Podcircle Podcast

Mickenzie Vought: 00:00

I recently saw a quote that content marketing is not about lead gen, and that's gonna hit some of you in a tender place because you feel like, if I'm doing content marketing, I should be getting leads, getting leads, getting leads. Yes. But content marketing is not about lead gen, it is about trust gen. 70 7% of content marketers say LinkedIn produces the best organic results. So you are building trust.

Kyle Cummings: 00:25

Welcome to the Podcircle podcast where we bring practical tips and insights for every podcaster.

Mickenzie Vought: 00:30

Whether you're just getting started or you're already a seasoned podcast pro, these conversations dive into all the topics that matter most to you. So over the next 2 weeks, we're going to be digging into how to use LinkedIn to promote and grow your podcast. So make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel where we post all of our episodes so that you can get both part 1 and part 2 when it releases next week. And follow along with this episode and catch up on our past shows.

Kyle Cummings: 01:01

And don't forget that if you're listening on Apple or Spotify to subscribe and rate and review the show, it really helps us out and to make sure that you'll never miss an episode.

Mickenzie Vought: 01:11

Recently, we talked about growing your online presence. And today, we're gonna take it a little bit farther and talk more specifically about LinkedIn. So let's start. Why LinkedIn? And, you know, I love some stats, so I grabbed just a few.

Mickenzie Vought: 01:26

Here are a few stats about LinkedIn users. 40% of LinkedIn visitors organically engage with a business page every week. Members of LinkedIn have 2 times the buying power of the average online audience. LinkedIn has more than 1, 000, 000, 000 members globally, and since 2021, there's been a 42% increase in public conversation happening on this platform. So I don't know about you, but I have really started leaning more into my LinkedIn network, trying to go there for authentic conversation, networking conversation, and I'm finding myself finding products, people, and services that I actually care about over on LinkedIn.

Mickenzie Vought: 02:11

So it's not just a place to go for a job anymore. It's really a place for people to go to connect with like minded individuals and engage with brands and creators that they admire in a completely different way.

Kyle Cummings: 02:23

Totally. I feel like LinkedIn is pretty much the only social media that I really have a 2 way engagement in, like

Mickenzie Vought: 02:30

Yeah.

Kyle Cummings: 02:31

Might scroll Facebook. I'm not I don't really have much of a Instagram presence. I've largely taken a step back from social media, but LinkedIn I've found is actually provides value. It doesn't have some of the things that I kinda hate about other social media. And I've just made valuable connections there, business connections.

Kyle Cummings: 02:48

It's a great way to, like, give people referrals and things like that. So it's a great way to kinda brand yourself, and we're gonna talk about that next. We've talked about that a little bit recently just like putting a face to your brand. I mean, LinkedIn is where people are going to make business connections. And you and I were in the in the space of podcasting services for businesses and nonprofits.

Kyle Cummings: 03:08

And so that's where we're having really good traction Yeah. Just uploading our our podcast clips and things like that to let people know, hey, I'm kinda I'm the podcast production guy. You know, Mackenzie is is a marketing expert and really knows how to do podcast promotion and things like that. So LinkedIn has just been awesome for that. But if you're a small business owner, a coach, a therapist, a VP, or in any way you're you're representing a brand, LinkedIn is for you.

Kyle Cummings: 03:36

So Mhmm. My advice and this is what I've done, take it or leave it, is to create a business page on LinkedIn. So ours would be the Podcircle business page on LinkedIn, but also to create an individual page for yourself. The reasoning behind that is because people are gonna buy from people first and foremost, and and I'm the kind of the representative or the ambassador of my brand. Putting names with faces is gonna be more valuable at least in the short term than just expecting kind of an amorphous brand that nobody knows anything about or really knows what they do to do that the heavy lifting for you for lack of a better phrase.

Kyle Cummings: 04:13

So and then even just when we're talking about using the podcast to promote and brand you and your business and things, take those clips from the podcast and put them on both your business page and your personal page. That's what I do for Podcircle and, you know, try not to really cross post those too much you know maybe you can go and recycle some older posts or things like that but you know if you can pull a handful of clips per episode that gives you a couple for your personal LinkedIn and some for the your main page. And then we're gonna get into a couple of other really cool features that LinkedIn also offers as well, especially on the business page side of things. So

Mickenzie Vought: 04:51

Absolutely. And over the next few weeks, we're going to be digging into the top ways that you can optimize your LinkedIn content to really promote and grow your podcast. And in turn, I really do believe your business. So this week, we're going to talk through the ways to reuse and repurpose episode content. You'll notice a theme.

