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Zach Armstrong, founder at Rooster High Productions, guides you through harnessing the full power content marketing powered by podcasts, especially for professional service businesses. In each episode you'll learn another process, method, or best practice for using podcasts as a cornerstone of a content strategy that starts that relationship with your next client before you meet them.
Zach started in theater in 2003, audio in 2010, and marketing in 2015. As an editor, storyteller, small business owner, and marketing process guru, you'll find yourself entertained and informed when you subscribe to Rooster High Radio.
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Welcome to Rooster High Radio. My name is Zach Armstrong. I'm the founder at Rooster High Productions, where we harness the power of podcasts for content marketing. Much like this. Today we are talking about using interviews for connection. So remember the past couple of times here on Rooster High Radio, we've talked about a few things.
A couple episodes back, we've talked about why solo episodes should be your primary focus. If you are using a podcast to generate your content marketing, right, you've gotta show off your expertise. And then interviews are great for a couple reasons. Last week. Uh, if you didn't catch that episode, go check it out.
And we talked about how you want to pick interviewees whose expertise will serve your audience. Now, there is a secret other reason to do an interview that's a bit [00:01:00] different. It's a bit more of a strategic business move. And every time I talk to a real smart business person who has already picked up podcasts and they discovered this quote unquote cheat code, this quote unquote life hack, right?
It's really not much of a trick. It's just leveraging the fact that you have a podcast and a podcast are fun and cool. And this is using interviews to get strategic connections for your business. This means using an interview for your benefit and your business's benefit. Now we're gonna talk about, uh, the qualifiers here. You have to do this right for the sake of your audience and for the sake of your guest.
But at the end of the day, you can use a podcast interview to get a strategic guest that is a connection for your business, and that's why. They're on the podcast, so we're gonna talk about all the dynamics you need to consider to make that happen in the best possible way. Again, my name is Zach. This is Rooster High Radio, where we are unpacking the power of podcasts for content marketing.
Factors In Using Your Business Podcast As A Strategic Connector
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The two main points about using interviews in this way [00:02:00] is that one, they are a great hook to get a strategic meeting with somebody who's gonna be a benefit to your business. Are they an ideal client and a client Who's really the next step up and the kind of person you wanna serve?
Are they, are they, uh, a peer or a contact somebody who's really notable? You just want that relationship with them because you know that's gonna be a good relationship to have. So whether they're a client, uh, or a peer, or simply, somebody notable in your space or an adjacent space, you can use a podcast episode interview to say, Hey, come be a guest on my podcast.
I would love to hear your take on this topic.
Warning! Generosity Required
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So they are great for that, but you can't just do this on the cheap or else it's going to show. Real generosity with your guest and with your audience is the absolute key because if you use this quote unquote cheat code as a cheat code, then what's gonna happen is your, if your guest even agrees to be on.
They're going to see that [00:03:00] you are just grasping at a relationship with them. Now, you are using this to meet this person, but you've gotta use real generosity and real wisdom to actually get them on your podcast in a way that is open-handed, that makes sense, that says, Hey, I really want to honor your expertise.
How great you are. Let me show you that I really care about this and I care about you beyond just the connection. Now, of course, you still have to ask for the connection. You've gotta advocate for yourself. I'm not saying to become, you know, totally altruistic and disappear into the background here and never mention yourself or pitch yourself or say, you know, what you have to bring to the table.
Uh, sometimes you have to do that pretty clearly and pretty directly. But what you can't do, . Simply trying to be getting something from this person through this whole process, or else it's probably going to be obvious. So you want to use interview slots as a way to make strategic connections for your business, and you want to do it with real human generosity, right?
You don't want to cut a corner here with connecting [00:04:00] with this person. It's gotta be a real genuine interaction, even if it's one you are trying to calculate, right? Even if it's one that you are moving with intent to say, Hey. If I wanna have a relationship with you because I want to make this a win win.
Who Do You Target?
