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Winning Podcast Shows That You Can Achieve High Quality in Short Time

by Media

Cue the up-tempo music. “Welcome to ASME TechCast, bringing you the innovators, the innovations and the issues that push the envelope of engineering.”

Then we hear John Kennedy’s iconic, New England-tinged voice. “We choose to go to the moon and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they were hard.” Then we hear more famous space voices—“one small step…”; “the eagle has landed…,” and then some not-so-famous ones. Because this stirring podcast—titled Engineering the Apollo 11 Lunar Module—spotlights the engineers who made the1969 moon landing happen.

That episode won ASME a 2020 Gold EXCEL Award (from another division here), and they just started the podcast in 2018—showing that you can achieve high quality in a short time. (And the podcast doesn’t have to be long—more below.)
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“We had to ask ourselves, ‘What is our mission? Why do we want to do this?'” Chitra Sethi, executive editor, media, for ASME, said during a session last year. “Is music important? [Yes.] Do you need a logo? [Yes.] And what format do you want? Solo, segmented, interview?”

They chose segmented. “Music can help your podcast connect,” said Sethi. “And what’s in a name? Everything. It took us weeks to pick a name. We had Geek Speak and Mechanically Speaking. Once we picked ASME TechCast as a recommendation from Lower Street, we had our designer create a logo for it. We launched with a pilot episode on diversity in the industry” featuring an Interview with a woman engineer.

Talk about being ahead of your time. And speaking of time, they realized after recording a few episodes that a long podcast was not in their cards—or 8-hour workday. “We did like a 45-minute interview that we had to cut down to 12 minutes,” she said. “We did not have the time for that going forward so decided to try to keep the recordings short.” Now the podcasts average about 10-12 minutes with this winning one just a quote or two over 10 minutes.

While in-person events may not happen for a while, podcasts are getting even bigger audiences. So if you don’t have one yet, this may be a good time to start one.

Here are some of Sethi’s DO’s and DON’TS:

DO’s
Conduct a pre-interview with your subject. Help them shape their story. Question: Can they tell it themselves or do they need an interviewer to draw it out of them?”

Choose your where-to-record wisely and always listen before you record. Wear headphones of what the actual recording will sound like.

Include a call-to-action on every episode for something you want listeners to do.

Promote episodes on social media.

Track your metrics—how many listens, how long are they staying, where are they dropping off?

If you are speaking, find your personal mic distance.

Have a strong introduction. Just like everything else that’s digital today, people want to be engaged quickly—especially now.

Practice your part.

DON’TS

Don’t touch the microphone once it’s set up.

Don’t go on without setting a script agenda.

Avoid the yesses, nos and uh-huhs. This isn’t like regular conversation, Sethi said, though it does need to sound off the cuff.

Don’t read from the script.

Avoid long recordings. You will spend too much time editing it down.

Here are more tips from others:

Fit your schedule to your audience. You don’t have to pump out a podcast every week. Think what your true podcast value is, what the audience is, and whether a time-limited series is a better fit.

Over-explain how to listen. There’s still a gap in podcast awareness and listening, particularly among older audiences—who listen least, but like Facebook, will most likely be jumping more on board. Podcast creators still need to explain to potential listeners how to find, subscribe to and download their show.

Celebrate your launch. Put ads throughout the month on your website, in your newsletters and magazine. Go crazy on social media and, ahem, talk it up on Zoom.

Look inward for talent. Ask your staff, in all areas, who might be interested in hosting. You never know. They probably know the subject, which is a big bonus.

Capitalize on your legacy brand but… There’s a temptation to launch a new brand around podcasts, rather than using your legacy brand. Not smart. But, Althen recommends giving your podcast its own url.

Get some advice on selling ads or sponsorships. The SIPA Discussion Forum might be the best place for that.

