There are indeed so many ways to use a private podcast. Whether you are a solo- entrepreneur or a larger business, it’s unlimited. Today, Raphie Wagner, a Certified Strategist Program Manager at Podetize, shares ways to use a private podcast for your business, work culture, and marketing. A podcast strategist and consultant with a demonstrated history of working in the podcast production industry, Raphie is skilled in coaching, podcast project management, strategic planning, and research. Tune in to learn how private podcasts benefit your business’ brand and marketing.

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The Benefits Of Having A Private Podcast For Your Business’ Brand And Marketing With Raphie Wagner

Welcome to the show. I’m Tracy Hazzard but I am not going to be hosting this episode. I have turned this over to Raphie Wagner. She is our amazing Certified Strategist Program Manager here at Podetize. I have adored every moment since I’ve met her. Here’s how we met because I want you to hear that story.

I’m going to let Raphie talk about this topic that she’s picked out, which I find fascinating, number one and I’m going to have her back because we want other members of our Podetize team to be able to contribute. Raphie is one of the most fascinating ones, who’s got this incredible backstory and way that she’s drawn into podcasting. She’s come to be such a great contributor here and a great partner for us in developing our certified strategist program. I adore her but here’s how I met Rafi.

She was fangirling me. She was listening to The Binge Factor and this show. She was reaching out and commenting on LinkedIn. She’s great at doing that. She’s great at making insightful comments and getting your attention. That’s what she was doing. I had seen her name and show. Her show was called Not a Momma Life, which she had before. She now has the other podcast.

She’s got more going on but back then, it was Not a Momma Life and that was an intriguing title. She appeared in one of our Clubhouse rooms. We brought her up, opened the mic and she started talking. I realized I’ve got to connect with this person. I was private messaging her while we were on Clubhouse together. I invited her to come on The Binge Factor. We got to know each other and we’re doing business together. Isn’t that a fun path of how things happen in the podcasting world? It’s typical of how we connect. We meet, see and have built a relationship. It turns into something so much more.

Let me give you a little bit of background on Raphie because I want to make sure that you have a little bit of background on her. She’s a retired occupational therapist and lover of all things podcasting. She created a space in the podcasting world for her podcast and herself. Her passion is taking action, no matter the outcome. She honors diversity and inclusivity. I honor that as well. I’m glad that she’s a part of our team.

She lives in a small beach town on the East Coast, Florida, with her husband and six parrots. I love when I get to hear them on a call. They have personalities you can hear through the microphone. I don’t know, there might be a whole future episode in that but in the meantime, Raphie has not been on the Not a Momm Life. You should check out the other podcast. It’s interesting in the world because she does such a great job of focusing on the production value of everything and thinking about podcasting tech and systems. She’s obsessed with that.

To me, that is why she’s part of our team and why I’ve had her come on and talk to you about all kinds of subjects here because her perspective and viewpoint on podcasting are worthy of bringing forward to you. Her technical knowledge is wonderfully in-depth. She tests everything out and researches them. She’s going to talk about a topic near and dear to her, which I have learned a lot about because I’ve been starting a private show. Between the two of us, we have been exploring this behind the scenes and she has got some great viewpoints on why you might want to do this in the near future. Check this out. Raphie Wagner is talking with us here on the show about private podcasts.

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My name is Raphie Wagner and I am a Program Manager here at Podetize Brandcasters. I want to share with you the value of a private podcast. Let’s get started. First, what is a private podcast? A private podcast is a podcast that’s not syndicated. What that means is it does not have a public out in the world RSS feed. It’s meant to stay in a certain area or close-private for whatever you decide to use it for. The main goal is to keep it private and keep it inside.

Let’s go ahead and jump in. I will be sharing ways that you can use a private podcast for your business, your work culture and marketing. There are truly many ways to use a private podcast. Whether you are a solopreneur or a larger business, it’s truly unlimited. Details on a private podcast. I talked about what a private podcast is versus a public podcast.

A public podcast is the one that you have an RSS feed. It’s hosted on Podetize and distributed out to different players. That has a purpose. Those are the two differences, the private and the public. Why you would want to do a private is if you want to keep it small, internal for a specific use case and not for the world to hear. Whereas a public podcast is out there in the world. It has that public-facing ability to get to everybody and be on all the players.

There are some internal and external use cases. I’m going to be going through a little bit of everything but here are some examples for you. The internal use case would be something like communicating with a team, employees, contractors, design team or investors. It’s also can be used for education internally.

