Latest / Content, Briefly / Are Podcasts Required for B2B?

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Are Podcasts Required for B2B? · Content, Briefly

• 0:00
  [on-hold music] This episode is brought to you by our friends at Ahrefs. They've been an awesome partner to us this year.
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• 1:04
  Thanks so much to our friends at Ahrefs for making this happen, and thank you so much for all your support. Hey, everybody, and thanks for tuning in to another episode of Content Briefly.
• 1:10
  Today we're talking about podcasting, and specifically where it fits in a B2B content strategy.
• 1:16
  Now, my opinion is that podcasts are one of the coolest and definitely the most fun things happening in B2B content right now. I would say that and YouTube, kind of both at the top of that list.
• 1:27
  You know, podcasts, because the medium and the way that it is kind of free of the algorithmic constraints and opportunities that so many other types of content are, just gives you the opportunity to be a human being and have interesting conversations and flex your creativity and, you know, look for ways to differentiate your brand and elevate the people within your company and your peers within the industry.
• 1:49
  There's so many, like, human things happening in the podcast world because you can't optimize it for an algorithm. You know, there's some of that going on in YouTube, of course, but there's an algorithm.
• 1:59
  So anyways, in this discussion today, Chloe, Eric, and I discuss where it fits in, who's in charge of it, what does the process look like, who hosts it, what's your concept look like, and then lastly, we discussed is it required now, or is it just a nice-to-have?
• 2:14
  So hope you enjoy this kind of a meta episode, since this is a B2B podcast. Quick plug for Superpath Pro. We've got a thirty-day free trial, so come kick the tires, see what you think.
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  We have a ton of awesome stuff going on in there right now. As always, you get the Slack group twenty-four/seven. There's cool stuff going on in the Slack group all the time. We have some new channels recently.
• 2:34
  The social strategy one is one I will highlight.
• 2:36
  There's a lot of interesting stuff happening there, particularly related to LinkedIn as social-- I would say it's sort of climbing the ladder of importance for most content individuals and content teams, and so there's some good stuff going on there.
• 2:48
  The content strategy channel is not new, but I would say that is the most reliable and richest source of great questions. Like, really, like, hard-hitting, pressing questions that folks are dealing with.
• 2:58
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  Please enjoy this episode on podcasting with myself, Eric, and Chloe. Take care, everybody. This episode of Content Briefly is brought to you by our friends at Ahrefs.
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• 4:08
  Hey, everybody, Jimmy from Superpath here today with Chloe and Eric for another episode of Content Briefly. Today we're talking podcasting, sort of meta, I guess, since we're gonna talk about podcasting on a podcast.
• 4:17
  But, you know, B2B podcasting has become something that not everybody does, but a lot of companies do, and I feel like there's not necessarily a tried and true playbook yet of, like, where podcasting fits in a B2B content strategy.
• 4:36
  Who owns it? Who operates it? Is it a founder pet project? Is there, like, a more deliberate plan behind it? What counts as success? What do you do with the stuff later? Et cetera, et cetera.
• 4:47
  So that's what we'll be diving into today. Eric, why don't we start with you? Doc has a podcast intermittently. Is that fair to say? Like, you've run it in seasons. Could you just give us, like, background?
• 4:57
  Like, what is the Doc podcast? Why do you do it? What's your thoughts on it? Yeah.
• 5:02
  So it happened, we did maybe forty-five episodes, and it's taken a break because the founder is the host, which is a whole issue we can talk about later. But- Oh, yeah. I bet that's the case- Essentially-...
• 5:14
  a lot of B2B podcasts. E- exactly, yeah. So we ran it for about a year, maybe a year and a half, and then it's taken a break, and then we're hoping to bring it back soon.
• 5:22
  But I would say it sort of operated as the core of our content strategy. Like, it was the thing that fed everything else. So the concept was pretty familiar. It was one-on-one interview.
• 5:33
  We talked to go-to-market leaders from already successful companies, like, you know, the person who founded customer success or who started customer success at Notion, the person who ran it at Loom, the person who led sales at whatever, Atlassian.
• 5:47
  Like, and they just told their story at, at the company, so pretty classic, like, how I built this type format, and similar to the format of when you interview people on this show.
• 5:57
  And then maybe what's different about what we did is, like, we went super hard on repurposing itFor every single possible medium that we could, because I'm such a small team with no resources and pretty much no budget, and it was like, if you have no money, it's an amazing strategy because you get to talk to smart people.
