How to repurpose your podcast for LinkedIn

Last time, we spoke about how to repurpose a podcast. This time, I want to zoom in on how to repurpose a podcast for LinkedIn specifically. This is a brand new angle for content marketing, and I think there's something in this for everyone who's looking at social media as a tool for conversion.

At the time of this writing, and probably for a good while to come, LinkedIn marketing still reigns supreme in organic reach. At to that that it's (shockingly) the only social platform for professionals currently on the market. It is no wonder that everyone is going H.A.M on LinkedIn to see how they can reap the most benefits out of it. By reading this article, you're already making quantum leaps over others in your industry. Why? Because repurposing your podcast content helps you build out your thought leadership and authority in a space in an entertaining and engaging fashion.

 

We've seen how thought leaders and avid podcasters like Gary Vaynerchuk and Guy Raz (of How I Built This fame) grow their professional cred on LinkedIn, largely in the form of repurposed clips from original episodes. Here's an example:

There are three aspects to familiarize yourself with when it comes to repurposing content for LinkedIn. Promise me you'll learn them all:

1. Understanding why your podcast audience are on LinkedIn

2. Understanding your podcast goals on LinkedIn

3. Deciding how to repurpose your episodes accordingly

 

1. Understand why your podcast audience is on LinkedIn

The first thing you need to answer is: "Why is my audience on LinkedIn?" 

Before you skip this part, no it's not "obvious". Meditate over this, or better yet, let me give you the answers. It's typically one of four main reasons:

• To build a personal brand

• To keep up with the Joneses

• To promote their company

• To find new clients

I. To build a personal brand

Outside those actively job seeking, or perhaps even including them, building a personal brand is probably the common denominator or the underlying motive behind many people being on LinkedIn, sharing and engaging with content.

They want to be seen as active and engaging

When it comes to building personal brands, the way many people do this is by choosing what content to share on and what conversations to participate in, which would help them also project their knowledge or interest in certain subject matters, especially pertaining to their industry. Knowing this, you can create the kind of content that invites them to participate .

How your repurposed content can help

Besides inviting them on to your show, you can also pick content that asks a question designed to showcase their expertise.

It can be as simple as posting a link with the caption, "Thoughts?"

In the following video clip, we asked our audience, "Why do corporate brands struggle with YouTube?" It's a thought-provoking question that can potentially branch out to several interesting discussion threads.

 

The great thing about asking questions is that you can actually learn from them (duh), and potentially use that learning as material for your next episode to keep the conversation going.

II. Keeping up with the joneses (industry peers)

Yup. Let's be real: many people are on LinkedIn to stay up-to-date with the latest trends and the freshest ideas in their industries, as well as their peers. Also, they usually look out for what industry leaders have to say so that they can feel assurance in going by what they preach.

They want to know how their peers are doing

People who fall under this category want to stay up-to-date with the latest trends and the freshest ideas in their industries. They usually look out for what industry leaders have to say.

How your repurposed content can help

Tag people from the industry in the repurposed episodes you put out and celebrate them if they said something noteworthy. You can also use it as a way to invite others to join in the conversation to agree or embellish on what said guest said on your show. 

III. Promote Their Company

The third reason, and naturally one of the most important amongst owners, salespeople, and marketers is promoting their product and services by virtue of promoting their company.

Take the best of them as an example: business leaders like Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Tim Cook use LinkedIn to share about their companies—new products, marketing campaigns, press releases, and company achievements.

 

How your repurposed content can help

If your audience wants to promote their companies, give them a platform to do just that. Ask them about their expertise and how they would approach common business problems in their industry and watch them flock to participate. 

It's not hard to do, you just need to ask questions that can get them talking. Not everyone is as outgoing, handsome, and charismatic as you - sometimes you may need to pose specific questions to invite discussions.

Ask something like,

“How is your company tackling XXX, and what did you learn” ?

