Knowing Your Territory: Can You Make a Living Podcasting?

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article | Knowing Your Territory: Can You Make a Living Podcasting?Podcasts continue to grow in popularity. As a result, there are many people who want to join the individuals who are already taking advantage of this new form of expression. From individual hobbyists who want to share an interest they have while supplementing their income to business owners who want to grow a new customer base and build their authority in an industry, podcasting offers a huge appeal.

While finding a Podcast publishing platform is an important step in this process, it is not the only step that must be taken. If someone wants to find success with a podcast, there are few other things to consider, as well.

How Can Podcasts Make Money?

One of the most effective ways for podcasts to make money is through advertisements. While it may take time to build an audience that will attract the attention of a potential advertiser, it is the best way to earn a profit.

Typically, advertisements are sold by CPM, or cost per mille. This is the fee for every 1,000 listeners. The average rates for podcast advertising are about $18 for a 30-second CBM and $25 for a 60-second CPM.

Usually, advertisement sales will occur directly between the podcast and brand or by using a marketplace or agency. The commission from an affiliated product or program is another common type of income stream for today’s podcasters. With this, hosts will mention products on their show and then give their listeners a custom discount link. After this, the podcast is going to receive a percentage of every sale that is made with a unique URL.

Instead of including advertisements, there are some podcasts that sell subscriptions to their show. This is done by keeping content behind a paywall. For example, there are some crowdfunding platforms that allow subscribers to select a donation tier to get different perks, such as access to episodes early or exclusive content.

Expanding a Podcast Audience to Attract More Advertisers

Today, podcasts are a sought-out way to advertise for brands. Even with the pandemic in 2020, podcast advertising revenue grew by 14.7%. With this in mind, it is clear that this is a great way to generate a new stream of income.

Even though advertisers are going to look at other factors, beyond engagement, interest group, demographics, and more, the size of the audience is still an important consideration. When someone is new to podcasting, they should focus on appealing to and expanding their audience, which is going to help attract more advertisers.

There are a few key components that need to be focused on to build an audience and establish a successful podcast.

Target Audience Considerations

It is necessary for a podcaster to determine who their audience is and keep them in mind during the process. Each time an episode is released, there needs to be a plan to market it. By knowing the target audience, it is possible to create content that will resonate with them.

When it comes to creating a podcast, there are more than a few factors to consider. Be sure to keep the information and tips here in mind to achieve the desired results with the podcast that is created, regardless of the subject matter or the industry that it is being created for.

Attention Social Media Marketers! Here’s What You Should Know about Inclusiveness on Social Media

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article, Attention Social Media Marketers! Here’s What You Should Know about Inclusiveness on Social Media

At nearly 4 billion users, more than half of the world’s population now uses social media to connect with not just each other but also with brands. Needless to say, your social media audience is an extremely diverse bunch of individuals with varied interests, beliefs, and abilities.

To cater to them all in the best way possible, you’ll need to consider inclusiveness in your social media marketing efforts. People expect the companies they do business with to take a stand – in fact, 70% of U.S. consumers say it’s important for brands to take a stand on social and political issues.

But inclusiveness is not just about taking a stand on global issues. It covers a diverse range of subjects, from racial justice and gender equality to content accessibility and hate speech.

In this post, let’s learn more about these inclusivity issues and how you can address them in your social media marketing strategy.

Go Beyond a Corporate Statement With a Social Strategy

A corporate statement tells your audience about your beliefs, but a long-term social media strategy shows them how your brand is taking real action.

It goes beyond announcing a charitable donation and proves that diversity, equality, and inclusion is a long-term commitment for your brand. Create a social media strategy to highlight your employees’ actions and your company’s ongoing work towards more inclusivity.

For instance, if one of your initiatives focuses on internal education and dialogue about racial justice, you can share the activities that your team is doing with your followers. If your team is doing volunteering, highlight their stories and experiences in serving the community.

To go beyond a mere corporate statement about inclusiveness and demonstrate real action, here are a few things you can have in your social media marketing strategy:

  • Research how issues like racism and gender inequality impact your industry and create and promote content or resources like books, podcasts, thought leadership, etc. on how to tackle these issues.
  • Get your company involved in a movement and frequent volunteering or fundraising activities, and invite your followers to do the same.
  • Learn about your company’s past and existing efforts, and build a plan to convey your employees’ stories and actions on social media..