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‘Meeting Quota Is About Behaviors’; Study Finds Disconnects in B2B Sales

by Media
“Now is a good time to ‘be human’ when talking with prospects,” said Julie Thomas, CEO and president of ValueSelling Associates. “Engage in active listening, employ empathy, ask informed questions and elevate conversations to a business level. By forging a human-to-human connection, you may learn how to provide value to the buyer when they rebound. Alternatively, you may be working with companies that are suddenly experiencing exponential growth and are in need of your product.”
That’s from an article that ValueSelling put out last week reporting that 69% of B2B salespeople said they do not have enough leads in their pipeline to meet quota. The study revealed that the three biggest obstacles that impact sales quota attainment are:
  • having enough sales pipeline
  • having the right sales process, and
  • the salesperson’s ability to communicate value to the prospect or customer.
“Meeting and surpassing quota is all about selling behaviors,” said Thomas. “Our research demonstrates that salespeople who do not receive the proper training or coaching tend to underperform.”
Some key numbers:
  • 19% – The percentage of sales people who report that they receive no product training
  • 19% (again) – salespeople who get training less than once a year
  • 23% – Salespeople who get training once a year
  • 39% – Those who get training two or more times per year
There are some clear disconnects:
While 72% of sales leaders report they do teach reps how to communicate value, 62% of salespeople who are not on track to meet quota say they are not taught to communicate value. And while 58% of underperformers say they communicate value “very well” when speaking with customers and prospects, only 28% of sales leaders think their sales reps communicate value “very well” in those conversations.
Here are some ways to surmount these issues:
Get everyone together in the same (virtual) room. Try to bridge these  disconnects. Where are the sales calls falling short? Where might more training help most?
Have more conversations with your customers. Pick up the phone. “How are you?” should still be the lead question. “Any vacation plans?” It’s a great time to be human and lead with empathy and understanding. And then transition. “What do you need the most help with?” “What are your pain points?”
Share those conversations with colleagues. Anecdotal information from the conversations/emails your staff is having with your customers should be shared—by everyone.
Learn from your audience. Sales teams everywhere are dealing with cancelled or pivoted events. What are your subscribers saying? Will they buy into virtual events? Can webinars fill the gap?
Get back to your core products. Innovation is good but we also want to get back to what we do well. What go-to product do you have now that you can tune or adjust to solve your audience’s current challenges?
Look at something new. Your events have gone away. But maybe that opens the door to more sponsored webinars, which may have a greater profit margin anyway. Get in information-gathering mode and find out what your audience needs.
Tailor information that is out there to your industry. What can we do now to positively impact the people we serve? The CDC is pushing out a ton of information right now. How can you take that information and tailor to your industry?
Explore your archives. It’s a great time to dig into your files. What do you have that can be recycled and refreshed—maybe a white paper that focused on crisis communications or selling in a downturn.
Salespeople need a simple sales process they can follow easily, according to Thomas. While 70% of sales leaders report they have outlined a clear sales process for sales reps to follow, they are not confident that sales reps consistently (or ever) follow the process with prospects. And almost 90% of salespeople report they have no formal sales coaching program.

 

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Cabot Wealth Still ‘Connecting the Dots’ for its Customers 50 Years Later

by Media
What makes good marketing? It’s a simple question but a crucial one, especially in the unique times we’ve all been trying to navigate the last four-plus months. Do we send more email or less email? Do we strive for clever copywriting and catchy phrases or caring and straight talk? Do we look to do more campaigns, tell more stories or both?
When a news release arrived a few weeks ago titled 7 Launches in 9 Months for Cabot Wealth, it presented a good opportunity for some answers.
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“Being clever is way down on the list,” said Ed Coburn, president of Cabot Wealth Network, which in September will mark its 50th year of advising individual investors. “It’s not about clever copywriting or catchy phrases. A big part of it is understanding who we’re selling to and what they’re going through and what they’re trying to accomplish, and writing copy that appeals to that need. Connecting the dots between what they want and what we can do for them.”

