In early January of this year, the tech giant Apple launched a catalog of over 25 audiobooks completely narrated by artificial intelligence. If you’ve written a book or have a podcast, this is some industry shaking news. AI is predicted to play huge roles in audio industries this year, and it shows no signs of slowing down. What does this mean for thought leaders? Is a robot coming to replace you?
Well, no. If anything, this is an opportunity to further use your authentic voice as an essential part of your brand.
First, let’s get one thing straight: the need for a human voice is not going away. AI audio is a great cheap option, but humans crave more depth than what it has to offer. AI cannot accurately add breathing into audio at this time, which is key for how humans listen and interpret the credibility of a narrator, as well as the emotional content. Inflection, modulation, sarcasm, and much more are all beyond the current technology’s capability.
Even more, AI audio runs the risk of dipping into the “uncanny valley,” a psychological phenomenon where people feel uneasy around things that appear similar to, but not quite human.
Our voices are invaluable resources, and the data shows this. Podcasts and audiobooks continue to grow at unprecedented rates. Take a look at the growth:
The podcasts and audiobooks that an ever growing audience are seeking out feature authentic human voices. Our unique speaking styles as thought leaders are something that AI can never replace. In fact, doubling down on our uniqueness by utilizing our voices as an essential part of our brands is a smart growth and marketing strategy that we can explore further in conversation together.
However, this isn’t to say that all AI is bad, or that it has no place in the audio industry. In fact, the judicious use of AI saves us on our precious resources of focus and time. Thought leaders and content creators can use up and coming technology to further their message. Take a look at some software you should keep your eye on this year:
As mentioned above, there’s no stopping artificial intelligence. And while the world is safe from a robot audiobook narrator apocalypse (for now), you can rest easy knowing that your authentic voice is your biggest asset. AI can only help you save time and broaden your reach this year.
Inspired to turn your Voice into influence and become a Thought Leader worth listening to?
No one wants to work for an organization that doesn’t invest in their employees. We’re seeing proof of this with “The Great Resignation” that’s been happening throughout the US. According to Gartner, a Global corporate research company, lack of career development is a leading cause of employee attrition, with 40 percent of workers stating it as a key factor in their decision to leave.
Richard Branson said, “Train people well enough so that they can leave, treat them well enough so they don’t want to.”Training like this is challenging when your staff is handling multiple priorities and craving innovative, tech-savvy options. However, it’s worth it because organizations that offer better training solutions see improvement in employee innovation, productivity, and retention.
So, if companies know they’ll get better results, why do so many organizations struggle with having quality training programs? The truth is that it can be difficult to convey the wealth of knowledge your senior leadership has obtained over their years of experience. Another harsh reality companies face is how to access the information their employees consume when they’re sent to workshops and seminars. Having an efficient way to disseminate the information they learned may be hard to deliver all at once. And, what about the times employees don’t seem to retain the information or a way to easily reference back to it?
You’re in good company if you can relate to these issues. Training programs can be costly and time-consuming to deliver company-wide, but they don’t have to be. The fastest-growing segment in Human Resource spending is employee learning systems and the adoption of new tools and technology. Businesses across the globe are learning new ways to improve their employee’s continuous learning, including the use of internal podcasting for onboarding and training.
Why Internal Podcasting?
Benefits to using internal podcasts to improve your learning management system (LMS) include:
Podcasting democratizes mentorship.
Senior leadership can bring their experience and wisdom to the entire organization or individual departments (customized topics) so their time and energy are maximized while reducing the perception of favoritism.
According to a CNBC study, workers at practically every level are significantly less likely to quit if they have a mentor, and 90 percent of employees reported being happy in their job when they are being mentored.
Studies also show that when a company uses a mentorship program, they experience a 50 percent higher retention rate and 93 percent of employees believe their mentoring relationship was helpful.
68 percent of millennials who stay at their organization for 5 or more years have a mentor, compared to just 32 percent of those without a mentor.
Using podcasts for senior leaders to mentor “one to many” will eliminate most of the typical challenges mentor programs entail, including any perceptions of favoritism, coordinating and managing the process, identifying and developing qualified mentors, matching mentor to mentee, time constraints, and high costs.
Podcasting repurposes long workshops into bite-sized evergreen content.
Training programs that your company has invested in, such as workshops, can be turned into podcast episodes. This repurposes content into evergreen learning that is bite-sized and highly accessible via their LMS and/or secure podcasting apps.
Hiring trainers and consultants is an investment that can be fleeting. There is a lost opportunity to make the most of training that you’ve invested in by having these recorded and then transformed into accessible modules and podcast episodes to help with implementation and understanding of the material.
Finding extra time for employees to complete training can be challenging. Listeners stay engaged with short yet entertaining podcasts anywhere, anytime. Bite-sized information is more likely to be retained, so what better way for your employees to learn and develop than through podcasts.
Employees can go back and listen to podcasts as many times as they need for the information to sink in. Repetition is key to memorizing or understanding information and modifying or changing behavior.
3. Highly accessible
Internal podcasts are easy to consume and as accessible as music. Audio is available when team members can’t watch or read content, allowing learning to happen anywhere.
87% of people who listen to podcasts enjoy them because they can listen while doing other things. The top activities for listeners are exercising, driving/commuting, and doing housework.
4. Accommodates kinesthetic learning and reduces screen fatigue.
The average adult spends 11 hours per day of screen time, whether that is a computer, phone, tablet, TV, or other electronic device. “While this problem is more pervasive in office-based jobs, it does involve those who don’t work on computers as well, since many go home and spend hours on their phones and TVs after work,” says Vivian Tran, MD, internal medicine physician at Scripps Clinic Mission Valley.Excessive screen time causes a variety ofnegative health impacts, while podcasting gives your eyes a break.
Not only employees with an auditory learning style benefit from podcasts. Kinesthetic and visual-kinesthetic learners benefit as well. These types of learners tend to be less accommodated in many companies, given the sedentary nature of office environments and the long-held belief that most people are visual learners. However, more recent studies find that multimodal learning is more common in today’s workforce. Employees can listen on a lunch break workout, walking to another wing of the building, during their commute, or better yet while performing the task they’re listening about so they can learn while doing.
5. Provides a more personal approach than eLearning courses.
When employees are given the opportunity to learn more about their leadership team, more relatability and respect can be fostered. These connections help companies retain their employees, making your investment in them so much more rewarding.
Internal podcasts provide a more personal approach and increase retention of training materials when delivered with a storytelling style. The content can provide relatable stories, interactions, personal advice, and Q&As to enhance training.
6. Podcasts are perfect for employee onboarding.
Podcasts for onboarding introduce new employees to the mission, vision, values, and goals of the company. They also help communicate culture and DEI, get to know who’s who on a more personal level, and create a sense of belonging. “Organizations with a strong onboarding process improve new hire retention by 82% and productivity by over 70%” (The True Cost of a Bad Hire, Glassdoor).
Podcasts give new employees information that will help them be successful, including what is expected of them in their particular role. New employees and employees switching roles will feel more confident about their performance. It will also be easier for those transferring departments to develop new skills, learn new strategies or understand new SOPs.
For example, VMware, a virtualization company, implemented an innovative approach to overcome the challenges of training busy people. They implemented single sign on (SSO) and assigned training credits for each employee as they listened to each training podcast.
The quality of your employee training and ongoing learning opportunities are crucial to the lifeblood of your business in today’s competitive talent market. Your company can utilize internal podcasting to create training and development solutions that will solve its training and development woes and improve employee engagement. To learn more and book a time to explore how internal podcasting can foster more productivity, loyalty, and innovation on your teams, please Contact Us today.
Employee engagement can feel like a never-ending uphill battle. Companies never accomplish great things if their talent just shows up to collect a paycheck, but how do you ensure your employees feel connected to your organization, stay long term, and encourage others to do the same?
Internal podcasting is a powerful tool to cultivate a culture of employee engagement. Internal podcasts are usually produced with the help of a production company to privately reach their internal audience of employees and stakeholders.
It's no secret why using internal podcasting to improve employee engagement is catching on. Compared to other forms of media, podcasts are easy and inexpensive to produce — and their popularity speaks for itself. A whopping one-third of Americans listen to podcasts regularly, according to Buzzsprout.
Podcast listeners crave new and edifying content to listen to. In fact, the second most popular podcast topic is news according to Edison research. Why shouldn’t it be content that serves your company’s mission and builds your company’s culture? Your employees are used to listening to their favorite news and educational podcasts, so they will trust your corporate podcast as a relevant source of information for training and development. Internal podcasting reaches employees in ways that traditional meetings and corporate culture training cannot.
Done correctly, podcasts are a powerful tool to motivate and develop employees, ultimately leading to better team cohesion and talent retention.
So, how do you do it right? Here are five ways to use internal podcasting to engage, develop, and retain employees …
1. Highlight Top Performers and Rising Leaders
We’ve all heard that one of the best ways to improve moral and employee engagement is to recognize achievement. However, the big question is “How?”. You can only have so many pizza parties, and the “Employee of the Month” plaque is getting a little tired.
A better solution — feature a top performer or rising leader on the company’s internal podcast. This is a chance to shower good work with positive attention in a very public way. The podcast producer could:
Share a big win and highlight the team members responsible.
