Audio holds unique advantages over other content types. This podcast is taken from a webinar where I discussed those advantages including the ability of audio to create exceptional engagement with your customers.

You’ll discover what types of audio content fit different parts of your marketing funnel and how easy it can be to produce and repurpose audio into other forms of content.

You’ll learn:

1. Why audio content is more powerful than other types of content (even video)

2. It’s not necessary to publish audio to make an impact on your life science marketing

3. How audio makes content creation easier for busy executives and R&D scientists

4. What makes audio content ideal for reaching busy customers

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Music stefsax / CC BY 2.5

The TranscripT

Chris: Thanks for the fantastic introduction and thanks for putting on this amazing summit. I mean, a huge amount of value for everyone including myself in these talks. So as Harrison mentioned, I’m the host of the podcast, Life Science Marketing Radio, but my business is all about helping life science companies with their content strategy and specifically around figuring out what their content should be. So you’ve heard a lot about content marketing over the last couple days, and I’ve been in the situation maybe that some of you are in where you understand content marketing but when it comes down to just making the content, what should you create, that’s a barrier and sometimes with a lot of people involved, they can take a long time to make those decisions. And I help companies get together and figure out exactly what they should create and then also help them figure out how to get it created more easily and that’s a little bit more of what we’re going to talk about today.

I did a webinar with Harrison a couple weeks ago on mapping out the buyer’s journey, which is really more about the, what content should we make part. And today, I’m going to talk about just one thing that’s a little bit different than what most people are doing. If you’re here at the end of all of this, thank you for listening. This is going to be a pretty short session, pretty simple. I just want to introduce people to the idea of how they can use audio content and not just from a publishing standpoint. I mean, there’s other ways you can use audio to create all of your content.

 

When we’re talking about marketing, obviously one of our goals is to attract new customers and help them see your company as the right partner to help them solve a problem or take advantage of an opportunity. And another thing that we’d love to do in all of our marketing is to create an experience that makes people comfortable to do business with you. And that’s a little bit about what we’re talking about today, is that experience part and why audio is so important.

I’m going to talk about three things today, I’m going to that talk about the advantages of audio content. We’re going to talk about different ways to use it and then a little bit about how to create it. So starting off with the advantages. Audio is an intimate form of content like no other even beyond video. When you are listening to an audio program, it feels like it’s happening to you right now. It’s a very one on one experience. If you’re listening to a single person speaking, you feel like that person’s talking directly and only to you, you know, if they’re doing their job well. And if you happen to be listening to two people having a conversation or an interview through an audio program, you might feel the same as if you were in a coffee shop eavesdropping on a pair of people sitting next to you.

So this is how we humanize content. It’s a conversation that our voices have, there’s a magical component to it and we’ll talk about that a little bit more later, but it’s a differentiating experience. And it’s a very human experience and having someone’s voice in your ear is a very powerful thing. In fact, you know, if you were here yesterday, David Chapin mentioned that humans are pattern matching animals, and if you haven’t seen a picture of me or if you’ve forgotten what I looked like if you had seen one, you are creating a picture in your head right now of what I look like based on what I sound like, the cadence of my voice and so on. And because that image is part of your own making, it becomes somewhat more believable way to consume information, it’s a more trusted source. And I promise you, I will only use that power for good. But I can tell you there are cases and some evidence of where audio content has been used for some very bad things and because it’s so powerful.

I recently, in July, I went to a podcasting conference where I can tell you the level of geekery matches any life science conference you’ve been to, because we all love our podcast, we love talking about them, it’s a special group of people. But there was a session and they were talking a lot about journalism and audio programs in journalism and sponsorship and whether that was okay or not and so on. But I met a woman there, I listened to her talk and she was on a panel. And her name is Rupa Shenoy, and she has been a journalist at many large media companies whose names you would recognize and covered stories that you know about, but she recently started a podcast called Otherhood. It is about the first generation children of immigrant parents in America. And at that point, she had only published seven episodes, but in her talk she said that she felt like and she was confident of this that those seven episodes of her podcast had made more of an impact on her audience than in all of her years as a writer. Seven episodes, more than all of her extensive experience as a writer.

