Use a Podcast to Get On a Podcast

[00:00:00.170] – Stephanie Feger
So you become a guest on a podcast. You direct people over to your podcast, and then at the end of your podcast, you are offering something of value to get their email, opt-in and possibly figure out a way to make it an ROI option for you. That is a win-win. And this is why strategy is important. Anytime you're doing anything to market yourself, you need to have strategy.

Hey, I'm Stephanie Feger, and in emPower is my middle name. Well, not really, but it should be. I believe that emPowered people emPower people, and I'm obsessed with emPowering you, the nonfiction author, with emPactful marketing strategies to help you take your important message and share it with those who desperately need it, want it, and will buy it. I'm a gal whose life was changed by a dream, literally. And that dream pushed me to write my first book, the book that changed everything for me. That dream was the catalyst to help me capture a message I was passionate about, and in turn, it gifted me with the opportunity to merge my two loves: my skillset for marketing and PR and communications and my love for books, both writing them and marketing them.

As the owner and chief strategist of the emPower PR Group, I help nonfiction authors with laser focused strategy and tactics to help them write books that sell, promote their books to those who need and want them most, and build a meaningful business from a message that is emPowering. Think of this as your one stop shop for marketing insights from an author who has been there, done that, and understands exactly where you are. So grab a warm beverage and a comfy blanket, get your pens ready, because I am ready to emPower you. This is The emPowered Author Podcast.

Welcome to season one of The emPowered Author Podcast, and I can't think of a better topic for the season than, well, podcasts. As an author, you likely know how important getting on the podcast circuit is to keeping your book and your business front and center. Podcasts give you a great opportunity to reach new people in new ways. But this season isn't about being a guest on podcasts. It's about being the host instead. You may have the dream of starting a podcast one day, but before you do, give this season of The emPowered Author Podcast a listen.

[00:02:37.170] – Stephanie Feger
Hosting a podcast is a big undertaking, but when you lead with strategy, it could be a very effective tool for your book, your business, and your message. I am excited to have Betsy Wallace of Capsule Podcasts as my guest this season, and together we're talking all things podcasts. Capsule Podcasts, that is.

All right, Betsy. We've made it six episodes, and we are on our last episode of The emPowered Author Podcast season one, which is all focused on Capsule Podcasts. I think I'm going to go to sleep saying Capsule Podcast because I love it. And I love all that we've been able to really unpack. It has been phenomenal. We have dug deep. We have shared lots of valuable ideas on how you leverage this really unique and novel concept to help authors stick out amongst the crowd, be seen, be heard, and, I don't know, sell more books because that's really what authors want to be doing anyways. So today, on our last episode of this particular season, we've got a really fun topic, right? So what better way to talk about and wrap up capsule podcasts than to talk about how you leverage one to be on a podcast.

[00:03:53.620] – Stephanie Feger
So we've been talking a lot about being a host and that's phenomenal. And I love everything that being a capsule podcast host and just a host for your brand can do for you. But there's a lot of value in being a guest on other podcasts. And don't worry, we've got another season coming up on podcasting in general and being the guest. But, today, I want to talk a little bit more about how to you leverage the capsule podcast to help you get on other people's podcasts. Betsy, you know the drill. Before we get going, I want people to know what a capsule podcast is. Tell us a little bit about it.

[00:04:27.500] – Betsy Wallace
Yes, a capsule podcast is a six-episode, stand alone miniseries that you produce that is going to align perfectly with your marketing strategy to help move the needle in your business. So we are taking these six episodes, 15ish minutes each, putting together a nice tightly curated piece of content that will just help leverage everything else in your marketing strategy. So it's using the power of podcasting, but in kind of a different way that does not overwhelm with commitment and costs and everything else where like, you can just make six episodes in a really strategic way. And Stephanie has so many ideas on how to do that, which I love.

[00:05:13.250] – Stephanie Feger
Well, and let's be real, when you say podcasting can be overwhelming, anything with new technology and new strategies can be overwhelming. But you have packaged it up in a way that makes it so easy for people to get their message out without stressing about all of the logistics of it. So that's phenomenal. And we absolutely, absolutely love what capsule podcast stands for and everything that comes along with it. I do want us to talk a bit about just podcasting in general. So, we've talked in previous episodes about how you have a podcast and it's one that you and your sister started. So, tell us just a little bit more about your podcasts. And I'm interested specifically on this as you share, on how you noticed a need that people had that you became a solution for sure.