Mickenzie Vought: 05:10

We often talk about this. And then next week, we'll explore specific LinkedIn tools that I think can help you and maybe you don't know about. So we're gonna dive in more nitty gritty next week to actual LinkedIn features, and this week, we're gonna focus more on content. So if you've been listening to the show for a while, you know that we continue to beat the drum of viewing your podcast as a content machine. It is.

Mickenzie Vought: 05:34

And as you just shared, Kyle, you have really seen a lot of success using both your main page and your personal page because you are a person representing your brand. I have found so many brands, because of the way that they have mobilized their employees, their leaders to go in, and really establish their own personal brands. And so when optimized for LinkedIn, that content can really lead to building trust with your target market, and in turn, sales. So I recently saw a quote that content marketing is not about lead gen, and that's gonna hit some of you in a tender place because you feel like if I'm doing content marketing, I should be getting leads, getting leads, getting leads. Yes.

Mickenzie Vought: 06:18

But content marketing is not about lead gen. It is about trust gen, and I couldn't agree more. 77% of content marketers say LinkedIn produces the best organic results. So you are building trust. You're not just building leads, leads are going to be a result of the trust you're building.

Mickenzie Vought: 06:39

LinkedIn pages that post weekly see 5.6 times more follower growth, which then leads to more trust, more sales.

Kyle Cummings: 06:48

I'm thinking about that last stat, the LinkedIn pages that post weekly. I mean, my wife has seen explosive growth on her LinkedIn this past Yes. Year, but she posts

Mickenzie Vought: 06:56

I'm gonna say she is a prime example of this.

Kyle Cummings: 06:59

She posts every well, for a long time, she posted every day. I think now she's down to just posting 4 or 5 days a week, but Mhmm. It's just I mean, we preach it all the time in the podcast world. It's the same for LinkedIn. Whatever you're gonna pour into, as long as you do it consistently and provide quality and value and consistency, it's just keep showing up which is which has always been her mantra.

Kyle Cummings: 07:22

It's just keep showing up. And I mean, she kept showing up when she had a 100 followers and now I think I think she's over 7, 000 on on LinkedIn. She just keeps on keeping on with it. So let's get into a couple specifics of how you can reuse a podcast episode to promote your podcast and to grow your reach with your audience within LinkedIn. So here are the top types of posts we think you should be prioritizing.

Kyle Cummings: 07:45

Video clips and this includes both long and short videos. So we talk about it all the time. We love videos even if you take, you know a couple of minutes segment from a podcast and produce it as a I guess a horizontal video or you take a 45 second clip and produce it as a vertical or a square. However you wanna orientate it. We're huge fans of video.

Kyle Cummings: 08:06

There's no better way to get a name and a face talking about your expertise and getting it to the people that are the most interested and hearing from your expertise. And when you post consistently, more people are gonna find you, and find that content that resonates with them. And then from there, I think it's about having other things that you could point them to, more long form types of content, like some things we're gonna get into here a little bit like LinkedIn articles and newsletters, things like that.

Mickenzie Vought: 08:31

Absolutely. I thought of a really tangible example around this. So I started following, again, I was talking about employers mobilizing their leaders. I started following this person who is just like a director of content, but she is director of content of an organization that touches something that matters to me, which is parental leave, and really advocates for parental leave, advocates for women in the workforce, advocates for men's rights within the workforce to be able to, like, support their families. And I just really enjoy it.

Mickenzie Vought: 09:03

She I didn't even know the organization she worked for. I just enjoyed her content. And then it led me down a rabbit trail to see, oh, she works for a company called Parentally. And then they just started a podcast, and then I started following her there because I was watching the videos and getting drawn in. So now I listened to the podcast, The False Trade Off, simply because I was following the creator.

Mickenzie Vought: 09:25

She was putting out quality content, showing up consistently. And then there was a video that I it's just like we preach all the time that drew me in. And I realized that it was a small piece of a larger content that was getting really set into the world. So just wanna say from a out in the wild example, video on LinkedIn works. Kinda leading off of this point as well, I've seen this podcast and this particular creator do a really good job of starting a conversation.

Mickenzie Vought: 09:55

And when I was doing my research around this, both for Podcircle as a whole for our LinkedIn strategy and for this podcast episode, I found a quote from Maura Arons Mail, and she's the host of the anxious achiever. So if you've ever seen that podcast, I think it's always hitting the top of the charts. But what she said is what I found is that if I lead with stories and the content that makes me truly curious, inspired, or even angry, my community on LinkedIn definitely wants to talk about it too. So the podcast is really a catalyst for creating other conversations. So what she does is she starts a conversation about the topic that her episode is on.

Mickenzie Vought: 10:34

So for example, today, we could start a conversation that says, is LinkedIn dead? Or are you tired of seeing people just, you know, post links of their podcast and nothing else and just start a conversation, get things going. And then it suddenly leads into your podcast. I think it's super fascinating to talk about, oh, we have an episode on this entire thing. I think a great way to do this is in long form text posts.