Feature promotions and rising leaders within the organization.
Recognize outstanding performers by name and describe their success.
Highlight top performers and leaders as subject matter experts where they can share a story or host a Q & A as part of a training exercise.
Employee recognition encourages excellence and creates a sense of shared purpose. It also improves engagement. Employees love to listen along and celebrate the success of their teammates and aspire to be featured on the company podcast as a reward for their contributions as well.
Business and tech consulting company Slalom puts this practice into practice with a segment of their Slalom On Air podcast called “Wins to Know,” highlighting big wins within the organization to its audience of over 8,000 employees.
2. Reinforce What’s Working in the Company
One of the advantages of podcasting is the opportunity to communicate a message to many people at a time. What better venue than a podcast to disseminate best practices, and training, so everyone in the organization can reinforce what’s already working and keep everyone on the same page?
Employee engagement, development, and retention starts with proper onboarding and training. Many savvy organizations are turning to internal podcasts for training, development, and onboarding procedures. For example:
Virtualization leaders VM Ware includes podcasts as mandatory training for new onboards, even using their back-end monitoring tools to verify completion of the training requirement.
3. Highlight Positive Culture Developments
Highlighting positive developments within the company doesn’t have to be limited to individual performance or business practices. The company podcast can also highlight examples of great company culture – teams or groups that took initiative to solve a problem or improve morale.
For many companies, an internal podcast became a cornerstone of company culture during the COVID-19 pandemic, when unplanned remote work led to the risk of a breakdown in company culture. As work from home and hybrid jobs remain popular, podcasts are an important tool to reach both on-site and remote employees.
Reinforcing corporate culture encourages other employees to do the same. They might not have even realized what goes into a healthy company culture or how they can actively contribute. Demonstrating it to them through the podcast is an efficient way to raise the bar for the entire organization.. Here are a few things to keep in mind when using podcasts to reinforce company culture:
Highlight your organization’s values and be sure your script aligns with your corporate culture
Invite employees to company events
Weave in personal stories, hobbies, or humor to improve engagement and inspire deeper connections among employees
Provide updates on company goals and vision
4. Unify the Team Behind a Story or Mission
One of the best ways to get an employee to regard a job as more than just a paycheck is to cast their role as service to a broader mission. Employees who buy into the mission don’t just have a job — they have a purpose. A team united around a mission is unstoppable.
How do you make a mission resonate? By telling a story. Storytelling is the oldest tool in human history for captivating an audience and uniting them around a theme. Use part or all of your podcast to tell the company’s story.
You may have heard of the importance of storytelling in business to grab your customers’ attention. Storytelling is also an excellent way to create connections between leaders and employees. Rather than only being told information, workers feel empathy and connection to their supervisors. Crank up the drama and don’t be afraid to make it personal. Employees respect their bosses more when they are vulnerable, have flaws and a compelling story that shares their leadership journey.
When healthcare administration company Signature Performance brought on two new C-level executives, the company used its internal podcast to introduce the new leaders, let them tell their story in their own words, and articulate their vision for their role and contribution within the organization. It was an opportunity to use the power of hearing someone’s voice to build connection and trust.
An internal podcast is easy to start, cost effective to produce, and simple to distribute. Best of all, it’s one of the best ways you can effectively reach and communicate with your company’s most important asset — its talent. Don’t waste the opportunity. Use your internal podcast to build team cohesion, foster positive company culture, and decrease turnover expenses by earning your employees’ commitment and loyalty for the long haul.
Do you have further questions about how internal podcasting can help improve your employee engagement? Contact us today.
Employee engagement can feel like a never-ending uphill battle. Companies never accomplish great things if their talent just shows up to collect a paycheck, but how do you ensure your employees feel connected to your organization, stay long term, and encourage others to do the same?
Internal podcasting is a powerful tool to cultivate a culture of employee engagement. Internal podcasts are usually produced with the help of a production company to privately reach their internal audience of employees and stakeholders.
It's no secret why using internal podcasting to improve employee engagement is catching on. Compared to other forms of media, podcasts are easy and inexpensive to produce — and their popularity speaks for itself. A whopping one-third of Americans listen to podcasts regularly, according to Buzzsprout.
Podcast listeners crave new and edifying content to listen to. In fact, the second most popular podcast topic is news according to Edison research. Why shouldn’t it be content that serves your company’s mission and builds your company’s culture? Your employees are used to listening to their favorite news and educational podcasts, so they will trust your corporate podcast as a relevant source of information for training and development. Internal podcasting reaches employees in ways that traditional meetings and corporate culture training cannot.
Done correctly, podcasts are a powerful tool to motivate and develop employees, ultimately leading to better team cohesion and talent retention.
So, how do you do it right? Here are five ways to use internal podcasting to engage, develop, and retain employees …
1. Highlight Top Performers and Rising Leaders
We’ve all heard that one of the best ways to improve moral and employee engagement is to recognize achievement. However, the big question is “How?”. You can only have so many pizza parties, and the “Employee of the Month” plaque is getting a little tired.
A better solution — feature a top performer or rising leader on the company’s internal podcast. This is a chance to shower good work with positive attention in a very public way. The podcast producer could:
Share a big win and highlight the team members responsible.
Feature promotions and rising leaders within the organization.
Recognize outstanding performers by name and describe their success.
Highlight top performers and leaders as subject matter experts where they can share a story or host a Q & A as part of a training exercise.
Employee recognition encourages excellence and creates a sense of shared purpose. It also improves engagement. Employees love to listen along and celebrate the success of their teammates and aspire to be featured on the company podcast as a reward for their contributions as well.
Business and tech consulting company Slalom puts this practice into practice with a segment of their Slalom On Air podcast called “Wins to Know,” highlighting big wins within the organization to its audience of over 8,000 employees.
2. Reinforce What’s Working in the Company
One of the advantages of podcasting is the opportunity to communicate a message to many people at a time. What better venue than a podcast to disseminate best practices, and training, so everyone in the organization can reinforce what’s already working and keep everyone on the same page?
Employee engagement, development, and retention starts with proper onboarding and training. Many savvy organizations are turning to internal podcasts for training, development, and onboarding procedures. For example:
Virtualization leaders VM Ware includes podcasts as mandatory training for new onboards, even using their back-end monitoring tools to verify completion of the training requirement.
3. Highlight Positive Culture Developments
Highlighting positive developments within the company doesn’t have to be limited to individual performance or business practices. The company podcast can also highlight examples of great company culture – teams or groups that took initiative to solve a problem or improve morale.
For many companies, an internal podcast became a cornerstone of company culture during the COVID-19 pandemic, when unplanned remote work led to the risk of a breakdown in company culture. As work from home and hybrid jobs remain popular, podcasts are an important tool to reach both on-site and remote employees.
Reinforcing corporate culture encourages other employees to do the same. They might not have even realized what goes into a healthy company culture or how they can actively contribute. Demonstrating it to them through the podcast is an efficient way to raise the bar for the entire organization.. Here are a few things to keep in mind when using podcasts to reinforce company culture:
Highlight your organization’s values and be sure your script aligns with your corporate culture
Invite employees to company events
Weave in personal stories, hobbies, or humor to improve engagement and inspire deeper connections among employees
Provide updates on company goals and vision
4. Unify the Team Behind a Story or Mission
One of the best ways to get an employee to regard a job as more than just a paycheck is to cast their role as service to a broader mission. Employees who buy into the mission don’t just have a job — they have a purpose. A team united around a mission is unstoppable.
How do you make a mission resonate? By telling a story. Storytelling is the oldest tool in human history for captivating an audience and uniting them around a theme. Use part or all of your podcast to tell the company’s story.
You may have heard of the importance of storytelling in business to grab your customers’ attention. Storytelling is also an excellent way to create connections between leaders and employees. Rather than only being told information, workers feel empathy and connection to their supervisors. Crank up the drama and don’t be afraid to make it personal. Employees respect their bosses more when they are vulnerable, have flaws and a compelling story that shares their leadership journey.
When healthcare administration company Signature Performance brought on two new C-level executives, the company used its internal podcast to introduce the new leaders, let them tell their story in their own words, and articulate their vision for their role and contribution within the organization. It was an opportunity to use the power of hearing someone’s voice to build connection and trust.
An internal podcast is easy to start, cost effective to produce, and simple to distribute. Best of all, it’s one of the best ways you can effectively reach and communicate with your company’s most important asset — its talent. Don’t waste the opportunity. Use your internal podcast to build team cohesion, foster positive company culture, and decrease turnover expenses by earning your employees’ commitment and loyalty for the long haul.
Do you have further questions about how internal podcasting can help improve your employee engagement? Contact us today.
Learn four ways podcasts can help solve common pain points of content creation and expand your reach.
By Tina Dietz, CEO Twin Flames Studios
When you’re trying to grow your business, you’ve got a huge amount of information you’d like to share with your audience. But taking everything you and your company are passionate about and distilling it into digestible content often feels like trying to capture a genie in a bottle. Despite your best efforts and highest motivation, it’s all too easy to wind up with content that’s inconsistent, doesn’t connect with your audience, or burns out your marketing team.
Not to mention that in the growing media landscape, it’s harder than ever to capture an audience’s attention. Their eyeballs are constantly pulled between social media, streaming services, hundreds of cable television channels, and millions of websites. But what if instead of eyeballs, you focused on ears?