[00:06:04.240] – Betsy Wallace
So I have a podcast called The Dinner Sisters and I co-host it with my sister. She is single and cooks for just herself. And I cook for a family of five. So every week, she picks three recipes, and we make them together. And this kind of came about because I would always call my sister because she loves food blogs and cooking and everything else, and I'd be like, I've got some chicken and some broccoli and some breadcrumbs and two eggs. What should I make for dinner? Because I just was not a good cook. I'm a much better cook now because we've been doing this for three years. But we thought, I don't really love to go through and look for recipes and figure out which ones are good. And there's a lot of bad recipes on the internet. So I thought I was a bad cook because I was making really bad recipes. And she identified this, and I was like, hey, Kate, why don't you just pick these three recipes a week? I'll make whatever you say. We'll record. This will be a podcast, and we'll talk about it, and we'll help other people avoid the bad recipes on the internet and find new things to make for dinner.

[00:07:04.050] – Betsy Wallace
And we tried it out. We kind of had just an idea, and we thought, this is a solution, because I know there are a lot of people who struggle trying to find a recipe out there on the Wild West of the internet free recipe situation, which is crazy and could just really use some guidance. And Kate loved to find and try new recipes. So three years later, we have done three recipes a week for 150 episodes. So I have made almost 500 from scratch new recipes, and my cooking has improved significantly. And I've also gone to Rome and interviewed a cookbook author at her apartment in Rome, and she was featured in the National Geographic. Like, she's like a tour guide for them, and she's on the Stanley Tucci Living, Italy thing that's out right now. So that was an amazing thing. And I could say I messaged her and said, hey, I have a podcast, and we'd love to interview you. I'll be in Rome, can I interview you? And she was like, yes, of course. Invited me over, and it was great.

[00:08:16.340] – Betsy Wallace
And I did the same thing for a cookbook release. We went to the Appalachian Mountains to a place called Fox Fire. We did a whole episode one morning where we cooked over a wood fire stove. Fox Fire had a cookbook come out, and they fired up this wood fire stove, and we cooked the fried chicken, and we recorded on location with the fried chicken in the background. We talked about Southern cooking and heritage cooking and all of that. So, it's really opened up some amazing opportunities for us. And when you have that platform, people love to engage with you and network with you, and it just opens up so many different, unexpected connections, which has been wonderful.

[00:09:00.570] – Stephanie Feger
Yeah, that's awesome. Can you take me to Rome with you next time?

[00:09:04.430] – Betsy Wallace
All right.

[00:09:05.950] – Stephanie Feger
That's amazing. I can only imagine how awesome and exciting that is. And what I also love is, well, a couple of things. One, I'm ready to help you publish a cookbook whenever you're ready, because I have helped authors do that. But the other thing I wanted to note was something that you shared with me when you and I first started talking about how capsule podcasts could help authors. You specifically said, anytime we have guests come on, and they're sharing all of their great information, one of the things that they tend to share as a follow up is directing someone to a website somewhere off the podcast platform. And you said, that's interesting. There's nothing against doing that, but you might be missing an opportunity because a lot of people who are listening to a podcast are more willing to hop over to another podcast than they are to leave the platform and go to the website. Would you agree to that?

[00:10:01.870] – Betsy Wallace
I have such strong feelings on this because one of the key things we do in my podcast is interview cookbook authors. I would see these cookbook authors come through our podcast on their cookbook podcast tours. Everyone's doing kind of a podcast book tour, and we would love it, and we would host them, and then we'd say, where can we find you? Where can we connect with you? And they would share their website or something like that, which is great. People will do that. But what we know for a fact after doing a podcast for three years is that anytime I go on someone else's podcast, I tell them to come back, listen to my podcast, and that bumps our listenership like nothing else. That is the number one way to grow your podcast. And we know that people who listen to podcasts listen to an average of six or seven shows per week. And just anecdotally, I'm sure you know this, people who love podcasts, love podcasts. And because as we talked about earlier in this episode, there's only 800,000ish shows out there, people are really searching for good content. So what I realized is, when people were coming through with their book tours, I thought, wouldn't it be amazing if they just had a short six episodes or something to send these people over to?

[00:11:28.840] – Betsy Wallace
They love this cookbook. And a lot of them, I mean, it was a target audience, right? They were like, yes, this is a book I want to get. I really would love to hear more from this author. They just felt like there was just a missing piece of the puzzle there. So I think when you're going out, you need to have something to send people back to, to really connect that circle within the podcasting space.

[00:11:55.700] – Stephanie Feger
Yes. And you saw a missing puzzle piece and you became the puzzle piece, which is what I absolutely love about the world we live in today. You can become a solution to someone else's need.

[00:12:04.900] – Betsy Wallace
Yeah, I am very passionate specifically about authors taking advantage of this because you do have so much to share and there are so many fun stories that go with putting together a book, whether that's a cookbook or a business book or whatever it is. And people who love podcasts, they would 100% listen to you for another series.