• 6:17
  You don't have to pay them to do that. Most people will come and talk to you, s- give you an hour of their time for nothing.
• 6:24
  They will say lots of really smart things that then you can sort of like claim as first party insights, and then we could use it across the rest of our content strategy.
• 6:34
  So like very quick, we turned every episode into a bunch of shorts and YouTube videos, so maybe like imagine just like a four or five minute clip as a horizontal YouTube video.
• 6:44
  And then we had like vertical shorts that we post on YouTube. We posted them on Instagram, TikTok, wherever. And then we also used, repurposed them as LinkedIn videos, mostly sort of like vertical videos.
• 6:55
  And then what I did is I saved those all in an archive, and then we could embed them in our blog posts and use them as insights on our blog. So we wrote a topic about like, or wrote a blog about sales management advice.
• 7:07
  We would take clips from like 10 different episodes, embed them, or just like quote people. So what it did is it like created an archive of like first party insights for freelancers or whoever else.
• 7:19
  Oh, and, and then just like one last thing is it's been like nine months since we actually recorded an episode. We'll be bringing it back soon.
• 7:25
  But then recently we've repurposed our favorite episodes into sort of long form newsletters, which I've been writing with Rosie from Superpath Community. Shout out Rosie.
• 7:35
  And we've-- yeah, so it's like nice, like long form story version, and so we've been able to like take that same interview again, put it in a new medium, new audience, get in front of different people.
• 7:46
  And so for me as like a resource-strapped small team, it's been amazing at like the fuel for like having something to say and talk about in the rest of our content.
• 7:55
  I love that that was like a mini masterclass on how to repurpose a podcast, because I agree with so much of what you just said.
• 8:02
  I think that a lot of times I see B2B podcasts and it's just like, okay, here's the recap, and then nothing else happens with it. Maybe there's like one clip.
• 8:12
  But I love the idea of creating, and I actually did this on my last role, I started to create exactly what you just said, like an archive of those insights and quotes so that we could pull them into topical pieces.
• 8:24
  So I think like for teams that are working on refreshing their content, not even creating net new, that's a really like quick win way to just get those like quote unquote, you know, proprietary insights and the things that like high AI, AI can't fake into your pieces.
• 8:41
  So I love that. I've had a love-hate relationship with podcasts. I will say like being the co-host on this I think has rejuvenated like, okay, I think I like podcasts. I think I have to like podcasts.
• 8:53
  But I have the attention span of a goldfish, so like listening to things audio-wise is challenging for me.
• 9:00
  So when you take the insights from a podcast and you repurpose it in different bite-sized ways or even the long form, more like story-like piece, that's where I really find myself gravitating toward those, and then I'm like, "Oh, this is a part of a podcast and a longer thing that I can be listening to."
• 9:18
  So I think that's kind of like a full circle moment for me. [chuckles] Totally.
• 9:22
  And I think what's interesting about, I kind of skipped right to tactics, but strategically thinking about a podcast, I think it's like, what is it? A picture's worth a thousand words.
• 9:31
  I think someone who listens to a one-hour podcast from your company, it counts as like one view on YouTube or whatever, and you see that and you're like, "Ah, one."
• 9:41
  But that's incredibly different than one page view on your website.
• 9:45
  I think the relationship you build with somebody by them listening to you speak for an hour, I mean, like all three of us have probably experienced this with when people join Superpath or whatever, like they feel like they know us or they feel like, you know, they already have this existing relationship with us.
• 10:00
  To have that be the starting ground of someone to then come to your like B2B SaaS product and feel like they already know the founder or they already know whoever the host is, they have this like very real connection that I don't know if you can get through social media posts even or blog.
• 10:16
  Like it's... I'm listening to this in my head when I'm like doing my dishes at 7:00 p.m. at night. It's very different than like casually pulling it up during the day.
• 10:24
  So I think there's this automatic connection building that you don't even need like huge frequency to create. And there's an intention behind it too, right?
• 10:34
  Like you're like, you see something and then you're like, "Oh, I'm gonna bookmark this because I wanna listen to it later, and I'm gonna use my valuable free time to interact with this brand."
• 10:45
  And that's like the holy grail, right, of like what we're trying to do as marketers. So that's where I think like podcasting can make a lot of sense.
• 10:53
  I think where it can be challenging is it depends on all the other things that you're doing.
