Why Podcast Interviews Are the New SEO with Tom Schwab

Back in 2024, one of our clients that's a big AI company said they wanted to do podcast interviews. And I'm like, why? And they said, because what's most important to the search engines is share a voice, right? How much are people talking about you as opposed to competitors?

Hey everyone, it's Jen Foster here with the Elite Expert Insider Podcast. And I'm happy to say this is our 11th year of recording. So really excited to be interviewing a podcast expert today, Tom Schwab, because I don't know if you know this, but search engines are changing. When you search, you change, you do it differently.

Keywords and hacks are fading and AI engines are indexing conversations and long form content and authentic voices. But Tom Schwab has been ahead of the curve. He's been pioneering podcast interview marketing and helping over 1,500 leaders amplify their authority using podcasting. He is known as the godfather of podcast interview marketing, and Tom shows why conversations aren't just winning with audiences, they're now fueling AI itself.

So welcome, Tom. Jen, I am thrilled to be here, and it's interesting. We both started over a decade ago, and we can remember back then, we would say podcast and people would say, what's that? And today, it's not only people that are listening to podcasts, but the AI that refers them.

So it's an interesting time for sure. Yes, it's awesome. And tell us a little bit how you got into podcasting or why you started Interview Valley. Yeah, and I really look at this as everything in life is a evolution, not a revolution.

So my last company was HubSpot's first e-commerce case study. And back in 2014, people said, how did you grow your business? I was like guest blogging, but it doesn't work anymore, right? Tap into other people's existing audience, get that know and trust.

And so I hypothesized at that point that you could do the same thing on podcast interviews with conversations. And so we tested it. It worked well. I wrote a book, a little cheesy PDF at the time, even did a course.

And the people that were honest said, I don't want to do the course. Can't you just do it? Let me be the guest and you take care of the rest. So we beta tested it.

One of our clients actually bought us the domain interview valet and said, this is what you should call it. So we started it for that first few years. People say, what's a podcast? And then it really started to take off.

And then in 2020 with COVID, all of a sudden, big companies realized that you could use this medium to talk with ideal clients. And then in 2024, it was obvious that AI is indexing all of the podcast interviews. And now we've got people coming and saying, I want to get recommended. I want to get talked about on AI.

And they come to us because the best way to do that is through podcast interviews. I love that. And I think a lot of people are probably wondering, what do you mean AI is indexing podcasts? So let's talk about that for a minute because now people search differently.

They don't search on Google. They go to chat or they just read what Gemini puts up there after the Google results, right? Which is AI. So why or how would doing lots of podcast interviews help you to get indexed with AI?

And I would say doing the right podcast interviews will get you indexed by them. I hear so many people that'll come back and say, I did 50 interviews. And if you listen to them, they did one interview 50 times, right? There's nothing to index.

But the reason it's happening is because AI is looking for human content. It's called digital dementia is what most people call it, or model collapse, right? So when AI trains on AI, it gets worse and worse. It's almost like, think about making a copy of a copy at a certain point, it's useless.

Right. It reminds me of that movie, Multiplicity, where he copies himself and then the person gets dumber and dumber. You remember that one? That was funny.

Yes. And that's, in some ways, that's what the internet has become because it's become more and more AI generated content. And back in 2024, one of our clients, it's a big AI company said they wanted to do podcast interviews. And I'm like, why?

And they said, because what's most important to the search engines is share a voice, right? How much are people talking about you as opposed to competitors and then sentiment, right? Is it positive, neutral, or negative? And they said a podcast interview, it's 30, 45 minutes of positive content.

And they hypothesized it. And then in November of 24, ChatGPT started to show their sources. And I'd encourage you to look at the sources it's usually wikipedia amazon if you've got a book then it goes to long form collaborative content right nobody really cares what you say about yourself on your website right but what they care about is what are people saying on itunes and spotify and as the internet now they say over 60 percent of it is ai generated so they don't want to go there they want to go to true human conversations.

And today that's AI. Yeah, because that's podcasts. And that's the best way that AI can learn more about humans, right? And how to be like, how to communicate with us is hearing us communicate, right?

Exactly. And I always tell people on a podcast, don't talk about the five best ways to do this or the six steps to make six figures in six seconds. That's something that's an outdated blog or it's something that somebody can just ask chat GPT about. What you should be talking about is how the world is changing, where it's going, your point of view, things that people don't just search, right?

It's not a quick little answer. It's a big idea. And that what really attracts the right clients I always think the podcast should be a magnet not a megaphone right You not just trying to make noise You trying to attract the right people and repel the wrong ones Because at the end of the day none of us need more leads right? That's just busy work.