[00:12:32.070] – Stephanie Feger
Absolutely. We talked about lead magnets and what better way than, at the very end of the podcast, to incorporate a lead magnet. So, you become a guest on the podcast, you direct people over to your podcast and then at the end of your podcast you are offering something of value to get their email opt-in and possibly figure out a way to make it an ROI option for you. That is a win-win. And this is why strategy is important. Anytime you're doing anything to market yourself, you need to have strategy. And the podcast circuit is a part of an author's marketing plan and their overall strategy. I'm not opposed to that. I actually think it's great. Being a guest on podcasts will help you reach people that you never ever would. But the problem is that most authors, they don't have a strong call to action or what we call a CTA when they're a podcast guest. So most are actually missing the whole point of why they're on a podcast. They think they're on to share information about their book, but they might not even ever see any books being purchased because of that.

[00:13:36.570] – Stephanie Feger
Because they haven't thought about the people who could potentially be listening, how they want to take action. This is where the capsule podcast comes in. There are actually several ways that authors, I believe, can use capsule podcasts just in general, but especially when we're talking about this topic on what happens when they are on other people's podcasts. But, today, I want to talk specifically about two ways to use them to get you on a podcast and how you use them as a tool to help you when you are on one. So let's start with the first one. How do you utilize a capsule podcast to help you actually get on a podcast? I don't know if you've listened to anything over the course of this particular season of The emPowered Author Podcast. I hope you walk away realizing this it's not always about you, it's about them too. Right? So you wrote a book because you have a message, but you want people to buy it. You want them to be inspired by it, you want them to take action. Every move you make needs to be done through the lens of what do the people that you want to take action need and want.

[00:14:39.600] – Stephanie Feger
And what will they do. Podcasting is an industry where what you say really matters. And the people who listen to podcasts are very, very loyal listeners. They might go there and go nowhere else. So if you're thinking like your target audience and you feel like they live on a podcast, here's the kicker. Being a guest on people's podcasts is great when you can get that guest appearance. And Betsy, I'm sure you agree. And now, as a podcast host myself, I agree that I want to ensure if anybody's going to be a guest on my podcast, that they're going to be a good guest. Right. Like, if you're going to share real estate, you want it to be someone of value.

[00:15:21.930] – Betsy Wallace
First of all, you're vetting people because you want to make sure that what you're sharing with your audience is what they want, because you have a target audience, and you don't want to ruin that trust that you've built over years by having someone on who is just totally not aligning with your values.

[00:15:41.230] – Stephanie Feger
Absolutely. You're exactly right. And I think as a podcast host, when you pitch yourself to be on someone else's podcast, you need to think about what that host really needs. And there's about probably three things that they're thinking about. One, you want to make sure you have a message that others need to hear and that their target audience needs to hear, too, because at the end of the day, they're doing their podcast because they are trying to reach a specific target audience. So you want to help them reach their audience. The second thing that podcast hosts want to know is that you're going to be strong at delivering that message. They want to make sure you're going to be captivating and engaging and conversational. So utilizing a capsule podcast to give them a glimpse into what they can get from your message is really important. And number three, they want to also know that you have a group of people that are going to follow you because they want you to promote their podcasts. Let's be real, they have similar goals as you do. So I feel like a capsule podcast has the opportunity to really be a part of what I call your speaker reel or your pitch kit that you can give podcast hosts the opportunity to hear before they say, yes, I want Stephanie on to talk about her book. Would you say, Betsy, as a podcast host, that you would really find something like that valuable?

[00:17:02.630] – Betsy Wallace
I sure would, because podcasters these days will do a Google form submission, and they'll ask you for episodes of things that they can listen to, that you've been on before, so they can get a feel for your style, for your voice. And a lot of times, if they can't get that preview, they're not going to book you because that's just a risk for them to take and there are other people that they can book.

[00:17:25.390] – Stephanie Feger
Yes. And you want to make life easy for the people who are going to make life easy for you. That just has to happen. Another way that you could utilize a capsule podcast is to help you utilize your podcast interview to the fullest. And we talked about this a minute ago. We talked about how people who listen to podcasts tend to be very loyal to listening to podcasts. There was some research, I think it's a 2019 Edison research that found that most podcasts are consumed when people are at home. So, nine out of ten podcasts are when people are at home. That research doesn't say where they are at home. I mean, OK, tidbit Easter egg about me...I like to listen to my podcast while I'm in the shower. Well, I don't have time to go over and go to a website. I'm all wet. I'd ruin my phone if I did that. So, having some flexibility there and the reality is there's a 64%, 49%, 37% of listeners are also choosing to tune in when they're on the move, whether they're in a car, truck, walking around, commuting, respectfully.