 

Think about a private podcast if you are educating a sales team on a launch, a customer service team or a client team on a specific way of doing something. This may be an alternative to a Zoom call or a meeting. It could be in addition to an update on standard operating procedures. You’ve made a change to that and you want to let the team know. That is an example of how you could use a private podcast.

In addition to that, sharing news within an internal organization or a team is a unique way of using a private podcast. In Podetize Brandcasters, we did that investor campaign and used a private podcast to speak to those who participated in that campaign. If you have something like a fundraising campaign, having a private podcast to announce it, promote it and do some of the work for you, as far as promoting it for fundraising, that’s an example.

Privately, it stays within wherever you want to put it. If it is a private podcast for your corporate team, it’s staying within that team. That is how you can customize it where it’s going to be distributed. It’s not public. It’s going to stay within your company domain emails or it’s going to be subscribed based but it’s only going to a certain amount of people.

With a public-facing podcast, there’s still an opportunity to have what we sometimes call a gate. It’s behind something. It’s private but it also has the components of not being out in the world. It’s specific to whatever that goal may be. If you’re considering a private podcast, consider the goal, what you’re looking to do, where that’s going to land, what department or it even could be some examples of an external private podcast. It could also be for a particular campaign for VIP clients or existing clients.

 

An example, you could use a private podcast for existing clients for a referral campaign. You can simply reach out to existing clients and customers. You can share your brand story and different things that are going on in the company or different successes from other clients. You use that as an opportunity to have a referral campaign within that private podcast.

When you’re doing a private podcast that is going out to clients or people outside of an internal team, there are many use cases for it. One thing I want you to consider is whether it’s private podcasting within an organization, a team or a private podcast that’s specific to a niche or a group of people, clients, customers or part of a campaign, there are still a few things that overlap.

One of those things is important and something that the industry and businesses that you can be seen doing something different because you can replace endless emails with a private podcast that’s internal and a lot of emails for a campaign that you’re doing for your next launch by using a private podcast. It can be an additional way to distribute a campaign or a launch that is not going to be an email, webinar or another Zoom call. It’s truly a unique and different approach.

I also think that because podcasts, in general, are intimate. What I mean by that is most people are listening to the podcast in an earbud or by themselves. This statistic shows that it’s not common that people are listening to a podcast in a big open space on speakerphone. That’s generally not the case. It lends itself as a public podcast would to that little touch of intimacy like, “This is special for me. This is just for me.” That also adds a nice component to it. It’s not a broadcast email. It’s a little bit more of a one-to-one feel and intimacy feel. I liked that touch.

 

The trend out there that we see is that audio content is on the uptake. The trend is always going up for audio content. Why not consider bringing audio content into different areas of your business to mix it up a little and approach content in additional types of ways of delivery? There’s another thing you can do internally, which is unique. There are a couple of different unique things I’m going to talk about and one is the touch point with leadership.

Here’s one thing for work culture, especially since we had everything on the news about the Great Resignation. Incorporating a private podcast for a company or business from a small team of 1 to 10 or 2 to 10 to even larger companies is it can be a touch point for leadership. It can be an opportunity for leadership to, in their own words, share what’s going on in the company and create that work culture that may not be there or add to the work culture. That’s something to consider as well. Getting that episode delivered to you from the CEO who is thanking everybody for all of their work on the latest campaign or whatever they may be wanting to share with the team.

Here’s another idea you could do for a podcast. That could be types of episodes within a private podcast or a specific line for the private podcast. The touch point with a leadership team could be its own podcast in itself and an ongoing podcast with different parts of the leadership team. Smaller ways that you could make individual episodes for a private podcast would be something along the lines of education. Whether it’s that internal piece, educating your team on that SOP. Let’s say you’ve made some updates to SOP.

Maybe your company is coming out of doing a lot of virtual things or employees. Since then, you’ve changed the SOPs. Why not launch that with a private podcast, in addition to the actual connection to the SOP? Think of it as a creative outside the box to provide that same content but make it a little bit more intimate and one-on-one, even though it’s a bigger message.

Incorporating a private podcast for a company or a business can be an opportunity for leadership to share what's going on in the company and create a work culture that may not be there now or add to the current work culture. Click To Tweet

On the flip side of that, that was internal for businesses. Those same things can be used for clients outward-facing but still in a small private podcast feed. That could be feedback, FAQs or anything like that, like Q&As that have come up to help clients work through a process. Department-specific communication and education. I highlighted that. A private podcast is a great way if your company is going to remain remote after this global pandemic and you need a way to communicate with that team.

