a special event such as a milestone episode, annual anniversary, interviews with interesting people or upcoming contests are all reasons to send out a press release.

3) Interviews: On a podcast it can be very worth well interviewing people in the topic area of your podcast. If you do ensure you send a link to the person you interviewed and encourage them to link to it from their own website, blog, or social network profile. By doing this will help other people in the interviewee's circle of influence find out about your podcast .

4) Two Way communication: While listening to audio is technically a one way communication, encouraging and incorporating listener feedback in your show creates a sense of community. Provide ways to contact the podcasts for feedback and questions and if you do get emails make sure you read them during your podcast. Link up web applications such as twitter and Facebook to your podcasts so listeners can become fans, and promote your show therefore creating E-WORD OF MOUTH.

Other advice is similar to methods of promoting blogs such as:

* Commenting on other podcasts, forums, and podcasts.

* Offer to guest blog on related blogs, when they need a break or want to go on vacation.

* Get Listed in both podcast directories and directories focusing on your podcast topic. There are loads of podcast directories out there some of the most effective ones I have found are:

http://www.ipodlounge.com/

http://www.podcastdirectory.com

http://www.podcast.net/

http://www.podcastcentral.com

http://www.podcastalley.com