Smart Automation Techniques for Podcast Guest Outreach with Khadirah Muhammad

Rachael: 00:00:09

Hi, and welcome to podcasting 101 with Rachael. This podcast is for busy female entrepreneurs who run their own businesses and want to start a podcast or who may already have a podcast.

I want to share practical information and tips on how you can get your podcast started and managing it along the way. I'll also be interviewing other female podcast hosts to give you real insight into what it's like having your own podcast.

Hi, and welcome to this week's episode. Today we're going to talk about the automation tactics you can use to get guests on your podcast.

Let me introduce you to today's guest, Khadirah Muhammad. Khadirah is a marketing automation and systems engineer and CEO of the alliance for Business Excellence.

Her ultimate passion is to help service providers leverage systems and automation so they can gain back 500 hours of their time without feeling overwhelmed with tech using her four c method. Welcome, Khadirah.

Khadirah: 00:01:15

Hi, Rachael. I'm excited to be here. I've been looking forward to this.

Rachael: 00:01:18

Yes, I'm very excited to dive into this topic today. So, as I just said, we're talking about the tactics that you can use for automation with getting guests in your podcast.

I would love to just get stuck in. So why don't you hit me up? I haven't, as I said before we start recording, I haven't really come across a lot of this.

So I'm just really super interested to dive into this conversation. So I will let you share your expertise.

Khadirah: 00:01:45

Oh, yeah, absolutely. So just a little backstory on myself, just a little context. I am the automation.

So I do all things tech systems, kind of the things that most business owners and I imagine most podcasters probably don't want to deal with outside of the direct tech that's needed for your time. And so I've been doing that for like, I don't know, since I was about 18 years old. I went to college, went to school to be a web developer.

I taught myself how to code. Prior to that. Tech is in my blood.

I've been doing this for a very long time, and I've been helping business owners be able to use technology without being overwhelmed because most people don't want to or that necessary evil type of thing. I've been doing that for probably around five to six years now. It's been a joy.

I'm super excited to talk about this with you, Rachael, because it is like that podcast inception, because I use the same tactics I'm going to talk about to get on Rachael's podcast. And it's a lot simpler than I hope is something made out to be this huge web of things. But it's a lot simpler when it comes to automation technology.

Most people take it a bit too far in trying to do all the things with one app or buying a bunch of software, and you don't really end up using it. You have a bunch of duplicates, and now you're just paying $100 a month for something that you're not really then doing anything with it.

And as a podcaster, and more specifically as a guest who wants to be on podcast, it can be a lot simpler to actually get on those podcasts. So what I did to begin with, Rachael, is we use any kind of one of these directory podcast tools that you may have.

There's podcaster, I think there's pod insanity. There's a lot of different ones out there. All of them do the same thing. So it's okay, choose anyone that you want.

But it's effectively taking that and having what's called a marketing CRM. And if you're familiar with CRMs, there's a customer relationship management tool. And really it's.

You may have heard of them, there's Dubsano, there's honeybook, there's active campaign, there's keep, there's HubSpot, there's go high level. All of them do effectively the same thing. Some of them are better than others, but that's what you need. You need a podcast directory.

You need a mark Bean CRM, any one of the ones that I mentioned before. And you probably need somebody else. It could be you.

But if you have a virtual assistant or somebody on your team who can manage the entire process, that would be very helpful as well.

And what you need to do is you have your team member, again, I'm just going to say a VA or whatever system that you have an EA, and they're going on your podcast directory and they're looking at, okay, these are the podcasts that in this case ratio is really interested in being a guest. These are the podcasts that she wants to be able to show up on.

They match her desires, they match her demographic, they match just whatever audience that she's looking out for. You go on that directory, you're able to find all those podcasts you want to get. Their contact information. Mainly just an email is perfectly fine.

In this case, we only miss email. Some of them have phone numbers, but I don't do any direct estimates. That's. I guess it's a whole different thing. But the email side is super simple.

You take that and you're using your marketing CRM in order to automatically follow up with all of those people. And it's really as simple as that. The best thing that we've done now is my assistant, Cecilia. I love her.

I've been, she's been my assistant for, at this point, maybe almost four years now. And she's amazing at this.

And what she'll do is she finds these podcasts, she shows them to me, and we both listen to them, and she listens to them an episode or two to get a feel of what they're speaking about, if they match what we're looking for and audience that we want to be a part of.

When she does that, she writes a very personalized message related to that episode, complimenting it, bringing up some insight from it, something that says that she's actually listened to, because she did right. There are some tools out there where you can have AI handle that part for you. I like the personal touch a little bit more.

And so I like when she mentions what she liked about that episode or what I like about that episode. And so she takes that and she's able to automatically put it into every single email that goes out.

