If you’ve landed on this blog post, it’s because you’re not only interested in starting a podcast, you are a change maker! You might already have a social-good brand, or you might be an author or thought leader.
No matter how you landed here, you need a powerful way to connect with your audience so you can propel big change and big ideas! So today, I will share how podcasting helps social-good ideas create a tribe, make an online impact, cultivate support, and gets people to act.
Podcasting is a unique platform! Not just because it nurtures relationships and provides a strong conversion rate, but people who show up to podcasts strategically create a highly engaged audience that feels like they KNOW the host. No other type of marketing has this impact or power. It’s why podcasting can produce a wild conversion rate (over time, we aren’t talking instant results).
The key to using podcasting to propel a movement is in the clarity of your message and your ability to strategically produce content that aligns with your ideal listener, aka ideal client/reader/donor/buyer.
When you go into the podcasting process with purpose, it’s easier to create meaningful goals, improve over time, and create the transformation you hope to see in the world.
Social-Good Requires A Heart Connection
Podcasting is personal! Few things are as personal as the human voice. We evoke intention, emotion, and passion with our speech. When you podcast strategically, you have the opportunity to connect with like-minded listeners and encourage them to align with your vision or a deep need.
Successful podcasts create a tribe over time and fuel such a relationship through vulnerability and storytelling; the listener feels like they know the host. If you’ve tried to share any big idea, you know how important it is to get an emotional opt-in; this is what podcasting offers you!
Podcaster Key: Get better at being vulnerable with your audience.
Social-Good Needs Word of Mouth
We’ve all seen challenges go viral on social media to support organizations doing good work worldwide, but these are spikes in engagement.
Long-term success requires ongoing word of mouth and relationship building to create an audience that carries a message for you. A podcast allows hosts to be a catalyst for this forward motion. The better hosts get at aligning content with their audience, the more likely it is that listeners will propel the message forward.
If you’re wondering, “How do I go viral?” you’re asking the wrong question. You don’t need to go viral; you need to create a long-lasting audience engaged and eager to act because they relate to you.
Podcaster Key: Are you creating episodes that align so profoundly with your ideal listener’s heart that they want to share the message?
Social-Good Should Be Easy To Share
When trying to change the world, you need to make it easy for people to act and engage with your ideas. Podcasting allows others to share your message without filtration. When someone shares your episode on social media, others have the opportunity to listen and hear it straight from the horse’s mouth without a game of telephone.
A considerable part of creating cultural shifts is access! Podcasting is generally free, and the information is robust. A podcast allows you to break down barriers and share an ocean of knowledge with anyone willing to listen.
Podcaster Key: From a practical standpoint, are you on platforms that make it easy to share episodes? Are you leveraging your social media in a way that nurtures your community by encouraging people to tag friends, share posts, or offer feedback?
Social-Good Needs Credibility
Podcasting is one of the number one ways to build brand credibility for thought-leaders, authors, and social-good entrepreneurs. To build brand credibility, you must consistently demonstrate knowledge over time. Podcasts attract listeners who want in-depth information, so it’s an excellent platform for authority building.
By sharing your heart and information in a way that aligns with your ideal listener each week, you have the opportunity to build brand through the profound exchange of information and emotion. Remember, podcasting creates a heart connection. If you can connect on a heart level and demonstrate knowledge, you have a massive way to increase credibility.
Podcaster Key: Are you going deep in each episode? Are you making episodes long enough that they demonstrate clear and direct knowledge?
Social-Good Needs Authority Support
Any social-good idea requires support from key figures. When you have established voices supporting you, it automatically elevates your concept with your ideal listener. A powerful tool in podcasting is interviewing guests that align with your message. Guests add nuance, emotion, thoughts, and background to ideas you cannot offer alone.
Guests who have a podcast or existing audience also offer the opportunity to audience share. When someone searches for your guest, your episode can appear in search results (when you craft episode titles for SEO).
Podcaster Key: Are you inviting guests on your show that make your message more credible and nurture your audience? Are you leveraging their name in episode titles and descriptions? Do you tag them on social media, so they share your interview with their audience?
Social-Good Should Make an Impact
This one is obvious—the goal for any social-good brand or thought leader is to generate change. Podcasting allows you to share this change or the systems that keep change from happening. In marketing, we say, “Your best salesperson is a happy client.” In the same way, the best way to share the effectiveness of a social-good idea is to share testimonials of success or roadblocks! Podcasting allows you to powerfully storytell and communicate the change you are trying to make in the world. Through story and personal experience, listeners get the heart jolt they need to propel your message and act.
Podcast Key: Are you creating solo episodes or interviews that share the transformation you’re trying to make?
Social-Good Entrepreneurs Need An Idea Container
Entrepreneurs and thought-leaders need channels to test concepts with their audience. When I say test concepts, I mean ideas for action, books, memberships, services, and more! Over time, as you build a relationship with a podcast audience, you can use them to market-test ideas and get quality feedback. Granted, this is only true for someone who launched a strategic show and is actively generating content for a precise audience.
A podcast is a place to flesh out ideas as they relate to the heart of your show and brand.
Podcast Key: Are you asking your audience to engage and give feedback? Have you done enough relationship building to generate a response?
Social-Good Brands Have To Make a Digital Impact
Regardless of industry, brands have to make an SEO and digital impact. Podcasts are indexed by search engines like Google, Safari, and others. When you podcast strategically and create SEO show notes and episode titles, you increase your ability to rank for topics critical to your message.
Not only can you rank for specific topics over time, but people can also click on an episode where they can get complete information directly from an authority.
Podcasts also create an opportunity to hit other SEO goals, like meaningful backlinks to your website.
Podcast Key: Are you leveraging SEO show notes on your site and writing headlines that convert based on keywords?
Social-Good Ideas Must Be Focused To Catch On
The key to any brand’s success is offering a solution to a clear problem that your audience recognizes. This key is especially true for social-good ideas. Ideas that catch on can be explained with brevity and clarity. It might take work to create that exact problem, solution, and transformation message, but it’s possible! The clearer your concept is, the easier it is for people to opt into your idea.
Some of our best scientists work hard on drilling down complex ideas into simple terms to generate social opt-in and action. Did you know that PDH dissertations with simple language and more straightforward headlines are more likely to be published? Even a complex idea can be communicated easily – but you have to work on how you tell that story.
Podcast Key: Is the premise and promise of your podcast clear? Does your audience understand the problem, solution, and transformation you are trying to share?
If you’re eager to start a podcast that leads to personal/socio-economic/professional transformation, don’t wait! You first need to nail down the clarity of your message and show brand promise. A podcast first beautifully into any marketing funnel as it builds authority and credibility while nurturing relationships – this is everything needed to move someone through the sales/donation/action funnel.
