Landing a Guest Interview

Thanks to Guest Columnist Kelly Glover – The Talent Squad

Landing a couple of podcast interviews is a great start to a podcast guesting strategy but don’t stop there! Earned media is cumulative (and SO valuable). Here’s a super-fast Podcasting Pitching Plan in 5 steps to give you a process & keep you on track.

1. Decide on Your Goal. Add Metrics 

Start with the end in mind. What action do you want the audience to take as a result of hearing your podcast interview? Add metrics. Once your recordings start getting published you can measure, assess, recalibrate, rinse & repeat.

2. Topics & Talking Points

Package your genius into pitch-ready talking points the media will love. Pitching a topic on its own won’t work. That’s way too broad! You’ll need to go deeper and really extract your genius. Turn them into topics that you could imagine seeing as a bestselling book title. You’ll need to write a scroll-stopping subject line for the email too. Your goal here is to grab enough attention to get that email opened.

3. Draft your podcast pitching list

After you’ve done a lot of pitches you’ll quickly be able to work out your pitch-to-booking ratio. This is important so you know how many shows to send to in order to get the booking. It’s not a one-to-one game. The first step is to research and create a pitch list so you can vet each show to the podcasts you’ll actually pitch. When doing your due diligence, there’s a lot more than just having a lot of Insta followers. There’s a lot of moving parts here so once you figure out your personal vetting process, make sure you document, add to a grid, so you can track, cross-check and verify!

4. Personalize your pitch

This is a crucial step of the podcast pitching plan. Customize every email. There’s no place for blasting out a copy & paste email. This isn’t off-the-rack, it’s bespoke! Podcast hosts absolutely hate it when you pitch them and don’t have a clue about the show. This is a highly personal process (as are podcasts). It’s manual and takes time but the payoff is worth it! Shallow host references are also a turn off so be authentic and make sure your pitch copy is a true reflection of your personal brand. This will be be a nice integration & complement to your podcast one sheet and online press kit. Personal branding is key!

5. Have a fantastic follow-up system in place

Set up a logical system to follow-up. You already have your pitch grid for easy tracking. It’s rare to do a cold pitch and get an instant yes. If that happens you’ve hit the podcast pitching jackpot and should celebrate. For all those other times, you’ll need to check back with the host and producer (without being annoying). At the Talent Squad, we call it professional persistence. I suggest checking to see if and when the e-mail was opened before you do any follow-ups so you know how to craft the next set of coms.

Good luck getting booked!

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