Posted on: July 6, 2020
By Nancy Marshall, The PR Maven®
- Repurposing your content — in this case, your podcast episodes — is an important marketing strategy. It can help boost your Google search rankings, get more social shares, collect more press hits and strengthen your credibility.
- “I think it’s tough to do good marketing in 2020 if you don’t have a really solid repurposing strategy. It’s like low-hanging fruit,” says Jaclyn Schiff, founder of PodReacher, a service that repurposes podcasts into articles.
- When turning your podcast episodes into an article or blog post, don’t simply summarize the transcript. Instead, organize and highlight the most interesting and useful points of the conversation to best serve your audience.
If a repurposing strategy isn’t part of your podcast’s marketing plan, you’re missing out on valuable opportunities.
Jaclyn Schiff, the founder of PodReacher, is a huge proponent of repurposing content.
She started her career in journalism before becoming the director of communications for a global health research association. As she likes to say, she has experience on “both sides of the press release.”
Now, through PodReacher, she’s using this expertise to transform podcast episodes into searchable, clickable blog posts and articles to help podcasters boost their discoverability.
“I think it’s tough to do good marketing in 2020 if you don’t have a really solid repurposing strategy,” Jaclyn says. “It’s like low-hanging fruit. If you have a marketing asset, [like a podcast], make sure you’re optimizing it for various other channels where your audience could be.”
On episode 90 of The PR Maven® podcast, I spoke with Jaclyn about the benefits of repurposing your podcast episodes, and she shared a few of her pro tips to help you get started.
How repurposing your podcast episodes can attract new listeners
Jaclyn has always loved podcasts — so much so she’s created a few of her own.
When she started looking around to see what podcasters were doing to promote their episodes, she found the most successful ones were repurposing their content.
“Having a journalism background, I know anytime you interview someone, that could be the foundation of really great written content, especially if you get insightful answers,” she says.
Jaclyn outlines three ways turning your podcast episodes into written content can expand your podcast’s reach. Plus, she shares actionable tips to help you dive into repurposing your content.
1. You can squeeze more SEO juice out of your episode
Thanks to some Google search algorithm updates last year, it’s now possible for your podcast episodes to rank on Google. However, text still dominates the search engine.
“As much as Google has done recently to unlock the search value of an MP3, text still has 20 years on audio,” Jaclyn explains.
That’s where repurposing your episode into a blog post or article can help boost your search traffic.
Before you sit down to interview your guest, think about high-volume keywords you could address in your conversation.
For example, if you’re interviewing a social media influencer, you might ask about strategies for getting more likes or followers on Instagram — both topics frequently searched on Google. After the interview, you can create an article addressing these topics.
Chances are, this article will have a much better chance of ranking and getting traffic than your podcast episode alone.
Jaclyn’s pro tip: When repurposing your podcast episodes into articles for SEO, write for the reader first. It’s easy to get sucked into stuffing specific keywords into your content, but your ultimate goal is to serve your reader — not just Google.
2. You’ll get your guests, listeners and even non-listeners excited to share
Podcasts are prevalent these days, so it probably wouldn’t shock you if you found out your guest was on several other shows this month. That’s great, but it might also mean they’re not as excited to share your episode with their followers. For them, it could be just another podcast.
But when you repurpose your episode into an article, they’ll be more likely to be excited to share it across their social media platforms.
“It can really help set your podcast apart, because not everyone does that,” Jaclyn says. “And there’s just something about seeing your name in print that’s a little more exciting than sharing an audio player on a page.”
Your listeners (and even non-listeners) will also be more willing to share an engaging, useful article on their social media channels as well.
Jaclyn’s pro tip: When writing about your podcast episode, don’t be afraid to step outside the transcript. You don’t have to — and shouldn’t — simply summarize your episode. In fact, Jaclyn says you’ll probably only use about 30% of the episode. Your goal is to highlight the most fascinating, useful points and drill down to the heart of the topic for readers.
3. You’ll collect more press hits and boost your credibility
Repurposing your podcast episodes and publishing them on your own website is one strategy, but you can also pitch them to other websites, blogs, newsletters or industry publications.
“If you’ve got the text in front of you, you make it really easy for people to write about you,” Jaclyn says.
These press hits can drum up more brand awareness, boost your listenership and build your credibility.
Jaclyn’s pro tip: If you want to get published on a website or blog, hold up a content marketing lens to your article or blog post. Brainstorm clicky headlines and shareable angles. Keep your audience top of mind — what are they going to be interested in reading?
If you have several episodes covering similar topics, consider aggregating the best advice, tips or tools into one article. For example, if you interview a dozen marketing professionals, and they share their most surprising tips to getting noticed on Instagram, compile those tidbits and create a pillar piece.
No matter how you choose to repurpose your podcast content, it’s an invaluable marketing strategy, and it’ll ultimately help you land more listeners.
This is based on episode 80 of The PR Maven® Podcast, a podcast hosted by Nancy Marshall. Weekly interviews feature industry leaders, top executives, media personalities and online influencers to give listeners a peek into the world of public relations, marketing and personal branding. Subscribe through Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.
You should always re purpose content if you want to get the most value from it.
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