Mickenzie Vought: 10:59

And I think on LinkedIn, that is maybe the 1 place where long form is not dead because people are going there typically knowing that they'll read longer things. So I've seen a strategy on LinkedIn winning right now. You kinda catch them with a catchy, headline, and then you enter enter so that people have to say more, and then they see the entire long caption. But it works really well because it converts because it increases engagement because it pulls you in. Now when you're doing a long form content, maybe you're just giving an opinion.

Mickenzie Vought: 11:28

You are starting a conversation like she's saying, and you have a particular guest that you want to highlight that maybe if we had a guest show and we have pulled on an expert from LinkedIn, we would wanna make sure that that person, we can say, oh, this person can speak to this topic. Make sure you're tagging them so that their audience can then see it in their feed. Because I do believe LinkedIn is 1 of the places where the algorithm is really in your favor. Interactions, connections, mentions, comments go a long way. Okay.

Mickenzie Vought: 11:58

So here's a bonus tip on that. Talking about

Kyle Cummings: 12:00

kind of cross posting, you can also send those assets to your guests. So whatever you're posting on your page, if you've got, to your guests. So whatever you're posting on your page, if you've got, you can send them that clip from the podcast Yeah.

Mickenzie Vought: 12:13

Or if

Kyle Cummings: 12:13

you have extra clips that you wanna say, hey, I'm gonna post these. Mhmm. These really feature you really well, so why don't you post these on your channel? And you guys just tag each other. And you're leveraging the reach of 2 audiences there which is awesome.

Kyle Cummings: 12:26

You know, long form posts are are kinda like emails. Hit them with a really good subject line and that's gonna entice them to open the email and to read more. And a lot of the best LinkedIn content kinda reads that way. And I, you know, and I think the thing is too, it's like, it doesn't have to be like a shock value, like a YouTube thumbnail kinda thing. Just like something that's interesting and and compelling.

Kyle Cummings: 12:47

And especially if you can combine that with a photo because I've see that LinkedIn is you can kinda use the photo for attention type thing. And if you have a really interesting kind of heading to that post, oftentimes, that's enough to kinda get people to be like, hey. What's this person talking about? Or or what's Yeah.

Mickenzie Vought: 13:01

The longer they stay, you know, or they stop the scroll, the more it's gonna tell LinkedIn, oh, this is something people are interested

Kyle Cummings: 13:07

Yeah.

Mickenzie Vought: 13:08

So yeah, I think this is something Kristen has done really well. And I think if we think continue to kind of pull on this thread of longer form posts, it's really a great place to take if you are someone who creates outlines for your episode. Take those outlines, those main points, put them in a long post and say, like, here's a summary of our most recent podcast or here's the things we talked about. Like, repurpose even your preparation and make sure that you're providing links to the episode in the comments and or CTAs below. So we'll talk next week about getting really strategic with the CTAs that you're putting in those long form posts.

Mickenzie Vought: 13:46

But that's my little extra tidbit. And like you were saying, make sure you're using a photo if you have a photo of you and your guests or you and your co host that pull people in LinkedIn posts with images see 2 times higher comment rates. Like, that's just a fact. So make sure you're utilizing photos as much as you can.

Kyle Cummings: 14:05

I keep referencing Kristen just because she's just really done well in LinkedIn, but whenever she posts, she always is very active in that first 30 minutes after she posts as well. So she's she's, with her connection, she's commenting on their post, and the algorithm just eats it up. I mean, they just and so it gives her more visibility, more visibility to her post. And so whenever you're posting, I know what some people schedule their posts, I've seen kind of mixed results, I guess, algorithmically Yeah. With that.

Kyle Cummings: 14:32

But regardless of whether you're kinda doing the manual posting or whether you're scheduling them out, I would just set aside 15 or 20 minutes whenever that post goes up to just be really active on LinkedIn and and chatting with different people liking people's posts.

Mickenzie Vought: 14:45

Put it in your calendar. Just Yeah. I I have a spot in my calendar for my other job that says engage in social. Like, just do that so that you're creating that 2 way conversation. Because when we're just talking at people, they're gonna tune you out.

Kyle Cummings: 14:58

Yeah. And that's, I think, hearkening back to okay. So I need an individual LinkedIn page and 1 for my brand or my business. Yes. And the 1 you should be kind of talking from, I think, is your personal page.

Kyle Cummings: 15:10

You know? Exactly. I'm not really totally sure how you would do that as a brand, you know, because again, a brand is I think if you're a small business, you are the brand. You know, and I think that we're seeing a lot of people wake up to that. I certainly have.

