Internet Broadcasting for Fun and Profit

How to Create your Own Internet Radio, PodCast or

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WebTV show

By Hector Cisneros

In 2012 when Carl proposed that we create an Internet radio show to improve website ranking and traffic, I told him I though it wasn’t a good idea.  In fact, I was opposed to the effort altogether. Reluctantly, I went along and before we knew it, our fledgling Blog Talk Radio show went from zero to hero where in four months one of our shows had 30,000 downloads in a 10 days span.  Since then our blog, which is what we use as the outline for each show, has grown to more than 1,380,000-page views and the radio show has expanded to simulcasting on YouTube and Facebook. Our episodes have been downloaded several hundred thousand times since the show's inception, and we have even been able to develop a formula for producing a cost-effective show for our clients. In this episode of Working the Web to Win, we will explore how we have turned our marketing efforts to produce traffic and ranking into a fun and profit-generating center for W Squared Media Group. So, tune into blog talk radio and turn on your podcast recorder as we lay out the path for internet radio for fun and profit.

In 2012, we knew that Google liked content such as blogs, videos, podcast, WebTV and Internet radio shows because most of that type of content is unique and authoritative. We also knew that Google was looking for a quality user experience where the user would receive content that was of high quality, relevant, useful, and or entertaining. For us, internet radio seemed a good fit as it was inexpensive to produce. In fact, the engineering console of BlogTalk Radio was easy to operate and only cost us $40 a month to rent. It gave us up to 3

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hours of programming per-day and the controls for starting, stopping, adding sound effects, inviting participants and handling up to 50 callers per show. It was and still is a bargain. What has changed since then is that if you want to build an audience for your show, you must do most, if not all of the marketing to build your audience. More on this later.

If you're serious about creating your own internet broadcasting channel, you will want to learn everything you can about this subject. We have written several articles on this subject in the past. I recommend reading these blogs for additional details and as reference material.

• Team Tech - Your Secret SEO Ranking Weapon
• The Secrets to Building an Audience for Your Business
• The Guide to The Working the Web Universe
• Top 18 Tips That Can Maximize Your Content Marketing
• Top 12 Marketing Secrets for Filling the Credibility Gap
• How to Make Money with Internet Radio and Podcasting
• Is Your Business Still Waiting for the Movie to Come Out?
• Using Video as a Social Media Platform

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Getting Started in the Broadcasting Biz - The first thing you need to decide is the format of your show. This includes the primary topic or topics, the show length, time of day, length of the show, the days of the week, etc.… You will also have to develop a way to create content, or at least an outline for your show or podcast. We chose a half hour show once a week because we knew we could devote that much time every week. Our plan was to team write a blog every week and use the blog as fodder for the show, then post the blog and show to all of our social networks to garner distribution. We felt that it would produce traffic, page views, comments, and shares, plus it would allow us to build an audience rather quickly.  We also decided that two talking heads were better than one, so our show features Carl and Hector who have a serious and sometimes humorous conversation about the blog topic of the week. The format we chose required about six hours of work each week if you include: research, writing the blog, doing show prep, producing the show and pushing it out to our social nets and email lists. What amazed me the most was how quickly our audience grew. We had figured we would have to work hard in the trenches for at least a year before building any a loyal audience, but surprisingly it came within three months. The most important success for us was that these combined content producing efforts actually gave us a page one organic position in a highly competitive market in about nine months.

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Getting Your Show Found - Now there are thousands of bloggers, podcasters and internet radio stations out there. Few have achieved much of a following. This is because many internet marketers are under the false impression that if you build great content, the world will beat a path to your internet doorway because it is high quality. This is as far from the truth as possible as it could be. In fact, the internet is filled with blogs, podcasts, WebTV shows and Internet radio shows that are just billboards in the desert with only a few hundred people acting as their audience (even after several years of effort). To get found, a marketer has to go after the audience, and the audience lives on the social networks. To be successful, you have to have a mindset that you’re in the audience-building business, and that means social media marketing. For one, you have to build a large social network in as many of the top social networks as you can. Twitter is the easiest to grow, but Facebook is very important. Also, let’s not forget LinkedIn, Instagram Google+, Blogger, YouTube, and Pinterest. Building your audience requires a multi-pronged approach where your content is cross-pollinated between your blog, radio/podcast, and simulcasted videos.  These social posts have to be produced daily, and in order to achieve this, you must have fresh and authoritative content. We recommend that you produce two articles a week in the beginning until you reach at least 30 articles/shows. Once you reach this number, you can begin recycling the shows on a daily basis.