And the emails are outreach, and we're sending those emails via marketing CRM. And people respond. Some people respond sooner, some people respond later.

We're able to use that email marketing in order to reach out to all these podcasts to see who's interested in us being on there. Being against is real to suppose that.

Rachael: 00:06:41

So do the emails get sent out individually or are they on an automation progress within the CRM?

Khadirah: 00:06:48

Yes, they're on automation. So all of them are on automation. All of them, just each of them have their own specific, personalized, unique message in each of them.

You know, a sentence or two gets changed out, but the bulk of the email is pretty much templatized and it gives them more to know who I am by the podcast I've been a part of, so on and so forth.

Rachael: 00:07:08

Yeah, I mean, I think the personalized touches is the way to go because we have talked about this in the West Midlands podcast Club community.

From the point of view of the podcast host, if you receive a very generic email that doesn't really show that the person has really listened, you're not really, you're going to just think they've just like cold emailed a load of podcasts. And in fact, actually, I had an email on Monday, this week at time of recording. This is September and my new season.

Four of this podcast has come out today and someone emailed me Monday saying they listened to the episode, and I was like, I actually don't know how you listen to the episode because it's literally not published. It wasn't published till today. So I don't know how you managed to hear the episode earlier. Tell me how great you thought it was.

I was a bit like, I'm not quite sure where you're coming from here, but I think that you definitely need to be listening to some of the episodes and making it personalized. Do you or your assistant have a process of where you search for the podcasts?

Is there any kind of, is it just looking at the different, you go through the directory, find the podcast that you think are the best match for you, and then you transferring the information over to the CRM.

Khadirah: 00:08:25

Yeah, we search using, so each podcast directly will be a little bit different in terms of how you search on there, but we're always using some variation of keywords via the podcast title, potentially via the previous episode that they have. Right. So I like to focus on podcasts that are speaking to small business owners as well as corporations and execs.

Those type goes deeper than that, we say, but those are the main keywords that we're using in order to find the podcast that we want. And then from there we just research.

We may listen to an episode or two, and then if we like it, we try to see if we have their email information and then put them in the system.

Rachael: 00:09:05

Yeah. Would you try multiple different directories or you just stick to like, do you stick to one? I don't know if you've heard of good pods.

I found that quite good to use for search.

Khadirah: 00:09:17

I haven't, but mostly we just use one.

I'm actually in the middle of looking at a couple different ones because the one that we've had before is just the poly hasn't been as good in terms of the platform itself, not necessarily the amount of podcasts that they have on record, but we don't usually go with more than one unless there's like an issue with the one that we have right now. Most podcast directories that we've utilized have been large enough where they, they're getting all the podcasts that are available to them.

And it hasn't been like huge discrepancies, unless they're newer. If they're newer, then that's different.

But if they've been around for a bit of time, they tend to, in their systems, always update and have the latest information on new podcasts as well as current podcasts that have just been running, but we're always seeing which one is the best. I'm not as I'm not married to one, if I could say it.

We'll switch around and see which one best, especially if any newer directories, like right now I'm in the middle of looking for a directory that offers more integration so we can automate a little bit more. As in, like being able to pull the humanos a little bit faster and be able to put them in our system.

Because right now even that process is a little bit more manual.

Rachael: 00:10:33

So the informations you can. Because I know you've mentioned Zapier to me as a tool that you can use to connect different softwares.

Can you connect that up to any podcast directories? Do you know? Or is that not something?

Khadirah: 00:10:46

That depends. Not every podcast works will let you. Some of them may have to be on a higher level paid plan. Other ones don't offgrid at all.

Yeah, it just depends on what's going on with that particular directory. Sometimes they'll let you, sometimes they won't have.

Rachael: 00:11:01

Okay, that would make it easier if you could just simply set that up.

Khadirah: 00:11:08

Yeah, it would be worth the money. And then also you gotta make sure that the data they're bringing in is also the data that you need. Sometimes. Sometimes.

And for those who may not be as familiar with Zapier. Zapier is like the glue of the Internet, I like to think of it. And it lets you connect apps together that don't normally talk to each other.

They don't normally hang out in the same spaces.

And so if you ever had an issue where you're getting an email in Gmail, but you want that to go into a Dropbox folder, for whatever reason, Gmail and Dropbox don't work like that. Natural. And Zapier can help you do that.

So I use Zapier in order to connect a podcast directly to my marketing CRM, because I know for a fact they don't talk to each other naturally. And it makes everything so much without you having to physically do all the things yourself. So I'm a big Zapier fan. Zapier expert. It's amazing, too.

