Hatch

Earlier in the month we put out episode 200 of the Exit Five podcast. I quit this podcast twice, and then when I decided to rebrand to Exit Five in April 2022, I went all in on the podcast and said I am going to put at out least one episode every week. No stopping. Today we've done that. And we're at 205 episodes. 440,324 downloads. Despite one guy with a personal vendetta against me telling everyone that Exit Five is the place to go to ruin your career (because the content is so bad and the takes about marketing are so wrong) and a few other people who don't like me either (it's always the solo consultants for some reason..) this has been and incredible resource for B2B marketers and it's an example of how podcasting can be an incredible relationship building tool. I've met so many incredible marketers through this podcast. Those people became online connections, we comment on each other's posts, they speak on our webinars, participate in our community, speak at our in-person events, or just trade emails every now and then. What's also cool is that Exit Five is a content business, so the podcast becomes a huge part of our flywheel: popular podcast episodes become newsletters, articles, topics for the community. We can use the clips for social. The transcripts for written content etc. Our podcast is what makes everything go at Exit Five. And I've been super lucky to have Erik Jacobson and the team at Hatch guiding me along the way the whole time. Erik and I met years ago as he was building Hatch and he's created the best B2B podcast production company in the game. They have not only made this process so easy for me, with editing, production, clips, and distribution. But he's become a true partner on strategy and always willing to share ideas. In fact: in honor of 200+ episodes, we had the genius idea of rebranding the podcast from "Exit Five podcast" to "B2B marketing with Dave Gerhardt" which is brought to you by Exit Five, because it will do much better in search. Small tweaks, constantly. Thanks for listening to the podcast, and here's to another 200 episodes. I wish I could tag all the guests but LinkedIn hates when you tag more than one person, so maybe you can comment with your favorite guest below OR drop a comment with a pitch if you want to be on a future episode. PS. You can find every episode now on YouTube too in addition to Apple + Spotify.

Popping in from maternity leave to share that uConnect’s Career Everywhere podcast hit 10,000 downloads! 🎙️ This has been my work baby (have to specify because I now have a human baby 😉❤️) for two years, and it has been one of the most rewarding projects I’ve ever been a part of. I am proud to serve as host and producer! We launched the Career Everywhere podcast in January 2023 and have never missed a launch date (excluding holidays). I am a firm believer in the power of consistency when it comes to building any kind of brand or content strategy. It takes a LOT of work, but it’s effective 💪 A huge thank you to all of our amazing guests! Hands down, my favorite part of podcasting is getting to talk to so many interesting people and hear their stories. My second favorite is hearing from listeners that they’ve learned so much from our episodes and have even implemented some of the strategies they heard about on the pod. That’s seriously the best 😊 I’m excited to hit the ground running in January for our 2025 lineup of episodes! There are endless stories to tell in the higher ed career services space, and I look forward to tracking down more of them. Here’s to the next 10,000 downloads! 📈 P.S. I couldn’t have done any of this without the help of our incredible post-production agency, Hatch! 10/10 service. (And I’m not paid to say that, I just genuinely appreciate them!) P.P.S. Check out the Career Everywhere podcast here: https://lnkd.in/gygrMfNz #contentmarketing #podcast

A big shift has happened over the last 24 months. Creating a video show is now a better strategy (by far) than creating an audio-only podcast. Audio-only shows are good for companies who want to spend $150k+ to create a 10-episode Netflix-like show but in audio-only format (note: very very few companies should do this). For B2B companies, video shows will be the best way to win going forward. 𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲'𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝘆: 𝟭) 𝗔𝘀𝘆𝗺𝗺𝗲𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗰 𝗩𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗲: 10x the distribution and attention opportunity, but not 10x the effort needed to create it. 𝟮) 𝗙𝗲𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗹𝗴𝗼𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗺𝘀: The social platforms are all competing with each other and rewarding good video content in their algorithm as a result (a benefit you'd never get with audio-only). 𝟯) 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 & 𝗦𝗮𝗹𝗲𝘀 Video assets and clips can be used for very specific marketing and sales use cases on offense at all stages of the funnel (audio-only is not as compelling for this). 𝟰) 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗧𝘂𝗯𝗲 YouTube is one of the most used platforms in the world to listen to / watch podcasts, right in line with Spotify and Apple. That alone should be enough of a reason to go with a video-first show, with a heavy emphasis on YouTube distribution (full-episodes and clips). But it also has something all other podcast apps do not have - actual search intent. 𝟱) 𝗕𝗲 𝗘𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 The companies with the most attention are the ones that win. You don't need an audience the size of Joe Rogan to win. You need a vehicle to build the right audience on every platform they are on. Creating original content on each platform is a much bigger lift than using a video-show as one pillar content source to distribute everywhere.

