This article originally appeared in The Tennessean.
Welcome to the Half-Geek-Half-Human podcast where we discuss the intersections between technology, business, and life.”
A few weeks ago, our tech consulting firm decided it was time to jump on the bandwagon and start up our own podcast.
This is something we had been reticent to do in the past. With over 3 million podcasts already out there, we asked ourselves, “What’s the point?” It seemed like the last thing the world needed was another podcast taking up space. And with all that competition, why would anyone use their valuable time to listen to what we had to say?
Our thinking changed though about a year into the pandemic.
As many analysts predicted, the demand for podcasts dropped about 10% when the pandemic first hit. With everyone quarantined at home spending less time in their cars or at gyms, it made sense that the audience for podcasting would fade.
But then something interesting happened. After the quick dip in podcast popularity, the trend reversed itself. Overall, worldwide pandemic podcast listenership ultimately increased by more than 40%. Apparently, we all love interesting content, and it’s not just a distraction to pass time on the morning commute. Maybe we weren’t too late to jump in?
Still though, the question remained. Despite the demand for podcasts being at an all-time high, how could we ever hope to compete with the 3 million other shows out there?
Like publishing a book or recording a song, in podcasting the odds of producing a best seller are against you. But people still do it and often gain rewards beyond their original intent.
After some internal debate, we decided to dive in to the podcasting world not for fame and fortune (although that would be nice), but for other equally valuable reasons that we felt would help our company grow.
In our first season of producing our “Half-Geek-Half-Human” podcast we learned a lot:
- The technical part of recording, editing, and publishing a podcast is relatively easy to do. The time and financial investments have been low compared to other marketing strategies.
- The content we feature in our podcast has upped our profile as “thought leaders” who are deeply interested in tech topics that can help businesses thrive.
- There’s been a boost to our company culture. Our show has supplied an opportunity to talk about internal topics like promoting “Women in Tech” and “Making Work Personal” that are part of our core values.
- It’s provided us with an easy way to network with interesting people as we have sought out guests to be on our shows.
- It’s given us a chance to give back to our clients by inviting them to tell their stories, which we then share on our social media outlets and website.
- It’s generated content for our website to boost our Google search rankings.
- Our podcasts have increased our social media audience.
The list goes on.
The benefits have been unexpected, but they have been real.
Putting out content to promote yourself or your business is nothing new. Some write books, others write blogs, and some put videos on YouTube. But books are hard (and dated as soon as they’re published), blogs are a dime a dozen, and not everybody is ready for their YouTube closeup.
For all these reasons, we have gotten a great bang for the buck with our simple but targeted podcast that we can easily do every two weeks. If you haven’t already, there’s still time to join the podcast bandwagon.
J Rosen is the founder of Atiba, a Nashville custom software development firm and IT support company. Visit Atiba.com for more info.
