Ilysa and Kira have been podcasting for over 4 years, and in that amount of time have created an incredible community and business all flowering from their awesome podcast Polymer Clay. Make sure you SUBSCRIBE!
Have you found that social media has expanded your listener base/reach?
Social media has made a huge impact on our business, up until this past year or so we hadn’t even spent $100 on advertising and most of our customers have come from our online efforts.
We found that YouTube brings many customers our way, its been a great marketing tool for us, it has helped to let people around the world know what we are doing and what is upcoming on our shows. We also love to share on Facebook and Twitter and get customers from there as well.
How has podcasting helped create opportunities for you?
Podcasting has given us a name in our niche market, we have been able to attend trade shows, retreats and other events as press, we have received products from companies which has given us topics for the show and a way to share them with our audience who might not have ever known they exist and who are unable to attend the events we cover.
We are getting ready to launch a new show called Things Crafty next month and will be expanding to all crafts so we expect even more opportunities to come our way.
What advise would you give a new podcaster so that they keep going!
You have to love what you do or your show will not work, people respond to your passion and can tell if you are just in it for the money.
Do things on your show that are fun to you and your audience will respond. If its not fun then there is a better chance you won’t want to continue and will end up podfading.
We are always thinking of ways to move forward, if we see a product or book we like we contact the company about reviewing it on the show, this helps to make it fun. We love trying to new things!
Has podcasting helped you grow your business.
Our shows Polymer Clay Podcast & Polymer Clay TV have been instrumental in growing our business.
The shows are what bring people to our website to see more of what we have to offer. They bring us the most exposure and also have helped people in our industry to view us as “experts” in our field, which creates trust.
If people don’t trust you they will never buy from you, the show helps to bring trust and show our audience that we are real people with the same issues that they have.
If you charge for access to your podcasts or premium, how did your audience react when you started doing this? How did you handle this?
Our podcasts are free but we also have premium content. We now produce instructional DVD’s and have premium paid downloadable videos and subscriptions.
We have found that if they like what you are doing on your show then they want to learn more and will pay to learn how to complete projects or techniques.
We will never charge for our podcasts, they are too valuable of a marketing tool for us and don’t cost much to produce and the payoff is worth the effort.
If you want to be a part of the Polymer Clay community you can subscribe to the podcast, email them polymerclaypodcast (at) yahoo (dot) com or leave them some voice mail feedback (386) 935-2058.
Remember these ladies are launching a whole new show called Things Crafty where they will share their passion for all crafts, have contributing artists for a number of craft categories and will be having free live online video events, more downloadable media and DVDs.
The ladies also have a new DVD called Kaleidoscope Caning Ilysa’s Way
Wanna podcast? Join the libsyn team, here’s your first step.