According to Edison Research’s Infinite Dial 2021 Report released in March, about 80 million Americans (28% of the U.S. 12+ population) listen to podcasts weekly. 116 million people listen to podcasts monthly, a growth of 61.5% since 2018.
As a podcast producer and vocal leadership expert, I’ve seen firsthand how sharp companies increasingly turn to podcasts to solve their content conundrums. Let me take you through some of the most common pain points of content creation, and how you too can use podcasting to overcome them.
Single-use content
Tell me if any of these scenarios sound familiar:
You write a blog post that gets a lot of traction, but a week later no one remembers it
Your team designs a graphic for your website, but only uses it there
You create a social media post that works perfectly on one platform, but falls flat on three others
This is probably the biggest problem content creators and marketing teams run into. No matter how good these pieces of content are, they’re only ever going to be useful once—you can’t just repost them on a different platform. This leads to a never-ending cycle of constantly having to create immense amounts of new content, either for up-to-date engagement, multiple different platforms, or both.
Luckily, podcasts don’t have this limitation. You can take the content from a podcast and reuse it on a number of different platforms, simply by changing its form to adapt to different mediums. And each time you record a new podcast, all those platforms get up-to-date content.
The following six examples are ways you can repurpose podcasts:
Website embeds
Easily embed podcasts into your website so that the latest episode is always available to play with just a click on the front page. Visitors can listen while they navigate through your site or even continue as they switch to another tab.
Quote cards
Take the most memorable insights from your podcast hosts or guests and post them on social media as a one-look visual that your audience can quickly absorb while they scroll through their feed.
Video clips
Many podcast recording methods include video, so you can easily get another secondary piece of content from your podcast. Upload a full, optimized video to your YouTube channel or short, impactful clips to Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok.
Audiograms
An audiogram is a short media clip that layers an audio soundtrack over a background image and texts or subtitles, sometimes with other effects showing up as well. Think of it like a cross between a PowerPoint slide and an Instagram reel or YouTube short.
You can easily grab audio clips from your podcast and layer them over branded images and transcribed texts to create multiple audiograms from the same podcast. Then post them to social media, link to them in your email marketing campaigns, or feature them on your website to attract new listeners.
Transcripts
Some people still prefer the written word. Publishing transcripts of your podcast allows audience members to quickly scan for key phrases and ideas and jump to the point in the conversation that most interests them.
Google scans your webpages for keywords, and it’s easy for the algorithms to recognize them from a transcript. This helps your website’s search-engine optimization (SEO), leading to higher search rankings on Google.
Articles
Repurposing podcast content into blogs or articles are another way to create timely and thought-provoking content for the community or profession you serve. This could be on your own website as blogs or case studies as well as used for contributing blogs or trade publications.
The Paychex Business Series, a thought leadership-branded podcast from the global HR and payroll services business Paychex, is a great example of this multi-platform approach.
On the podcast’s main webpage, you’ll see weekly episodes with links to video of each episode on YouTube and audio on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and iHeartRadio. The Paychex Business Series page also includes a few sentences summarizing each conversation, the timestamps of the topics covered, and a link to a PDF of the transcript for easy downloading and forwarding.
The podcast is promoted on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. One recent tweet from Paychex includes a link to the latest podcast, a short description of its focus on workplace mental health, and a 19-second video with stills of the podcast guest and one of her most impactful quotes from the conversation. The variety of content creates awareness of their message and promotes the podcast to multiple social media audiences.
Another example is Randy Crabtree, the host of The Unique CPA and his team at Tri-Merit Tax Solutions. They are now in their 3rd season of podcasting and went from building an audience from scratch to being in the top 5% of all podcasts, according to podcast data aggregator.
But, the real magic was how the podcast helped Randy Crabtree, the host, reach his goals. As a partner in the company, Randy is excellent in creating relationships and helping companies, but he didn’t consider himself a thought leader or influencer. Hosting the podcast allowed Randy to use his strengths as a relationship builder and generate content that he and his team were then able to turn into articles. They have become regular contributors to industry publications like Accounting Today due to their podcasting content, as they regularly turn their transcripts into thought provoking and timely articles for the accounting profession.
Because of his podcast, Randy also received a coveted mention in the Top 100 in public accounting because of his “excellent podcast.”
As you can see, each podcast can be turned into many pieces of content. Multi-channel marketing is an important process to maintain brand consistency and company growth.
Three other pain points of content creation podcasts can overcome are:
Inconsistent content
Let’s face it: it’s difficult to keep most marketing content consistent across platforms. In written blog posts, you have to follow grammar and style rules and keep the tone the same across multiple writers. Visual media must also remain consistent with brand color schemes and formatting. It’s easy to miss small (or even not-so-small) inconsistencies, especially when producing large amounts of content over time.
Podcasting solves this problem by holding all the consistency in its conversational format. As long as the length and topic(s) of your podcast stay the same theme, everything else can be flexible. The host and guests have room for a free-flowing conversation, without having to worry about going through a ton of edits or making everything look and sound perfect. Audiences already expect that every conversation is going to be a little different, so there’s no requirement to formalize a podcast besides a consistent introduction. After that, the space is all yours to share organic-sounding content that resonates with your listeners.
Trouble connecting with audience
We often struggle with the fact that the more overt our content is as an advertisement, the less likely potential customers are to want to come back to it. Gene Marks, host of the Paychex Business Series, is the first to admit that “nobody wants to have commercials or products jammed down their throats.”
Podcasting allows you to place your brand in the context of topics your audience already cares about. Tomorrow Comes Today, the branded podcast of UK wealth management giant St. James’s Place, features conversations with economists, journalists, and more on everything from success psychology to the role of investors in combating climate change. Content strategist Lauren Smith told podcasting company Podbean that the podcast has solidified St. James’s Place as a thought leader in the wealth management space.
Podcasts are edifying and enjoyable for both content creators and listeners. That’s the reason 80% of podcast listeners stick around for all or most of an episode. Podcasts offer a peek into a real conversation with real people, and provide real solutions to your content difficulties. You, too, can connect with potential customers more organically through podcasting.
Content producer burnout
If you or your company’s content producers report feeling burnt out today, they’re not alone. A recent study by content agency Vibely found that 90% feel the same way. Too many content producers are asked to spend too much time on mediums that don’t maximize engagement.
Mark Bussel, National Director of Learning and Development for the memorabilia ring company Jostens, used to spend much of his time creating an all-for-one newsletter. He recently turned to podcasts and told Podbean he was shocked at how easy they were to create and publish.
“We’ll take maybe 15 minutes to create an episode by putting a bumper on the front and back and adding a little bit of music,” Bussel said. “I am by no means a technical expert, but I’ve learned in a really short period that we can make it look pretty doggone good.”
As you can see, the magic of podcasts is that they are enjoyable for both marketers and target audiences alike.
For more information about how podcasts can work for your business, click here.
Audiobook sales are the most rapidly growing segment of the publishing industry. Registering double-digit revenue growth for the past few years, it is having a renaissance that can no longer be ignored. How can authors capitalize on this massive opportunity? Robin Colucci brings an expert on to the podcast to help us understand this booming industry. Tina Dietz is an award-winning and internationally acclaimed speaker, audiobook publisher, corporate podcast producer, and vocal leadership expert. Her company, Twin Flames Studios, helps authors and experts amplify their voices through audiobooks, podcasting, and other means. Listen to her discussion with Robin and learn why you should be looking into audiobooks as the new golden goose in publishing.
The Renaissance of Audiobooks and How to Capitalize on It with Tina Dietz
Our topic is audiobooks. Audiobooks sales and consumption have been booming. This is the most rapidly growing segment of the publishing industry. It’s been on a growth surge for the last few years of double-digit revenue growth in the field of audiobooks. In 2019, we had another epic year of audiobook sales with 16% growth. The total sales in audiobooks were $1.2 billion. This is a phenomenal thing that’s occurring. I wanted to bring on an expert who could help us understand a little bit more about audiobooks, how authors should be thinking about audiobooks, and what we might be able to do as authors to capitalize on this massive opportunity. With that in mind, I have brought on Tina Dietz.
Tina is an award-winning and internationally acclaimed speaker, audiobook publisher, corporate podcast producer, and vocal leadership expert who has been featured in media outlets including ABC, Inc., The Huffington Post, and Forbes. Tina’s first podcast, the The Start Something Show was named by Inc. Magazine as one of the Top 35 Podcasts For Entrepreneurs. Tina’s company, Twin Flames Studios, amplifies the messages of experts globally to their target markets via audiobooks, podcasting, and leadership. Tina divides her time between the US and Costa Rica where she’s part of a leadership team building a conscious community called Vista Mundo. Without further ado, let’s welcome Tina.
It’s my absolute pleasure, Robin. Thanks for having me.
I’m excited to speak with you because even though I’ve been in the publishing world for many years and long before there was such a thing as audiobooks, it’s an area that I don’t know a whole lot about. I’m as excited for myself to learn as I am for our readers.
It’s an interesting world and industry. I’m happy to share.
Book marketing is an evergreen thing. A little bit every day is better than a big push once.