IV. To find new clients

It's no surprise that LinkedIn is the best social selling tool if you're creative enough. With all the forces working against them, what if you can be the one to make it easy for them to shine through with their stories of how they've helped others achieve their goals? It's more natural than singing one's own praises, so they will thank you for it by participating in the conversation, thus boosting your overall reach and influence as a brand.

Keep this in mind when you're thinking of repurposing podcast content. 

How your repurposed content can help

Make it easy for them to built relatability by repurposing content in a way that paves the way for them to jump onto the conversation and add value in the form of:

• Similar experiences they had

• Learnings they had working with others

• Advice they care to share (thus establishing them as a trusted advisor)

 

2. Define your podcast repurposing goals

Now that you've figured out why your audience is there, we can talk about why you're there (if you haven't had that discussion already).

If you can't answer this question, or if you're on LinkedIn because somebody said so, we encourage you to go back to the drawing board.

To help you along, there are broadly one of two goals to attain from sharing your show on LinkedIn: brand awareness and/or business development.

I. Brand awareness

If you intend to share your podcast or original series show on LinkedIn, it's could highly likely for brand awareness purposes - whether that's for your company, your own personal brand, or both.

Portray thought leadership

Building yourself up as an expert in your field is best done through an entertaining, thought-leading podcast show. That is a very valid goal of sharing and repurposing your episodes for LinkedIn.

Keep your brand name top of mind

Alternatively, you may already be recognized as a thought leader, but have a heavy-weight title to defend. To maintain your level and avoid losing what you've worked so hard on building, you may continue to share and repurpose your episodes on LinkedIn to do just that. 

Build trust in a new domain (or cement it in a current one)

Riding off the last point, you may be entering a new market and looking to do the same thing you did with your new product or service as you did in the past. One of the best ways to turbo charge this is to increase the shelf life of each episode you create by embellishing on each episode you launch further by chopping it up based on the variables and goals that your audience wants.

Remember, you're not chopping up to just be resourceful, you're also doing it because every time you repurpose something new you are creating an entirely new content asset to live on forever.

After all,  brand trust is one of the top five things customers consider when dealing with a company, ranked almost as important as a product's or service's quality and value.

If you want to raise brand awareness (and eventually get to brand loyalty), trust is a factor you absolutely cannot ignore.

II. Lead generation and business development

You may be using the podcast to create content that will generate more enquiries for you. You ought to expand your definition of a lead to one that's more social-media inclusive.

Gone are the days where a lead is the one who classically takes the time to fill out a form on your website. Today, leads are those who have expressed any measure of interest in your brand and what you do.

You can consider all the people who liked and commented on your repurposed podcast episodes as leads. This tips the scale in your favour, as you can now qualify people based on what historically represents a good fit buyer profile for you.

For example, you may choose to prioritize those who interacted with your company who are specifically in your industry, or are at a certain company size. 

Social selling

Social selling is not hard. Color the discussion and discuss industry trends, share your expertise, and give value before you take it. Use the content you repurposed from your episodes as the vehicle to start those conversations.

Prospecting

You can use your podcast for prospecting by virtue of creating content that draws a commonality between all the people that fit your buyer profile. By inviting them onto your show you're easing the relationship-building component while also appealing to others like them in their network the more you share the episodes and the repurposed content from each episode as well.

Building status as a trusted advisor

Another reason you may be on LinkedIn is tied with the one above, which is in effect to become a trusted advisor as a personal brand in your industry. You can make a list of triggers. While it might seem counterproductive to let people pick your brain (a.k.a. your money-maker), giving away free information can actually pay generous dividends. 

For one, it allows you to "say it first". That is, people will automatically associate certain information with you.

Second, it's a great way to soft sell your services. In fact, it can show people you're the right person for the job, "she seems to know a lot, she's probably great at what she does".

Third, it shows people that they can go to you for advice, which is the definition of becoming a trusted advisor.

Goal achieved.

