Why I am Investing Time in Being Interviewed on 100 Different Podcasts

Neal Schaffer: 0:00

Why the heck is Neal Schaffer investing time in being interviewed? Uh, not one, not two, not three. But 100 different podcasts is this dude crazy? Listen in for why you may want to learn from what Neal is doing. Welcome to the maximize your social influence podcast with Neal Schaffer, where I help marketers, entrepreneurs, and business owners grow their businesses using innovative marketing techniques, leveraging the concept of digital influence throughout digital and social media. Hey, everybody, welcome to episode number 175. Wow, we are getting closer to number 200. But it is always excited to be here together with you. How are you doing? The world is slowly getting a little bit closer back to normal. But regardless, we are all accelerating our investment more and more in to digital and social media marketing. What's really interesting is I've told this to some people that I've talked to recently, but I believe that this year might be my best year, financially for my business. And I say this because Well, number one speaking is is great. And I do get paid to speak and I'm still doing virtual events. But speaking also requires travel, there's efficiencies and speaking. And there's also inefficiencies. And it's really the travel and time down and just the energy, the jetlag the time differences, the mediocre airplane Wi Fi, and I think you get the picture. But also, because with this acceleration of companies needing to do digital and social needing to do it, right, I've just had a lot more businesses reach out to me for what I call fractional cmo service. And I just want to bring this out, I am not here to sell, I think you know that. But I just want to let you know that this is sort of this bread and butter service that I do offer it is limited, because I literally work together with businesses anywhere from one hour a week to eight hours a week as their cmo slash VP of marketing. And I do it for large enterprises. And I also do it for smaller businesses, even startups. And the concept is that you need someone that's an expert at marketing, you want to bring them in, you want them to help you create a strategy, you want to help them implement the strategy. And you want to help them train their current people in their marketing department or agencies that they work with, into how to get aligned with this strategy. So it's something that I really love doing because I consider myself an educator and I get to apply all this with the help of the staff that the companies I work with usually have, whether it's one person or a whole team. So if that sounds interesting to you, feel free to reach out to me by Well, you know where to find me. But there's always links in the show notes of where you can contact me. So I'll stop there. And I want to move on to the episode that we have today, which is going to be all about podcasts. So you know, I went through it's funny because I don't have this year, there are some podcasts that have this detailed strategy. Like every month, we're going to talk about a different concept related to marketing. Or we're going to go through a 20 step approach to something with every step being a separate episode. Mine have always been. And it really taps into the original concept behind this podcast, which used to be called Social Business unplugged at its onset, is that it's really topics that come at the time that I think are really, really important. It's why I don't really do a lot of batch recordings. I sometimes will batch record some of my guest interviews, but I want them to be alive in the time. I mean, imagine if I was if I was broadcasting stuff that I recorded a year ago, you know, before Coronavirus. It's just such a different world now, right? It would just not make sense. It would not seem real. So every week, there's always something to talk about, right. And it's usually you know, with my own business, or helping my clients or just something that I see online or in social media. And I realized, you know, today for the first time, I really went back into my recorded podcast, I started to categorize them to see what I've talked a lot about what I haven't talked a lot about, and I realized that podcasting is not something I've talked a lot about now, all of you listening, your marketers, your entrepreneurs, your business owners, you're obviously listening to this podcast, so you have an interest in podcasting, and maybe some of you are bonafide. podcasters. So when I talk about influencer marketing in the age of influence, influence knows, no bounds. When we talk about Digital Influence. It's not limited to a specific social network. And that's one of the key takeaways from my book is it's not just about engaging with influencers on Instagram, they could be obviously on Tik Tok or YouTube but they could also be on LinkedIn on Twitter on Facebook, but it's also the content medium, right. So the could be a great photographer, a great videographer, they could be a great blogger, or they could be a great speaker or a great podcaster. Right? You got audio, you got text, you got photo, you got video. So when we think of influencer marketing, yes, we can think about the different social networks where the content creators are. But we can also consider different content