I wasn’t sure I heard it correctly. So I went up to her after her talk and I said, “Is this what you meant?” And she said, “Yes, absolutely. That is true.” It was very powerful type of content. You’re not going to get the biggest audience with audio content but you’re going to get a very engaged audience. These are the people who want to interact with you, who are going to be your advocates. These are the people who are going to be champions and you want to reach out to them.

The next advantage of audio content is that it’s portable. You can listen to it on demand. So you all know that you shouldn’t, hopefully you can’t and you know now that you shouldn’t be watching a video while you’re driving a car and reading a document whether it’s on a screen or a piece of paper while you’re walking the dog isn’t a very pleasant experience either. Because many of us have smartphones and can store that audio content and listen to it whenever we want, it’s very easy to listen when you’re mowing a lawn, commuting and/or doing some other routine chore. And the advantage of this is, this is the time because we know that all of our audiences are scientists are busy and they don’t have a lot of time, they’re not looking for extra content maybe, this is the time when you can reach them. They’re not doing anything else, they can’t do anything else but drive and listen, for example, and they’re in a free thinking creative space.

This is that time when new ideas come to them when they’re open to new ideas and they can process them. Imagine a person is in their office and they’re watching a video on their computer or reading a PDF, it’s highly likely that they’re going to be interrupted by a phone call, an e-mail or someone asking a question. And even if they managed to get through whatever it is they’re looking at or reading, it’s also probably true that they’re going to rush off to something else as soon as they’re done. And so there’s not a lot of time to absorb what they’ve just heard or watched or read. But if they’re doing some routine task when your mind flows freely, I mean, ideally we’d be giving them audio content in the shower because that’s where most great ideas happen. So not in a rush, they are able to capture that and capture your message and your ideas and turn it into something that they want to use and that’s hugely valuable.

And finally the last advantage I really want to talk about is the advantage of using audio content for other content creation. So let’s talk about how to use audio just for creating content and a little bit about how you can do that. So imagine this scenario, as marketers, we all rely on subject matter experts. Maybe it’s a scientist in R&D or a product manager or even a busy executive to create some of the content we need for our marketing programs. The last thing they want is for someone like us to come to them and say, “Hey, can you write me three or four pages about this topic?” That’s not their usual job, it’s not what they enjoy doing and anybody even professional writers fear the blank page. It’s hard and no one, because we’ve grown up in this educational system, wants to hand over a written document that isn’t really well-thought out, outlined, i’s dotted, t’s crossed, paragraphs in the end of the whole thing and laid out really nicely because it’s kind of like you’re evaluating a painting that they would make, it’s personal. And yet that barrier doesn’t exist if you were to just have a conversation with that person. So the busy executive or the R&D scientist have a lot of information sitting right behind their eyeballs in between their ears that you could easily get out through their mouth by sitting down with them at lunch, for example, and putting your phone on the table and hit Record. And if you know the right questions to ask them, you can get all the information you want, you’ll probably have a hard time getting them to stop talking about it.

So this is where I think it’s highly overlooked opportunity to gather content without relying on a keyboard. Joe Pulizzi has talked about this for a long time, I’ve heard Jay Baer say it as well. Think content first, format second. You don’t care how you get the information you need. You just want to get the information. And then you can do anything you want with it. So another advantage is that there’s no travel required for production, for example. I know many companies will send a crew across the planet to Europe, for example, to get a video testimonial about their product and those are hugely powerful. I know they’re really well-received, but not every company has the budget to do that, that’s not a cheap thing to do. But there’s no reason why you need to be stuck with just a written testimonial that someone sent you through email. Why couldn’t you call that person up and record their voice which contains so much more richness and real information in the tone of their voice and the way they say it and talk about your product, and again creating a more believable experience because you’re hearing the person actually use the words and the inflections that they would use when they say it.