3. Decide how to repurpose your podcast accordingly

Now that you have a better understanding of why your audience is on LinkedIn and why you're on LinkedIn, we can begin combining the two to understand how best to decide on your repurposing strategy. Besides audio, there are three other content formats at your disposal:

• Video

• Written

• Image

I. Video

There are two ways you can approach video. Either you: (1) take a video of your podcast, or (2) overlay your podcast with other kinds of video footage, also referred to as b-roll. The former tends to be more popular as it's easier. You can also use both techniques simultaneously.

Zoom in on questions, stats, and brand mentions

When thinking of what to put on video, consider the shortcomings of audio. Audio alone obviously does not provide a visual dimension, which means that you can't draw focus as easily to charts, statistics, and imagery.

For example saying that "podcast consumption has increased by 67% in the last 5 years" doesn't quite have as much impact as a steeply sloping line chart. Likewise, thanking a sponsor can have more impact if you actually show their logo or demonstrate one of their products on video. At the very least, it's been proven time and time again that people enjoy watching others having conversations as it makes them feel as they were there in the room with the participants.  

Consider square, horizontal, and vertical videos

Format matters, and no there's no one silver bullet format. The truth is, everything works, and everything works in varying degrees to different industries and different brands. Take into consideration how popular/over-done something is, how content-aware something this, and also what's historically been working for your particular brand. Most importantly, take note of what has historically not been working for the brand.

For starters, when repurposing podcast content in video, we recommend circling through square, horizontal and vertical videos (all of which have strong appeal on LinkedIn) to see which one catches your audiences' eye and engagement the most.

II. Written

Summaries, highlights, and 'post-articles'

When repurposing your podcast to written content, don't just transcribe, unless your audience are budding screenwriters. It can sometimes be hard to follow written dialogues for extended periods of time. Treasure the written format and create content that's uniquely, well, written.

The easiest thing you can do is produce a summary article recapping the gist of what was discussed in the podcast. Another thing you can do is create a highlights article, where by you encapsulate the highlight moments from the podcast.

You can also create what we're dubbing a 'post-article', where by you create an article that expands further beyond the premises of your podcast to embellish on some topics more than what was discussed in the episode. Think it a form of "advanced reading" after listening to the podcast. 

Post it on LinkedIn Publishing and on your website

Consider posting your articles once on your website, and again on LinkedIn's publishing platform - with a canonical link back to your article. You can also repeat this on medium.com using the import tool.  

III. Image

A picture speaks a thousand words, and posting a picture on LinkedIn about your podcast can get people interested in your thousand words. There are many cool formats you can experiment with, but here are the most common ones:

Golden one-liners (i.e. quotable quotes)

Draw attention to an interesting quote by creating an image out of it. It can literally be the quote on a colored background. It isn't rocket science... unless rocket science was the topic of the podcast.

Stats worth sharing

Any statistics that you want to highlight? Slap it onto an image for emphasis. If you can add a cool chart or infographic to supplement it, even better.

Guest learnings or maxims

There are times when key learnings get lost in translation, especially when with long podcasts. If there are particular lessons or takeaways you want your audience to focus on, put it up on an image for everyone to see.

Questions and answers

Putting questions and/or answers on an image serves a dual purpose: (1) it draws attention to a specific Q&A, and (2) it invites your audience to agree, disagree, or chime in on the discussion.

Consider square and horizontal images

You need not be a graphic artist (nor do you need to hire one) to pull off eye-catching images. A simple background image with text overlay, some stylistic elements, and your logo should do the trick to get you started. You could also create audiogram (secret plug: if you read this far in the article just reference this article and we'll create a free one for you) as a teaser for your podcast. 

Always make sure to keep the aesthetic consistent with your brand.

So, how are you going to repurpose your podcast for LinkedIn?

Repurposing podcast content for LinkedIn isn't that difficult. In fact, you may already have ideas on how to create your own unique spin.

 

If you're stuck, get in touch and plan a brainstorming call with us.