Your podcast is a content goldmine!
Jaclyn Schiff is the Founder of PodReacher.
PodReacher turns podcasts into high-quality articles to boost discoverability. Their writers take your audio and repurpose it into original blog posts and articles to optimize your hard work for text. With your podcast as the content hub, the articles PodReacher creates can be used in various ways to help grow your audience. Check them out at https://podreacher.com/
Learn more about how PodReacher can leverage your podcast by listening to this episode of The Thoughtful Entrepreneur above and don’t forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts – Stitcher – Spotify –Google Play –Castbox – TuneIn – RSS.
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0:00
Welcome to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur Show. I'm Josh Elledge, founder and CEO of UpMyInfluence.com. We turn entrepreneurs into media celebrities, grow their authority, and help them build partnerships with top influencers. We believe that every person has a unique message that can positively impact the world. stick around to the end of the show, where I'll reveal how you can be our next guest on one of the fastest growing daily inspiration podcasts on the planet in 15 to 20 minutes. Let's go. With us right now we've got Jaclyn Schiff. Jaclyn, you're the founder and CEO of PodReacher. Thanks so much for joining us.
:43
Thanks for having me, Josh. It's great to be here.
0:45
And what does PodReacher do?
0:48
So we're a service and we turn podcast episodes or a series of episodes into articles and to help boost the discoverability on your podcast.
1:01
And why did you say you started this? Not that long ago? Right?
1:06
Yeah. So I think, you know, compared to some of the folks that you have on the show, we're fairly new. We're just over a year old. And I was actually a freelancer. And I come from a journalism and content strategy background, and have always been a podcast fan. I like to say, you know, I was listening to this American life before it was easy to have on your phone before cereal and all of that. I've made podcasts before in sort of a professional context, and knew that I wanted to work more with podcasters. And that discovery and marketing was a big challenge. And I kind of took a look around at what some of the elite and top podcasters were doing, to make sure that people were finding their content. One of the big differences I found is that people like James all teacher, Pat Flynn, and many others, were taking that content and repurposing it in many ways, including as articles, either on the content website or publishing it elsewhere. Also, since I have a journalism background, I know that this is a huge thing that all media companies do. For example, the today show, you know, they'll have a segment and then they'll write an article and link to that segment on their website. And I thought, why aren't more podcasters doing this? And the more I dug into it, the more I realized, well, it's pretty time consuming. And you know, even for someone who's a very seasoned writer, to do it really well and get the benefits of it. It's a lot and so if you're a podcast or you know, you're putting a ton of time into the show, even just scheduling people getting them on preparing for an interview, you know, whatever it is, you don't have bandwidth after that. And so I started with a, you know, just a handful of podcasters That I reached out to see if they were interested. And, you know, to my delight and surprise, there was a lot of interest. And so I've just kind of built it up from there.
3:11
What does your pitch sound like when you're reaching out to podcasters? And asking if they're interested in that service?
3:58
And so how did you Your first few people to say yes. I mean, were you offering your services fairly inexpensively? Or like how did you get your first? Did you just have to reach out to a lot of people or what what was your experience?
4:14
Yeah, so I, so I basically cold pitched 10 podcasters. And I thought, Hey, you know if, if I could end up working with with one of them, I might be onto something here. And so I reached out to 10 that I didn't know got warm responses from six and ended up working with two of them.
4:38
Wow. Those are good numbers. Especially if you're reaching out cold. Now I we should point out just before anybody gets any bright ideas, you're not sending a mass spam email to 10 people, right? You're, you're dumb. Tell me break that down a little bit more.
4:55
Yeah, definitely thinks it's
4:58
so important.
5:00
Well, and I think honestly, as a business person, I, I sometimes get a little stuck here because I think if anything I overthink so I first of all, you know, before I reach out to someone, I feel like I need to from the outside. So, you know, first thing is from the outside looking in, you never really have the full picture, you don't know what's going on behind the scenes of their business. But, you know, from a cursory Look, I've I need to feel like I can really add value to what this person is doing. So I'm super selective, you know, I feel like I need to be convinced in order to, you know, be able to sell sell them something. So, there's that piece of being really selective. And then, you know, the the email outreach that I do is highly personal. I definitely, you know, I don't rely on any kind of mass email, software. You know, I'm sure there's good ways to do it, but it's just never been approached an approach That, you know, I felt super comfortable with. And so it's, you know, it's very custom to them. And it's it's personalized. And you know, and I try to be succinct as well. So those are kind of the steps that I've taken.