We all know what an audiobook is. A lot of us listen and have them. Audible is the most famous platform for an audiobook. Something I learned or at least got a taste of in our previous conversations is there are other platforms. I want to know a little bit about that because as I said, this is where you have “newbie Robin.”
Audible is the 500-pound gorilla in the room. They’d been around for a long time. Audiobooks have been around in one format or another. Since 1929 was the first audiobook, which was on an album. Audiobooks were on albums and then they were on tapes. A lot of us remember Books on Tape for years then moved to CDs and then, of course, it moved digitally. It was in the digital transition that happened that audiobooks have received a huge resurgence and a huge renaissance.
Prior to that, one of the first audiobooks I listened to as a young adult was Deepak Chopra’s Magical Mind, Magical Body. It was 12 or 16 tapes. I could not keep track of those damn tapes. I was always like, “What tape is next? I don’t remember which one I was listening to.” When digital audiobooks came about, it changed the game and much like the iPod Nano and the iPod in general changed music. Audiobooks changed in the same medium. Audiobooks, music, podcast, all of this audio content has had a tremendous rise in the last few years.
Audiobook Renaissance: Audiobooks are not as popular outside of the English-speaking world. However, they’re having a tremendous rise in countries like China and India.(Image via The Author's Corner)
It’s such a drastic thing that in my mind, there weren’t audiobooks available. Luckily, I haven’t been in the publishing industry since 1929, so that’s a relief. It’s interesting because you’re right. As soon as you started saying it, I’m like, “the tapes!” It was clumsy. It was difficult to manage. You had to keep track of where you were. You could lose one and lose a whole chunk of the book, and you had to be home. You had to be somewhere where you could also use the equipment.
If you didn’t have a car and Walkmans, things like that, that’s where things got more popular in that era. Prior to that, with albums, you couldn’t do that. I remember being a little kid sitting in front of my record player, having the book, and record from Disney. When Tinkerbell rings her little bell, it’s time to turn the page. I loved those when I was growing up. Those were fun. It was part of learning how to read. Audiobooks have this lovely, rich tradition, but because we live in such a different era now with the internet, digital, Bluetooth, and all the technology we have, as you said, the dots don’t necessarily get connected between the two.
Audible, in that pivot, does hold more than 60% of the market share in audiobooks worldwide. Audiobooks are not as popular in other places of the world outside of the English-speaking Western cultures. However, they’re having a tremendous rise in countries like China and India as the markets have opened up. I’m waiting with a bowl of popcorn. I’m excited to see what’s going to happen there. Going back to your original question, there are a lot more outlets than that.
There are more than 40 other audiobook outlets. This goes everywhere from your libraries. Most people get audiobooks out of their libraries. Those are usually using apps like OverDrive and Libby and sometimes Hoopla. Those are the three big ones for libraries. Those are the apps that they go through. There’s also Audiobooks.com, Downpour, Scribd. Blackstone has their own thing. You can purchase audiobooks through NOOK and other places as well. There’s a large distribution world for audiobooks out there.
I’m curious when a library purchases an audiobook, do they purchase a license or do they purchase a single audiobook like they put a book on the shelf?
The world of libraries does work differently than the retail world and it’s not an area that I have a tremendous depth of expertise. I’ll be transparent about that. To get on the radar of libraries is a lot more challenging. It depends on the types of titles that they’re looking for and their yearly budget mandate. Every community is different. As you can imagine, the number of libraries across the US alone is huge. It’s in the tens of thousands.
Getting into libraries can be an entire strategy in and of itself. The way to get on the radar of libraries is a little opaque because you can’t campaign libraries. You could but it’s a little different. The licensing works different for libraries. They have to purchase more than one license in order to be able to pass it around, so to speak. There are some people in the industry who specialize in selling books to libraries. The audiobook and the book process for purchasing to libraries is, from what I understand, quite similar.
Make a note to get me that contact. That could be also an interest.
It’s a great niche.
I did a little research for a client. They were writing a book that was more for school-age kids. There are over 46,000 school libraries, nevermind other libraries. In K-12, there were over 46,000 libraries in the US at that time. There are all these different platforms but Audible has the lion’s share. I’m curious when you’re working with a client on an audiobook, since we jumped in distribution, what is your goal when someone comes to you for help with an audiobook? Do you focus on Audible or do you try to get them any? How do you look at all these platforms that are available as part of your strategy?
We have to look at the overall goals of the author. We work with non-fiction authors. Fiction goals and non-fiction goals are very different worlds. Generally, the goals with the fiction author is to sell copies. That’s the only name of the game. Whereas a nonfiction author has their book. It’s being used in service of building their platform. Selling copies is important but if you’re selling bulk copies of your book, you’re more likely to sell them in bulk when you’re speaking or to be handed out as a promotional item as a loss leader, or various other things.
Getting speaking gigs, attracting clients, getting press, media attention, all of those things. The goals are different so the strategies are different. What binds the two together is, first of all, distribution platforms. Secondly, everybody does want to sell copies and wants visibility. The third thing is that book marketing, it’s you and I could agree, is an evergreen thing. A little bit every day is better than a big push once. That’s where authors get tired. We could have a whole conversation about that.
As you said, with the non-fiction authors especially, I always tell my clients, “Look at what activities you already are doing to grow your business or you know you should be doing and do those to promote your book because it will pay you off way bigger.” It keeps the book in the conversation that way too.
Going back to your question about what we focus on: We have to look at the goals and the overall strategy of the company or the individual first. What do you want your audiobook to do for you? What do you already have in place? Do you have a marketing team? Do you already have strategies for your book? How is this going to dovetail with all of that? Usually, in terms of distribution, what we end up recommending for the most part, particularly for a newer book. If you have a book coming out as a launch and the audiobook is coming out right around the same time as your book is launching or say within six months afterwards, then what ends up happening is they’ll be distributed exclusively through Audible, Amazon, and Apple Books for the first year, which takes advantage of a couple of things. One is a higher royalty rate. Royalty rates for exclusive distribution of 40% versus 25% for non-exclusive distribution. The other thing it takes advantage of is being able to focus on pushing your marketing, your customers, and your audience at one platform.
Amazon, Audible and Apple Books, that’s one?
Technically, that’s considered exclusive distribution because Audible and Amazon are the same company and Apple Books has an agreement with Audible for distribution. It’s an automatic also-run thing.
I’m going to guess Apple Books is the second biggest platform. Would that be accurate?
No, because Apple only holds 10% of the cell phone market. It seems like it’s everywhere but on a worldwide basis, Android is a much bigger player in terms of the cell phone markets. Apple is amazing in their marketing and they’re amazing at creating evangelists for their brand.
Audiobook Renaissance: The most important factor in someone deciding to purchase an audiobook is the quality of the narration. (Image via The Author's Corner)
This exclusive distribution, you said for the first year.
Yes. You then can evaluate after the first year and decide if you want to continue on or if you want to go with non-exclusive and then get the audiobook out to a bunch of more platforms.
What would be a good reason to be on? I’m wondering, if you’re getting 40% royalty and then it goes down to 25% royalty, does it ever add up like getting that extra market share offsets the decrease in the royalties?
It comes down again to marketing and the goals. If you don’t market, it’s not going to make any difference either way what it comes down to. It’s a marketing opportunity to change your distribution. Once you have your book on other platforms, you can make announcements about it like, “The audiobook is now available here. Did you know that this existed?” Much of marketing in our digital age, particularly on the 24-hour news cycle that is social media is coming up with interesting little, “Did you know,” pieces of information. It’s much like being nominated for a book award, getting a book award, having your book in a new place, or having a speaking opportunity. These are all little snippets of information to offer to your audience to stay top of mind. Additional distribution creates an additional opportunity for content to market your book.
What I’m getting out of this is that you’re adding these other distribution platforms, piecemeal, not all at once.
You submit it all at once but they tend to come in onesie-twosie in their approval process because you’re using a portal. The portals that we use and these are a self-serve portal. Not just for publishers but for people who want to self-publish as well. ACX.com is the common self-publishing backend for audiobooks for Audible. FindawayVoices.com can be also used for Audible but it will also help to get your book up to 40 additional platforms. Not everybody is going to take your book but a lot of them will.
What should I have asked you about the distribution that I didn’t?
That’s a lot of the broad strokes of that particular thing. The only thing about distribution that people need to know is that at least in the beginning, it’s something you want to stay on top of and go in. Read your monthly reports, get familiar with the notations that are made because that’s market research for you. What channels are working for you? What is not working for you? What are your best places to define readers? Certain distribution channels also, individually, if you look into them, may have more opportunities for you to promote your book in different ways.
Some paid opportunities usually come up. For example, Findaway and there’s this program called CHIRP, it sends out a daily email for audiobook deals. You can submit your audiobook to CHIRP once it’s been accepted through these other channels. Your book gets pushed out on a daily email to over 100,000 people. Now, you’re going to give them a deep discount on the audiobook as a result. If you’re talking about nonfiction and building an audience, building notoriety, all of that, that can be to your advantage.
I want to talk a little bit about audiobook production because one thing that we see is there seems to be two tracks. We either have the author themselves read the book or there’s a voiceover artist.
That is correct. Occasionally, that’s a hybrid of the two. That’s our third option.