I think it’s just a great way to do it and that nothing stops you from taking that and using that in print wherever you need to, but where you have the opportunity, why not give prospects the opportunity to listen to your actual customers? And then repurposing, I’m all about repurposing and there are so many ways to do it. So I’m going to give you my plan for this webinar. When we’re done, Harrison, and we can consider a webinar’s almost audio content. It’s audio with some slides, but the large component of it is my speaking and you could certainly do almost all of it without any images whatsoever, and I’m trying to do that.

So he’s going to send me a recorded version of the webinar. I’m going to take a modified version of the slides that I’m showing you with a few more bullets than what I’m subjecting you to and put it up on SlideShare. I’ll take the recorded movie and strip out the audio, a very easy thing to do, and I’ll turn that into a podcast. I will take the audio file, send it to an online service that will send me back a transcript for a dollar a minute and because this webinar is broken into three sections, I can use that transcript as starting point for creating three separate blog posts. So I’m creating one, two, three, four, five, six, seven pieces of content out of this webinar. All because we have audio and I’m going to get a lot of mileage out of that and it’s going to be very, very easy to do.

So where can we use this audio content that I’m so excited about? Well, we use it in almost any part of the funnel. So let’s start at the bottom. We sort of talked about this already. Maybe a three to five-minute user interview, this is really a testimonial or it could be as detailed as a case study at the persuasion stage. When people are close to being ready to buy, they’d like to know from other people that they recognize or at least can find something out about that they’ve been successful using it too, that’s one way to do it. A little further up the funnel look, if we’re in the education stage, maybe it’s a short series of how-tos, maybe you’re talking to that R&D scientist and they’re answering questions about how certain things can be done or new applications that it can be used for. This is all perfectly good educational mid-funnel content. And of course at the top of the funnel, anything goes. So when we’re creating awareness, it doesn’t have to be awareness about your product just like if you listen to him mid yesterday, it’s a recognition of a problem or a need. And so creating a podcast, which is at least a series of audio programs on any topic that’s relevant and of interest to your audience can be valuable.

At this stage, you just want people to know your company exists and kind of what you’re all about. So lots of different ways, ways to tell stories or interview people and create interesting content that people want to come back to again and again. And of course at the end, you can always put in a call to action to something relevant. Maybe you’re going to a trade show or you have a new launch coming up and you want to drive people to a page, get people on your e-mail list. This is a great opportunity and the possibilities here are endless.

I’m going to talk to you a little bit, mostly from now on about creating a podcast and how simple it is and why you shouldn’t be intimidated by it. Even though it’s not for everybody, it’s certainly…I don’t recommend it for every company, but there are many opportunities for companies that want to consider and that there’s an audience out there.

First of all, let’s talk about podcast listener-ship which has been growing year over year. So one in five Americans listened to a podcast within the last month, last year it was one in six. And this is anyone over the age of 12. For people who listen weekly, they average five podcasts per week so they listen to one every day, every working day perhaps, or maybe it’s one every day on their commute.

Again, this is a highly engaged audience, people who love podcasts love them a lot and they are really into their topic and they want to know everything about it and that’s why that can be so valuable. And they come in all kinds of formats, so for example, you could have a single person speaking on any number of topics. It could be a recognized authority, that’s one way to do it. Probably the easiest way to produce a podcast is simply an interview. That’s what I’ve chosen to do with Life Science Marketing Radio and I’ll tell you a little bit about how that gets made in a moment. But it’s pretty natural to have a conversation between two people and it brings new ideas in all the time.

There are popular podcasts that have two people talking about current events or trends. So Joe Pulizzi you know Robert Rose do a podcast called “Pulizzi & Rose” or PNR. Schaefer and Tom Webster have a great podcast, these guys are funny and brilliant called “The Marketing Companion”. I recommend both of those to everybody who’s listening to this. And it’s just two people talking, but it’s always interesting, some are every week, The Marketing Companion is every other week.