• 10:59
  And in the past, I've pushed back on a podcast because essentially, depending on how much else you've got going on, it can feel like an entirely new editorial calendar, and that can be kind of intimidating.
• 11:12
  Like do you need a dedicated resource for it, for example? And that's where I think just thinking about how it fits into the ecosystem of everything that you're building is incredibly important.
• 11:23
  There's something beautiful about podcast today, like right now, and, and I think it's the medium, and it's difficult, maybe actually impossible to optimize.
• 11:32
  I mean, you can optimize it for entertainment, for education, but you can't optimize it to land at the top of an algorithm, and that's the best thing about it.
• 11:41
  You know, it's like very easy to just have people with expertise on the topic just talk about something, and like that in itself is actually quite valuable and sort of cuts through the noise of so much other marketing.
• 11:53
  You know, and I can't even tell you, like when people sign up for Superpath Pro, we send them a series of, of direct messages in Slack, and one of them is kind of like, "What made you finally sign up?"
• 12:02
  I can't even tell you how often people say, "Oh, I've been listening to the podcast and-"I thought, okay, like, whatever something triggered me today to say, "Okay, I'm gonna try this out." You know?
• 12:10
  It's like we don't have, like, gigantic numbers to show for it, but, like, I feel 100% confident that it does send customers our way. And then, like, to run a podcast is, like, so simple compared to other things.
• 12:22
  Like, we get to just, like, hang out on a call and talk about content, which is fun anyways.
• 12:26
  And I feel like oftentimes we're working through ideas, disagreeing with each other, you know, trying to understand where the other person's coming from.
• 12:32
  And, like, that in it of itself is valuable for the, for the host as well.
• 12:36
  It's just like if you could choose one marketing channel and just rate it by the amount of fun you have doing it, I'm almost certain it's podcast. Certainly versus writing. Like, writing's hard, tedious.
• 12:46
  Podcasting is fun and easy compared to that. I think what would be interesting is also to talk about sort of the tactical challenges and- Yeah... downsides. And like you talked about founder pet project.
• 12:58
  I think for me, I mean, part of the challenge was just it was building a new skill set. Like, most...
• 13:03
  I'm sort of your prototypical millennial content marketer who, like, number one skill is writing, number two is, like, SEO or whatever, you know, number three social media.
• 13:13
  Like, I feel like most of us are that kind of stack, and video editing is not my thing. You know, I've never had to prepare interviews necessarily in that sense, so that was a different skill set.
• 13:24
  Like, researching the person enough to have an interesting conversation. So there were some new skills to be built.
• 13:29
  Th- the way we ended up divvying the work at Dock is that we have an editor who does, like, just basic sort of VA editing of the episode.
• 13:40
  When the podcast was running, I had a freelancer who did all the repurposing video stuff, so they made all the clips using Opus, like, which is like an AI tool that finds the best moments. Riverside has an equivalent.
• 13:51
  Like, they all have equivalents now. They also wrote the LinkedIn post for the founder. So we had someone who just sort of handled all of that.
• 13:59
  And then what was interesting and challenging is, like, the founder aspect because... And that's sort of, of the evergreen question of podcasting is, like, should it be your founder or should it not?
• 14:09
  And I think there's lots of positives in the yes column for, like, if they're the face of your company, they're the face of your content, then, like, absolutely they should be in the podcast.
• 14:19
  I think the trap that's easy to fall into, and one that we definitely fell into for a while and when we bring it back I don't want to, is, like, your founder can't just be, like, the question asker.
• 14:29
  They also have to bring thought. Like, if you looked at, like, timestamps of a typical podcast, it's probably the host asks a question, the guest answers for five minutes.
• 14:39
  The host asks a question, the guest answers for five minutes. Like, that's how it mostly goes.
• 14:43
  But if your goal is to also portray some thought leadership from your company, like, the founder shouldn't just be, like, an interviewer. You're 100% right.
• 14:54
  It's hard to design the show in a way that achieves that, but it's really important to prioritize. It's interesting because it's almost like that's, like, a souped-up webinar panel for me. Like, I'm almost like- Yeah...
• 15:05
  okay, you know, there's three of us on this call right now, and, like, I have a journalism background, so prepping for those interviews and doing those sorts of questions and finding the stories, that is one of my superpowers.
• 15:17
  I love that. But I think that when... At my old company when we used to design webinars, we made sure that it was a blend of, you know, our expertise.