[00:18:30.840] – Stephanie Feger
That's important to also know because again, they're really willing to go to another podcast. That's easy. They're not going to remember your book title, they're not going to remember your website, but they can remember a very focused podcast title and connect to that very quickly. So I think that it's very important for authors to keep this in mind that most people aren't going to click in the show notes or remember your website. They will hop over to your podcast and if you have one, you can use that to help build your loyalty and interest and then convert them to take action. What should you have in your capsule podcast? You have six episodes. What should you do for either of these directions? You could even still use that as a part of some of the other tactics that we've talked about in the other episodes. You may find that two capsule podcasts make sense. One to use in pitching and one to use for your listeners.

If you use one for pitching, this could touch on topics of your book's message or your business. I also see this as a great capsule podcast that you use for your internal and external book launch. It could also be used for speaking engagements and securing speaking gigs. If you want to do a capsule podcast for the listener, what if you considered how you could use this as your lead magnet? That's the new word we learned in a previous episode. Or encourage them to utilize it as an opt-in. Maybe if you listen to season one, episode five, you're going to get lots of tips. We did lots of tips talking about lead magnets, opt-ins, and nurture campaigns. And all of those can be in alignment with what you can use the Capsule Podcast for to ensure that your listeners are now connecting with you.

Oh, Betsy, you and I have uncovered so many ways that capsule podcasts can be used for authors. They can be used to help you get on a podcast. A podcast can help you get on a podcast. It can help you secure speaking engagements.

[00:20:34.310] – Stephanie Feger
Really, can do anything. I would highly recommend that you include your capsule podcast in your speaker resource page on your website and how much do you want to bet most authors listening, they don't have that page on their website. So you want to tune into the website season where we've got some good tips and tricks on how to make that happen. And keep in mind, too, most podcast hosts that, as you said, are very open to having guests on will share that it's challenging for them to find good, articulate, conversational guests. If you have a capsule podcast, you're able to allow them the opportunity to get a glimpse of what they're going to get when you join their show. And it also can be used in your speaker pitching and might give you an opportunity to secure that speaking engagement that you've always wanted. Betsy, I have had a blast. We might have to do another season here in the future because this has been so much fun.

[00:21:25.790] – Betsy Wallace
It has been so much fun and I have learned so much throughout these six episodes. I feel like I want to go launch a book and be an authorpreneur after this.

[00:21:35.250] – Stephanie Feger
Girl, when you are ready, I'm ready. And just like me, you inspired me to launch my podcast, something I've always wanted to do. So, it's just proof that each of us come across people's lives for reason and for purpose. The day that you sent me a LinkedIn connection was a game changer, I think, for both of us. If that doesn't tell our listeners anything, I hope it tells you to take a risk, to try something different, to get creative, to become emPowered, because you just never know what you're going to uncover with a new connection, with a new opportunity, with a capsule podcast. Any parting words, Betsy?

[00:22:15.300] – Betsy Wallace
If you make a capsule podcast, we want to hear about it.

[00:22:17.880] – Stephanie Feger
Yes, we do.

[00:22:18.410] – Betsy Wallace
We want to see all of the capsule podcasts. And I am so excited to see what comes out of all of this because there's so much creative energy.

[00:22:26.720] – Stephanie Feger
Thank you so much for doing this with me. And thank you to those who are tuning in and listening to The emPowered Author Podcast. I can't wait to hear what you think and to see your capsule podcasts come to life and to be a part of that journey with you.

Did you know that podcasts help you get on podcasts? Capsule podcasts can give hosts a glimpse into you, your message, and your delivery techniques. And boy, will they appreciate that in every marketing effort. You do remember that it's not about you, it's about them. Keep that nugget of info close when you write your book, when you pull together your launch team, when you go to market your book, and when you pitch yourself as a podcast guest. When you focus on the end user first, you realize what they need to help you be successful. A capsule podcast could be that solution to help you get more visibility. Also, remember to focus on what the listeners need and want. They typically love consuming information in this way, and they will likely stay on this platform and continue to learn new things. So, if you have a podcast to connect them with, it could be an easy transition for them to come over and learn from you.

[00:23:37.860] – Stephanie Feger
Being a podcast guest is just as important as being a podcast host. I am not a fan of movement without strategy, so I caution you to be deliberate about how a podcast can help you take your important message and share it with those who desperately need it, want it, and will buy it if you didn't already. I highly encourage you to listen to every episode from this season focused specifically on capsule podcasts. You are sure to walk away with key nuggets of information you may have never considered otherwise. If you are a nonfiction author who is interested in utilizing a capsule podcast as a tactic to support a meaningful marketing strategy for your book or your business, the emPower PR Group can help. I invite you to visit www.empowerprgroup.com/capsulepodcast for more information on how Betsy and myself can help you. From strategy to concept to podcast, we are ready to emPower you in the creation of your capsule podcast. Are you ready? Remember, emPowered people emPower people. I've emPowered you. Now it's your turn to go and emPower others.