Growing Your Podcast
Andy Crestodina is a co-founder and CMO of Orbit Media and a content marketing powerhouse! Listen as he discusses growing your podcast with collaborative content marketing, why social media influencer marketing isn’t always good, and how to optimize your podcast and content for more traffic, links and leads.
Tapping Into Collaborative Content Marketing
Andy started doing collaborative content marketing around 10 years ago. He would reach out to other creators asking for contributor quotes for roundups and interviews.
Over the years, these collaborations have taught Andy several things, have enabled him to make connections and close friends, as well as long-term SEO.
‘Social is Temporary, Search is Forever’
Andy defines collaborative content marketing as an organic form of influencer marketing.
When it comes to influencers, however, there’s a shortcoming many often overlook. Some social influencers don’t publish on their website, they limit themselves to post on social media. And only a small percentage of them actually creates content.
It’s easy to be drawn to social influencer marketing but it’s important to remember that, as Andy puts it, ‘social is temporary, search is forever’.
Short-Lived Influencer Marketing
When hearing influencer marketing some people think about fashion, travel and lifestyle on Instagram. This is only a tiny subset of all influencer marketing, though. B2B social media marketing is about thought leadership, expertise…nothing to do with Instagram.
But Instagram is a good example to look at because it shows how temporary and short-lived some of this social influencer visibility is – and the icing on the cake is the fact that some posts don’t even include links.
This means that you aren’t getting any traffic nor attracting subscribers.
Link or Social Mention?
Not getting links matters big time, since links from other websites play a big part in Google search ranking algorithm. Getting a link from a website is a vote of confidence from that website to yours, and it’s something that can help improve your rankings for years.
“There’s a question you should ask: Would you rather have a link from an authoritative website or a mention in someone’s social media streams? For Andy, the answer is obvious…”
How to Grow Your Website Domain Authority
Andy shares two ingredients for growing your website domain authority without using spammy SEO link-building gimmicks.
The first step is focusing on improving the quality of a piece of content, let’s say an article, by featuring expert contributions.
The second step is to create link-worthy content, especially original research that’s well-suited for supporting other people’s contributions.
If You Aren’t Doing This, Then Your Content Isn’t Optimized for Social
Andy recommends always adding contributor quotes in your articles. When you have names and faces in your articles, in your podcast episodes, in your webinars, or in other pieces of content, you have someone to mention when sharing that content on social media.
Remember: your content isn’t really optimized for social media unless it has faces and names in it.
What Your Network Is…Not
Your network isn’t built to grow links to your website and to support your future rankings unless you’re creating and leveraging content as a networking tool to build relationships with other content creators.
Links, Rankings, and Leads
When it comes to getting a lead, there are two things you need, according to Andy: traffic and a conversion.
These are the things you need to have your website rank high on search engines too – you’ll need authority (links to your website) and relevance.
As for getting links, you’re going to need relationships with content creators and content that’s worthy of being linked to.
Everything is connected: your leads are based on your rankings, which are based on your links. Your links, in turn, are based on your relationship with content creators.
Content, SEO and Networking
Podcasting as a medium that is engineered for networking outcomes. It lets you network, foster relationships, and foster a community, among other things.
When talking about SEO, we’re often thinking about Google… but it isn’t just about that. For Andy, for instance, podcasters should focus on optimizing their show to rank not only on Google but also on Apple Podcasts and other discovery networks.
SEO isn’t just Google. For podcasters, for instance, it’s about optimizing the show to rank on Apple Podcasts and other discovery networks.
Leveraging Barnacle SEO as a Podcaster
Are you a podcaster? Then, you should focus on finding who writes articles along the lines of ‘Top Podcasts for _____ Topic’.
If you make friends with them and your podcast appears on the list, you may leverage the so-called Barnacle SEO – strategy that allows a website (or business) to attach itself to a large website that ranks predominantly for desired keywords to earn traffic, leads, and rankings increases.
Google doesn’t rank websites, it ranks web pages, never forget that.
How to Leverage Your Podcast
Your goal should be having your podcast added to long-form, in-depth, articles that are entirely focused on a specific target or keyphrase.
In addition to this, try to embed your podcast episodes on pages that go way into details when it comes to a particular topic.
Is your podcast an interview-based show? Then, you might want to rank for the podcast guest’s name too.
The Thing About SEO
When it comes to his content, Andy doesn’t worry about optimizing every single piece of content. For the pieces he decides to optimize, he may spend several hours to make them the best piece of content around that particular topic.
If you want to rank for a phrase, ask yourself what is the best link on your website for that phrase. Then, go look at that page and ask yourself whether that would legitimately be one of the best online pages for the phrase.
Remember: the best SEO people have an obsession over quality.
Be like them.
About Andy
Andy Crestodina is a co-founder and CMO of Orbit Media, and a content marketing powerhouse! Listen as he discusses growing your podcast with collaborative content marketing, why social media influencer marketing isn’t always good, and how to optimize your podcast and content for more traffic, links and leads.
Resources mentioned:
– Lyndsay on LinkedIn
– Andy’s article Influencer Marketing for SEO
– Dan Shure
– Orbit Media
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