What Value You Bring To the Guest (For Interview Podcasters)

TL;DR:

One of the things that holds back newer podcasters from reaching out to guests that they want on the podcast is that they don’t understand the actual value that they are providing the guest by having them on your podcast. In this article, we’ll dive into how you actually may be helping the guest more than you know and why you shouldn’t be afraid to reach out to people even if you don’t have the biggest audience.

The most obvious value that you provide to your guest is access to your audience. You may be thinking, but I only get like 3 downloads per podcast, should I even bother reaching out to people?

The answer is yes. Especially if the guest isn’t a household name with millions of followers, each new person that gets introduced to the person and their ideas is valuable to them. Creating good content has a compounding effect. If they do a great job and one of the three people that listen to your podcast shares the episode, then they may get introduced to a much larger audience.

The other thing is that your podcast episode lives forever. As long as you keep your podcast active, as your podcast grows people will binge content that they find interesting in your catalog. You may only have 3 listeners now, but over the course of time that episode may end up getting a lot more listens based on your own growth as a podcast.

The thing about being an expert is that you have to prove that you’re an expert by sharing their ideas with other. They can do this by using their own channels and creating their own content, but having people interview can have an even more powerful effect because now others are validating that you’re an expert in the field.

In my interview with DP Knudten, DP shares that when he wrote his first book he reached out to A-list celebrities who he never thought would leave a testimonial, some friends he thought would surely do it, and then some long shots in between. He was expecting none of the A-listers to respond and the only testimonials he would have would be from his friends. Turns out that the A-listers were the only ones that actually provided a blurb for the book.

Why?

Because when experts share their thoughts and are labeled by experts as others, their status as an expert in their niche increases.

And what about the others? Why didn’t they provide blurbs even though they were close to DP?

They were “too busy.”

This is something I faced in getting guests for my podcast as well. People who I knew personally and I felt had a good understanding of branding and marketing always were too busy to come on my podcast, but I had no problem booking guests with much more impressive press sheets. They didn’t realize the value of having other people paint you as an expert, and that’s their loss.

When guests come on your podcast, they can leverage that to increase their perceived value in their own audience’s minds. How? By sharing that they were invited onto a podcast about their industry and that they shared their thoughts. Most guests I’ve had on go on to share the podcast episode with their audiences because it paints them in a positive light.

If you’re still unsure at this point, just go for it. The worst thing that can happen is the person says no. A no now doesn’t mean a no forever. They may be busy or have other things that are more of a priority for them at this time. As you keep building your podcast more and more opportunities will come and you’ll see the caliber of your guests keep increasing with it.

However, you have to start somewhere. You have to start doing some interviews so people know that you’re a good interviewer and you’ll make them look good.