mediums. And therefore podcasting becomes a great medium, whether you want to become an influencer yourself, or you want to leverage other influencers, it is something that should be discussed now. Maybe you've heard people evangelism, you know, podcasting. It's the next greatest thing, and everybody has to have a podcast. And I'm not here to evangelize on that, right, that there's enough people doing that. And I don't like to evangelize for anything other than my thoughts that I write in my books and what have you. But I will say, just getting back to the topic of today's podcast, that I have learned an incredible amount since you know, q3 of last year. This is q3 of 2019. So I've pretty much consistently podcasted weekly, for let's see here, and I'm actually going through all my different podcast episodes, as they really started this year. So really back with episode number 143, which was my interview with David Meerman. Scott on his new book fan, ah, cracy. And in all of 2019, I, you know, my first episode in 2019, was 136. And right now, I'm recording my 32nd episode of 2020. So really q4, and really q1 of 2020 is when I started getting more and more into podcasting. And where I began to see and understand it better, both from a content creator perspective, as well as that influencer marketing perspective. So why then have I become so passionate about getting onto other people's podcasts and being interviewed, and this is something that, as I've been interviewed another podcast, and I'm sharing these in social media, if you follow me there, maybe you've seen some of them. But it really comes back to this conversation that I have with my publisher. So if you've seen me speak on influencer marketing, and when I say speak these days, it's obviously on a virtual, like a webinar format. You might have seen me talk about my own influence of marketing for the release of my book, The Age of influence, and maybe on a previous podcast episode, I talked about this as well. But it really started with how do I leverage influencer marketing for my own book, and I'm not going to just go out there and pay an Instagramer $10,000 to publish a good looking photo that I doubt that's really going to push book sales, unless somehow, that's a business minded influencer, that's out there. But it comes down to a conversation I have with my publisher, which is what are the best ways to promote the book. And in their words, it was bloggers, and podcasters. Everybody that knows me knows that when it comes to promoting my book, and I've talked about this before, I am in a leave no stone unturned phase, especially for the first three to six months. It's been a little bit over five months now. So I have one more month to really hit these KPIs that I'm trying to hit for these various activities I'm doing as part of this leave no stone unturned. But when I looked for book promotion ideas, it's all about the way I talk about influencer marketing, how do you insight word of mouth marketing? How do I get people to talk about me? And when you think about it, let's go back to this content mediums? How am I in I did some research before podcasts? I did some research on bloggers first, how am I going to get bloggers to talk about me. So best marketing books, blog posts, there's a few of them out there, don't get me wrong. Some of them are old, they haven't been updated. They don't plan on updating them. And you know, every once in a while a new one comes out. But it's they're far and few between, you know, how else could I get on a blog? Well, I could do guest blog posts, right. And I have done some of those. But every guest blog posts requires you to write a blog post and every outlet once unique content. And that's the requirement that I have for my own bloggers as well. So that's, you know, that's a lot of blogs. Right? And the thing is that blogs don't have there aren't a lot of interview blogs out there. And I have been interviewed by some blogs. But there aren't that many out there. Right? There aren't that many photographers that will interview you. And there aren't that many talk shows on YouTube. You know where I am in terms of video, in terms of marketing. Sure, there's some live stream shows. But the funny thing is a lot of those interviews that you see on YouTube, or live stream interviews, they're actually coming from podcasters. And when you look more deeply in the podcasting, it's one of the reasons why when I started this podcast, it was 100% solo. It took me You know, I could go back again in history here. But it took me quite some time to accept the fact that I was going to interview someone on my podcast, right? So I started very, very differently. Ian Cleary of Razer social was my first interview that wasn't until episode number 13. My next interview was Michael Stelzner from social Media Marketing World episode number 46. In my first 50 episodes, I only had a third person that I interviewed. So that's 47 Solo, and three interviews. That was not that was not for me, that's not sort of what I, what I set out to do. I, you know, I saw that everybody else was doing an interview podcast. And because I'm a speaker, to me, it made just a lot more sense. I always have something to talk about, to use it as a way to share my ideas, my thoughts, my experiences with all of you. So I started adding interviews. Number one, it