• 15:29
  If we were inviting a guest onto the webinar, you know, a client or something like that, it was their expertise, but it showcased the best of both worlds, and I do feel like in order to do that on a podcast, like,
• 15:42
  is that asking your founder to develop too many superpowers?
• 15:47
  And in that case, like, should, you know, your head of content or your head of marketing or whatever, like, more so be a facilitator or a co-host on it and create more of, like, a panel-style podcast? Like, I don't know.
• 16:01
  It's just- I have thoughts on that. Yeah. I have thoughts on that. We did, like, 100 episodes of interviews, and we had some amazing people come on. And there was a lot of great things that came from it.
• 16:15
  One not great thing that came from it was, to Eric's point, like, I actually felt like I had a lot to say that I wanted to say, and I felt like I had sort of...
• 16:24
  Katie Parrott wrote this blog post for Animalz about thought leadership, and she talked about thought leadership is good when you have, quote-unquote, "earned secrets."
• 16:31
  Basically, like, you have experience doing something and that's your kind of foundation to talk about it. And I felt like I had a bunch of earned secrets that I wanted to talk about, but you can't do it. Y- you know?
• 16:40
  And so interestingly, since we've been co-hosting these episodes, our download numbers are up, which I find to be very interesting. The format is like it's more casual, right?
• 16:50
  Like, we all sort of get a chance to, like, say our piece on a topic and try to sometimes, like, come to a conclusion on, like, what is the way to go.
• 16:57
  But yeah, I think probably the two biggest problems for B2B podcasts are, one, is what's the format? I think that's really important, and defaulting to interview I don't think is necessarily the right move.
• 17:08
  And then the second is who's gonna host it? Eric, we did an episode over the summer about this, and it's kinda like this tension of personal brands in content right now where, like, people follow people.
• 17:19
  So, like, you want your team doing stuff, like, on social or having their own newsletters or whatever because, like, that can be an opportunity to send folks directly or indirectly to the brand.
• 17:31
  But then what happens when they become the voice and face of the company? Like, that is complicated. I think that was my first podcast with you guys. Yeah, you were on that one, that's right.
• 17:39
  And it's like, so what do we do with that? Y- you know what I mean? And I feel like the podcast host is probably even more difficult than, like, the LinkedIn writing, you know?
• 17:48
  Because it's like that person really does in a way become the person most closely associated with the brand for the listeners, and maybe that's good, maybe that presents problems later on, but- Well, not everyone's good at it either.
• 18:01
  Absolutely. You know, it's a learned skill or, you know, it's...
• 18:05
  Some people don't likeDoing those types of things, they would rather be behind the scenes and, you know, to Eric's point, like, the quintessential, like, the writer, the SEO, you know?
• 18:15
  So I think it's an interesting one for me in terms of is this now a requirement for if you're in content marketing in some way, like, you have to be comfortable putting your face out there, putting yourself on video, putting your voice out there because the world is such a multimedia place.
• 18:34
  Or do you have to find someone else to take that if you're not comfortable with it? Yeah. Totally.
• 18:39
  This goes back to our creator conversation in another way too that, like, if you have a really talented sort of generalist marketer who can do those interview-style podcasts even if they're not the subject matter expert.
• 18:51
  Like, if I was marketing to developers or whatever, I would have nothing to say. But that's a case where if I were a good journalist, as Chloe says, you could bring a guest on and get really interesting insights and...
• 19:03
  Like, there's a lot of faceless content in that way of, like... I, I think of someone like the First Round Review, which, like, I love their blog or whatever, and they have a podcast version.
• 19:11
  Like, the host is just, just, like, a host, right? They're not delivering any insights, but they're just really good at asking questions and asking another question on top of that question.
• 19:20
  Like, it's just your classic sort of journalist mindset, and that's good. That's a good podcast in one way. But then, like, I think that's an easier way to do it. It's a harder way to, like...
• 19:31
  Your, like, growth factor isn't gonna be as much in terms of, like, perception of your company, right? It's a good way to, like, get interesting guests.
• 19:38
  You might gain attention through the guest, but it's harder to, like, build an audience that way, I think. Which is another point in that a podcast isn't a quick way to grow an audience.
• 19:49
  If you have an existing audience, it's a very easy play to just, like, put things in front of them and put interesting thoughts.