Use Gender-Neutral Language, Emojis, and Imagery

When addressing a general audience on social media, use inclusive pronouns like “they/them” rather than “he/she” and avoid language biased to one gender, such as “mankind” or “guys”.

Also, when responding to comments or posts, do not assume the person’s gender, but instead, address them by their name or username. UN Women has a comprehensive set of guidelines on writing in a gender-inclusive way.

This extends to the emojis you use, too. Avoid gendered emojis if possible and opt for the default yellow emojis when addressing a diverse audience.

Simply put, using non-gendered and default yellow emojis when engaging with a universal audience, or multiple colors of emojis when portraying a broad audience can greatly contribute to creating a strong sense of inclusiveness in your social media presence.

Furthermore, if you use stock visuals in your social media, understand that stock images are often littered with gender and racial biases, and there aren’t many options when trying to source inclusive images.

Use platforms like nappy and Canva’s Natural Women Collection the next time you need a stock image that truly embraces diversity and inclusivity. And when designing any new marketing material (flyers, banners, icons, etc.), make sure to let your graphic designer know that you’re committed to representing diversity and inclusion.

Create Content That’s Accessible to Everyone

While on the subject of designing graphics for your social media marketing, inclusiveness is also about ensuring all your content is accessible to everyone, regardless of their disabilities.

You might already know that having an accessible website is mandatory today, with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) extending to digital properties too. Essentially, an accessible website is one that accommodates all visitors on all devices irrespective of the physical or mental ability of the user.

With an estimated 26.9 million adult Americans claiming they either have trouble seeing or are unable to see at all, if you don’t prioritize accessibility, it’s likely that you’re unwittingly shunning a considerable chunk of your audience from engaging with your content on both your website and social media. Not to mention accessibility is also important to avoid ADA lawsuits, which are on the rise.

To make your website accessible, you can take many steps yourself, such as ensuring logical content hierarchy (with subheadings), adding alt text for all images, adding descriptive labels to form elements, and making your site keyboard-friendly. Making all of these adjustments basically mean to adhere to the ADA compliance guidelines.

For social media, in particular, make sure to create graphics with sufficient color contrast so that the visually impaired can also consume the content. When posting videos, always include closed captions or subtitles.

Also, when posting on Instagram, go to Advanced Settings and then Write Alt Text to add a descriptive alt text for your posts. This way, you make your content more accessible to the visually impaired audience who’re using screen readers.

Remove Offensive Comments

If you haven’t already, sooner or later you’ll receive comments on your posts that are misogynistic, racist, homophobic, or hateful in nature. Such comments that are offensive to any group of people should have no place on your brand’s social media presence.

By not engaging and instantly removing these types of comments, your followers can appreciate your company’s intolerance and firm stance against hate speech. If you are not able to remove comments on some social review platforms, develop a strategy to tactfully respond to such spiteful comments, and demonstrate your brand’s values.

Final Words

Inclusivity isn’t just an HR initiative that’s limited to your workplace — it should be built into your company culture that extends to all your brand messaging and marketing as well.

Sure, it’ll take some time and effort, but working with your marketing team to create an inclusive social media presence goes a long way in increasing your content’s value, reach, engagement, and overall brand image.

Ways Of Helping Your Parents After They Retire

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StrategyDriven Practices for Professionals Article | Ways Of Helping Your Parents After They RetireAt one point in our lives, everyone will get older and dace their own challenges. But with many of us wondering how we can help out parents when they get older. However, with just a few simple steps, it is possible to make sure you are financially stable whilst helping your parents. In this article, we will be providing you with a few simple ways that you can successfully aid your parents in achieving a peaceful retirement.

Don’t Be Afraid To Talk About It

When you are looking to help your parents after they retire, it is important to make sure that you have an open line of communication. Though it may seem strange or even difficult to talk about the later years of their lives with them, this will help you to sort out important things such as care homes should they need it and even funeral arrangements. By having these conversations and ensuring that you are prepared and have a will in order will prove hugely beneficial as difficult as it can be this is vital to keep you happy.

Make Sure Finances Are In Order

In addition to an open line of communication, it is important to make sure that the finances are in order. Whether this is paying off all the outstanding debt that you have or taking the time to put together a savings account to pay off the mortgage a bit faster, this will all help to ensure that your family are happy when it comes time for them to eventually retire.