definitely helps in terms of content creation, I can tap into the minds of great people and have some great podcast episodes, I really wanted a more diverse podcast, I wanted to have more people's ideas included. And I'm also a person that when I talk with someone else, it often generates new ideas for me that I can bounce off them. So I you know, it's rewarding for me as well. And I know it's rewarding for the listener in terms of the diversity, not just having the same person all the time. So that's why right now, it's 5050, solo and 5050 interview. But getting back to that original concept, there are a heck of a lot of podcasts, where it is 100% interviews, or at least 50% interviews. There is no other content medium that has so many interviews, meaning that if you want to get found, there's no better content medium that will accept interviewing you should you pass the vetting process that each podcaster has than podcast and podcasters are influencers. I talk about that 99 One approach in terms of the percentages of Internet users who are lurkers or engagers, or content creators, there are not that many podcasters out there. But podcasters, the really good ones get a lot more. But you got to remember that every iPhone has an apple podcast built into it, right? When people listen to a podcast, they're they're engaged with you for 2030 minutes, even an hour, they're downloading all your episodes, it is an extremely influential medium in a very, very different way than the other mediums are. So once you understand that podcasters are influencers and that podcasting is the only medium where interviews are mainstream. That's where it all click with me. And that's why I said, You know what, I want to try my best to get on the other podcast. Now. I was on a podcast earlier this week, where the woman said, Neil, I get asked by a lot of people to interview on the podcast. But yours is the first one where you actually wrote the email and personalized it. And if you've read the age of influence, you know that that's my approach to working with influencers as well. But what I've learned in this process, right, so I, you know, here's the process that okay, I want to be interviewed on 100 different podcasts as part of my PR plan for the launch of the book. And if I am interviewed on 100 Different relevant podcasts, right? These are mainly in marketing, there's some entrepreneurs, small business podcasts. But these are all relevant audiences. And I know how many listeners my podcast gets, because of my stats, if I can be interviewed in any podcast that's on the top 250 charts, in marketing. In the four countries where I have the most listeners, which is the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, should be no surprises there. Sometimes I rank high in Greece or Japan or Spain or, or Norway or Denmark, but that's beside the point of Ireland. But those are the four big countries in terms of number of users. If I can get on any one of those. I'm reaching more people than I'm reaching right now. Now, since I started my this podcast, thanks to all of you that listen, subscribe review is reaching more people. And I'm starting to rank a lot higher than I did just a few months ago. But regardless of that fact, if I can get an any one of those have already been exposed to a relatively large audience, you multiply that by 100. It's like, Man, this is this would be great to be able to do. What I have learned in the process of doing that, though, is a lot of what I want to talk about today. Because number one, I am now building relationships with other influencers. Now these podcasts are some of them do live streams. Some of them are authors, some of them are CEOs, I have done, literally a guest interview that lead to business. So whenever you engage with an influencer, yes, they're content creators. But in the case of podcasting, chances are they're also business owners. So it opens up a lot of potential for collaboration that I didn't even really think about to be honest with you, but that I've realized, and if we take it one step further, I have a client right now who actually may be listening this podcast, and when she was asking me advice, and she's writing a book, and how do I get the word out about the book and how do I engage with influencers? Well, one way obviously, is to do what I've done. But the other way is to actually launch a podcast solely as a networking vehicle. And when you connect the dots, I realized Dang, this is what you On the Dumas did hopefully you have listened to my episode with John Lee Dumas because I just recently interviewed him. And I'm going to get that number up here while I'm while I have it in front of me. John Lee Dumas episode number 166. It was just literally two months ago where I interviewed him. And that is an example. And I think it is a great example of you leveraging this as a way to build relationships with other influencers. So there's obviously guesting, but there's the other side as well. The other interesting thing that I learned is that it helps me find guests for my own show, because a lot of these people are podcasters. They understand the value of expanding their podcast listeners on being on another podcaster show because guess what, if they're on another podcast or show, they know that they're being exposed to actual podcast listeners, when I publish