Recommended Marketing Podcasts: Week of January 8

January 12th, 2018

Podcasts are a great way to educate yourself. Whether you’re on the train, in the car, at your desk, or anywhere in between, this medium is an incredible vehicle for supplementing your industry knowledge. Every week, I’ll be sharing with you some of the best marketing podcasts around, spanning the whole marketing landscape.

Whether you’re new to podcasts or you’re a seasoned listener, I know you’ll find value in each weekly round-up. Let’s get listening, shall we?

Everyone Hates Marketers #11: Why Trust-Based Marketing Is Eating Branding for Breakfast

Marketers often get blamed for ruining “everything.” Sure, a few bad apples have spoiled the bushel for some. But the majority of us are trying to create exciting experiences for our customers.

Louis Grenier understands this, but he’s also totally playing up our industry’s reputation with his Everyone Hates Marketers podcast. When he’s not running his podcast, he’s a Content Strategist for Hotjar, a very slick heat mapping tool. In this episode, Louis speaks with author and consultant Jonathan Salem Baskin about why honesty truly is the best policy.

Takeaways: Jay has often preached how people don’t do business with logos—they do business with people. That’s what Jonathan shares here, too. As Jonathan points out, brands were created in the 20th century in lieu of local businesses being able to scale. Brands with headquarters 2,000 miles away skated by on claims that sounded great in mass media but never lived up to their billing.

Today, we’re able to hold companies accountable thanks to social media, which means transparency is a necessity for them. Thanks to this, many local businesses are thriving, and a sort of renaissance is occurring on Main Street.

Transparency in business truly is a differentiator. The more we trust a company, the more likely we are to keep doing business with them and recommend them to others.

The Science of Social Media #65: 8 Tips To Quickly Master Social Media for Businesses & Entrepreneurs

Is 2018 finally going to be the year your company gets serious about your social program? There are still plenty of organizations trying to wade through the social media jungle and avoid all of the pitfalls and traps their friends and colleagues have encountered. Fortunately, we have the great folks at Buffer, anchored by co-hosts Brian Peters and Hailley Griffis, as our guides. In addition to having one of the most straightforward social tools around, their blog has always been one of the best in the industry.

Takeaway: This is a wonderfully paced episode, and at only 18 minutes, it’s easy to absorb just about anywhere. For the purposes of the takeaway, however, I’ll call out Brian and Hailley’s tip number three.

Great social media programs prioritize listening to customers, not promoting to them. Social has been an integral part of customer service programs for years, but how often are you taking the extra steps to turn your customer questions into killer content?

Hailley and Brian recommend not only using these questions as fodder for your next batch of content but also sifting through Quora and competitor’s sites. These questions not only make your life a lot easier, but they also allow you to build trust with your audience, on social media or otherwise.

How often do you turn your customers’ questions into killer content? Click To Tweet

Six Pixels of Separation #599: Better Brand Stories with Mark Evans

Many brands struggle with their brand story. Regardless of how much time, effort, and money we put into curating and crafting our brand story, sometimes it doesn’t resonate as we expect.

Mark Evans knows this and wants brands to understand that it’s neither as easy nor as daunting as it seems. Mark is an author and consultant who works directly with startups to not only improve their stories but find the best ways to distribute and market them. He joined SPOS host Mitch Joel for his last episode of 2017 for an excellent conversation all about sharing stories that move.

Takeaways: Around the 24-minute mark, Mitch asks Mark an excellent question about the value of storytelling given the half-life of content in this breakneck-paced environment. His response starts simple (quality over quantity) but blooms into much more. Since content and storytelling success demand excellence and volume, empowering your customers to tell stories for you is one way businesses are succeeding.

Mark uses Shopify as an example, and after checking out their content, he’s absolutely right. The content and stories found on the Shopify blog are not just stories about Shopify; they’re most often stories happening around their business. We’ve seemingly graduated from making our customers the stars of the stories to giving them a producer credit, as well.

That’s all for this edition! I’ll be back with a new batch next week. In the meantime, share any podcasts you think I should know about with me @jwsteiert on Twitter or in the comments below!