Consider A Care Home Or At Home Care

Though there are several elements that you need to consider, perhaps one of the most important is the care that they may need as they get older. Though we would love to believe that we can look after ourselves as we get older this is sometimes not always the case. Therefore, looking into some of the care homes Chelmsford options as well as other care homes in the UK, these should be compared to at-home care to determine which is right for you. Though this will take time to show around for, this can provide several benefits throughout retirement.

Consider The Future Of Their Condition

Though this is something that may be hard to think about it is also important for you to consider any medical conditions that they have. Whether this is arteritis or dementia or another disease that worsens over time, it is important to make sure that you have a plan in place should their conditions worsen. Though this may or may not happen, it is important to make sure that you have a -plan to make sure they are getting the care that they need should they become really ill in the future and you be unable to look after them.

With this in mind, there are several elements for you to consider when it comes to helping your parents throughout their retirement, regardless of the savings that you have at the time. Where will you begin?

Starting Your Own Small Business

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StrategyDriven Starting Your Business Article |Starting your own Business|Starting Your Own Small BusinessThere are no limits when it comes to starting your own business and making a breakthrough in any industry. When you’re trying to become successful and run a strong business, there are lots of things you need to pay attention to if you want to build a company that’s competitive, reputable, and lucrative. Most people make a mistake and try to build a brand based on strategies they’ve copied from famous entrepreneurs, but that’s never a good plan. Moreover, this is a sign that you’re not doing something right and that your business won’t make it once you hit the market. Instead, try to do thorough research and make sure you’re looking into every detail when building your business and making sure you’ve covered all the basics.

Do the research

Having a great business idea is the first and most crucial step you need to take, but after you come up with such an idea, you’ll need to research the market in order to discover what you need to do to boost your business. This will help you stay relevant, be more competitive, and see how other businesses function.

This also means you’ll have to do proper market research, especially if you’re starting a business that requires feedback. This will help you find your ideal clients and customers, and direct your marketing plan towards their attention. In addition to that, you’ll see what people have to say and use their opinion to make sure your product is the best one on the market at the moment.

Create a business plan

Once you decide what you’re going to do and how you’re going to develop your business, you need to create a detailed business plan. This will allow you to anticipate the future of your business and develop it gradually, from the startup phase to getting new deals and growing your network.

Sometimes it takes a while to get established and recognized, so having a plan will allow you to take all the right steps. If you want to look for possible investors and get them interested in your venture, for instance, this can be a deciding factor because they’ll probably want to see what you have planned for your business in the future. You can even include different answers and ideas on how to solve possible problems just to make sure you’re ready for everything.

Work on your workspace

When it comes to designing your workplace, you need to pay as much attention to details as possible. If you’re starting a business in the healthcare industry, for example, you’ll see how every little detail needs to be carefully planned – the same goes for other industries, but this one is the most demanding when it comes to details.

When creating a hospital design, you need to make sure that you do everything in accordance with the law, and design a space that’s functional, practical, and safe. In addition to that, you need to use those helpful hospital pharmaceutical lighting fixtures that are made specifically for this purpose. These will illuminate your space properly and make it more visually appealing and comfortable – both for the patients and the staff. Making sure your space is organized and functional is what’s going to help you stand out in the competitive market and build patient’s trust.

Get the necessary licenses and permits

This is something most entrepreneurs are unaware of, but you won’t be able to notice how many different things are involved in starting a business until you begin gathering all the necessary paperwork. From gathering all the licenses and permits to preventing all potential issues that might occur in the future, sticking to legal boundaries and regulations is crucial. This process might take a while, and you’ll have to invest some energy and patience into it, so just start working on it immediately and get it over with as soon as you can.

Different countries require you to get different licenses and permits, so the first thing you should do is talk to a professional in your area and learn what sort of licenses and permits you’ll need to obtain. In addition to area-specific paperwork, you shouldn’t forget some of the most common licenses and permits that are required for small businesses anywhere in the world. So, start taking care of this issue right now and try not to let bureaucracy defeat you!

Starting a small business isn’t easy, but it’s exciting and fun, so don’t be afraid to begin this adventure ASAP, and good luck!

