Podcasting can generate you millions in revenue, increase your audience 100% and establish you as an authority figure on your preferred niche.

If you’re stuck with your blog wondering how to shore up numbers or wondering how to breathe a new spark into your blog business, podcasting could be the smartest moves you make this year.

One of my main missions this year is to start 3 Podcast Series – one on inspiration and the other two on lead generation tactics and tips & tricks behind content creation. Then it will dominate my content creation service offerings to my clients. Why? Well, I have over 16 years experience in radio and a podcast follows commercial radio’s main audience and sales strategies so I will know how to grow it exponentially. More importantly, a podcast is a powerful way of establishing yourself as an authority in your social space effectively.

More and more people are gravitating towards podcasts for authority information on anything to do with fitness, health, diet tips, to motivation, finances and entertainment. With a well thought out podcast, you will grow a new audience and link them back to your main blog hence growing your overall audience. There are hundreds of thousands of free podcasts at your fingertips in various podcast libraries. Your next podcast could be downloaded on someone’s iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or computer. Suppose you dominated your niche with well thought-out material that millions of listeners are searching for?

Create a podcast. Then create a web feed. Software developers can customize apps for subscription to this feed, creating you a new revenue stream. That means that new episodes are automatically downloaded on any phone at any time. They make money, you make money. Nice, huh?

The other critical reason why you need to go into this right now is that the apple watch is about to become a perfect podcast machine. APPLE watchOS 2 Apple is doing a lot for the podcasting crowd that’s going to result in a much better experience once the watchOS 2 arrives this Fall. The company has anticipated Watch uses beyond simple voice memos and messages with watchOS 2 recording powers. It will be almost an entirely new device.

Here’s why.

The device will support local, long-form audio playback, and support for audio recording. Long form audio immediately gives rise to Audio Books one of the most attractive ways for bloggers to build a new following. As you enjoy your morning run, listening to your new audio book on ‘best diet plans for 2015′ or ’10 exciting ways to improve your profit margin’ for example allows the person to keep you on the top of his list on that subject. You are then more likely to be his first choice when searching for any related matter on those topics. Offering long form audio in the background is key, because now you can listen along to your favorite program as you do your workout or your morning run. Equally fascinating is the audio recording capability that the watch has where it becomes an input mechanism for creating podcasts. There are three distinct audio quality choices developers can use when capturing recorded content, including a high quality version that will probably provide serviceable raw material for podcast recording in a pinch. It gives rise to interesting podcast-related features like a list of upcoming scheduled shows, or the ability to finely scrub through an episode’s timeline on your wrist.

Brian Honigan is a Speaker, marketing consultant and a freelance writer. He’s written for Forbes, Mashable, the Huffington Post, the Next Web and others. He says this, “Even if you aren’t a good writer, make a podcast or start a YouTube channel to get quality content out there regarding your perspectives on your industry. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain by starting a blog, a video series or a podcast. We aren’t talking about a job with serious risks if you deviate from the norm like being a surgeon or an airplane pilot. One of the worst things that can happen if you start blogging tomorrow is that no one will see it. It’s a long-term effort that doesn’t happen overnight, but with hard work that you’ll begin to see results from step by step.”

If you have started a podcast, and are hoping to get back links to your show, or help get discovered, you may have come across the idea to list yourself in podcast directories. Nearly anybody can set up a podcast, but getting site visitors can be difficult. As a result, podcasters can submit their feeds to the podcast directory sites to gain visitors. Is this beneficial, or does this strategy work?

What Are Podcast Directories For?

A podcast directory is a listing of syndication feeds that link to a podcast. They are typically coordinated by group or subject, and also allow the individual to find a podcast that pertains to just about everything and everything. Just as blog search directories help individuals find internet sites and blogs with the topics they are looking, a podcast directory site offers a searchable list of podcasts individuals can subscribe to in like manner. Users might also have the ability to obtain the accessible episodes from within the web site itself.