Kyle Cummings: 15:23

It's really, really hard to build a brand that stands on its own. Like, when I think of McDonald's, just to use a very overused example, I don't know of any 1 person who works at McDonough. I don't know who the CEO is. I mean, I know the guy who's the name of the guy who started it, but Mhmm. You know, they are an entity and into themselves, but they've also been around forever and 1, 000, 000, 000 of dollars in advertising on and on and on.

Kyle Cummings: 15:49

As a small business, we don't we don't have the luxury of 1, 000, 000, 000 of dollars in advertising or time. Mhmm. You know? Yep. So you're the brand.

Mickenzie Vought: 15:56

Yeah. And I think your brand page is gonna be consistently on things that are going to be promoting your work culture, the things that are more businessy, not personal. And really, that personal account is going to be the way you put your feet forward, how you are establishing yourself as a thought expert, as a thought leader in this space, whatever your business is.

Kyle Cummings: 16:18

Yes.

Mickenzie Vought: 16:19

So you're not always just promoting your business. You're engaging in conversation about the thing you know the most about.

Kyle Cummings: 16:26

Yeah. And on your Yeah. Personal page, you're not even always talking about your business. Sometimes you're just talking about, like, man, I just I just learned a major leadership lesson the other day, and I and I wanna share it. Or I had this interaction with my kid that that made me just wanna be a better person, you know, and and and how that's affected my, you you know, just like work work life balance is a huge Mhmm.

Kyle Cummings: 16:47

Topic on LinkedIn. Yeah. So LinkedIn is not just for people that are looking for jobs. It's really become more than that, and I've really started to enjoy the platform as I engage with it in in kind of these different ways.

Mickenzie Vought: 16:58

Just be human. I can think of an example that I literally saw in the wild and then was listening to a podcast this week where they made fun of it where someone said, I got engaged this weekend. Here's what getting engaged taught me about lead gen and sales over here, and I was like, don't do that. Just be a human. Like, don't be icky.

Mickenzie Vought: 17:17

You know? There's a line there. We all know it. So Yeah. Anyway.

Kyle Cummings: 17:21

Less like, grasping for straws there.

Mickenzie Vought: 17:23

Yes. Exactly. So the other things that we think you could really engage in is LinkedIn articles and newsletters. We'll talk talk more about that next week. I think this goes a lot in line with how you can reuse the content you're creating from an episode into creating blogs for your website.

Mickenzie Vought: 17:38

And then how you're creating a newsletter. We'll talk specifically the how do you do that well on LinkedIn because it's different than maybe your website or your email. And last is PDF tips. I'm gonna tell you that this is something that I, as a social marketer, couldn't figure out for a while, so don't want you to have the trouble. But it looks really professional when someone uploads a PDF.

Mickenzie Vought: 17:59

Have you ever seen where there's, like, little arrows and you can swipe through? Mhmm. You're like, oh, this is really great. I thought it was just graphics. I was like, oh, these people are uploading graphics, but I never could get it to work.

Mickenzie Vought: 18:10

But if you have a 4 or 5 part graphic that you're putting on social media, maybe you're building the points, maybe today we would put all of our tips on a different slide for Instagram, upload it both as a PNG for Instagram and then as a PDF for LinkedIn, and it was already formatted and looking beautiful. So it could be, like, 5 ways to get your pet outside this summer. You know, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Let's say you have a dog food business. Mhmm.

Kyle Cummings: 18:36

That was

Mickenzie Vought: 18:37

just an example. But then it'll go through it, and people will be able to engage with it in a different way, and it takes your content in a way that the algorithm is going to reward.

Kyle Cummings: 18:45

So if they love it, they can download it to their desktop, and then they have it for reference. I don't know. I I haven't hit 1 of those in a while. I don't know if it's an exchange for an email or anything like that, but I don't think I don't think it is.

Mickenzie Vought: 18:55

Nope. Usually, it's not an email tied to it. I think that would be great. Yeah. It's not currently

Kyle Cummings: 19:02

this Well, I'm sure there's an option to do a a built in lead lead gen, which is something

Mickenzie Vought: 19:04

that paid that way.

Kyle Cummings: 19:05

You do paid. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which we're gonna look into here before too long because, I think that's something we we talk about on our next episode just briefly.

Kyle Cummings: 19:12

But we're at time in this episode. If you're ready to take the leap and the next step of your podcast journey, we can help you every step of the way here at Podcircle You can schedule a time to chat with me and to learn more about how we can support you and the launching and the day to day of your podcast, you can simply email me at kyle@podcircle.com, or you can simply follow 1 of the links in the show notes. So we're gonna be back at you next week with another round of tips about using LinkedIn to promote your podcast. It's a really powerful platform, and we'll talk to you then.

Kyle Cummings: 19:47

Alright.

Mickenzie Vought: 19:47

See you next week.