And at the top of the food chain if you get into the highly produced story telling format, which I would probably not recommend for anybody unless they’re really bold and want to take a big chance and do something spectacularly different, is the storytelling type. So maybe you’ve heard this “American Life”, or “The Start Up Podcast,” both of those produced by Alex Bloomberg who’s brilliant and you don’t have to…it doesn’t have to be all year long, it doesn’t have to be every week, it doesn’t have to be…you could do it twice a month, that’d be sort of a minimal thing, but it doesn’t have to be all year long either. A lot of these podcasts now are doing seasons like you would for “House of Cards” or “Breaking Bad”. They might do 10 episodes on a topic and take a break for a few weeks, get another one together, 10 more episodes on a different topic. I really like that idea for life science companies. Because many of them have lots of topics to cover and you wouldn’t want to dilute them out in a way that’s interspersed. So if you kept them together and said, “All right, we’re going to talk about to 10 people or do 10 episodes on this topic. Now we’re going to complete and shift gears, do 10 episodes on another one,” maybe a whole new audience, but you’re out there, you’re doing it.

And then on the far, far end of the spectrum, GE, who is a recognized leader in content marketing, everybody looks to them for innovations in content marketing. They’ve actually produced a podcast called “The Message”, and it’s a sci-fi fictional story, takes place in the future but it references the kinds of technologies that General Electric is developing today. So they’re building an audience, getting people engaged, and getting them just thinking about these cool new technologies.

So I want you to not be afraid of this idea and I want to tell you that it’s actually easier than you think. This young gentleman on the left is Nate Butkus. Nate started the first grade a couple of weeks ago. But he started his podcast called “The Show About Science” last year when he was in kindergarten. And Nate is a very bright young guy, he’s really curious, he asks great questions and he’s funny as heck and it’s just…he is a joy to listen to and I highly recommend you check out the show, it will inspire you, and it will show you that it is possible to create interesting podcast around anything.

He covers all kinds of things about science, alligators, radiation, Isaac Newton, the whole deal. And I had a chance to interview him a couple of weeks ago for a different project I’m doing at toolsofscience.com. But the day before I interviewed him, he interviewed this gentleman on the left. His name is Cliff Tabin and he is the Chairman of the Genetics Department at Harvard Medical School. So Nate is able to ask great questions of these brilliant scientists and create a podcast that not only is educational for kids like Nate, it’s educational for all of us. So I want to encourage you to just think about the unlimited possibilities of things you could create. There is someone in your company unless you have three people in your company that would probably enjoy this and be really good at it and that person might surprise you. They’re probably not in your marketing department. Anyway a little thought there, Cliff Haven was brilliant and as I said, Nate interviewed him and it was great and he gets lots of great scientists on his show. So I’m sure we can all do that, too.

Let’s talk a little bit about the workflow for creating a podcast, so this is how mine goes. A little bit of planning. I typically want to invite a guest we have…we schedule a quick 15-minute call to outline what we’re going to talk about and that’s important because if we just have a wandering conversation, it makes it really hard to promote the content by saying if you listen to this, you’re going to learn A, B, and C. So it’s good to have a plan and have a plan on anything you’re talking about and then you can go wherever you want, but you’ve got to make sure you cover that plan. Then we schedule it. I use an online scheduling service. So it’s very easy and at the appointed day and time, I call that person using Skype. I can either call their Skype account or call them on the phone if they don’t use Skype. And another piece of software I hit Record, it captures both sides of that conversation. When I’m done, I take the audio file and I’ll tell you a little bit about editing at the end of this. But it’s very simple thing. I typically only have to cut off the chit chat at the beginning and the end of the podcast.

And occasionally if someone maybe they wanted to answer a question differently the second time around, and so I just tell them, “Just pause if you don’t like your first answer, start over.” It’s very easy for me to find the one you didn’t like and throw it out. And it sounds seamless in the audio and there’s nothing wrong with that, that’s how it should be.