Why not start a private podcast? Why not cut down on some weekly emails and have an opportunity for your team to hear your voice and create that bond with each other? They could listen to the updated podcast and you could bring it to your work chat. It’s also a way to keep people connected if your team is going to remain remote and need that little connection piece. Those are some ways that a company can use internally.

I’ve talked about remote team building. We took care of that. Those are all business-related and company-related. As you can see, there are a lot of different ways that you could even build on some of those ideas. You can also look at a private podcast and break it down based on your department in your company.

If you have a business and a small marketing team that needs to speak to the customer relations team or if you have an HR team that needs to speak to customer relations. You could look at how to find ideas. You could do it that way and by the department as well. The way that that could look is that you could have a private podcast for your company and each episode might be from another department.

 

It could be something like highlighting what’s going on in HR but the next episode could be how HR can communicate with customer relations or something along those lines. Those are different ways that you can come up with not only why and how it’s an amazing idea to use a private podcast but even built within that, it allows you to have some ideas for content for those podcast episodes. It is nice because sometimes when we do our podcasts, it doesn’t always lend to us immediately knowing what our content is. Whereas a private podcast for internal use is like an open book of content. That’s a great bonus.

I want to share some external ways that you can use a private podcast. There is a way that you can have a smaller group of people subscribe to a private podcast. Even though it’s going out there, it’s still subscription-based only. It’s still considered a private podcast. There are some related ideas and ways, whether it’s external or internal. I’m going to talk about some unique and outside-of-the-box that you could use for a client, customer campaigns, marketing, that type of thing.

It’s truly all the same thing. It’s whether it’s going to stay in-house or go out to a certain select exclusive group of people. I might want to mention that for Podetize. We use this technique for our worthy and use notes to stay connected, serve and build trust within the private community for our crowdfunding investors. That’s an example of how it was a private podcast for a specific amount of people.

Let’s talk about how brands can use private podcasting within their company. For example, let’s say I have my business and I’m doing a branding change. I’m decided that I want to change some things on branding. A one-time private podcast campaign can be a great way to share your brand story and promote that you’re going to be changing your brand. You can have episodes where you talk about what the brand was to what the brand is going to be and your inspiration for that. That’s an idea of how you can use a private podcast to help your brand story.

A private podcast is excellent if your company will remain remote after this global pandemic and you need a way to communicate with that team. Click To Tweet

Whether you’re a brand new company, it’s a great way to promote what’s about to happen or if you’re making changes, it’s a great way to communicate the story behind changes. When you think of a podcast, a lot of us think of it as storytelling or education. It lends itself perfectly to be used when those opportunities come up within your company or business.

Another way that you could use it for clients and customers in your company is for onboarding for different packages, contractors or anything like that. It’s a unique way to provide that education that they’re going to need, in addition to whatever systems you’re using. It does not replace signing into something to do a task but it can be a creative way to help that process and make that process a little bit more intimate and a little bit different.

As consumers, employees, contractors and clients of other businesses, we would welcome a change in different processes. As long as you’re getting covered what you need to get covered, why not throw in some creative mixes there along the way? You could use it for courses. As a supplement to a course, that also considers when you’re educating someone. It’s proven that people most likely retain information when it comes to them in a multisensory approach. That means getting something in writing something that they can read in addition to an audio version of that but a private podcast could be even more support to that.

There have been a lot of summits that have transitioned to a private podcast. It could be a virtual summit, something you do all the time or a retreat but in a podcast version. That’s also a unique approach. It could also help you with a launch. If you’re launching a program, a course, a TEDx Talk or a book, have a private podcast feed as a lead magnet to that TEDx Talk or book launch. It is another unique approach. Instead of endless email series, mix it up and throw a private podcast into that mix.

 

One thing I found was a unique use case that I stumbled across and I would consider myself. In the world, there are a lot of companies that are using text messages, the SMS technique to throw out little daily motivational or anything like that. It’s something that could be used in a private podcast. You have subscriptions to your private podcasts and you send them little daily motivational.

It’s a little outside the box but I thought it would be a unique thing to mention. I like that idea because SMS marketing platforms are expensive. It’s a little bit more of a cost-effective option to have something like this available to you and use it almost the same way. It’s a unique approach there. That’s about everything I have, Tom.

Thanks for sharing that. You covered a lot, Raphie, in that short period but we have another interesting use case. I could share that we have a new client who’s doing a hybrid approach. They are recording sessions with their guests as I understand it and we haven’t seen any of these yet, that are high-profile guests, at least in their industry. They’re doing one 90-minute session with that guest in a Zoom recording.