and promote my podcast episodes and social media, not everyone's a podcast listener, so it makes it really difficult. I see Facebook groups where they talk about how do I promote my podcast. And there are some that try Facebook ads. But not everyone's going to click on that out and actually go to an apple podcast page, or an iTunes page or a Google podcast page, because they don't really listen to podcasts. So that's why if you're a podcaster, you know, it's gold, to be interviewed on other people's pages, or I should say on other people's podcasts. And it's really helped me find some great guests for this podcast that I'll be exposing you all to in the not so distant future. And obviously, when I invite guests on, I invite them on number one for you. But number two for me, because I get to learn and up my game from working with them as well. The other interesting thing that I've found in this, I won't call it an experiment in an exercise is that it's helped me better find my own voice. If you want to become a better speaker, you need to speak more. And if you wanted to launch your own podcast, you need to know what it's all about, you need to know what to expect what you're going to say. So being on 100 different podcasts being interviewed by 100 different people, the average podcast is probably 45 minutes, because half of them are an hour and half of them are half an hour. That's like 75 hours of you speaking, right? If you can speak that much about a topic, you have really mastered it. And what you find when I did research, I didn't reach out to any and every marketing podcasts because some are completely irrelevant to what I want to talk about. Visa V. The age of influence and influencer marketing. And some are based on niches. But it's like this is a legal marketing podcast. Yes, there is a way that even in legal marketing, you can use influencers. This is a podcast just about retail. Yes, there's a way to leverage them. This is just about e commerce. Yes, there's a way to leverage influence. So it really gives you a way to not only better find your own voice as a speaker or future podcaster. But it also helps you better deeply understand your subject cuz you're going to get asked a lot of questions, and it's in those questions, you better understand what's on the tips of people's minds, that allows you to develop better and better content. And of course, as I mentioned in the age of influence, and if you've seen me talk about influencer marketing, one of the benefits of working and collaborating together with influencers is it gives you more content to share with you call it UGC, UGC, user generated content, or you call it IGC influencer generated content, it's less content you have to make. So, now I have 100 episodes that I can plug into my Twitter, my LinkedIn, my Facebook, and I can tag the podcasters let them know that I'm sharing. Because guess what a lot of people that guest on podcast, don't end up sharing the episode. And I'm not complaining because it happens to me too, I understand. But once you understand the value of building those relationships, you'd obviously want to do that and it gives you more content, the results of all this. And what I want to let you all know, this podcast obviously is about maximizing your social influence. I really if you haven't taken podcasting seriously, whether you want to go the route of starting your own podcast, or guesting on someone else's. If you want to yield more influence in digital and social media, podcasting is an option that you should seriously consider. And hey, if this is something you want me to talk more about, this is something this is only the first time I've talked about it on this podcast. So if you want me to talk more about the guesting strategy, or starting your own podcast strategy, let me know I'd be more than happy to delve deeper net into future episodes. But you know, there's also more unintended benefits. I got pinged recently by an SEO expert, it was actually the SEO experts virtual system. And she's like, Hey, so and so is coming out with a new blog post of how they generated 50 backlinks from high domain authority sites in 30 days. And it's a unique strategy they haven't blogged about do you want a sneak peek of the strategy? So after I After I read that, I replied, Let me guess, guest podcasting. And she said, Yep, and here's the thing, right, because often, when you appear on a podcast, there are shownotes. And often in the show notes, it includes a link back to your website. This is a common courtesy, that in exchange for inviting a guest on your podcast, you link back to them in case, your listeners want to find out more about them. I do it in all my show notes. And when I say show notes, for those that aren't familiar, it's the descriptions that you see in your podcast app. And then I do this on my website as well. If you're ever curious, there is a maximize your social influence page on the Neal schaffer.com website where you can actually listen to episodes and find those links. Just go to Neal schaffer.com/podcast. I'll make sure I put that link in the show notes as well. But this is one of the unintended benefits is that you're going to get backlinks which is going to help your SEO. Now, I do not recommend you do it for backlinks, you should do it. Because you truly want to serve the audience of that