Talk to me a little bit about what are the things like if an author comes to you and they’re like, “I’m not sure if I should read it myself or if I should hire a voiceover artist.” What are some of the things that an author should be thinking about when you’re looking for it?
One of the things the author should be thinking about, again, comes back to the purpose of the book. First of all, most authors who write non-fiction who are building a platform will come to me and say, “I have to narrate my book. Nobody can do it like me.” That is the first assumption that we question because that may be true. However, the most important factor in someone deciding to purchase an audiobook is the quality of the narration. Even if the author can read the book out loud in a way that they feel characterizes the book correctly, whether that translates or not to a listener receiving it the way it’s intended is an entirely different matter. They may feel like, “This is how I need it to be read,” but their listener may be going, “That is not what you’re portraying.” That is one of the things we have to take a look at and evaluate.
A lot of the folks we work with, our speakers narrating an audiobook is different than public speaking. It’s a tool. It’s a different animal. When you’re up on a stage, public speaking, you’re speaking one to many whereas on a podcast or a narration, you’re speaking one-to-one. You can’t get out there and be like, “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to be doing all of this and talk about audiobooks.” It blows your face off. You also can’t be boring but you have to slow down with an audiobook because audiobooks are at a slower pace than most other kinds of speaking. There’s a balance there. The breathing is different.
Recording an audiobook takes time and that’s if you hire a professional. If you want to go DIY, double that time and add a bottle of vodka.
Even the duration of time that you have to spend recording an audiobook—it’s not just a matter of reading the book. It’s reading the book in such a way that it sounds like you’re not reading it. There are all of these factors that go into it. In the early days of developing the company and the services and all of that, we did experiment with a number of different ways of working with authors who wanted to narrate their own books because it is an important thing. About 1/3 of our authors self-narrate and about 2/3 work with a professional narrator. That’s the way it shakes out. Some because they don’t have a great voice for narration.
They’re great for a keynote, but if you had to listen to them for 6 or 7 hours, no. Again, a different animal. There may be some physical issues. One of my favorite authors, brilliant book, brilliant man, and a rare form of head-neck cancer. He couldn’t narrate his entire book. There was no way. We did what I like to call the Tony Robbins Sandwich with his book. Tony Robbins narrates the first chapters and the last chapter of his book and has a professional narrator do the middle. That’s what we did with that particular client. It worked out well. Those are some of the factors.
Audiobook Renaissance: There need to be more opportunities for a diversity of narrators. One of the reasons people didn’t listen to audiobooks more is because they were boring.(Image via The Author's Corner)
There’s something in here because when you were talking about a speaker on stage being one-to-many, an audiobook is a one-on-one. I want to point out an idea that goes along with that. It’s something that I speak about fairly regularly is this idea of how a book is the best way when you’re thinking about a marketing avenue to create intimacy to your prospective client or with your reader when we’re talking non-fiction. It’s often your prospective clients or somebody who’s going to be influenced by you in some way. What you’re saying about audiobooks and even the tone of the voice, the pace of the speech, volume, and everything else, I never thought of it before but you’re right. It is a one-on-one conversation, just like the writing is but it’s important to get that across. It’s even different if you’re standing at a book signing in front of the room and reading an excerpt.
You have more bodies there and different energy.
That is one-to-many, but an audiobook is a one-on-one conversation. One of the things is vocal quality. Even the amount of time the author is willing or able to—
The time is a big factor. I’ll give you simple math, 10,000 words of a book are about one hour of audio. You’ve got 40,000-word book, you’ve got about a four-hour audiobook. That four hours of the audiobook is going to take about 10 to 12 hours of recording time. This is working with a professional organization like us. This is not DIY. For DIY, double that and add a bottle of vodka. It’s not just me saying this and do a shot for every hour of audiobook you do, it’s a drinking game. Split up into 2 to 3-hour chunks because that’s about as far as you can go with our vocal fatigue and energy issues and all of that.
What we do to work with the author and take the technology out of their hands and also to give them the objective feedback and a person to play off of, is we do the full direction of our audiobooks, but we do it remotely. We have software we’re able to remote in to wherever the author is anywhere in the world, help them make sure that their sound is tuned correctly, we’ll suggest a microphone, make sure they’re in the right place in their home or office to record. We then fully direct and record the audiobook for them to the entire process. That creates a wonderful product. It also takes a lot of the stress and pressure off of the author. All they have to do is focus on delivering their message and being natural about it and that helps a lot.
You’re able to give them feedback.
Yes, so it makes it a lot easier to catch issues. A lot of our authors have charts, graphs, and exercises in their books. There are industry standards on how to narrate those. We’re able to live coach people through all that process as well.
Let’s talk a little bit about the other side of hiring vocal artists to record your audiobook. What are some of the things that you advise authors to consider when they’re trying to make that decision? Let’s say they’ve decided, “I’d like to use the voiceover artists.” What are some of the things that they should be thinking about as they’re deciding? What’s that going to look like?
I have done professional narration. My background's as a therapist. As an entrepreneur of multiple businesses, did business coaching for years, but the voice acting was a paid hobby for me because I love a stage and a microphone. The masterclasses I took on audiobook narration had me have this epiphany about all my colleagues and clients who are doing bestseller campaigns, why aren’t they doing audiobooks? That was the rabbit hole I went down. That’s how I got there.
Between the podcasting and the audiobooks, microphones are a big part of my day one way or another. Narration and voiceover work in its industry. It has its own language and standards. Coming into that world as an author or as a business owner, there are some things you need to know about that industry. When we send out auditions, there are key pieces of information you need to provide to an author in terms of, what are you paying? What section of the book do you choose for an audition and how long it is? Where do you choose from the book?
Other key pieces of information that the narrator is going to need. If you want somebody to emulate your energy and have similar qualities to your voice being able to articulate, what are those qualities that are most important? What are the key pieces that somebody needs to know if the book is going to, first of all, resonate with them and what they need to deliver to you in terms of an audition? A lot of mistakes that authors make doing this on their own are putting an audition piece out that’s way too long and then being offended when somebody only sends back one minute of an audition. Auditions need to be short. Another thing that happens a lot is getting into the production of the audiobook and not having been clear upfront about the number of characters or the type of characters, even in non-fiction.
A lot of the pronunciation issues can come in regionalisms. We had an issue a while back. We keep a running list of these and this one we hadn’t run into yet. We had 38 replacements. You can’t go back when in audio like you can in text and do a find and replace. This narrator had to go back and we worked with the other because normally, we wouldn’t even allow that change at the end. That’s something that needs to be discussed upfront. Fortunately, the narrator was game and it all worked out but she would have had to replace entire paragraphs or entire sentences depending on the situation in the book. These are the things we get ahead of and get on top of. Occasionally, things happen as I mentioned. We get ahead of it 99% more than working through it on your own. Those are a few things.
What is the question that an author asks themselves even going into that? How do they know to tell somebody that they want that? It made me think of The Chicago Manual of Style which we both know is the publishing industry bible for punctuation and everything. It’s a perfect book except you have to know there might be a mistake to look for the correct way. How do you help authors figure out what to ask for in even a situation like that?
We have a whole onboarding process where we go through things like that. We have protocols, guidelines, and all of these things that we walk people and authors through to help prevent things like this. Everything from names to medical terminology and other types of regionalisms even down to looking at, “Are there any characters in your book, even if it’s nonfiction, who are they? What do they sound like?” One of my favorite books we ever did so far is called Tiger Bravo’s War. It is a ten-hour audiobook about the Vietnam War that I would put up against Ken Burns any day of the week.
Our narrator who works with us in the company now on our podcasting divisions. He’s a wonderful guy named David White. He did an incredible job of nuancing about 15 or 20 different soldiers’ voices inside of this documentary-style memoir. Getting those characters out front, getting a sense of who they are, and having the narrator demonstrate that before you get too deep into the production, that’s important.
I want to bring up something because you cleared a memory for me of an audiobook that I was listening to and I was enjoying. I believe the author Red Moskoff. They did a character and they brought in a different voice. By the way, this was traditionally published—New York Times. Not only was it a terrible Middle Eastern accent, it was so bad that it sounded racist to me. It’s offensively bad.
They went full Apu from the Simpsons.
That’s a perfect analogy. I was going to say it was like a Breakfast at Tiffany’s nightmare. I still enjoyed the book but every time that would happen, unfortunately, it was more than once in the manuscript. I would cringe and it nearly ruined the experience for me. What about characterization, especially when it’s clearly across cultural narrations? This seems to me to be a real potential minefield. If you could you say a little bit about that.
There is always something to get better at.
It can be. We produced a book that was author narrated and it was an emotional book. As I’m talking with potential clients and scanning through their books, a lot of them are highly emotional. I was crying in the first two pages of this guy’s book. He was writing it and he was an angry, abusive man. It was about his healing journey and what he wanted men to know. He had traveled to many countries as a professional Rugby player. He had voices of these people from different countries and cultures. He had a lot of facility in doing this.
He was able to slip into their skins—which most authors don’t have that ability to do. One of the things that the director did is he went and listened to other authentic accents to see how far off or how far on the author was and to make sure it didn’t come off as mocking or disrespectful in any way. There are ways to handle it in the direction process. Professional narrators are sensitive to this because they want things to be represented accurately. That comes down to the audition process and vetting people.