What we need is more great clients that are profitable, that value what we do. Yes, I like that. And you said something earlier that I thought was really good, which was when you're being interviewed, you don't have the same interview 50 times. like I do see that a lot we're all up because we've had our podcast now 11 years so I'll go look at the podcast that someone else has been on that I'm going to be interviewing and I'll see that they have 10 podcast interviews and they're all the same interview they say the same thing over and over again instead of having the conversations I love that you say we should have a big idea and talk about the big idea and not so much of the here's my six tips and do that on every single podcast.

Yeah. And some people are teaching it the wrong way. They're like, some people will tell you, just go on lots of podcasts and tell your story. He cares about your story.

They care about their problem and how you can solve it, right? You should be starting with, here's the way the world has changed. Here's the problem, right? That's what I just talked about, right?

AI is now the biggest referral source. Here's the solution we see. And if you can do that, then that's interesting to people. And if you do it for different topics, then you can repurpose that content.

If your every podcast is the same six questions in order, nobody's going to listen to that. And you're not going to be able to repurpose and promote that content because it all sounds the same. Yeah, we were actually just, we've done it before. We've turned an actual, It was just a webinar.

We turned into a book, but we've told our authors before that have struggled writing their book, go on 10 podcasts and transcribe that. But then make sure you talk about different things and get your outline of your chapters of what you want in your book, go talk it and then transcribe it. And you'll have that. You'll have the content of your book.

Now you just have to add more story or find the holes or get an editor. I love that because for me, I've written a lot of blogs in my life. All of them felt like homework assignments. But for me to talk and answer questions, that's easy.

To go deep on a topic, that's easy. And now you've got this great content that you can use for your social media, for a book, for AI to index. Heck, you can even make AI clones now, which are amazing, where it's trained on your book, all your interviews, all your content. And we've started to use one, and my team prefers it, right?

They can ask my AI clone something, and they get a quicker answer with less tangents and less stories. And so it's a great tool out there. And it's really the ability to create in the way that we want and then repurpose it in the way other people want. yes I love the repurposing and using content over again so having a podcast interview and being on other people's podcasts not only like you said you get to utilize their audience but the type of content that you created the long-form content and you can create the short-form content for your social media and you can have your team just make it or hire a company like Clipper or Opus Clips and get it and have it done and it's so nice because then you have you you've only spent your time once, but you have multiple pieces of content.

And most people think, I wish I could create more content. You don't need to create more content, right? Sometimes you need to capture more content. And that could be through podcast interviews.

That could be through team calls that you record, even client calls, right? There's different ideas in there. So you're capturing that. And then it's like, how do you cut that up and promote that out into the world, right?

Gary Vaynerchuk, everybody points to him. We're all creating just as much content in a day as Gary is. The difference is there's a lot of people that have books out there. And like you said, it's basically just taking their speeches, their talks and boiling it down into a book.

So it's really a great time in the world where we've got the tools that we can repurpose that. Yeah, I love that. And to reiterate, when you're going on different podcasts, if you are just telling your story, people don't really want to hear that. They want to hear your story, but they also want to hear how the problem that you solved in your life, how can they solve it in their life?

Exactly. And we always teach people, start with what you believe, what you reject, what the big problem in the world is. Then you can go in. The reason I understand that is because of this, right?

Of my experience. That's where you weave your story in, right? Like with a book, right? If I wrote a book about my life, I'd buy a bunch of copies.

My mom would probably buy one just to fact check it, right? But nobody's just going to read my memoir, right? But if there's a book that says, this is how to solve a problem in the world, and I put my story in there, my client's story in there, then it's meaningful and people can see themselves in it. Yes, I love that.

Let's talk about something I wanted to ask you, because I know a lot of people go on a podcast, tell their story, tell their idea, help their solve problems. And then that's it. They don't have what I call a call to action. So what do you think?

How important do you think it is to have some type of call to action or have something for people to do when the podcast is over? It depends on your goals. if your goal is that this is a hobby and it's just an activity and it's supposed to be entertainment then you don't need that right and the part is that most people are out there doing podcast guesting and it's a very expensive hobby that they're calling marketing right if it's marketing it should be getting results there should be a next step and part of the big things with podcasting is you gotta be talking to the right crowd and you also have to help them convert.

And so at the end of every podcast, somebody's gonna say, so Jen, how do people find out about your, Jen next steps I amazed by the people that will either confuse everyone by saying you can find me here on X You can find me here on Instagram Here my phone number You can text me And do you not understand the medium? People are multitasking, right? They're not remembering any of that. Send them to one place, right?