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So, diving into some of the points and best practices about this here, um, we, you first wanna figure out who's a good connection for your business, right? Is this, is this the next kind of client who is going to be a great fit? For instance, with my business, uh, one target market I'm looking at is realtors.
Right. Realtors who have to have their face out there, people should trust them. And that would augment the word of mouth and awareness about these people's expertise, both with potential future clients, right? Where, uh, they see you on social media. Somebody shares and they go, wow, I really like the way this realtor talks about this thing.
I feel like I, I'm building that trust, right? That content marketing doing that trust building, the relationship starting [00:05:00] and relationship building while you sleep. One of the great advantages of a saturated content marketing strategy, the other thing is keeping yourself top of mind and the people you've worked with before.
Right. My wife and I absolutely loved our realtor who helped us find and get this house that we're living in Now, Christina Lafonte here in Athens, she's fantastic. And the more I see her on social media, applying her trade, showing off how impressive she is, right? As a realtor and, and what she does, getting the stuff done, staying on top of things, being connected, finding the right homes, right, uh, um, stewarding relationships, the more my confidence in her.
Just keeps, keeps going up. Now, we're not gonna need to buy another house anytime soon, I don't think. But the more I remember, Christina, the more I see her on social media, the more I'm gonna say, oh yeah, Christina LaFontaine fantastic realtor. I would recommend anybody and everybody work with her. So that's an example of why you wanna stay top [00:06:00] of mind with your clients.
Early on in the life of this podcast, a current client of mine, uh, saw some, saw some of the content on the channel and said, oh, you know, I think I'm gonna implement that. And then right after onboarding, they were starting to record and they talked to me about some of the advice they were implementing.
And so that was great. It's for current clients, it's for future clients, it's for past clients.
The Process: Identify Your Guest
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So breaking down all of the pieces here about how to do this successfully is that first you want to identify who you're going after. Who is the strategic get for your business? Are they in the kind of, uh. Are they in kind of space with some of your other ideal clients?
And they're the kind of next step up of, uh, success. They're one of my target markets with this kind of content marketing service are realtors. So I might be looking around and saying, okay, who are the realtors I can go ahead and work with? And then who are the realtors who are doing the big ticket stuff, who are really high end with, uh, the sales they're making really successful?
[00:07:00] We've been around a long time. How can I land, how can I land an interview? With one of them and make that connection to show off what I do and find an appropriate topic. Maybe bring them in to talk about how they have used social media marketing. In the past with their business over time. So that would be an example of, you know, the kind of person I would go look for.
So who would you go look for in your business as a strategic business connection interviewee, right? Do you want to go ahead and make that connection in, uh, a group of people who are a group of your ideal clients and you want to go ahead and start that relationship off with one of them? Is it somebody who is a peer of some kind, who's really successful and you want to just start a business relationship with them for the sake of getting to know them, getting advice from them, and, and sharing with them as well?
And you can go ahead and, and find an appropriate, uh, find an appropriate topic to invite them onto the podcast about and reach out. And then are there some totally blue sky [00:08:00] names who would be up there within the range of like truly notable or really known in your industry?
Famous in your industry. If you have a halfway decent podcast, you have a platform to say, Hey, I wanna honor you by inviting you onto this platform, right? Some of these connections, the benefits of knowing them are gonna be obvious, right? If they're an ideal client type, then maybe they're gonna wanna work with you, right?
Maybe they're gonna tell their friends about you when they have a great time on your podcast. Maybe it's a little bit more open-handed, where you know that if you made this connection with this person who's successful, they're, uh, x number of years ahead. Or maybe they're, maybe they're, you've been in business as long as they have, but you know that making a connection with them would help pull you into that next step and improve your network in that way.
And then some of these people, you just know that it would be a great connection because you like them and yeah, maybe they're more successful than you, maybe they're not, but you just know that this would be a good relationship to start off. Right.
