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Create a Radio Blog
My friend , a real estate guru, asked me the other day if we could create a “radio blog” for him to offer up all of the different interviews on shows, local radio interviews and his own show.
It’s funny that no one really called it a “Radio Blog” before. Video blogs have been around for 10 years, even before YouTube became well known, and internet radio and podcasting pre-dated video.
So here’s some easy steps to take your audio files and create a radio blog.
(1) Make sure your audio files are in MP3 or better format. Goto http://www.online-convert.com — this place is great if you’re not a audiofile or have a wide skill set in formats. The service is free and quick. Not only does it convert your audio files, but video, images, documents, data, even ebooks.
(2) Setup a self-hosted WordPress blog/website. You can either do this on a new domain or on your current website. If you don’t run your own server, or spend a lot of time as your web admin, check with your hosting company. Almost all them have a one click install for WordPress, the most popular online publishing platform.
(3) Install a “podcasting” plugin. There are a variety to choose from at WordPress.org for free, and some paid.
(4) Load up your audio files.
(5) Pay close attention to the data fields that are available and to your Schema as Google, Facebook and others are now cataloging audio files based upon this data. See my article on Configuring Schema for Audio Files. This will help your be properly indexed by the search engines and social media sites like Facebook and Twitter and boost your Search Engine Optimization while generating more listeners.
(6) Images — if you don’t have images to go along with each individual broadcast consider making them up yourself with a free tool like www.canva.com.
(7) Promote your new “radio blog” — put a link to it in your Email Signature, put a link on your website, promote it on social media and list it a the top podcasting directories.
There are a lot of other tips and tricks, but this will get you started leveraging your existing audio content in a new or existing “radio blog”.
How to Generate a Better Response Rate on LinkedIN with Publishing Guidelines
LinkedIN is the leading Professional Social Network with over 400 million users. If you haven’t joined up yet with LinkedIN now would be a good time to do you if you are interested in generating new leads and relationships with social network marketing.
Joining LinkedIn is a free, although depending upon your needs, there are a series of valuable and affordable add ons and advertising options that might be useful. You can sign up here using your email or signup with your Facebook credentials.
Images
Rich media has proven to increase reader engagement by at least 2x. Images are much more likely to make readers click on your post; choose a strong image that represents the message of your post and put it at the top of your post. It’s best to avoid using images that contain a lot of text, i.e. Memes. A slogan or your corporate watermark is fine, but you really want the reader to actually read your post and get to your clickable Call to Action versus walking away thinking they got the “whole story” simply from the image. Here’s an article about places to find free images for your posts, social media and websites.
Headlines
Make sure headlines are clear and compelling. Choose clarity over cleverness.
Value of authenticity
Make sure that your posts are authentic, not simply sales copy or advertisements. This helps to creates human appeal and yields trust among readers overtime by positioning you as someone other than just a shameless self promoter.
Keys to authenticity
- Have an opinion – whether you are writing a product review, an editorial about the economy or simply commenting about an industry trend, your opinion matters and your readers will continue to “tune in” to read your perspective, assuming that you aren’t wildly obscene or become known for factless blathering!
- Use personal anecdotes – How to Win Friends and Influence People or Chicken Soup for the Soul – these are perfect examples of using personal anecdotes to add perspective and readability to your posts. Personal anecdotes add a human side to sometimes seemingly boring post topics. Customer success stories are another great example you can use, think “mini case studies”.
- Create insights and share knowledge, tips, tricks and easily implementable strategies are a great way to build trust and continuity with your posts that keep your readers selecting your content to consume versus your competitors.
- Set your post up with a clear intro, and explain your terms – don’t try to cover everything in one post, but also try to avoid drawn out “series” – example: if you have 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover (sorry Paul Simon) put them all in one song, not across 10 songs on the album!
- Steer clear of jargon and acronyms – especially in the technology and marketing worlds we love to shorten things to KPI, KEI, ROI, ANSI, LAMP, SSL, etc. Just because you know what the acronym stands for doesn’t mean your reader is always up to speed. Make sure to spell out and explain the acronym BEFORE you use it in your postings.
- Write in a way that starts a conversation. Ask for comments and feedback to engage your audience, but make sure that you respond to these comments at least with a “thank you”.
These are just a few strategies you can deploy to improve the response rate and engagement of your LinkedIN posts. There are many more available, but these are the basics. Please comment and let us know of your strategies or tips on using LinkedIN.
ICON JV Mastermind 2017 Panel
How to Use SERPS Free Keyword Ranking Tool
Keyword research is, or should be, an integral part of your content marketing strategy. Whether you’re working on a title for a press release, or a topic for a blog post, radio show or podcast it’s a good idea to do at least some basic keyword research before you get started.
Keyword research is even more important if you’re buying Pay Per Click (PPC) or other keyword based advertising from Google or Bing or other “relative” advertising provider.
SERPS.com has both a FREE version listed below and a paid version. The FREE version is good for doing a few keywords at a time, but can become time consuming if you have large sets of words. Here’s the instructions on how to use their Keyword Ranking Tool from their site.
SERPs’ Keyword Rank Checker tool shows you the top 250 search results, along with CPC and search volume data, for any keyword or phrase, and allows you to tailor your results by domain, location, and device.
Enter a keyword or phrase and any of the following additional fields:
Domain (optional): to return only where pages from a specific domain appear in the top 250 search results (leave blank to see all 250 results).
Search engine and location (required, default set to Google, US – English): to specify whether you want to see rankings on Yahoo or Google, for searches performed in the country/language you select.
Device (required, default set to Desktop): to see rankings for searches performed on either desktop or a mobile device.
Exact location (optional): to see rankings for a search performed in a specific city or zip code.
Your Results
When the tool finishes, your results will appear below the form. While we’re checking your ranking, we’ll also pull in CPC and avg. monthly search data (Google Adwords data).
The tool lets you do multiple searches one-after-another and then download all of the results in one CSV.
SERPS.com provides a great FREE keyword research tool, and their full service pricing model is cost effective and even more useful and fast. The small business package is $49 per month for 300 keywords (phrases), up to 5 sites with 1 users, their Agency package is $99 per month for 1,000 keywords (phrases), unlimited sites, unlimited users and white labeled (with your brand on it). A keyword is counted as keyword x device x location x engine. So tracking “SEO Software” in Google, on both desktop and mobile, USA only, would count
One this to remember is the concept of “long tail keywords”. If you’re not familiar the basic concept is that it’s better to target two or three word phrases versus more simple and generic keywords. Not only does this help define your potential client, but you will have less competition and less cost if buying advertising.
SERPS.com offer a FREE 30 day trial of their PRO plan and it’s most definitely worth checking out and taking it for a test drive. Think about combining it with other tools like keyword.io, keywordtool.io, wordstream and ubersuggest.io and combine the best results into your final keyword sets on SERPS.com.
Let us know using the comment form below what you think about SERPS.com and other keyword research tools you have tried or use.