There are 5 Steps to using a business podcast as a tool to land more clients, connect with more influencers, grow an audience, generate salable content and – absolutely write an authority-building book.

Step 1. Activate your Existing Audience

Always start with what you have. Right now that’s your existing audience, and the audience of those who know and like you enough to help out. (First guests, maybe?) A podcast launch is where everything begins – you let your community know what’s going on, get people excited and test the waters for your idea. After a short period of careful, strategic planning, you’ve got a small amount of work to do every week that will bring you huge returns.

Step 2. Curate a Strategic Guest List

There are lots of people who can tell you that your guests should be your clients. But will your audience appreciate listening to you have a pre-sales call with a lead week in week out for months on end? Not likely. Striking the balance between your ideal clients, experts in your field and other genuinely interesting people to create a top-quality show your listeners will love does 2 things: it means you’re actually creating something interesting, and you’re nurturing different kinds of relationships. It’s not all about sales, and it never will be. Influencers, experts and potential partners are all equally valuable. Step 3. Multiply Your Content

A podcast episode should never be just a podcast episode. It needs to do double or triple duty in your business as educational materials, sales assets, book inspiration and content, social media content, and as a tool to leverage yourself. The key is to make sure you know at the planning stage what you’re going to be doing with the content you create during an interview, or in a solo episode. Plan in advance, then let the process take care of the rest.

Step 4. Grow Your Influence

As you podcast, you will be growing a new audience. Podcast downloads don’t always skyrocket from day one – but you know what’s great about podcast listeners? As long as you’re giving them great content – they’re loyal, and they remember what you tell them. Also, being someone who recommends as well as someone who teaches or provides a service cements your authority AND helps you improve and deepen your relationship with other influencers.

Step 5. Launch Your Book

When you have spent a year strategically creating awesome content and growing your personal network, then creating a polished, useful book is a breeze. And with your greatly expanded network of colleagues, leads, clients and connections who are personally invested in your content – launching it can be a massive list building opportunity – with a well-orchestrated partner launch, there is no reason not to add thousands to your community. Over the course of your podcast’s life – you will get some subscribers who are interested enough – and have good enough memories – to click through to your site and sign up for something – but you won’t get a hell of a lot. Not so with a book launch – that’s when your hard work and months spent creating compelling content pays off in terms of your own community growth.

And… you have a book now. Congratulations! Because you planned content over the course of a year to inform and add to your book, it’s not going to be just a pile of transcripts or newsletters mashed together and called literature; it’s going to be a thorough exploration of your expertise.

Want to talk about how this will work for you? Email [email protected] and we’ll jump on a call, or visit Podcast to Book for more information.