They’re recording the first 30 minutes. They will be published as a free podcast available on all the apps. In the last hour, they’re reserving premium podcasts. It’s a different thing they’re doing in 1 session with 1 guest. They were getting two different episodes. They’re submitting them as two different episodes to us to be produced. Once free 30-minute cast, a wide net on all the apps to raise awareness for the brand.

A private podcast campaign can be a great way to share your brand story and promote that you're changing your brand. Click To Tweet

They also tease, “There’s more to get. There’s a lot more value in an hour-long episode over here.” You have to get to that by subscribing to their private membership site. You’re paying for the content, not directly like a premium podcast, Apple or anything. Just in their environment in a membership site. There’s another value people get besides that premium podcasts as other things that they do. In 1 session, they are getting 2 episodes out of it. It is produced for 2 separate podcasts but 1 is private behind a paywall.

Behind the paywall, it can be used for something like that. It could be access to that private podcast. You could do a whole course. For those smaller company ideas, you could do all of that behind a paywall and still keep it private.

Private and monetize it directly. The problem with Apple’s system from a premium podcast is it’s only available on Apple and you have to give Apple a big cut of the revenue. In this way, you don’t have to share revenue with anybody if you do it yourself and have a private podcast. You control who pays. You have all the member information and contact info. You can retarget them for other things because they’ve opted in, signed up and paid for your membership group.

You’re right. You can have other things. This particular customer was producing the episode and all the social share graphics slides but behind the paywall, we’re not creating a conventional blog post as we do for public podcasts for two reasons. Number one, you don’t get any SEO value for posts that are behind a paywall. Google will not index them and tend not to send free traffic there.

 

There is no point from an SEO perspective for that but they’re taking all of the data and material that we create for a blog post and creating their downloadable PDF. That’s like an individual magazine article but in a PDF. That provides that information downloadable for their clients but only through that pay gate. They’re not publicizing it. There’s some other value and information they get from their premium content for each episode besides what we’re creating for them.

It’s an interesting model, which unfortunately doesn’t exist or I would like to show it to you all. It’s in the process of being created and set up. It’s supposed to launch in mid-June of 2022. We can, in the future, visit that, especially as we see it working and get some metrics. How many members do you have? Is it working for you? It’d be good to learn.

I feel like a private podcast feed. It’s almost like you find one idea and it’s a domino effect. You truly start to see it in the bigger picture and how valuable it can be. It’s a perfect opportunity for those that want to go into a podcast with monetization availability right away.

Not every podcast is a fit for monetization right away. There are certainly some that are and anybody that is podcasting in service to their business in any way. If you have a business or you are at least an independent entrepreneur business person that has something to sell, by all means, you can monetize your podcast right away, as long as it’s in alignment with that business and lead-generate from the audience or offer them things of value that might be something they have to pay for. We’re all about monetization. It’s a part of our brand name here, the whole idea at the right time, hopefully, for every podcast. Not everyone’s going to generate revenue from third-party sponsors and things. Certainly, that’s also a great option once you have the right fit audience.

A private podcast can be a way to get into podcasting without that full commitment of doing one that's going out into the world and syndicated. Click To Tweet

Most shows can monetize sooner by selling something they’re already in business doing in one way or another. Others are doing it with affiliates. There are many different ways to monetize the show. There’s no right or wrong answer. It’s unique to each podcaster. The premium/private podcast is we’re going to see a lot more of it.

It’s a perfect model to offer some value for free, give them an appetizer and provide some value. If they want the higher level or premium content, go and pay for it. It makes perfect sense. Some of you may not even want to make it be something people pay for but make people have to opt into your marketing list to get it. What you’re giving them value and what you’re getting in return may vary. It doesn’t necessarily have to be money.

For someone like me, I don’t necessarily want to sit down and type a newsletter but I can sit down and record a newsletter. It’s an opportunity for somebody to have an opt-in get into my world and I’m going to do a little podcast episode as a newsletter. That might be a little bit different than my business podcast. That is a unique approach.

I don’t know how you feel, Tom. Let me know about this but I almost feel that a private podcast can also be a way to get into podcasting without that full commitment of doing one that’s going out into the world and syndicated. The expectation is weekly, bi-weekly or whatever you do. It’s a way to get a taste of it and see if you like the workflow and the process of it.

 

That’s an option. No rule says, “You record podcast content and make it public for all the world.” If you’re going to do that, you need to be clear on the outcome that you’re going to achieve. If you’re going to put this out to a private audience, I hope you either already have a private audience who you can make aware of it, have a list or have a large following on social media. You have some way to raise awareness for this private podcast through some methods and means.