Then I take the audio file and I send it off to get transcribed. That takes about a week, usually it’s less, comes back to me and I go through it to correct any misunderstandings in case the transcriber didn’t hear a word correctly or someone massed a few words together and they couldn’t figure it out. I do that and at the same time I’m picking up the highlights for the notes that I will put on the webpage where the podcast is published. I spend a little time after that making sure the audio sounds good, where I’d level out the volume and make sure the voices sound nice and rich as much as possible. I tackle on a pre-recorded intro and an outro which is just like a copy and paste in word and then I publish it to my website. That’s simple. It probably takes me, I want to say six hours of work to create a podcast. Now that might seem like a lot for a 30-minute show, but I can promise you that if you think about it, a written document that gets passed around your office numerous times, it takes more than six hours’ worth of man hours, person hours of time to produce way more for a much less rich experience.

So let’s talk about creating audio content. If you’re with me still and you’re thinking, “That sounds pretty cool. What can we do?” And we’ll talk a little bit about the hardware and software and the online services that I use to create this audio content. So it’s a funny thing that very simple equipment can produce professional sounding audio and we’re all comfortable using digital cameras or digital video recorders and processing that video or editing those images a little bit and it’s seems a very natural thing to us. And yet audio seems to be a mystery because you conjure up pictures of the Muscle Shoals Recording Studio or your local DJ with a big panel in front of them and it doesn’t have to be that way. And audio is simple, you might not have recorded an audio since like I did when I was a little kid, you know, using a cheap cassette recorder to pirate songs off the radio because you’re too cheap to buy the album. But it’s actually quite easy.

So the simplest thing you can do is pull out your iPhone or whatever smartphone you have and get a recording app on it and hit Record. And this is what I highly recommend if you’re just interviewing subject matter experts and you can get perfectly publishable audio out of it if you do it right. But if you’re just looking for content from the busy executive or the R&D scientists or the product manager, sit down at lunch, pull out your phone, put it on the table and have a conversation. If you want to go up a level, this is it. Plug an iPhone into your laptop and you’re on your way and the rest is all software.

So for recording the way I do it is I’m using Skype for my calls when I interview someone, so I’m interviewing people all over the place. I’ve interviewed everyone you’ve listened to in the last two days with the exception of Andy Bertera and it was all on Skype. I use a software called AVEA which costs \$20. It does a great job; it records both sides of it. It automatically knows when Skype is being used and it says, “Do you want to record?” And I hit yes essentially and it records both sides of the conversation. And it will record video as well if you’re using a camera. And it creates a very nice output.

If you have a GoToWebinar or a GoToMeeting subscription at your company, make the call and record it with that and you’re done. And then you have to be able to…you can use some audio processing software like Audacity or something else to pull the audio out of that file. So I use Audacity for my editing and audio processing. It’s a free software, it’s available on PC and Mac. If you’re using Mac, you want to use GarageBand. You can use that for editing and if you’re not comfortable with audio processing, the kinds of things that you probably need to spend a little time learning to make you sound great, there’s a website called Auphonic and you can upload two hours of audio free per month and they just keep track, so that could be four-30 minute sessions of audio and it will clean up, level out and make your conversations sound really good and you’re there.

For transcription, I send all my audio files to a site called Speechpad and for a dollar a minute they will send me back a transcript within a week. If I want it tomorrow, it’s $3 a minute. As a side note, I highly recommend if you’re doing webinars, you should be getting those transcribed anyway. If you’re paying $15,000 to get a hosted webinar from a large media company, why wouldn’t you spend $60 to get a transcript that’s searchable to put on the website? Because not everybody has time to watch it and if you can pull out the audio and let them listen on the way home, even better, but huge value to getting a transcript of every webinar you do. That should be the minimum.

And then for publishing, most podcasters use something called Libsyn which is a way to get your audio content published and hosted on your site and then you submit your RSS feed essentially or your podcast feed to iTunes and it will show up…you know, it’d be researchable on anybody’s smartphone or their computer and they can subscribe. And so new episodes will show up on their phone every time you produce one. How great is that?

Your company definitely has something to say. You should let them hear your voice and whether you publish your audio content as audio or use it to produce something else, consider sitting down and talking to people as the best way to start generating the content that’s going to build an audience for your brand.