As of today, uConnect's bi-weekly Career Everywhere podcast is produced, edited, and scheduled out through January 2025 🎙 In preparation for my impending maternity leave. That's 9 episodes between now and January 21. No disruptions (aside from not publishing an episode on Dec. 24, due to the holiday). Every scheduled launch includes: - A landing page on our website (which includes the video episode, a summary, linked resources, a transcript, and more) - The audio episode uploaded to Transistor for distribution to all podcasting platforms - The video episode uploaded to Wistia and YouTube - A launch post scheduled on LinkedIn - A launch email scheduled to be sent to the episode's guest(s) Not to mention packing my schedule this summer with extra interviews to make sure we had enough content to get through Q4 and into Q1. And working closely with our amazing podcast production agency Hatch to get everything edited in time. (10/10 service) While still maintaining our regular bi-weekly release schedule in the meantime. In short, this was a LOT of work to pull off 😅 And I am super proud. This was a major goal I set for myself as my boss and I planned how we'd approach content production while I'm on maternity leave during Q4. The podcast is the pillar of our content strategy, and I am a solo content marketer (and the host/producer of the show). In my mind, we HAD to keep it going if at all possible. Plus, we've never missed a release since launching the podcast in January 2023, and I sure as heck didn't want to start now 😅 👏 HUGE thank you to my boss Ashley Safranski for all of her support with this goal, including freeing up my calendar so I had time to focus on this and her great work hosting several recent webinars that I repurposed into podcast episodes. 👏 Thanks also to the many career services leaders who agreed to be interviewed this summer, knowing their episodes won't come out for a while yet. Thank you for your flexibility in squeezing these interviews in before the end of August, too! Michele Doran, Melanie Murphy, Paul Maniaci, Claire Klieger, Gerald Tang, Ed.D., Dave Merry, EdD, just to name a few. 👏 And finally, thank you to Baby Boy for staying put and not arriving early 😅 #clutch There are still several more things I'd like to get done before going on maternity leave (if time and baby allow). But this was the big one 😊

Your short-form video and long-form show/series audiences are not always the same people. 𝗦𝗛𝗢𝗥𝗧-𝗙𝗢𝗥𝗠 𝗔𝗨𝗗𝗜𝗘𝗡𝗖𝗘 (1-2 minute videos for social distribution) These are your "shadow subscribers". They are not actually subscribed to your long-form "show/series". But they still love getting the education and value from your show/series inside of their social feed (instead of through a podcast app or long-form YouTube video). 𝗟𝗢𝗡𝗚-𝗙𝗢𝗥𝗠 𝗔𝗨𝗗𝗜𝗘𝗡𝗖𝗘 (30 - 60 minute video podcasts, video series/shows, recurring live event series, etc.) These are your actual content "subscribers". They are subscribed to your podcast in their podcast app, or your video series on YouTube. ---------- Not everyone in your target audience wants to consume content that same way. Having both short-form and long-form content is an unlock to reach your full audience TAM, and ultimately to driving the best business results using video-first content.

As big as podcasting is right now, many B2B companies are sleeping on it. The same is true for YouTube. And also short-form video. This content game is just getting started. It’s still early. The next 12-24 months is (almost) wide open for those companies who see it.

There’s a big difference between being seen as an expert in your industry and doing a podcast. You can only have one north star goal with your podcast, and it's very important to be clear on which one it is: 1) “We want to do a podcast to grow our long-form audio podcast subscribers and become a top-ranked podcast in our category” OR 2) “We want to do a podcast as a content creation vehicle to highlight our CEO / SME as a thought leader and expert to our target customers across all of the channels they hang out online, and will use the podcast as one pillar source of content for that.” The strategies you do to achieve #1 above are very different than what you would do to achieve #2 above. Literally everything. - The positioning of the show - The format of the show - The marketing of the show - The repurposing of the show Knowing which of those is your north star goal (and why) for your podcast will help ensure you actually get the result you want.

Here’s how our 3-person Marketing team puts out more content every day than most $100MM companies put out in a month: 1. Commit You must be committed to executing on the right activities for a sustained period of time. Most companies fail at this because they do 3 podcasts & give up when they don’t get any “leads”. 2. Identify Your Subject Matter Expert(s) Provide forward-thinking, relevant information that your buyers *want*. Most B2B marketing content doesn’t hit because the person creating the content isn't an expert and doesn’t deeply understand the buyer. 3. Content Creation Framework Put pillars in the ground that help you create content on a recurring basis. Example: we host Tik Tok Live every Tuesday and bi-weekly live Revenue Strategy events. These pillars create raw content. We have 3 total recurring pillars. 4. Post-Production framework Create a framework to *quickly* edit raw long-form content & optimize it for each distribution channel. We publish recorded content within 24 hours, while big companies take 3 months to do the same thing. 5. *Effective* Multi-Channel Distribution Content makes ZERO impact if your buyers don’t *consume* it. You must spend a lot of time in the DETAILS on each channel listening & engaging. __ Strategize -> Create -> Post-Produce -> Distribute -> Listen -> Repeat #marketing #b2b #demand #gtm #content Bonus: Use Hatch for the best quality and most cost-efficient post-production framework to take your raw video content assets and optimize them for distribution across every dark social channel (LinkedIn, Podcast, YouTube, Tik Tok, Instagram, and more) ✌️

It is much better to spend an unreasonable amount of time creating exceptional content and then letting your audience market it forever for you, than it is to spend too little time creating mediocre content and spending forever pushing extremely hard to market it yourself.

The companies who win their category will be the ones who produce great content that gets seen, shared, and subscribed to.