podcaster. But it is an unintended unexpected benefit that does come you get links from all the podcast apps, wherever they put the show notes, and they redistribute that podcast, whether it's Pandora, whether it's Google, whether it's Spotify, I Heart Radio, and the provider themselves, I use Buzzsprout, mainly use Libsyn. If you're in the UK, a shout out to activate, you get links from including potentially their own website. So that is an SEO strategy, in and of its own to consider if that's your thing. Now, two things I want to mention here, before I depart. First one is, it really does take time. Now that's 75 hours of recording. I've had to devote a lot of time to this. But this is why I mentioned Coronavirus has not been a blessing by any means don't get me wrong. But it has meant less travel time, which has opened up other business operating giving me more time to do that fractional cmo work. But it's also given me more time to double down on content. And to develop relationships. I've talked about this a lot. And developing relationships means taking the time to research to find the right shows reach out in the right way, I'm not talking about using some automated software to spam people really find out the way in which these people like to be reached out to some podcasters will do a pre screening call to make sure that you're worthy, or you have enough to talk about or they find you interesting or maybe they want to learn from you, right? Some are like hey, can you first send me your book, I'll review it. And if I like it, I'll reach out to you. So it's like anything else, when you're working with influencers, you're going to contact 100 people, not 100 people are going to contact you back. But the more research you do, and the more personalized outreach you do, obviously, the greater that conversion should be. And then obviously there's back and forth on scheduling. The podcast then is actually the recording and then you want to give it the promotion that it deserves on your own social channels as well. And to be honest with you, there are some podcasts that have never been published, even though we recorded them back in April. So this is something I've learned when I talk about researching the right shows, you also want to look at their cadence, their frequency, you want to see if they've been publishing for a while I have a lot of people reach out to me asking me to be on their podcast. And they have yet to launch their podcast, I always say hey, you know, get back to me after you have like 10 episodes in your belt. So that you're you're an experienced podcaster it's gonna be a lot better and, and I don't want you to record my podcast and it never gets published, because then I've wasted an hour or so of time, right. But the other thing is, there really is a right and wrong way to reach out to being a guest. And like I said, if this is something you want me to cover, please send me an email, or you know, make note of it on social share this episode and tag me let me know, it really can improve your chances of being able to show up on some pretty popular podcast normally speaking, just like the more followers an influencer has, the more it has to be featured. It's the exact same here. But by reaching out in the right way, and it gave you some hints already, it can really improve your chances. And once again, if necessary, I can record a completely separate episode on that. So just let me know. So that's why I do what I do. And I'm going to continue to do it and I'm going to leave no stone unturned. I'm going to create some great relationships with some great influencers. I'm always going to be upping my game and I look forward maybe there's other unintended benefits that I get from this and if there are all obviously create another episode, but I hope and usually when I talk about podcasting this way, it usually changes your mind similar to how you know after you read the age of influence, or you've heard me speak about influencer marketing it hopefully it's sort of completely redefined how you see it. But hopefully that gives you some food for thought on helping you maximize your own social influence. Hey, I always say it and I hate to repeat myself. But make sure you hit that subscribe button because I got you know, the interviews I think are only going to get better and better over time. And make sure if you found any value here, I would really, really, really appreciate any review that you could write me. I want to give a shout out to Riley I see. Riley I see said 10 out of 10 would recommend. There's a reason Neil has become one of the de facto cream of the crop names and digital social media marketing. And this shows a glaring example why he deserves a status he's earned. This podcast should be mandatory listening for marketing professionals everywhere. Riley, I see you are awesome. Thank you so much. If you ended up writing a review, send me a screenshot, let me know I want to make sure that not only do I bring it up on this episode or on future episodes, but I have a chance to personally thank you as well. So that's it for another episode of the maximize your social influence podcast. I always enjoy spending time with you. And I hope you equally enjoyed spending time with me. Until next week, make it a great virtual social day everybody. Bye bye. Sayonara and sight gents.