Pick A Good Topic For Your Audience
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Which brings me to one of the next points,[00:09:00] you do still want to, as you're doing this, ensure a good fit for your topic and for your audience. Now, like I mentioned, one of my ideal clients being, uh, realtors, right? I would have to find a topic that truly is relevant for a realtor to come speak to.
We could talk about content and their experience with, uh, hiring photographers. We could talk about their use of social media and building relationships over time on social media because the realtors, I. Who have executed on building a presence on social media are gonna be the ones who have seen the results from augmenting that word of mouth over time with a social media presence, right?
So there's a lot of Venn diagram crossovers I can look at and find a truly appropriate place to bring a realtor on. So look for a place that makes sense for this person to speak into with a little bit of creativity, a little bit of brainstorming. You can find, you can find the right topic to bring this person in on.
If you're having trouble thinking about a topic, you've got, you know, you've got your target, you've got the person you want [00:10:00] to bring in on, and you don't know exactly what topic is in the Venn diagram between the air expertise and yours. Shoot me an email, zach@roosterhigh.com and, uh, we can brainstorm that a little bit together.
Real Generosity
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We can look at what they're good at, their background, their history, and then what you do and figure out what topic you want to put together to invite them to come speak on. Now, the back half of this episode here is really the most important because if you just take the front half and you run and you say, okay, I wanna squeeze all the advantage, all the leverage I can out of this, right?
That's one of the hot business words, leverage. I want to leverage this relationship. I want to get as much out of it as I can. I can go get that good client. Now, a good confident approach will often serve you well. Business. However, if you forget the human behind the business, if you are just treating the relationship as trans transactional to just get, you know, get some blood from the stone on it, then you are likely going to, to lose [00:11:00] some trust in that relationship.
You try to build it likely won't start well, they won't see you as a person trying to actually start a relationship for the sake of the relationship. I realize there is a bit of a tension here in what I'm saying because when you invite this person on you, you are doing it for the chance at making that good connection with them. But you've gotta do it with real generosity and real openhandedness. It's that balance of not asking from a place of need.
Because here's the thing, you're a good business person, right? If you've, if your, your offers are working, you're figuring it out, you're making that money. You're figuring it out. You don't actually need this person to continue succeeding, but their relationship with this person would be a great boon to your business.
And so you've gotta be actually generous with it and hold it with an open hand, and make the ask appropriately.
The Invitation
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So, part of the way to do this, the invitation is pretty simple, right? You find a person, you find a topic, you [00:12:00] show that you care. You show about the, you know about this person. And then part of the magic is really in their experience of being interviewed by you.
Mostly this will likely be remote, right? So you want some good tools, you want them to work, right? Uh, with my clients and I, my clients are all using squad cast. That, comes with, with working with me. And Squad Cast is a fantastic, remote recording solution like Zencastr or Riverside. If you've heard of those, we'll dive into how useful those tools are and how they work so you can understand, in the future episode of Rooster High Radio.
So once you have them on, you want it to be a smooth experience. You want to set the expectations of how long will it take, right? Generally saying, uh, up to one hour, I think 45 minutes really is the sweet spot though. And then you end at latest with, uh. At the 40 minute mark, right? So you can do a little, uh, under promise, over deliver.
So save 45 minutes, right? Uh, a full hour can feel like a bit much. So save 45 minutes, use up 40. And that's from starting the call [00:13:00] with them to hanging up. So you're looking for about a half hour episode here. You're looking for about a half hour episode here. And of course, this is all just baseline stuff, a place for you to start.
You can mix and match as needed. Your results may vary.
The Narduwar School of Interviewing
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So, uh, set a good expectation. 45 minutes, get done in about 40, and you are going to want to engage in the Narduwar School of Interviewing when you are using this as a strategic connection. And I'd recommend this even when you are doing interviews as a, a, bringing an expertise to your audience, like we talked about in last episode, but especially when you are using an interview to form a strategic connection for your business through your podcast, you need to engage in the nardo.