Coburn is not a fan of the recent trend of short bulleted marketing copy. “We’re in the consumer marketing field, where it’s never become fashionable to use short copy. People who are not going to buy from you don’t have time, but the people who want to buy, they want to read. Selling subscription products requires long copy that tells a story and makes an emotional connection.”
He said that one strategy change has been the implementation of more campaigns—three, five, seven days in a row on one topic, “in different bites but building that case over a number of emails. It’s worked well for us. We were concerned about emailing too much but people seem happy to engage. And the campaigns seem to give us a much better chance at selling. We’re very systematic in that we track the results, what worked and what didn’t. And if it works, we’ll use that campaign again. We don’t feel the need to recreate the wheel, but we are constantly refreshing.”
That “refresh-ment” also shows in the product success. Those seven launches included: a limited membership options trading advisory service called Jacob’s Private Circle with a price tag of $10,000 per year that sold out in just 10 hours; Financial Freedom, a digital magazine on financial wellness, that, along with an extensive library of reports and investor briefings, is part of a Gold Membership (though an annual Financial Freedom Federation membership costs just $10.); the Cabot Income Advisor; and the Cabot Retirement Club.
Talk about not resting on your laurels.
“These new services will generate substantial growth for us this year, on top of growing our existing services, and bring the total number of subscription products to 18 from 11,” Coburn said.
“We’re rooted in editorial. Carlton Lutts [father of current CEO Tim Lutts], was a subject matter expert in investing, as is Tim. So we always had products that came from real systems and were validated in their use. That was critically important. But now, the battle is much more about marketing.”
And this is also where a winning history comes in. Coburn spoke about the customers who have been with them for “10, 15, 20, 30 years at a time—not a lot of people can say that.” And even though that loyalty is “rooted in product,” it was clear that they had to step up the marketing. “We weren’t marketing in a way the products deserved. That’s part of why Tim was attracted to me as a buyer.” (Coburn joined Cabot in 2018.)
It’s all quite astounding for an internal staff of just 14. “We’re a small team so this has been a lot,” Coburn said. “It’s forced us to figure out where we best add value and how to leverage the resources of outside firms and freelancers. That will really help us continue our growth in the future. We plan to take a little bit of a breather while we work on our annual investor conference, the Cabot Wealth Summit, which will be held entirely online Aug 18-20.”
Cabot staff tries to have dialogues with its audience whenever possible, through surveys with their subscription products and tracking the webchats or phone calls that editors partake in so they can identify trends. Of course, in olden times, they would have talked to them at their conferences, “spending time with our existing customers and asking people like them who aren’t yet customers what they’re looking for and what do they want to see,” Coburn said.
“We’re not the most aggressive publisher in the investment space when it comes to marketing and making outlandish claims. Our focus is providing investors with excellent investment advice using proven systems we have developed over years and decades. So it’s nice to know that almost 50 years and hundreds of thousands of customers later, our reputation and excellent team of investment analysts are still producing the results for our subscribers and reaping benefits for Cabot as well.”
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‘It Just Kind of Built on Itself’; 8 Ideas for Varying Your Content