6:15
So you're working as a freelancer, you get a couple of blog podcasters to say, yeah, sure, we, you know, love to have you help out with some of our content. And so like, what do you what business or what pricing model Did you select for this?
6:30
Yeah, so it's taken a while to to get to the point of having clear packages and pricing. And actually, in the last month, we've just kind of updated our website, but the way will typically work with podcast is at this point, and I say we, you know, originally it was me, I'm now working with a team of writers that I trust implicitly and that I think do a wonderful job but will typically work with podcasters on a monthly basis. So some of them were doing all the episodes were sinking with their publishing schedule. So a new episode goes live on the website and the content that we create goes live as well. But a lot of podcasts, we're just doing a select number of episodes. So sometimes maybe just two or four a month. And in some cases, they're using that to populate a blog on their website. So it's kind of separate from the episode page. It might be a couple days after the podcast episode, go live maybe a couple weeks, or they're using it as part of a guest posting strategy as a way to get backlinks to their website, get in front of new audiences. And so a couple of folks that we've worked with have, you know, gotten the content that we've created for them in places like CIO. Actually, just today we have someone in tech Crunch. I'm excited about hacker noon. So various publications, guest posting, obviously is tough. But, you know, again, the the content that we create, like, I like to say that there's kind of three stages to it. So it's journalistic in the sense that, you know, we're conveying what happened in the episode. So it's like, as if you had a journalist who was sitting in on the conversation, imagine you had it in front of a live audience. So that's, that's one piece. But then the other piece is content marketing. And that's really important. We're thinking really intently about who is this for, and how do we position it and a lot of times that means using different you know, headlines then you might use as the different headlines then what would be used as the podcast, episode title in the podcast player and, you know, Considering SEO is part of that and keyword targeting. And then the third pieces is ghostwriting, a lot of the content we create is intended to be used with the podcast or byline. And so there's got to be something that feels really authentic about that. So that you know, it's in the person's tone and style. So there's a couple different pieces to it.
9:23
So Jaclyn, let's say that someone doesn't quite have the budget to hire you for your services. And it looks like your pricing ranges from as little as I think, maybe $300 or so for one podcast episode, obviously, I think what's really nice as you've productized your services, which I'm a big fan of prioritization of pricing, but let's say someone's not quite at that level to make that investment on a regular basis that they're fairly new podcast, you're fairly new business, what would be some best practices that you would recommend? Okay, just recorded this interview with somebody. Now I've got this audio content now. What
10:00
Absolutely, and I think there's, there's definitely ways that people can be doing it themselves in just a couple hours a week. So, you know, what we do is we always work from a transcript. I like temi.com, you know, which is an AI transcript, you know, will generate it based on your mp3 file in, you know, less than 10 minutes, it's 10 cents a minute. So it's pretty cost effective. And what's nice there is, you know, you have that it's not, it's not a perfect transcript, but you have the sort of quotes and key points. And then what I would do is, you know, go through and think about what are the three to five key takeaways. So even if you can't do like a full article, something, what are the key takeaways? Now, here's a thing that I see a lot of podcasters do that is like a small switch you can make that I think makes a big difference. A lot of podcasters will do something similar, and maybe they're including something like that and show notes, but they're talking about the interview from there. perspective, they're like, here's what I did and what I learned. Whereas make it focused on your audience. So don't talk about your experience of doing the interview, talk about what the audience is going to get out of it. So I definitely recommend that. You know, the other thing that I'm pretty partial to and is something that you can definitely do on a budget is, again, getting the AI generated transcript. And a lot of people will just post the full transcript on the website, right? It's definitely a place for that, right? Because there's an accessibility issue if you want your content to be available to people who are hard of hearing. But I think in terms of creating a shareable piece of content, it makes a huge difference to have an edited transcript prior, you know, trimming it down, reframing the questions and that kind of thing. So that's can be another easy way to do it where you're attaching a little more meaningful piece of text. than just a whole transcript.
12:02
And I can't imagine, I mean, Google might read the transcript, but transcripts really aren't that fun to read.