• 19:55
  But if you're expecting to start a podcast and get, like, hundreds and thousands of listeners without putting, like, a serious advertising push or something behind it, don't do it [laughs] because it's- Yeah, yeah...
• 20:05
  it's not... And when people ask me, like, "Should I start a podcast?" The question I bounce back on them, because this is my experience, is like, "Will it be worth it if nobody listens to it?"
• 20:16
  Which is, like, the repurposing question, right? Like, can you do something else with it? Like, what, like, secondary or tertiary value does this have for your content strategy if no one listens?
• 20:27
  Because people aren't, like, lining up to add another podcast to their list, you know?
• 20:32
  And I think that makes a lot of sense in terms of just, like, goaling yourself around, like, the bucket of content that you create from the podcast.
• 20:41
  So essentially it just creates, like, this flywheel of content that you're doing, and then you're not necessarily looking at the success of the podcast in terms of, oh, we made 50 best, you know, B2B podcast in X category, won an award.
• 20:55
  You're instead being like, "Look how this fueled six months of content for us, and that content led to this sort of, you know, these leads, these revenues, et cetera," talking about the whole attribution report.
• 21:06
  Like, you know, I think that's how you have to look at it. But I don't think that a podcast...
• 21:12
  Again, this is a resource, budget, goal, strategy question, but I don't necessarily think a podcast should be your end-all be-all for, like, all of the content that you're producing.
• 21:23
  I think you can create a content repurposing machine out of it, but I still think you need other pieces of the puzzle because you're not gonna be able to fabricate absolutely everything you need out of
• 21:36
  actual stories, insights. Like, you're gonna need other things unless you completely, you know, lead the guest in such a way that it doesn't then become... It doesn't sound authentic anymore. Yeah.
• 21:49
  I think to run a very successful guest-driven show, your process has to be so dialed. Like, you really have to, like,
• 21:58
  know the right questions to ask to extract the right information to make the guest the star, to make them sound smart.
• 22:05
  You know, it's, like, so easy to book a guest and then just ask softball questions and, like, it's just, it's just not interesting. Like, you're just hoping the guest will say something cool.
• 22:15
  There's a format of podcast that I love, which I find to be, like, kind of a simple, simple play, but quite effective.
• 22:21
  The MKT1, Emily Kramer, does this pretty regularly where, like, she'll put a massive amount of effort into publishing a post, sometimes free, sometimes behind the paywall on the Substack, and then there's a podcast that talks about it.
• 22:35
  And it's not the exact same content, but, like, by the time she's gone through this huge effort to write the post, it's really a great way to, like, get a little bit more juice out of that massive effort.
• 22:47
  I feel like if you're creating the type of content that requires that type of effort, throwing a podcast on top's, like, easy, especially if you're the person creating it, you know?
• 22:56
  And you can, like, have somebody else to bat back and forth with. Like, that's a...
• 23:00
  Not to, like, just, like, cherry-pick one thing that I think a lot of people could do, but, like, I think a lot of people could do that, you know.
• 23:05
  Like, versus relying on interviews or, or kind of, like, relying on your founder or whatever. It's, like, a thing you can do without too many dependencies.
• 23:12
  Well, and putting that much effort into writing, like, you're gonna have thoughts as you're- Yeah... writing it, right?
• 23:18
  Like, you're gonna have this whole side bank of comments, of notes, of scribbles, of really crappy headlines or whatever that didn't make it into the final cut. So, like, I think that's brilliant.
• 23:30
  Like, you take what didn't make it to the final cut on the cutting room floor and you say, "What else can we do with this?
• 23:35
  This is a thread that I thought maybe I was gonna go down, but instead maybe I'll go down that on a podcast." Like, I think that makes a ton of sense.
• 23:43
  And from a, like, speak to your customers point of advice that we always get as marketers, podcast is a really good excuse to just talk to your target ICP if you're doing, like, the interview format.
• 23:55
  And I've, from a content writer, SEO perspective, I've gotten some of the best topic ideas, even just, like, keywords because someone said a thing in an interview where they said, "Yeah, when I'm running our, like, scaled success," I'm like, "Hmm, I haven't written about a scaled customer success program.
• 24:12
  I never heard that term." And I, like, Googled it, had, like...Tons of keyword volume, no content about it because it's just not like, if you're not in that world, you wouldn't know.
• 24:19
  So it's sort of these like early adopter terms that get floated out.
• 24:24
  Like, they happen in conversation a lot earlier than they happen in writing, and so I've had a lot of our best sort of like early opportunity SEO ideas from just hearing people say things.