School of interviewing. If you have no idea what I just said and you think I'm having a stroke, that's okay. Nardo War is a Vancouver based interviewer who interviews music artists, especially hip hop artists and all sorts of other artists over his long career [00:14:00] as an interviewer. Essentially an independent journalist who has this tradition, this, this signature of researching the most crazy niche facts about his interviewees.
He'll walk up to somebody, uh, to interview them. He'll start talking with them, and then he'll make a reference to a band they started in high school that only lasted a week, or he will hand them a piece of their early merch that they developed very early in their career, they lost track of, and then they got big, and were never able to find those pieces of merch they produced back then.
Just type in Nardo, our interview greatest hits into YouTube. You're gonna see what I'm saying now. Nardo War is famous for his research. He has even scared people away from the interview because they feel like he knows too much about their past. Now, I'm not saying you have to shock the person or make them uncomfortable, however, the inspiration that I want you to take from Duar.
Is that when you're interviewing somebody, especially for a strategic connection for your [00:15:00] business, you need to research them in a way that shows you really do care and you really are a fan of theirs in a meaningful way. Right. I had an interview with a gentleman named Carlos, who has a pretty good sized YouTube channel. He was coming on my podcast very graciously to talk about a card game I enjoyed. And when Carlos came on, I had booked him and I had done my research about Carlos. I'd watched a lot of his episodes on his YouTube channel and started to make notes on what Carlos likes, you know, what is Carlos?
A fan of what is meaningful to Carlos. And one thing I found out is that Carlos loves Michael Jordan, and Carlos loves Michael Jordan's quotes about practice and perfectionism, right, and failure. And so, uh, I found that I saw Carlos give that quote on a few episodes of his YouTube channel. I made sure that I wrote it down, I had it familiar, and then I walked into that interview with a couple of pieces of information about Carlos that I was only gonna share if appropriate.
Right? I wasn't trying [00:16:00] to force these facts about Carlos in front of him to show that I care, uh, because of its force. It doesn't matter as much. And towards the end of the interview with Carlos. Uh, the subject of practice came up and it was a great chance to say, oh yeah, I have heard you talk about this Michael Jordan quote on a few episodes of your show.
And it was relevant to the topic at hand. And it showed Carlos how much I cared and I had done my research and he laughed, and he was impressed. He was like, yes. Oh my gosh. I love that quote. Uh, another, another place to go check out this kind of interviewing for some inspiration is look up hot ones.
You've likely seen some viral clips. Uh, this gentleman . Uh, this gentleman, uh, Sean, I believe his name is on Hot Ones, does some really deep research on his mostly celebrity guests. And really wows them. And it turns into not just a PR conversation for the, uh, for the, the, the, the celebrity, but what it turns into is all of a sudden they recognize that this kinded their research, he found out some crazy deep [00:17:00] stuff about them, and all of a sudden it's just a conversation between two humans.
And the kind of stuff that Sean gets out of these interviews is just absolutely amazing. So you don't need to need be the next hot ones. You don't need to be the next nardo. Go. Go out and research your guest and show that you care by presenting the right deep information about them at the right time.
Now, don't go too deep, right? Naming all of their childhood pets and their wifi password. That's gonna be a little creepy, but go show that you care and present it at the right time tactfully.
Patience and Payoff
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And when you do this well, the payoff is in the patience. We talked about doing this, yes, to form that strategic connection with somebody, but you have to do it in an open-handed way. You can't be expecting them to then engage with you in the way that you wanted them to engage. You've gotta hold it with an open hand.
You have to say, Hey, I appreciated this. This was great. Thank you so much and be then be surprised when they're gen by their generosity. When they do reach [00:18:00] out and make connections and send you off, uh, as a recommendation to other people they know. So you've gotta hold it with an open hand. And so you're going to do this and then sometimes you won't get what you were hoping to get out of it, at least not in the timeframe.
Maybe you expected you're gonna have one of these interviews. The person is gonna say, yeah, that was great, thank you so much. And then they won't respond again, or they won't be engaging with you in the way that you were hoping. Uh, so what you've gotta do is just be okay with that. Hold it with an open hand.