I didn’t feel like we needed the accent in that book I’m telling you.
A lot of times it’s not necessary or there’s a shade. You don’t have to hit it hard.
Why is this even happening?
It happens a lot with male narrators doing female voices as well. Some are brilliant at it. Some of them will characterize female voices as whiny, shrewish, or childish. That’s an issue in the industry that gets brought up regularly and on both sides. Women doing male voices, men doing women’s voices because it’s one narrator. Full cast recordings are still quite rare in the industry because of the cost of production. Some of them are great, like The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, but particularly in non-fiction full-cast recording.
I’m glad we got a chance to talk about that. It left quite an impression on me.
If we have culturally diverse authors and one of our authors is from China. We opted not to have him do the narration. His articulation isn’t quite up to speed. It might be hard for the listener. He’s a brilliant speaker from the stage—he’s fantastic. But 8 to 10 hours on an audiobook will be harder. One of our biggest challenges has been finding somebody who is Chinese-American or Chinese immigrated to the US, a professional narrator who can do this voice authentically.
Have a hint of the authentic accent without being thick.
It needs to be real.
That’s another aspect of this. If the author is an immigrant or something in the US.
We have several books in the pipeline that we know our narrator searches expanded because there need to be more opportunities for a diversity of narrators. For years, it was, “This is Audible. I’m an Audible guy.” That’s one of the reasons people didn’t listen to audiobooks because they were boring.
“I’m a suburban white man Audible.”
“Can you see my blue suit just from the tone of my voice? I bet you can.”
“On weekends, I wear khakis.”
“I play golf.” I’m a professional instigator, I should warn you.
What I wanted to say is this sounds like a heck of an opportunity. Let’s talk a little bit about investment-wise. What’s the difference when we hire an artist to record our audiobook for us versus doing it ourselves?
There are a couple of levels. We try to keep the cost of author narration and the cost of professional narration very similar. The business model we’ve created has allowed for that because counterintuitively to a lot of people, it used to be in our company that author narration was way more expensive. I run into that all the time but think about it. We had to train the author on a whole new skillset. We had to research studios. We had to pay studio time, which is hourly, and studio time, depending on where you are in the world, is anywhere from $50 to $250 an hour. The editing was a lot more intensive because we weren’t doing what’s called Punch and Roll recording. We weren’t doing live direction. Studios will give you a sound engineer who’ll tell you if you’re screwing up but they just record the whole session. We stop, back up, and record again to get rid of a lot of those errors.
The comfort level of the author was tense because even with training them ahead of time, it was crazy. All of those factors make for a much more expensive prospect. We’ve got things down and we have a negotiated rate with our narrators that we’ve got a sweet spot. However, we do also have a premium level for narrators. These are folks who are in the Actor’s Union, SAG-AFTRA. The minimum required hourly rate to work with those folks is $225 an hour. That’s what’s called a per finished hour rate. That can include multiple things. That’s not studio hours. I go back to that 40,000-word book is four hours long. It would be $225 for four hours. That’s the math we’re talking about here. We’re not talking about 15, 20 hours in a studio at $225 an hour.
Audiobook Renaissance: It’s always better to experiment, beta test, and interest focus group things out before making a big launch. (Image via The Author's Corner)
That’s a lot more reasonable than I would have been imagining.
The average audiobook that we produce is somewhere in the $2,800 to $5,000 range.
I’ve heard of people charging 2 to 4 times.
It can get high depending on how much margin they’re adding. If you’re working out of New York or LA, your price automatically goes up because the cost of production is much higher in those cities.
If you’re hiring the talent or as you said, you were able to do it remotely, that’s not as expensive.
All the companies I’ve ever owned, except for my first one, was in completely remote. For years, we’ve been 100%t remote and my team is across North America and Europe.
A lot of businesses like mine are similar. We were already working remotely. The pandemic added my social life to the remote category.
I lost all my coffee offices for a while. I know that talk about first world problems, but nonetheless.
This has been informative. We talked about production, distribution, costs, and talent. The thing that’s occurring to me now is, you don’t have to reveal any names or anything. Do you have any stories of audiobooks either gone extremely well or horribly wrong? I always love a good story.
One of the reasons we changed the way we were doing things and I looked for solutions around author narration is because of both the amount of time that it took to work with authors that way and then having to go to the studio and the cost involved. Like with many things in business, a lot of what has to be handled upfront is expectation management. For people who don’t understand what it takes to edit audio and rerecord audio versus text, we call it a repeated education process and 90% of people get it. We occasionally do end up with someone who resists the training and coaching, and then after recording wants to go back and rerecord the whole thing because “now they have a handle on it” and think that’s included.
That is not the way that works. You can’t go back and do another ten hours of recording because you feel like it. You haven’t taken the coaching and been willing to do the work that needs to be done. Similarly, managing expectations on the professionally narrated side of things, it’s important upfront to get all of the expectations, voices, cadence, timing, pacing, and all these things are done. We do all that in what’s called the first fifteen of the book. We take about the first 15, 20 minutes, produce it, and make sure that it’s what the author wants before we produce the rest of the book.
We have an audiobook that created a tremendous amount of havoc in the author’s life because they realized in listening back to their own work, that they hated their work and wanted to shutter their company. It was intense. In hearing a third party deliver their work back to them, they had a breakdown. I’m a therapist by training but they were also in a different country, difficult to reach, and a long time difference. It ended up being an abandoned project with them not paying their bill because they decided to not move forward with their company. That resulted in some policy changes on our side of things.
Once you’ve been in business for a while, there are always a few items in the contract that were created in response to a specific situation.
That’s why contracts end up being so long.
They’re like, “We can’t let that happen again. Let’s set this.”
Making people’s initials in certain paragraphs is something we do because it’s easy like the terms and condition page to scroll to the bottom and check, “I have read it.” It is important to read. I don’t read all the terms and conditions either, but in contracts, I definitely read every word because there could be some questions there.
I’m thinking about that. They should have paid you but it could have been a great thing that happened for them.
That’s the thing and I don’t disagree. It was a case of somebody who was extremely well-meaning, had gone out, and they were putting themselves forward as an expert in an area that they had no experience in. It was all academic knowledge. It was all from synthesizing reading and going to workshops. They had never had a single client ever. They, unfortunately, spent over six figures in trying to launch this company. This is a lesson in entrepreneurship. I know there’s somebody out there who needs to know this. I’ve never told this story or alluded to this story anywhere in the media before. I built many businesses and companies my time and helped many other people do the same. It’s much better to experiment, beta test, and interest focus group things out before you do a big website, a book launch, or anything like that.
I want to add to that because this has shown up many times in my business that somebody will come to me in that situation. They’re like, “I want help writing a book.” I’ll be like, “Cool but I’m not going to be the one helping you.” You have no business writing a book about your expertise until you’ve developed some expertise. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people out there who will tell people, “You need a book so you can have a business.” It isn’t true. It’s such a dramatic illustration of a big problem but this is investing over six figures to launch a brand with nothing behind it. By the time he came to you, most of that money was spent.
It doesn’t matter what religion you are. When it comes to sales, you have to become a Buddhist at that moment.
This is an aftereffect of it.
I will let people write a booklet. Quick turnaround, test, and we do help people with that. That’s why I came up with that idea, by the way, was because I turned away thousands of people over the last years who came to me wanting to write a book in exactly that situation and said, “Go become an expert and then come back.”
Come back when you have some chops in what you’re doing. That happens more on the podcasting side of our company. I will pivot people from, “I need to start a podcast.” “No, you don’t need to start a podcast. You need to build some clientele, sell some stuff, and be in business.” I’ll pivot them from having their own podcast to podcast guesting. That’s a great way both to network, to generate content, to build authority, all of those things that you want to do without the massive commitment that it is to have a quality podcast.
I know we’re a little off-topic, but I agree with you. There are people reading this who need to know this. When people start a podcast, what they need to do is get clients. When they decide to write a book, what they need to do is get clients or do an audiobook. The problem is if it feels productive. They can get up in the morning and say, “I’m growing my business,” “I’m recording a podcast,” or “I’m working on my book.” What they’re not seeing is what they’re avoiding. If people don’t have clients yet and everything’s theoretical, it’s because they don’t feel comfortable with doing sales.
A lot of what shows up looking like productivity is an expensive, very long avoidance strategy that could eat up somebody’s entire savings and set them back in terms of their ability to generate momentum in their business because they’re trying to avoid sales subconsciously. What’s they’re saying is, “This is what I do. This is how much it costs, Mastercard, American Express, or Visa.” That’s what innate and they can tell themselves they’re being productive. That’s why it’s so destructive when people tell people that. It’s a double whammy. When they figure it out, their resources are drained.
I bootstrapped my businesses in the beginning for years working other jobs, whatnot is exploring, and all of that. Sometimes you get sold the dream. I grew up in a situation, my parents owned a business, and I was surrounded by sales. Even I wasn’t comfortable with sales until I was in my late 20s, early 30s, it’s always something to learn. There’s always something to master or get better at. It never has anything to do with making the sale, it has everything to do with your internal conversation, your personal growth, and your ability to create relationships. The sales has nothing to do with sales.