• 24:36
  I mean, and that opens up, like, you can imagine an AI workflow that like takes the transcript of your podcast and then comes up with ideas, and like there's all that kind of repurposing too.
• 24:47
  It's easier to like sit and talk for an hour with somebody and just like spit out a bunch of AI content, like if volume is what you're going for, but- You could even build a chatbot. Exactly.
• 24:57
  [laughs] I was looking at Doc's YouTube channel, or like our Grow and Tell YouTube channel, and like we haven't posted anything in maybe nine months, and it had 100 views of shorts and videos like in the last 48 hours, which is like we've posted nothing.
• 25:11
  Yeah, that's interesting. Like all-time watch hours of 1.3 thousand hours.
• 25:16
  Like, that feels like a lot for like a podcast where didn't have like explosive growth or anything, still thousands and thousands of hours of people watching.
• 25:23
  I'm assuming Superpath one would be like 10 times, 100 times that. And so I think like effort for reward, it's like I find it's worth it. It, again, it was like a new skill to like spin up, develop a workflow.
• 25:35
  Like Jimmy, like you said, the workflow is incredibly important.
• 25:38
  And another thing that happened with me and Alex, the host at Grow and Tell, our Doc podcast, like he's our CEO, he really wanted to prep for the interviews himself for the first 20, 30 guests 'cause he felt that if he didn't do the research, then he wasn't gonna be able to have meaningful conversations.
• 25:56
  But then that made it like a huge bottleneck for him to do the show, because he was investing one to two hours for every show on top of the actual hour of talking to the guest, became kind of unsustainable.
• 26:08
  And there was that like a bit of the CEO pet project thing of he just loved doing it. He had this like vision of being a podcast host.
• 26:16
  Eventually, I took over the research in advance of the episode and like nothing happened, which is great. [laughs] Like, the, the quality didn't go down. Like, he was as prepared.
• 26:25
  So I think like taking the work away from your subject matter experts and just putting that burden on your content/marketing team is, is really gonna pay off, because people get...
• 26:36
  That's the hardest part of a podcast is it's just like tiring to keep it going. And you ki- you really have to keep it going. It's such a consistency play.
• 26:43
  You have to release an episode every week or every two weeks, or else you don't build that sort of audience loyalty, which I think is the key for a podcast. People have to start sharing it with other people. Yeah.
• 26:55
  So but it's really like a mental block to keep it going. Like, there's all these benefits, but it feels hard as you're doing it.
• 27:02
  Well, and I think that's why people have to treat it like an editorial calendar, and you have to develop like that process in terms of either what guest or what topic or what this and what that. And like the way that
• 27:14
  I have approached it in the past in terms of trying to envelope a podcast strategy into our overarching content strategy is really looking at like podcast topics as, you know, what we're gonna be talking about seasonally to mirror it with like what the blog was gonna be talking about, what a long form asset was gonna be talking about, so that the podcast essentially could be the, I don't know, like the sprinkles, right?
• 27:38
  Like the insight sprinkles for like those larger pillars or topics that you know are gonna be core to the content that you're putting together.
• 27:46
  Like, that's the way that I envision it so that it also, you know, supports like your business goals as well as gets, you know, your brand, your name, exposure, all that out there.
• 27:57
  Like, I do think that it still has to connect to what you actually are trying to say in, in the market and like what your business, your product, or your clients, like one of the above, right, whichever of the buckets you're trying to look at.
• 28:10
  And I think that's why people can have a tough time trying to figure out like what should our podcast actually focus in on. Because your automatic thought is like, well, it has to promote our product.
• 28:20
  But some of the best podcasts, like they, they're not gonna mention the product, right? It's just a circular reasoning that you're going to get to that conclusion. There's, you know, I just looked at my own podcast app.
• 28:32
  Just sort of reflecting on something sort of funny about it, which is like your podcast can be alongside like some of the most popular podcasts in the world, and just like the way the app is, like they're just right next to each other.
• 28:43
  Like, if you can earn that subscriber, you know? But there's like a, I think expectation setting is important. You know? Like, there's so many celebrities who launch podcasts and they're like instantly tons of people
• 28:54
  fo- or, you know, are subscribing because it's just like, like Amy Poehler, comedian, like created a podcast like a couple months ago. It's like top five podcast.