Remote Positivity: Emulating Optimism for Your Work-From-Home Employees

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StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article |Work From Home| Remote Positivity: Emulating Optimism for Your Work-From-Home EmployeesThe work from home dynamic has come into our society in full force. Since the pandemic’s effects have significantly impacted our ability to congregate in groups, many companies have used remote work to keep their workflow on a proper level and collaborate with employees working from home.

There are numerous ways that technology has adeptly adapted to this, with apps and services across multiple platforms able to aid in employee communications no matter their location. However, one must remember that there are psychological effects on social isolation, ranging from anxiety to sleeplessness.

It starts with a company leader addressing these issues and taking the initiative to create a realm of positivity for his or her working community. Once done, employees can more easily thrive in a workplace with core values of workplace strength and support.

Collaborate and Listen

The applications that the tech world has developed have been a mainstay in the work from home atmosphere. No longer do people need to leave messages, wait hours for contact, or wonder which roles they have on a company project. Whether utilizing instant messaging, video conferencing, or campaign tracking, apps like GoToMeeting and Slack have all been heavily downloaded and integrated into remote work environments. Digital transformation will only continue to evolve with further refinement of workflow customization tools.

However, it’s important to note that “collaboration” is an integral part of these workflow collaboration apps. That means rising together towards the desired group result–but more than anything, it means a leader willing to step up and create a constructive and enthusiastic environment.

Project management is an essential part of any brand, for example, but proper communication with employees is necessary to steady productivity. Make sure that your working community knows that they’re valued on a personal level. Checking in for friendly workforce chats weekly, making employee onboarding a priority for future work efforts, and rewarding especially excellent efficiency with warm messages are all ways in which you can exemplify your positive work atmosphere.

Zooming the Right Way

If you’ve been working from home, then you’ve probably been using Zoom: the video communications service that’s connected a multitude of remote work employees through web conferencing. However, during the past few weeks, there’s been a concern over the notion of excess comfort in personal home office use with Zoom.

The concept of “Zoom etiquette” is one that has recently been in conversation across multiple sectors. Specifically, there is debate about how many behaviors one may or may not allow when videoconferencing in groups. Addressing this topic with your employees will eliminate any chance of discomfort for them during video conferences.

For example, if one hasn’t had the time for a lunch break and needs to eat during a long meeting, should one wait and not interrupt? The consensus seems to be that it is alright. However, temporarily switching off one’s camera and muting one’s microphone so as not to disturb the other members with possible sound interventions is best.

Other possible scenarios involve establishing that social media alerts or other interruptions don’t divert your employees. These will limit their ability to remember aspects of your video meeting, as well as demonstrate a lack of professionalism that other employees might catch onto.

However, ensure that your workforce member isn’t excessively stressed if a child or pet causes a minor interruption. Know that there are some elements in the new normal that you can control as an authority leader and some aspects that you cannot. Your working community will notice you, and your bolstering environment, more for it.

Communicate and Know the Purpose

With an untold amount of startups in the current atmosphere and a market that seems to change every second, there is a measure of instability that can occur when a company operates on an unstable foundation. Profit may be coming in with a trending product or service, but long-term success is built upon leadership that understands its key areas of skills and fortitude. Having each of your employees understand your brand’s–and your own life’s–mission will give better clarity to your organization, helping align short-term wants with long-term goals.

But communication doesn’t just come from one direction. Through videoconference, asking your employees what they believe their strengths to be and what they want to achieve in life will open up mental pathways on both sides. It will give them a sense of purpose and resolve, knowing that you have a sincere interest in their skillset.

They’ll see that they can chat with you if they notice an additional lead or avenue that the business can take in the future. And for you, as a leader, you may learn an additional power area from one of your working community members that you can now count on moving forward.

Communication has evolved to a level that few of us expected to see a year ago. With digital transformation, we’ve seen video conferencing and webinars take hold in our day-to-day work experiences. However, this doesn’t mean that the foundational aspects of a positive work environment need to lessen. Using the proper strategies, an optimistic working community can advance and lead to a brighter future for every work-from-home member.

About the Author

StrategyDriven Expert Contributor |Veronica BaxterVeronica Baxter is a legal assistant and blogger living and working in the great city of Philadelphia. She frequently works with Todd Mosser Esq., a busy criminal appeals lawyer, Philadelphia PA.