We can do a whole episode on sales. I look at it that the sales conversation is a quest for clarity and to help the person that I’m on the phone will come to a place of clarity. If the clarity dictates that we work together, we work together. If the clarity dictates that we don’t work together, we don’t work together. That takes all of the pressure off everybody. I don’t feel pressure to make the sale and they don’t feel pressured too or people like they’re being sold because that’s not what the conversation is about.
This was a mentor of mine that created a lot of clarity for me around sales. Robin, how do you feel about cookies?
I love cookies.
If I were to bake a plate of cookies, I would say, “Robin, would you like a cookie?” Assuming we were together and not social distancing, you would say yes, right?
Yes.
If I were in a room, I walked around, and I offered 100 people a cookie, some people are going to say yes and some people are going to say no. The people who say no, is there anything wrong with my cookie?
Nothing is wrong with your cookie.
The people who say yes, is there anything magical about that cookie special or does it mean anything?
No.
There are all reasons they could have said no. They could be diabetic, not like that particular cookie, allergic to one of the ingredients, not hungry, or on a diet. The cookie has nothing to do with me. It has nothing to do with my worth or even with my ability as a baker. People say yes or no. Ultimately, you go out into the world and you think about “selling something.” You’re offering them your cookie, and there’s nothing wrong with your cookie.
That’s a great analogy. That was the hardest thing for me to get over because I went from a place of being afraid of sales to I’m almost addicted to sales. I love selling. It’s fun. The big thing that I had to get over was taking it personally either I was lacking or what’s wrong with me. That’s how I did. I was having a lot of conversations in a short period of time to the point where I didn’t care.
That happens a lot with people learning how to like their own voices. They have to listen to themselves over and over again. I say all the time, “It doesn’t matter what religion you are. When it comes to sales, you have to become a Buddhist at that moment. You just have to practice non-attachment.” Temporary conversion. You can convert back afterward.
You can pick up all your baggage. Tina, this has been wonderful and informative. Thank you for sharing your insight, wisdom, and great stories with us.
Thanks, Robin. This has been awesome. I appreciate it.
Tina Dietz is an award-winning and internationally acclaimed speaker, audiobook publisher, podcast producer, and influence marketing expert who has been featured on media outlets including ABC, Inc.com, Huffington Post and Forbes. Tina’s first podcast, The StartSomething Show, was named by INC magazine as one of the top 35 podcasts for entrepreneurs.
In 2016, Tina was the recipient of the Evolutionary Business Council MORE award and in 2017 she received the award for Outstanding Audio Company from The Winner’s Circle. She is also a member of the EBC leadership body and a founding member of the Forbes Coaches Council. Tina was also the lead interviewer in the podcasting documentary “The Messengers” and featured in the film.Tina splits her time between the US and Costa Rica where she’s part of the leadership team building a community of conscious leaders called Vista Mundo.
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Yes, thank you for joining us.So please tell us a story of how Twin Flames Studios came to be.
Well, Twin Flames Studios is a high ROI Influence and Marketing company where we use audio to amplify the voices and messages of trusted leaders and companies all over the world. It's really our mission to help these people help these organizations get their word out to a larger audience in the very intimate form of audio, whether that is nonfiction audiobook publishing, or that is podcasting strategically for your business.
And it's important that we note that in these times of great change, these powerful voices are needed now more than ever.
My background, and my story, is a little bit more like the twisty journey of a lot of entrepreneurs.I grew up as an entrepreneur—my parents’ business—the super sexy world of wood burning stoves and fireplaces.
Wow.
Yeah, very exciting. But I never wanted to have my own business because I didn't want to be tied down to a brick and mortar like my parents were. And I'm an only child, so that business was my annoying younger sibling when I was growing up.
Right, the baby.
The baby, yeah.
So, I became a therapist, and I tried to be conventional. And that didn't work out so well for me—
Okay—
As many entrepreneurs—
The entrepreneurial spirit was still—
That’s right, within the blood.
Yes.
So, after working in higher education, starting a nonprofit, and also building a family—another family business with my father, the Nayada Institute of Massage—I stepped off into a full-time business coaching practice. And through the jigs and the reels over the years grew that practice.
It was wonderful, had young children at the time, we lived a mobile lifestyle, we sold our stuff moved to Costa Rica. And at one point because I was… had my own, like personal expression—I grew up a little bit of a theater kid—drama kid—and was looking for some outlets, creative outlets—I became a voice actor as a paid hobby. And through that process, and learning the audiobook industry as a narrator—I was exploring that—I had this epiphany “Well, wait a minute, I'm coaching all these people from all over the world who owned businesses—20 different industries, eight different countries—why aren't these folks who are publishing their own books doing bestseller campaigns? Why aren't they doing audiobooks?”
And it was that curiosity that led me down the rabbit hole first for audiobooks—I already had my own podcast at the time—had fallen in love with that world. And that is what led to developing this niche in podcasting and audiobooks for business owners, thought leaders and companies.
And so what would you say the difference is versus something that's on paper, versus really hearing a tone? What does that do for an audience to really hear a voice?
Well, you know, a couple of years ago, I had the pleasure and privilege of being the lead interviewer on a documentary about podcasting called The Messengers, you can find it I think it's on Amazon Prime. And that was developed by Chris Krimitsos and his team at the Podfest Multimedia Expo. And that was, that organization was younger at the time and wanted to really explore what is this industry of podcasting from an independent podcaster’s point of view, rather than monopoly, or NPR or the, you know, the big professional gigs.
So, I interviewed about 40, different podcasters from all different walks of life, different countries, different places, most of them didn't know each other. And the word that came up in every single interview independently was the word intimacy. Podcasting being this intimate format, you know, directly into your ears—becoming a voice in somebody's head, it's such a privilege. And that and then also the ability to do active storytelling when we're so wired to tell stories as human beings. So that's, you know, the audio format has a lot of advantages in that way. And it's also the most accessible form of media, you know, you can listen—as I'm assuming some people are right now listening to this podcast—when you can't read, you can listen when you can't watch. So, you can take it anywhere.
And as a coaching also involved in telling… teaching people how to speak as well as I'm sure some people aren't necessarily natural storytellers. Is that something you sometimes have to teach certain clients as well?
Yeah, actually, the body of work that I've been developing over time and will continue to do so is around what I call Vocal Leadership. And that's really about the instrument that your external voice is and learning how to tune that and play it beautifully to another level. And also, the internal voices that we have, which is really… if the external voice is the instrument, then the internal voice is the music, the sheet music that we're playing.
So those two things really need to be congruent in order to have a presence, and in order to move people the way we want to move them through stories. And then, of course, there's also the actual storytelling, and microphone techniques, and all of that good stuff as well.
The little details.
Yeah, exactly.So, our hosts… One of the things we do as a company as we get our podcast hosts together into a mastermind about quarterly, to connect them with each other, and also to provide additional support and training.
Okay
And that's, in addition to meeting with them one-on-one to help them with the strategy, you know, as their podcast is, you know, being aired.
Okay, and so that kind of goes to my next question—you mentioned Voice Leadership, and then how you can kind of take an extra step to really connect with the audience. So then, what does being a conscious business leader mean to you?
I think that the word conscious has… has not become overplayed, but it's important to take a step back and look at “Well, what does that really mean?” I'm so glad you asked the question.
And being conscious in your business means taking not just your business into account, it's taking the impact that you're making, or that you can make into account. And that has to do not just with the people that you serve, but it also has to do with how your business is set up. How the impact… How it impacts the people that work inside the company? Is it a win for them? Is it a good culture? Is it healthy? Is it helping people develop their dreams and goals? And is it good also for the people who are, you know, the founders? So, sometimes it's really easy as a C suite or business owner to get on this hamster wheel where you will—you burn out, right?
So, you really need to bring a conscious view… You know, taking these things into consideration. What are the deeper values that you have? And how do those infuse everything that you're doing, everything that you're saying, and the practices that you have? You know, unfortunately, being in the entrepreneur world, speaking world, as long as I have, sometimes you run into people who preach these incredible positive messages from the stage, but then don't treat people well behind the curtain. And being conscious means that you're congruent.
And that also comes back around to the—you know—the vocal leadership, or embodied leadership that we all strive to develop. When you are conscious to make sure that, you know, you're reflecting and having the… your internal conversations match what's coming out of your face.
Wow, that's the first time I've heard that sort of response as far as how it can be one way for the show, but behind the scenes things aren't matching, and how it needs to.So, would you say then, in order for things to be congruent, it has to start with the internal of the founder, of the person who's kind of setting the culture from the beginning?
Yeah, I would completely agree with that. You set the tone. The buck stops here, as the old saying goes.
And I think one of the important things about being a leader is being open enough to seek the coaching on that or to seek the feedback on that, not just from other experts, but also from your team, also from the people around you, from your, from your clients. And it can really take something to hear feedback about that. I remember years ago—I'll go in all the way back to my 20s—I used to get this piece of feedback all the time, because I'm a pretty intense person, you know, I—
I understand, yes.
There's this intensity, and there's this fervor, and there's this passion. And it's… they would say, “Well, could you tone it down a little bit?” Or “Could you soften your edges?” And—oh, my god—that was so offensive, that pissed me off 18 different ways. Because I thought, I just thought they meant that they wanted it, “You go be quiet, put in a box, and smile and do what you're told.” And sometimes that was the case. But what I came to understand later, is that it wasn't really about me, it was about them being intimidated by me. But where I can be kind, and I can be compassionate is learning how to read the room.