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Building an Audience for Your Show- Getting found and building an audience are two sides of the same coin. You can’t build an audience if no one knows who and where you are or what you have to offer. On top of that, even if you're successful at getting found, you must also respect the audience’s tastes and wishes. It’s all about them. No amount of keyword stuffing, phrase jacking or sensational headline grabbing is going to keep an audience loyal if your show and content don’t provide a high-quality experience. Its production value needs to be relatively high; it must be devoid of glaring mistakes and errors. And above all, it has to provide a unique perspective, voice, and message delivered on a weekly basis. To build your audience, you have to grow your social following. To grow your following, you have to provide them the high quality and relevant content they are looking for.  If you don’t give them what they want, they will go somewhere else to find it. If you have a budget, you can use pay per click and other promotional methods to grow your followers. Your company following can be different from your show following. However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t promote your show to your company’s followers. In fact, you should be promoting your content on every channel you are connected to. This type of marketing makes your show the primary landing page for your company and your show pages should be backlinked to every web property you own.

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Monetize Your Broadcasting Station - You can monetize your show in a variety of ways. Your success and profit will be based primarily on the amount of traffic you generate. Having said that, don’t let low traffic dissuade you from adding AdSense to your blog and or adding banner ads to your radios show or podcast. Your goal is to build traffic that allows you to sell ad space. This allows you to cover your costs and to eventually create a profit center. Your best income will be generated by selling direct banner ad deals with vendors you hunt down that match the audience you have built. Look for clients that can sponsor the show and make sure you provide them lots of show promos and banner ad space.  A couple of good clients can generate enough annual income to not only cover your show costs but also supplement or even pay for all of your other advertising efforts. You can bundle your show promo advertising products with banner ads, live promos, live guest appearances, pay per click and more. Your limitations are the audience size, the traffic you are receiving, and the value add you can bundle in.

Repurposing Your Broadcasted Show for Greater Results - Every show you create is a

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valuable company asset. It can be recycled as a social post many times and thus pay many dividends. It can also be repurposed by taking a blog and making it into an internet radio show or by taking a radio show and making it into a WebTV show or reverse engineering a show into a blog. Each title can be used to create similar topics that comes at the audience from a different angle. Topics can be seasonalized, annualized and updated over time. You can also come up with show segments that can be turned into show topics themselves. We usually get at least three bites out of each show by first writing a blog, then using the blog as the outline for the show, then simulcasting the live internet radio show as a live Facebook or YouTube streamed video. At the end of one year, you should have a minimum of 52 episodes as podcasts, video casts, and blogs. They should have produced a minimum of 1000+ social posts related to these content pieces, and you will have enough written material to produce a book of 120 pages or more.

An important note to this whole story is this. You can substitute internet radio for podcasting or even streaming video on Facebook or YouTube and still get the same results. You can reverse engineer a podcast or streamed video into an article and vice versa. You would be using different tools and internet channels as the original content, but the process is extremely similar

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as you would still push out and backlink all of this content to all of your social channels.

It is my hope that you decide to create your own internet radio show, WebTV show or other podcast channel. This form of marketing can be a very creative and productive way to build web traffic and ranking. It’s also a great way to build credibility and show off your expertise. Following this method is relatively straightforward. This program is simple to follow and implement. It is simple but it does require consistent daily work. It's not so easy to do this day in day out, week in and week out. It is simple, but not so easy. This is why we have developed a way to make it cost-effective for our clients to outsource this service from Working the Web to Win. In fact, to date, we have created many internet radio and WebTV shows. Diligently following this method will bring success. If you don’t have the time to figure out all the necessary details, outsource this to a competent company who has already been successful.

That’s my opinion; I look forward to reading yours.

In this article, I have outlined Working the Web to Win’s method for creating fun and profit by building an internet broadcasting channel (i.e. internet radio, podcasting or WebTV show). By reading this article, you will learn a five-step method for achieving success. On top of that, if you consistently provide this type of content marketing, your company website and properties will garner more traffic and achieve a higher ranking than if you tried other methods to achieve the same results.  

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If you found this article useful, please share it with friends, family, and co-workers. I recommend checking out the links in the blog, along with checking out other related articles on our Show Notes Page.  Don’t forget to listen to the BlogTalkRadioshow on this subject.  If you have a related useful comment or opinion about to this article, leave it in the comment section of this blog.  Also, don’t forget to plus us, on Google+ and share us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn as well.

Hector Cisneros is COO and Director of Social Media Marketing at Working the Web to Win, an award-winning Internet marketing company based in Jacksonville, Florida.  He is also co-host of the weekly Internet radio show, "Working the Web to Win" on BlogTalkRadio.com, which airs every Tuesday at 4 p.m. Eastern. Hector is a syndicated writer and published author of “60 Seconds to Success.”