Podcasting Is Significant For Solopreneurs

By Michael Pollock in Business Development

There’s a tremendous swell of interest in podcasting. For many reasons ranging from downright, unmitigated narcissism (that’s me) to preaching the word (amen) to making a buck (ka-ching) to creating world peace (ahhhh). And everything in between. Oh hell. It’s just fun.

The biggest problem for would-be podcasters is figuring out how the hell to do it. And it looks like that problem may soon have a much simpler solution in the form of Odeo (website. cool name – a spin-off of audio perhaps). Odeo (blog) is the brain-child of “Google alumnus” Noah Glass and Evan Williams, the 32 year-old founder of blogger.

For an idea of how Ev and Noah are trying to simplify podcasting for everyone, you can read Jason Calacanis’ post today titled Odeo podcasting software/portal demo by Evan Williams.

Podcasting is significant for solopreneurs. Period. Here’s why.

1. Transportable Content – if you create a podcast, your network can listen to it anywhere they want. Why? Because they can download it to their mp3 player. You can also transfer your recordings to CDs and offer them to your network. You no longer have to go the “traditional publishing” route to get your ideas/content into audiobook form. If you do a one hour talk, give away or sell CDs that expand upon the the ideas offered in the talk. Hand out CDs as audio business cards. There are so many ways to feed your network this way.

2. Passive Revenue – It’s great to have a full house of wonderful clients. At the same time, it’s a financial hamster wheel. If you want the revenue to continue, you have to keep the the clients coming. You have to keep putting in the hours with those clients. For some people, that works. For others, it might be nice to cut your work-load down by 40% without a comparable reduction in revenue.

3. Brand Equity – quality content goes a long way toward establishing you as the expert in the hearts and minds of your network. And that’s the goal. To make yourself the go-to gal/guy when the need arises.

4. Social Equity – there’s a level of personality that comes through in speech, which the written word fails to capture. People get a better sense of who you really are when they hear you engage in conversation. When people feel as though they know you personally, they’re that much closer to doing business with you. Assuming they like you.

The opposite will also happen. Assuming you do it right, you’ll turn some people off. And the beauty of that is you filter out incompatible clients. But with all that passive revenue, will you really care?

That’s all I can think of right now, and I’m sure there’s more to be said about it. Feel free to add to the list in the comments section.

In addition, I have to say this. Podcasting is not a panacea or some cure-all for your business building challenges. You’ll still have to do the work of building a network. You’ll still have to be very focused and clear about the value your bring to that network. You’ll still have to create valuable content for that network. The beauty of podcasting however, is you can also involve your network in the content creation – via interviews, recorded teleclasses, R&D calls, etc.

About the Author

Michael Pollock is the marketing and product development guy for Solostream. He's also a blogger, a web marketing trainer and an entrepreneur. When he's not evangelizing Solostream, he trains other solopreneurs on how to use the web to reach more people, earn more money and live a bigger life. Michael's Website.