Make it easy for them, right? Most digital marketers out there will tell you one call to action. And we have tested this over a dozen years. And what always works best is give people three ways to say yes.

Right. So meet them where they are. Don't give them take it or leave it. Right.

And it could be a small yes. Right. Come back to the website. There's you can subscribe to our podcast.

You can get a free download, whatever it is. Don't make it sign up for a newsletter right nobody wants another newsletter right the medium yes is something that's going to take a little bit more time right maybe you give away your book maybe it's a face to camera video maybe it's a small product or a trial and then that heck yes if somebody hears you and you are the answer to prayer don't slow them down in a funnel right big fish don't swim and whales don't click. If they want to go there and buy or engage, let them do that.

So send them to one place, give them three ways to say yes, and then remind them again where that place is. And it's so important. We teach this to all of our clients. You got to figure out how to take off the plane and land the plane.

So you better understand beforehand how you can answer that first question and how are you going to answer that last question. Everything else in the middle is easy, but it's meaningless if you don't get the beginning and the end. I like that. I think that's really good insight to have three ways to engage with you, not just a one time or not just confusing them by saying, follow me on all these places and text me, email me.

And the ones with the email always get me because it's no one's, they're listening while they're working out or they're running or they're walking or they're multitasking or they're driving. They're not going to write your email down and email you. And 70% of them are listening to it sped up. And so many people, we have to teach them, like with books, they'll keep saying, and in my book, I talk about this.

And in my book, I talk about that. Or in my book, Podcast Guest Profits, slow it down. People have it sped up. And if you don't break it up into the words, they'll never remember that.

Yeah. So I do love that though. And then, so the three ways, again, are usually a download or a giveaway. something to buy like the big heck yeah i want everything you got and what was the middle one because that was your last first and last yeah the middle one is something that's going to take them a little bit more time or money right it's different for different audiences for some audiences the time could be very valuable for them to read the book they're not worried about the 20 for the book they're worried about the two or three hours it's going to take to consume it For other ones, it might be a small product.

What you're trying to do is move them along, though, build that relationship. For some of them, it could be case studies or a video that you have, something to move them along and meet them where they are. Yeah, I like that. And you said something previously about talking to the right crowd.

So let's kind of address some of that right now about, we talked a little bit about it in the beginning about being interviewed on the right podcast and not just on random whatever podcast. but tell us a little bit about how interview ballet really matches people and helps people to get in front of the audiences that they're looking for and not just talking to whatever crowd will listen. It has nothing to do with what they're doing. I learned so much from our clients and I'll never forget one of them referred to what they were doing before was rap.

And I'm like, what? And they said, random acts of podcasting and it didn't work. Right. I'm like, so I'm an engineer by degree.

We have systems, we have processes, and we license the data. The data exists out there. It's just not free and it's very fragmented. So you should really look and say, where are my super consumers?

That's based off of a book by Eddie Yoon from Harvard Business Review. He talks about super consumers being those are the people that buy everything you have and they promote you to everyone else. So you don't want to talk to those people that have the problem that you talk about or have the solution to, and they've got the reason and the resources to engage with you. So be very intentional with that.

So we're always looking at what's your ideal client profile? What's your ideal reader? Who's your avatar? Is there one that's more profitable than others?

And there may be multiple ones, and that's fine. You can fish in different ponds there, but we use data to find those. You can ask your clients, right? What podcast do you subscribe to?

You can use resources. There's Podchaser Pro, right? It's $5,000 a year, but it will tell you the demographics of every podcast. And so if you want to talk to chief financial officers, it will tell you these are the podcasts that chief financial officers listen to.

We've even got one database. It's almost spooky. So I can tell you everyone that goes to this website or everyone that attends this conference or everyone that is a part of this organization, what podcasts do they subscribe to? And you can start to look at those and pick out these are the ideal podcasts.

So it's really based on data and then also on feedback, right? This is marketing. It shouldn't be just talking out into the void. So you'll want to make sure that you've got some way to figure out which podcasts are a base hit and which ones are a home run.

Often you can do that by sending them to different landing pages. We call them welcome pages so that you can say everyone that came to this podcast came from my conversation with Jen, right? And so that way, when you see, wow, this podcast did great. You can say, how can I get back on there?

Or how can I get someone else from my team on the podcast or everyone that listens to elite expert insider What other podcasts do they listen to Right This is marketing And we always focus on podcast interview marketing. It's almost like social media, right? You wouldn't say that you were doing social media marketing. If you just did random posts and never looked at the analytics, Right.