by Media
“We wrote a story about a company that was making its employees come in when they were sick until they were proven to have COVID-19. It’s a $1 billion company and we were telling the story about it. We wrote about another company that went into bankruptcy and their truckers were calling into our XM radio show talking about how their cards were being cut off. Those are the things people care about.”
That’s from Craig Fuller, founder and CEO of FreightWaves, a member of our Connectiv division, in an interview with my colleague Matt Kinsman. The bankruptcy story, about the collapse of Celadon, earned FreightWaves a 2020 Jesse H. Neal Award for Best News Coverage. FreightWaves.com also won best website for its revenue category.
It’s great to see that a company like FreightWaves, which had no origins in media, now puts such importance on content. “As we started to go to market, we realized that every successful futures market has an ecosystem of news and data and that didn’t exist with freight logistics,” said Fuller. “FreightWaves was started to evangelize and inform how futures work but we also knew that if it was just about trucking futures, no one would read it. We started writing about things like Tesla, Amazon, hurricanes… and it just kind of built on itself.”
Here are 8 more ways to put good content out there:
1. Increase your emails.
The new Reuters Digital News Report said that the email daily update now accounts for 60% of all news emails and it is generally well-received by both news lovers as well as daily briefers. The reasons that this is such a popular product are: simplicity, finish-ability, curation and serendipity. Globally, close to half (44%) of all respondents say they do read most of their news emails.
2. Video is still killing it, especially if you have international aspirations.
While 67% of those polled by Reuters say they access online news video on a weekly basis, in some countries that number goes as high as 95%. So it’s a good idea to increase your video output. “Across countries, over half (52%) access video news via a third-party platform each week, such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, with a third (33%) accessing via news websites and apps.”
3. Podcasts rising.
From the report: “The underlying [podcast] picture remains one of growth. Our data show an overall rise in podcast listening to 31% (+3) across a basket of 20 countries [including] the U.S. (36%). Podcasts can be five minutes or 50 minutes and in a variety of formats, so they’re relatively easy to start—even now—and people are listening more.
4. Use emotion in your copy.
“Emotional connections happen because we’re human, and we’re built for these connections, wired for them, and rely on them to live a rich, meaningful life,” said the famous “Marketoonist” Tom Fishburne. “Despite our significant advances in science and technology, human emotion (mainly our subconscious) will always be core to our DNA.”
5. Start a weekly content feature that brings people back.
Inc. launched a weekly webinar called “Real Talk.” “It’s people who have had success and are willing to give back to entrepreneurs and the small business community and answer questions for an hour,” said Scott Omelianuk, editor-in-chief. Haymarket’s PRWeek has two that they’ve started during the pandemic: Lockdown Life and Coffee Break.
6. Get your community “together” to talk content.
One of our other divisions, AM&P, is hosting virtual get-togethers on Fridays at lunchtime to either talk about a topic—diversity, alternative revenue, accessibility—or just offer each other support. Joanne Persico, president of SIPA member ONEcount, has been holding “Bold Minds Virtual Mixers” every Wednesday at 5:30 pm.
7. Experiment now.
By seeing what sticks now, you’re adding to your future. “When we come back [to live events], virtual elements will still be a big part going forward,” said Steve Barrett, VP and editorial director for Haymarket Media’s PRWeek. “We’ll still do virtual stuff because we’ve seen the potential of it. In terms of the bigger events, you have to add value in different ways than you would for a physical event… We’re all learning, there’s no playbook.”
8. Mix live and recorded content.
Barrett acknowledges that “pre-shot” content is often a safer way to go for awards and webinars. But he prefers a mix. “I think [people] do like seeing more personality” that comes from live content, he said. “All pre-recrorded can come off as a bit dry. And we’re all learning. I do think virtual events will progress massively over the next 12 months.” Jared Waters of BVR also recommends a mix of live and pre-recorded content, emphasizing that speakers often have a preference that should be respected.
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How MedLearn Media Doubled Website Traffic by Letting Its Audience Shine

by COVID 19Media
The BiPAP-masked patient… shouted through a positive pressure of 18/8 cm, “do you know why ants don’t get sick?”
“No, I don’t. Why?”
And through a positive pressure-enhanced smile, the patient answered, “because they have anty-bodies!” Then she laughed upstream against the onrushing BiPAP airflow.
…My laughing choked off as I watched her oxygen saturation drop from a very low 87%, to a really, really low 84%, to a breathtakingly low 81%.
— Michael A. Salvatore, MD, physician advisor and medical director of the palliative care team at Beebe Healthcare in Delaware, writing on MedLearn Media’s Frontline Friday
When longtime SIPA member MedLearn Media decided to call one of their pandemic features Frontline Friday, it was for good reason. These first-person dispatches from nurses, doctors and hospital personnel are searing to read.
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“Since we serve the healthcare market, we’ve gotten to see firsthand some of the real experiences that our market is facing on a day-in and day-out basis over the past 10 weeks,” Angela Kornegor, executive director of MedLearn Media, wrote me in late May. “The public health emergency has pulled our community and subscriber base together and the news and stories that have been pouring in have been remarkable to say the least. Our overall traffic in these past 10 weeks has doubled and in turn has inspired some significant pivoting in our communications.”