However, unlike a lot of search engines, though, a podcast directory site seldom gives you immediate results with simple searches or the subject matter by itself. All the feeds are either contributed by individuals who are attempting to help people locate or discover their podcast.

Considering that it’s so effortless to make a podcast, a podcast directory often uses means to split the excellent feeds from the ones people do not like as much. A directory site might have a ranking system, or allow certain special features on the home page, or even allow website visitors to comment with their thoughts on a feed.

Website visitors to a podcast directory can easily thereby bring their very own podcasts, search for various themes or subjects that interest them, as well as even discuss those they want or object to.

Are They Effective For Being Discovered?

In my personal opinion? Not really.

First, you have to ask yourself how likely you think the audience you’re aiming for is likely to visit a podcast directory in order to discover content. With the large size and quantity of options available to them, you need to do something to stand out. If you’re original and have a brilliant title, excellent logo and other things to stand out amidst the myriad of other podcasters in your niche, then go for it. But if not, you’re basically going to drown in the sea of other competitors.

You’re better of aiming for word of mouth and sharing with any mailing lists of social media networks you’re on, and encourage your fan base to share. I’ve seen the snowballing effect of this. Use other websites or offline advertising you have at your disposal to create awareness of your brand.

Podcast directories won’t really help get new users to discover your podcast, but can possibly help with your feed site’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and provide you a safe way to get a lot of back to your site, helping possible new searchers in Google, and Yahoo and other engines discover your podcast for other reasons based on searches they may already looking for.

Otherwise, I’m not so sure podcast directories are effective ways of being discovered in a very direct way. They just provide you back links to your site to get started.

Building your brand may sound to you like a phrase that belongs in a corporate boardroom and doesn’t apply to your podcast. This could not be further from the truth. As much as you may feel like a small-time independent podcast creator, the fact remains that there in order to build your podcast audience you are going to have to market your podcast.

Part of that marketing scheme should include building your online brand and figuring out how to market it.

If you are like me then you were born, tragically, without a single marketing bone in your body. So here are the basics of creating a brand for your podcast.

Podcast Name

This may come easily for some of you, the name of your podcast may have been the first thing that you created when you decided to do a podcast. If you haven’t chosen a podcast name yet, here are a few recommendations to consider.

Your podcast name should tie into your podcast topic somehow. If you are podcasting about quilting it makes no sense to call your podcast the SuperNova Podcast. That may sound like common sense to some of you, but I have seen some crazy podcast names out there.

Don’t make your podcast title something obscure that you will appreciate but others will find confusing. You want a name that is easily identifiable and relatable for your podcast audience so that they will remember you. Sometimes you can take a gamble and give your podcast a bizarre name and hope to be memorable because the name is so different, this is a big gamble and sometimes you gotta know when to fold ’em.

If you plan on having a website, and I highly recommend you do, then you should bring your website into consideration as well. If you are going to register your own domain for your website then you will want to pick a name for your podcast for which the website domain is still available. If your podcast is titled The SuperNova Podcast but that domain is already taken and so you register AstronomyCast.com you are going to confuse your audience and there will be a disconnect there. It would be a better option just to rename your podcast AstronomyCast.

Tagline

Having a tagline is optional, there are a lot of successful podcasts that don’t have a specific tagline but sometimes they are nice when rounding out a brand. Sometimes taglines can be used to elaborate on a podcast title that you had to shorten because it was too long.

Call your podcast AstronomyCast, and have your tagline be – SuperNovas, Black Holes and More…

Color Scheme

I can’t stress enough how important the color scheme for your podcast is. It will translate across the board to all of the marketing you do. If you rush to make a decision on color and then you change your mind later on, it will make for a lot of work as you have to go back and re-design your website, logos, business cards, everything else. If you aren’t color coordinated, surf the web and check out the sites you frequent. See what kind of color schemes they are using and try to get an idea of what works and what doesn’t work for you, then translate that into what you think fits your podcast. Also pay attention to what colors people use for backgrounds text etc. For a lot of people having a black background and white text is difficult to read, look for trends like that and steer clear from them if at all possible.