That's not marketing. That's just activity. Yeah. Yeah.

I love that. To wrap up what you were just saying then is you really need to define who your audience is, who's your avatar is, and then target those podcasts or hire a company like you who will match you with the right one so that you're not, so you're not just doing the random acts of podcasts. I like that. R.

A.P. That was really good. But yeah, I really do think it is important on who you're being interviewed by and that it's a good fit.

It wouldn't be a good fit to go on a romance book podcast if you're an entrepreneur and want to talk about your nonfiction book. and bigger is not better there right if you wrote a the best romance fiction book ever and you say i want to be on the joe rogan podcast right joe rogan is the biggest podcast out there that is not your ideal audience there you don't want to sit down with a comedian for three hours who does not like romance fiction and it will not go well for you right better to speak to the audience that you really resonates with what you wrote.

Tell us something that you can scale with podcasting with real conversations. I know you help people do that all the time with your company. Yeah. And it's all about the results that come from that, right?

So what's the hack? The hack is that exposure brings opportunity, right? These are, you should not just be having conversations, you should get results from them. So the things to measure are, did my social media followers go up after the podcast?

Did it open up a new relationship with the host, right? Sometimes the host has a event that they invite you to talk to. Do I have content to repurpose? Did it get me new clients to close faster because it's off of conversation?

So I think all of those things that come from there are the results that come from it. But if there was one thing that I would tell people is that more is not better is better, right? More activity, the right activity will get you more results. Yeah.

And I, and the audience really is important. So my business partner, Melanie was on a podcast for children's books, which we don't normally do children's books. We can, but we mostly do nonfiction. We help people publish their nonfiction self-help book, but she was asked to be on this interview.

And, but the reason why was because this person was really good at publishing children's books, but not marketing them. And so the whole conversation was about marketing books. And it blew up. She that video probably has so many views compared to other podcasts interviews that Melanie's done.

And we've actually gotten clients from that. And so it was really good, even though we didn't think it was the right audience, but it was because they still needed the marketing. So it wasn't that because they were already published authors. So it was like, I don't know for sure why we're going on this podcast, but because we do book marketing for authors, then it was the right fit.

So sometimes you do have to look at that and say, is it going to be the right fit for the end goal? Which is for us, it was to get new clients for her to go on that podcast, but it was a really good success. It's interesting that matching it both ways, because we had the problem for a while where we do a lot in health, nutrition, and wellness, right? I am not the spokeschild for health, nutrition, and wellness, right?

I don't understand that that's not my focus there. So it was the right audience, but the wrong speaker. So now we've got multiple people from our company that will go on different podcasts. And when Chloe Williamson, who runs our health, Nutrition and Wellness pod, when she started to go on those shows, we got so many more conversions, right?

They would actually invite her on because she had something to add to that. And it's like, we're all singing from the same hymnal, but we're singing it in different ways. That's the other thing. If you want AI to index you, that share of voice, having different people from your company talking about it, that can just be an exponential increase in the impact.

I like that. Well, this has been a great interview. I know people have questions. You have something for us that what we were talking about earlier with the little clone of yourself.

So tell us a little bit about where people can go to learn more about Interview of LA and about you. Okay. And if nothing else, just go here to figure out how you're supposed to land the plane at the end of an interview. Remember I said, send them to one place, give them three ways to say yes, and send them to another place.

So this is what it looks like, right? You can go to interviewvalet.com forward slash elite expert. And when you go there, there's really three things, right?

There's that clone that I talked about, right? If you want to ask me any question day or night, you can type it in there. You can talk it in there and it will give you an answer back, right? It's a very efficient way to do that.

You mentioned my book, Podcast Guest Profits. You can buy it on Amazon, or if you want a free copy, if you're in the States, I'll mail it to you. If you're outside the States, I'll email it to you. That's right there.

And then if you'd like to talk with me and say, how could we work for this, for my new book that's coming out, for a podcast book tour, or for my business, I'll put my calendar link on there. You can get all of that back at interviewvalet.com forward stash. Awesome.

Thank you, Tom. We'll put that in the show notes. For those of you who are driving and can't write that down, you can click on that in the show notes later on when you're not driving. Interviewvalet.

com slash elite expert. Thank you so much for being on the show today. Please don't subscribe. And if you know someone who would benefit from listening to the podcast, and if you enjoyed this podcast, please share it with them.

Have a great day and thanks again, Tom. Thank you, Jen.