12:10
You know, I go back and forth and have so many different discussions about this. Right? I personally never look at a full transcript. I know some people who do. You know, I think the the home run would be if you can offer all these resources to listeners, but I think if you're making a choice, you know, I would definitely think about this from a marketing perspective. And to me, I think it's a lot more engaging. I often find myself reading Q and A's on other people's website, right. So that's, that's a formatted transcript. It's edited down. You know, a lot of times on podcasts, you'll see that people, they'll say, Hey, what's your background? What's your backstory, you know, you can include one to two sentences of that in the introduction to a transcript. You don't need someone going on for like five paragraphs about, you know, the ins and outs of their career trajectory, huh?
13:02
Yeah. And so I mean for basic formatting, what what would you say? Let's say someone does have a transcript like, what would be some, like, at the very least do this. And what is that?
13:15
So I think a lot of times, hosts, especially if you're, you know, especially if you're a business person, and you're podcasting, sometimes people don't frame their questions really well in conversation, or, you know, they just, they can, they can go on it, but I'd keep those questions short, you know, all the questions, and then again, look at what your guest says, and you can trim that in various ways. Another thing to potentially consider, that's an easy way to repurpose several episodes is a lot of podcasters have a guest intake form, right? Where you're saying like, you know, what's your name, what's your website, that kind of thing. You can easily add a question to that. For example, what's one book that influenced you this year? Once you've done 20 interviews, and you very easily can go back, copy and paste those answers and create a really nice list where you're linking back to all the episodes you've done with those people. And that's, you know, that's going to play really well on social media. So I often recommend that as an easy way to repurpose a number of episodes.
14:29
Yeah. Excellent. Excellent. So um, so Jaclyn, I'm like, in terms of your growth now, like what's, what's your plan? Is it just more direct outreach? Or how do you plan on expanding your, your footprint or your industry authority?
14:49
Yeah, so the last couple months, I've been very heads down with operations. As I mentioned, Josh, before the end of this interview, I'm bringing on a part two Managing Editor. And so that's been key is to just get operationally a little more, you know, just just get behind the scenes sort of neatly tidy it up. I'll be continuing with some of the cold outreach, but another avenue I've found that's been great. Apart from definitely started getting some referrals from current customers, and people that have just started hearing about us in you know, podcast circles, but also newsletter advertising. And there's a lot of podcasts newsletters, and I've definitely had some success with those. So we'll be continuing that and I'm very active on Twitter. And that's been a really good resource for me to connect directly with podcasters. So I'd like to be doing a lot more of that. I've dipped my toe in with LinkedIn. And I think there's a lot of opportunity there. But yeah, that's right. Something I need to pick your brain on. Yeah,
16:02
sure, sure. Well, awesome. Well, Jaclyn, again, congratulations on your on your rapid success. Because you know, again to be on this show you generally need to be doing some good business. And so in one year's time you are off to the races my friend so congratulations on that. And again, founder and CEO of have a great product available and on the web, you could just go to Jaclyn, go ahead and give your website and anybody anywhere else that people should begin their relationship or connect with you.
16:34
Absolutely. Yeah, I think the best place is PodReacher.com p o d r e a CH er. And, you know, for January, we are going to have a special where we're doing a $50 article, and it's just going on for January. It's a crazy low price. It's like more than 80% of the actual price. And you know, I'd love listeners to take advantage of that. Brilliant. Brilliant. Jaclyn, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you.
21:00
Thanks for listening to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur show. If you are a thoughtful business owner or professional who would like to be on this daily program, please visit UpMyInfluence.com/guest that we've got something out of this interview. Would you share this episode on social media? Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or postit on the socials. If you do that tag us with the hashtag UpMyInfluence. Each month we scour Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. We pick one winner from each platform, and you get crowned king or queen of that social media. Now what do you win? We're going to promote you and your business to over 120,000 social media fans totally free. Now. Can you also hook us up now in your podcast player right now. Please give us a thumbs up or a rating and review. We promise to read it all and take action. We believe that every person has a message that can positively impact the world. Your feedback helps us fulfill that mission. While you're at it, hit that subscribe button. You know why? Tomorrow? That's right. seven days a week, you are going to be inspired and motivated to succeed 15 minutes a day. My name is Josh Elledge. Let's connect on the socials. You'll find all the stuff we're doing at UpMyInfluence.com. Thanks for listening and thank you for being a part of the thoughtful entrepreneur movement.