Why Every Blogger Should Podcast – Presentation – Recorded at BlogU

Two days ago a blogger emailed me and asked how to get more readers.

It was a stupid question, for sure.

I wrote the person back (I didn’t know them at all) and said, “I’m going to tell you, but you’re not going to like the answer.” Then I wrote the answer. It was one sentence long. I almost hit send but realized that I was kind of being a dick. This wasn’t intentional. I believe it’s okay to ask stupid questions – we all do from time to time. I added in five actionable ideas the blogger could do right that moment guaranteed to boost their following. Then I clicked send.

I’m going to share with you my guaranteed method of getting more readers.

Find out where your future readers are hanging out online and figure out how to get in front of their eyeballs.

One of the ways I decided to increase the number of people that read my stuff was to start a podcast. I thought it would be fun to see if I could reach other people who would never stumble upon my blog. However, before my first episode went live I found that there were 100k podcasts already live in iTunes. Rats. Nobody was going to find my dumb show.

Then I realized I loved talking to other bloggers, many of which have never been in front of a camera, or read their works aloud. So I started a show where I let bloggers read one of their pieces and then I interview them. It’s fun because I love talking to other humor writers. My audience gets to discover the guest and maybe start following them.

And, oh yeah, the guest promotes our episode to their audience which nets me new readers. Smart, right?

Ellen and Erin from Sisterhood of the Sensible Moms and I spoke on this very topic this year at BlogU. I thought you might want to hear and see our presentation on why and how we podcast.

I’m sure this subject only interests 1% of my readers. I also assume the 1% who are into it are all total foxes and I’ll do pretty much anything for a pretty head.

I hope you 1% find this useful and the other 99% can expect more of my old nonsense in the coming days.