Right
And learning how to not, you know, quell or shut off my integrity or my passion, but to manage it in order to express it in a way that people can really receive. Because that's what's important to me, can you receive the message that I'm giving?
Right, right. I guess that’s one of the hardest lessons to learn—different people receive things in different ways.
Right.
I’m just passionate, I just want you to do great, I want us to do great. And just certain ways… it doesn't sit with people like that. And it's learning how to do that extra communication.
Yeah, I remember one of the most important conversations I ever had was in a leadership course really kind of intense one year-long course. And one of my fellow, very successful executive woman, she said—I was getting all ramped up about something—she said, “Why is this so important to you?” I said, “Well, the question is, why isn't it important to you?” And we had a really fascinating discussion about how different people have different capacities to feel. And certain ones of us are very highly sensitive and other people are not. And just, it really opened my eyes, because I really kind of just thought that everybody was like me, and turns out, nope—
No—
Not so much.
I had to make those adjustments. And so, where do you see your business going then in the next three to five years? And I'm sure… We're seeing that people are doing more audio both receiving and giving, than actual reading, and literature, and everything. So where do you see your business going?
Well, it's been a… we've doubled the company four years in a row, time on time. And I don't expect that that will happen forever, certainly—
But it's nice.
It's great so far. And so, we're in a big scaling phase right now. And also, in a position, you know, earlier, in 2020, when the pandemic really was affecting a lot of our colleagues, our clients, our customers, former clients—things like that—I was grateful that we were in a position because we've always been a fully mobile company. And of course, audio is much easier to do remote—that we offered, you know, a lot of—a complement just for free. We went out and said, “What… how can we help?” and offered teleclasses, and consultations, and things like that, to help different companies make use of this online space, make use of audio, both for internal communications, and external communications and marketing. And so, we've had… 2020 was really a banner year for us.
And going into 2021 and beyond we're just looking to really serve more companies to have more intimate relationships with their current clients, with their future clients, with their colleagues, and even for their internal culture, because podcasting in particular, can help with all of that. And then on the author side of things, of course, a lot of people with time that they had, are finishing their books and getting things out on audio—and you know, audiobooks, outsell eBooks three to one across genres. So, it's… It's a beautiful thing to be able to help people get their voice out like that.
Yeah, absolutely, so you're kind of in a nice little sweet spot where it's like you get to of course, help people build their businesses and kind of make some pivots, but of course, it helps your business as well having more clients.
Exactly. You know, it's weird to say it felt like being in the right place at the right time after 20 years. So, worth the wait, worth the wait.
Absolutely. So, you have a few services offered through your website, such as links to your podcast and audiobooks. Tell us about any other services that you might offer, your business offers?
Well, you know, the done-for-you audiobook side of things, one of our… the key things that we're able to do with folks, to the best of my knowledge, we're the only audiobook house—and we do specialize in nonfiction exclusively—who is able to remote into wherever an author is in the world and record their audio book with them, live, full direction, from their home studio or office without them having to go into a studio.
And we can coach them on very easily getting good sound having a high-quality audiobook, and it keeps the cost down. And it's also very comforting to be in your own space while you're do that. So… And we also can do really fun things like insert music, and even other audio clips, and things like that. We're producing a memoir for a family right now on the Holocaust. And there are some fascinating video clips that we're converting to audio that we're going to be inserting in the narrative to help tell the story. So, there's some really cool stuff we do on that side.
Same thing with podcasting. Podcasting is so creative and such a beautiful format to get your message out there. So, whether it is internal podcasting—like we do with enterprise level companies—, external podcasting—that we do with companies and organizations to help get the word out about who they are, what they do and develop their influence—, or the vocal leadership—that I do one-on-one, to help people become more effective in the messages that they have. We're just happy to do all of it—
Yeah, sounds like, yeah, cover a lot of different things that a lot of different people could use especially right now with how things have changed. And so, for anyone who's interested in using any of those services or just even wants to connect with you, where are the best places, and platforms to go to?
You can definitely find me on any social media platform. We have a social media following about 280,000 so we're out there and so you can find me, Tina Dietz. You can also look up Twin Flames Studios, although my name is probably going to get you a better result there on LinkedIn, certainly Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. And you can also just come over to us at TwinFlamesStudios—it's a lot of ss—.com, and come and hang out with us find out some more information, and grab a cup of coffee.
Love it. I love coffee, and I'm sure others do too and would love to share with you.
Me too.
Perfect.
Tina Dietz, thank you so much. It has been such a pleasure learning about you and your company today.
Well, it's been a pleasure being here. Thanks so much, Gabby.
Learn more about the intimacy and power of our voice,
So you started a new business. Now what? In today’s highly competitive world, it’s important to find a way for your brand to stand out. And starting a podcast might be just what you need to get your brand ahead of the curve.
Podcasting is an inexpensive yet highly effective marketing tool that can help promote your brand. 24 percent of Americans listen to podcasts every month, with an average person listening to five different podcasts a week. One reason why podcasting is such a powerful medium is because it allows you to connect on a more personal level with your audience. Brands that use podcasts allow them to speak conversationally to their potential customers in a comfortable, trusting environment. Below we will look at how business owners can start a podcast to promote their new brand.
Test the waters with guesting opportunities
One of the best ways to introduce your brand to a new market is through being an interview guest. It’s a good way to test out the waters and see how audiences respond to your business. An audience’s initial response can help you craft a concept and format that works. Although you can’t just become a guest for any podcast, it’s important to find a show whose subject is appropriate for your brand. If you are a food-related business, you may consider educational shows that look at food trends. If you are a company focused on health and personal care, you might want to look for a podcast focused on helping people improve their wellbeing.
Come up with a name, concept and format
The first step to starting a podcast for your business is finding a niche. This will not be difficult as it should be something related to your brand. However, you must keep in mind that the topic should be broad enough that you can explore different aspects of it, yet narrow enough that you are able to attract an audience within that specific interest. For example, the podcast show “.future” by Microsoft is exploring how the future may unfold based on how our individual lives are today. The show looks at aspects of technology, health and data that influence the future we are moving toward. This fits Microsoft’s branding quite well since the company has always been looking at how to shape the future of society through their products.
Once you have come up with a topic, you can zero in on other details of the podcast such as the name of the show. It should be something catchy, short yet also descriptive. You will also need to decide on the format, which includes the length, structure and how often you will be publishing. The structure, such as solo shows, co-hosted shows or interview shows, will also need to be carefully decided on depending on what best allows your brand’s content to shine.
Make sure the business side of your brand is in order
You also need to ensure that the business aspect of your brand is in order before you begin marketing through podcast shows. This is especially important for startups and small businesses who have limited resources and manpower. It goes without saying that you should fine tune a strategy in marketing your primary product or service. You must also check that you have the right business structure that allows you to protect yourself. Starting a podcast opens you up to many potential liability issues that could shut down both the podcast and your brand. And if you are, like many starting business owners, a sole proprietorship, be aware that this business structure doesn’t protect you should your brand fail or you run into legal issues. Instead consider upgrading to a new structure. An LLC is a US business structure where the owners aren’t personally liable for the company’s debt and liabilities. Business structures such as these give you the freedom to invest in opportunities to grow your brand without the fear of anyone going after your personal assets. For online businesses, you must also make sure that your online platforms are in order and that the user experience is polished. This is because the idea is for customers to head to your website after listening to your podcasts.
If you are thinking about starting a podcast for your brand we hope these tips have helped.
Podcasting has exploded in the B2B realm. During this episode of the B2B Marketing Exchange Podcast, we talk about all things podcasts.(Podcast on B2B Marketing Exchange, June 3, 2020)
Podcasting has exploded in the B2B realm. We’ve seen brands across industries and of all sizes use podcasting to share their unique thought leadership and interview experts in their field. But how is this area of the media landscape evolving as more brands create podcasts, and as more buyers rely on them? During this episode, we sit down with Tina Dietz, Founder of Twin Flames Studios, to get her take on how podcasting is evolving. Together, Tina and hosts Alicia Esposito and Klaudia Tirico go through:
New podcasting formats and approaches;
Creating strategies for the middle and bottom of the funnel;
With 59% of marketers acknowledging the value of podcasts, what's next for podcasting in B2B? We cover it all in this B2BMX Podcast episode. Tune in!
We’ve seen brands across industries, of all sizes, use podcasting to share their unique thought leadership and have meaningful conversations withexperts in their field. Shows like the #FlipMyFunnel Podcast and The Marketer’s Journey are a goldmine for marketers of every breed looking to up their game.And with 59% of marketersacknowledging the value of podcasts in the early stages of the buying process, you’d be remiss not to consider developing a (relevant and informative) podcast for your own brand.
Things got a little meta on this week’s episode of the B2BMX Podcast when hosts Alicia Esposito and Klaudia Tirico sat down with Twin Flames Studios‘ Tina Dietzto get her take on how podcasting is evolving. As Tina explains in the episode, podcasting is about much more than having a good idea or topic to talk about—it’s about building relationships with your listeners, too.
Check out the episode now to hear:
New podcasting formats and approaches
Why finding the right host matters just as much as the content