One advantage of making a podcast public is you can distribute it far and wide. You can have it available on two dozen podcasts and listening apps inside of a few weeks and get some amount of organic listenership that way. If it’s private, you’re putting another step in the process once people are aware of it to be able to consume it. You’re asking them to, “You can’t just click and get it. You’ve got to click and get to where you have to provide some information and sign up and then you can get it.”

If you want to go that route, you’ve got to make sure you have realistic expectations. Some people are like, “I have to sign up for one more thing. Do I want to do that?” They may not but if they already know you, they appreciate you. You’re going to be providing them some value for free. All you have to do is trade their name, email and maybe phone number. That’s a pretty easy ask as long as they know you or they have some awareness of you. They’re going to listen when you make them this offer.

It may not be the ideal lead magnet for a cold audience. It’s going to be your existing audience, followers or whoever you want to share it with.

We regularly meet people that have huge followings on TikTok, some other obscure platform or have a big Instagram following. It’s easier for people to follow you on Instagram than it is to sign up to receive your podcast episodes. Maybe it’s not that much harder but they’ve got to go someplace different to do it.

If they’re already on Instagram, that’s easy. They can follow you on Instagram quickly. That isn’t going to give them your podcast episode. They’re going to have to take action, leave Instagram and go somewhere to click to subscribe. It takes a little more involvement. People come to us and have a huge following one way or another already. That’s excellent. That’s an opportunity where that happened.

It leads to another thing that teases some things in the future coming up here that we’ve talked about, which is some things on LinkedIn and LinkedIn newsletters. You can record your way to what that newsletter is if you want. They need to be pretty short, 500, 600, to 800 words at most. You can build a quick following within LinkedIn for a newsletter.

We’re starting to experiment with this as a strategy for new podcasts to launch with a quicker audience. If you’ve got a LinkedIn following, you’re participating in that platform. I probably have 4,000 or 5,000 connections and Tracy has got twice that. That’s a lot of people that if you make them aware of a LinkedIn newsletter and we’ve been shocked how quickly people have been signing up to receive these like Tracy’s got 900 subscribers in the first month. We thought, “Is that a fluke?” Tracy is active on LinkedIn.

We wondered, “Maybe that’s only going to happen for somebody that’s the primary social platform they engage and they’re publishing a lot of stuff there.” It is Tracy does. She’s very active. LinkedIn is her biggest platform. We did an experiment trade with me and I am not active on LinkedIn. I’ll tell you. I’m on it and I got a lot of connections. If I log in to the app on my phone once a month, that’s big for me. It’s not where I’m most active.

We experimented and our team posted. We created a LinkedIn newsletter. It’s good content we’re putting out there. In the first month, my LinkedIn newsletter got over 1,200 people subscribing to it. I have people posting. I’m not engaging with anybody on LinkedIn. That sent some white bulbs off, “If a new podcaster has a following on LinkedIn, you got at least 500 or 1,000 connections or even more as better, put out a newsletter. LinkedIn has given a lot of exposure to your connections for that because it keeps people active on LinkedIn and keeps them on LinkedIn longer.”

You get out subscribers and build that up ahead of a podcast launch. Not that you can’t do this if you already have a podcast. No question, you can. You could continue to raise more awareness for that podcast. After you provide some value in a newsletter, get people to subscribe to it and make other offers, suggestions or calls to action that raise awareness about your show.

There haven’t been many marketing techniques we’ve ever recommended to new podcasters to try to do before the show is launched. However, this LinkedIn newsletter thing is one that it may make sense to do before because when your podcast launches, you’ve got an instant audience of subscribers to your LinkedIn newsletter. You can raise awareness about the podcast. You’re probably going to get a lot of them if they sign up for your newsletter to take action and subscribe to your podcast.

This is becoming a new strategy that we were experimenting with and it’s worth considering. As we get through experiencing it a few more times, it won’t be an experiment anymore. It’ll probably be something we recommend for new podcasters as long as you have a LinkedIn presence. If you have none, it will take too long to build that but most people have a LinkedIn.

 

Important Links

• Podetize
• The Binge Factor
• Not a Momma Life

 

About Raphie Wagner

Podcast Strategist and Consultant with a demonstrated history of working in podcast production industry. Skilled in Coaching, Podcast Project Management, Strategic Planning, and Research.

Strong community and social services advocate with a Master’s degree focused in Occupational Therapy/Therapist from Barry University. Podcast Strategist and Consultant with a demonstrated history of working in podcast production industry.

Skilled in Coaching, Podcast Project Management, Strategic Planning, and Research. Strong community and social services advocate with a Master’s degree focused in Occupational Therapy/Therapist from Barry University.