• 29:00
  That means they're probably getting millions and millions of down- but like she has millions and millions of fans.
• 29:03
  So like, and I think understanding what success looks like, like the Superpath podcast gets 400 to 500 downloads an episode. I think that's fantastic. Is it millions? No.
• 29:12
  I would love if it were millions, but like to me, like there's like an obvious benefit to the business.
• 29:16
  Like, I have like attribution, anecdotal attribution, I guess, and like it doesn't have to get a million downloads to be really successful. So I don't know, do... A question for both of you to, to kind of round this out.
• 29:28
  Is it required? Is podcasting a required part of a B2B content strategy today? Deep. I mean, I'm gonna use marketers' favorite answer. It depends. [laughs] Depends, yeah. [laughs] That's what I was gonna say.
• 29:41
  No, you stole my answer. [laughs] I think it's required. That's my position. I think it's required. I think that so much of what we do is relying on algorithms, is paid.
• 29:52
  It's just like it, the, it's one of the maybe the only organic channel left that is mostly free of algorithmic constraints, and offers like a real opportunity to differentiate, to create like that human to human connection that other channels basically just don't allow anymore.
• 30:12
  I would say I don't know if it's completely required. I think that it is requiredTo really think about why you're not doing it.
• 30:22
  And if you're not doing it, to have a really, really compelling reason, because I do see the value that it brings, and I think there are a million reasons to do it, and but if there is like one reason why you're not doing it because you're doing a million other things that are more impactful, I would say challenge yourself to say, "Why aren't we doing it?"
• 30:45
  And then try and find a solution to see if it can be a part of like your content plan and your overarching strategy. I agree 100%.
• 30:52
  The only reason we paused our podcast is because our founder needed to be sort of heads down in the product for... 'cause we're a seed stage company still.
• 31:00
  He just needed to be heads down for nine months just evolving it to something else, and so the podcast just wasn't the place to be spending 10 hours a month of limited time, right? And so that was the only reason.
• 31:12
  Like the positives are hugely outweigh the work involved for sure. And I think there's, like I said earlier, nobody listens to the show, there's still so many benefits.
• 31:23
  If nobody ever reads your SEO listicle, then it was a waste, right? Like it doesn't serve any benefit beyond that, and the podcast like has all this evergreen value for sure.
• 31:34
  I just wanna name drop three people real fast. Oh, please do. Eric Doty, Jimmy Daly. [laughs] I think, I think about Content Briefly, I think about three names.
• 31:44
  The first is Jon Bonini, who I think like a lot of people are very familiar with, but his whole concept of the content brand, a lot of times that's anchored in proprietary insights that are gleaned from podcasts, and he's got a lot of really interesting stuff to say on this even though he and I have respectfully disagreed at times where a podcast fits in an overall content strategy.
• 32:07
  I think the second person that comes to mind, and these are all big names, but like if you're not already following them, go follow them, is Devin Reed.
• 32:13
  I just recently started listening to more of his podcast and watching him on YouTube, and his setup is insane, and it's clear that he puts a lot of effort, time, and probably money into it.
• 32:27
  But the podcasts are so insightful. The last one that... well, it wasn't the last one, but the last one I listened to was with Heike Young over at Microsoft, and I loved it. I follow her on LinkedIn.
• 32:40
  And then the third one is Andrew Copeland, and I think he is a master class in terms of getting the vulnerabilities out of people in just a really inspiring way. So those are my- That's awesome.
• 32:54
  Go check those out and tell your friends about Content Briefly. All right, how's this for a segue? If you're gonna do a B2B podcast you should tie it directly to business results.
• 33:02
  So in that spirit, go check out Superpath Pro. Yeah, how about that? [laughs] Wow. 30-day free trial. You get... There's just so much going on. So like this podcast was triggered by a conversation that happened.
• 33:14
  So somebody like brought this topic, there was a great conversation on it. Like that's the type of thing that's happening in there all the time.
• 33:19
  Then you also get access to our monthly one-on-one calls, the Superpath Social every month which is a group call that has breakout sessions. We're doing monthly AI show and tell.
• 33:29
  There's just a bunch of awesome stuff going on, so superpath.co to learn all about that. Anything else? Let's get this one to 750 downloads. Woo. I like it. Let's do it. [laughs] Cool.
• 33:39
  I've got a big chart behind me where I count listeners. [laughs] Bye. [laughs] Perfect. See you guys. Thanks, all. [upbeat music]