Early on, they took the stance that they would be “a confidant and trusted source of news and information for our subscribers,” Kornegor continued, “as we wanted to provide some normalcy to our audience as they were getting rocked day in and day out by the tragedy and uncertainty healthcare was facing.”
Health care has always been a popular niche for SIPA members. But the COVID-19 crisis has added so many new layers to their audience relationships.

Chuck Buck, publisher of RACmonitor, a division of MedLearn Media, told me last week that they started the increased coverage by boosting their popular podcast, Monitor Mondays—which just celebrated its 10-year anniversary—from 30 to 60 minutes.

“Because of the pandemic, there was so much confusion to deal with and just a tangle of regulations,” Buck said. “So we would have 30 minutes of content with our regular panelists, and then field the questions, which just kept coming on a daily basis. We saw big audience numbers. Wanting to leverage that and create more engagement led us to doctors on frontlines dealing with these issues.”

The initial thought might be that doctors would not want to relive what they were seeing, but Buck said the writing provided a form of relief. “I noticed this when I was a patient recently. They’re so passionate about their work and feel their work isn’t well received always. This gave them an outlet to express their passion of care giving. What they’re experiencing, the stories, are unbelievable.”
“What we did was roll out three new featured weekly segments on topics that we don’t traditionally write about, which are more lifestyle pieces then our traditional news on healthcare rules and regulations,” Kornegor said. The other two segments are Stay at Home Kids and The Saturday Post. “These new segments have driven our traffic up by 40% during the pandemic, and we are developing additional sponsor and advertising opportunities within these new segments and laying the ground work for a new subscription model.”
At the pandemic’s beginning, a letter was sent from the publisher to subscribers, letting them know the coverage that was planned—this elicited positive responses from subscribers all over the U.S.
“We then invited more healthcare professionals to the podcast to share and tell their stories of what they have been experiencing and seeing each week,” Kornegor said. “The response on the new format was astonishing. Our live attendance to our podcasts increased by 50% which not only gave us great insight and feedback into what our customers were looking for and craving, but gave us intel on topics we could produce webcast topics around.”
They also added a COVID category on their news site, where subscribers could find what they needed to know during the pandemic, “as the news that was coming in, was more than what we could output in our weekly newsletter,” Kornegor said.
Buck also admires the Stay at Home Kids features. “I was so surprised how articulate these kids are—they’re stuck at home on lockdown so their point of view was amazing. “The adults kind of let us down,” they said.
“Quarantine may have taken things away from me, but it was also an eye-opener to how grateful I should be, and a reminder that I need to start laying aside time for myself as well,” wrote Delaney Grider, a 14-year-old freshman from Fishers, Ind. “Never take your health or your friends for granted—you never know if it’s going to be months until you can see them again.”
The other new column, the Saturday Post, was so named because of the personal and wide-ranging nature of writing they were getting. “Every home had a Saturday Evening Post,” Buck recalled. “These have been incredible—really great personal essays.”
Erica E. Remer, MD, wrote a column titled, “COVID-19: Do you have ‘thinkihadititis?’” Another article included a firsthand account of contact tracing in Hangzhou, China. When the intersection of the racial protests started, another doctor, Steven Moffic, wrote about Billie Holiday and that haunting song Strange Fruit.
“For me it’s been a fun enterprise,” Buck said. “Gives our audience a different perspective. We did get one of our sponsors to sponsor Frontline Fridays. And we’ve seen a significant increase in podcast listenership on Mondays and Tuesdays.” Most of their revenue comes from webcasts, advertising and sponsorships.
As far as keeping the expanded coverage, Buck said they were going to let the audience determine that—gauging by number of questions they get, columns submitted, etc.
“The nature of the virus has changed significantly since we first started reporting. A lot of us thought it would be here then gone. Every day brings a greater sense of reality until a vaccine can be found. If we can in a moment engage and just share with our audience other points of view…”
He didn’t really have to finish that thought.