Do find the right places to advocate for yourself or bring it back up, or make the ask that you wanna make right. You can't be devoid of that in business, sometimes you do need to be direct and forward, depending on, depending on what's going on with you and your situation. But generally speaking, the payoff is in the patience.
So hold it with an open hand. Don't rush it. Make it natural. Business is simply one aspect of human relationships, right. Now, it's a big one. It's an important one. It's how people get fed. It's how people get goods and services. [00:19:00] It's how you make a living and make sure, make sure to remember that you've got to treat the real human relationships like real human relationships at the end of the day. Treat it generously and eventually people will respond to that. And remember to stand up for yourself when you need to.
Interviewing Richard Garfield
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Oh, one story I have with this is I shot for the moon with an in-House podcast before I went full-time with my business. I shot for the moon with the founder of Modern Card Games.
So you may have heard about collectible card games, like the Pokemon Trading Card game or Magic, the Gathering. Magic. The Gathering was the first big one. There was another attempt or two right beforehand, but Magic The Gathering is really what got it right, and what it turned into is, uh, essentially if you're unfamiliar with these kinds of games, it's fantasy themed, think Game of Thrones, right?
If you're familiar. And if you're a giant nerd, you're cringing at the comparison I just made . Um, what it is, is, you know, pieces of cardboard with characters on them, and you build a deck and play a game against [00:20:00] another person. And so what happens is that, uh, what happened is that this gentleman designed this fantastic card game, and then all of a sudden the company making this card game.
Was able to print pieces of cardboard that are highly valuable to the right type of nerd. This game is most of Hasbro, the giant parent company, right? That makes all the games that you've heard of. This game is most of the revenue of Hasbro these days. That's how big it is. And the guy who invented this game in the first place, along with a design partner of his, his name.
Is Richard Garfield. And I had a podcast about one of his car games that he designed, and it was always a pipe dream to get Richard Garfield on the podcast until one day I said, you know, why don't we just shoot our shot? And we did. And he accepted and he came on the podcast and now he's down to earth.
He's not a household name outside of, uh, outside of, you know. Nerdy, uh, nerdy circles like mine, but we got him on the podcast. Had a fantastic time talking with him. And now I have his email. He [00:21:00] has spent an hour talking to me and having a great time. I made him laugh and I got to include that in the cold open before.
And I'll, I'll go ahead and I'll link this episode and I'll link this episode in the show notes in case you have any interest in hearing Richard Garfield talk about his 2018 card game KeyForge with me and my, uh, British co-host, ed. So, uh, that was one time I used this tactic. I'll be, of course, using it for this show.
And so keep an eye out if you're listening now, if you're listening in the early days, right, you're in my first batch of actual listeners, right? So keep an eye out as we go down the line, as I get, uh, fellow podcast experts on here that I just want to be friends with, and I want to honor them by putting them on this podcast.
And then as I go, seek out . Other tiers of people, not necessarily higher, just different tiers of people, right? To go bring on the podcast, to really just level up my relationship with them and the business by making those connections. So keep an eye out for it. You can all watch it happen. Live like the content marketing
Powered by podcast process. [00:22:00] You're gonna see that work worked on, worked on with this podcast as I chop it up into clips and put it all over social media.
Outro
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So this has been Rooster High Radio, remember to follow. If you are not following yet, we're dropping these episodes every Friday so that you can get better at content marketing for your business.
And if you're interested in me doing this for you instead, awesome. Email me at zach@roosterhigh.com and let's get started. Rooster high.com. Here's of course, the website where my business is housed. So check that out. You can check out some of my offers and get in touch with me from there. And if you have any content marketing thoughts or content marketing questions, toss 'em out to me.
I'll answer 'em here or on social media. We'll make sure you get, uh, my thoughts and the answers you need. Thank you so much. We'll see you next Friday.