One of the purposes of your podcast is to provide information and build an audience to listen to you.
You can podcast once and stop and think that you will have a loyal audience. Consistency is needed. At the same time, if you only use audio, it is “just a voice” speaking to them.
People are visual by nature. Since we are born, we look at things. Think of a newborn baby, they look at everything! Right? But as we get older, we tend to ignore the things around us. Why? Because they are familiar to us.
As we mature, we tend to focus on the things that only interest us. These are the things that catch our attention.
Advertisers understand this explicitly. They know that 90% of people ignore their commercials. But they run them anyway. Usually every six to seven minutes on a television show. Why would they do this knowing that people ignore them?
Because the subconscious mind is still taking in the commercial. Our minds are registering what is being SAYED (even though we are not watching the video part). This is establishing a familiarity with the product in our minds.
Then when we watch the commercial and watch the video part, we connect the two aspects. The sound part has been spinning in our minds and now we see what the video looks like. Our minds connect the two together and the company has been successful in its endeavor to be permanently on our minds and thoughts about its product.
Think about these two examples below and you will see what I mean …
“Well to the last drop …” Who or what are you thinking of?
“Can you hear me now?” Who or what are you thinking of?
“Finger licking good” Who or what are you thinking of?
The first is, of course, “Maxwell House Coffee “. If you grew up in my day, that was the main brand of coffee you would find in almost every home.
The next is the boy from verizon walking in remote places, taking a few steps and saying this famous line.
And the last one is one of my favorites, “Kentucky Fried Chicken.”
All of these brands successfully used audio to implant thought and then video to consolidate thought in the public mind.
You need to connect your podcast with your brand (whatever brand you are establishing). If you can’t connect your brand with your target audience, it won’t grow. There are several ways to accomplish this, but social media is currently the cheapest way to start.
But, if you want to be honest in your assessment, social media is designed for visual questions, not audio cues. Why do you think social media platforms, by design, mute all video on every post? Because they trust your video to grab the attention of those who are interested in seeing and listening to your presentation. You must physically disable the video to hear it.
How many videos have you missed because nothing caught your eye?
My recommendation is to create short videos that focus on one point. Take this video as an example. It would be easy for me to extend this to a 30 minute teaching. (Do not worry I will not). The shorter the better.
You make your point. You viewers get the point. Now you and they move on to other things.
But, like the commercials we mentioned above, if you successfully brand your podcast, be it video or audio, and repeat it over and over again, eventually your brand will be subconsciously caught in the mind of your target audience.
That’s just one step in developing a loyal audience.