Rachael: 00:12:08

Yeah, it definitely is a great way to describe it as the glue of the Internet. I love that. Yeah, I use Zapier, I think, at the moment.

And for the West Midlands podcast Club, we have made a light and we have airtable, which is the CRM and I, what we use.

So we created a form so that when someone fills in the form it gets zapped to mailerlite so we can contact them on the newsletter and let them know when the events coming up and so on and so forth. So yeah, it's a really great tool. Can I just ask what CRM you use?

Khadirah: 00:12:40

Yeah, I use go high level.

Rachael: 00:12:42

Go high level. I've not heard of that one.

Khadirah: 00:12:45

Yeah, go high level is relatively newer. It's been around for maybe five ish years or so. It's a marketing CRM and it's a really nice all in one tool.

It comes out to surface like a business in a box and it really replaces a lot of other tools. It has email, sms, it has funnels. If you're familiar with clickfunnels and making landing pages, it has that as well.

If you're familiar with school, the kind of community platform where you make different groups and memberships, it has something like that as well. So it's a really neat all in one tool I've used. I build out a lot of our clients on go as well.

It's just, it's also just tends to be more cost effective.

Rachael: 00:13:32

Oh, that sounds interesting. Yeah, that it is hard. As a business owner and a pod, it's sometimes very difficult.

And like you were saying in the beginning, you tend to have a lot of different softwares and you're paying for the same thing and which you don't realize because you use one thing for one, one thing for the other.

But a lot of the time we need someone like you to be saying, okay, this is what you can change down or use instead so that you are streamlining your processes. Because I know that even myself to try and keep costs down. Like I'll have a free account of headliner which is a.

I don't know if you've heard of headliner, you can make audiograms and videos and subtitle them. It's a really great tool. It's one that I recommend to everyone for using. I have been on. They do have a good paid packages.

If you're making that many, it's worth investing in it. But I also have descript to do transcripts and some of the tools do the same things, but they don't all do everything that I want them to do.

So it's like trying to find the best workaround without going into five different programs to produce one episode and promote it kind of things. Yeah, I've really been able to connect up the podcast directory to your CRM.

That makes things the process a lot easier because from my experience in looking for guests I've done it for myself and I've done it for a client. It is quite laborious work.

Obviously, you have to put a lot of time into listening to the episodes and crafting that personalized response, but actually finding the episodes.

I know this is not about automation, but how have you or your assistant found like actually physically finding episodes that are relevant or, sorry, podcasts that are relevant? Because for me, I know discoverability is a big issue with people that want to be more discoverable with their podcast.

I found it quite difficult to really hone in on the podcast that would be relevant for me or my client.

Khadirah: 00:15:22

It all comes off like the podcast titles and episode titles and descriptions as well, because that's how the directories are able to search you up and make you findable or searchable inside of their platforms. If you are focusing on specific niche, I would suggest, and I also have an SEO background too, so it's also coming up into play too.

You really want to focus on your podcast title in the description and making sure you're adding in relevant keywords there. If you do, that's how people can find you. Not just in the directories, but just in regular places with people.

Social podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube podcast, wherever else searched them. It really comes down to how you keyword optimize your title and your descriptions, and that goes into your episodes as well. Each of them.

Each episode title, each episode description. That's the only way I can find you. I can't. Most directories are not like searching within the transcript of an episode.

They're looking so like you mention certain keywords in the episode, which is more likely I can't find you in that or for the majority of time I can't find you in that book. I find you need in description that you put out.

Rachael: 00:16:43

Yeah, that's a good reminder there to make sure that you're thinking about your titles and the descriptions. I know that when I first started this podcast, I had a lot of episodes that how do you record your podcast or how do you publish your episodes?

So they were quite easy and clear to understand for episode titles. But when you have a guest on, I do sometimes.

Sometimes it just comes to me and I feel like it really explains exactly what it is that you're getting across with the episode. But sometimes I find it hard and AI doesn't always help. I feel like they sometimes produce very generic so and so's journey and titles that aren't.

That might sound good, but really aren't very keyword specific like you were saying. So for somebody then to either find your podcast to listen to or to potentially be a guest on, you're restricting yourself in that way.

Do you actually have, if you've got an SEO background, do you have any tips?

Is the best way for titles and descriptions is to really make sure you've done your keyword research for that particular topic and ensure that you've built that into the description, the title.

Khadirah: 00:17:52

I love this question so much. So I'm going to answer all that because I actually would suggest using AI for this.

But this is where you have to train Da to be able to produce what you want it to do.

I think if I was in your shoes or I was in your audience's shoes into producing podcasts and they want to be able to optimize their title subscriptions on their every episode that they do, my first thing I will do is if I already know what the episode is about, that is going to tell me what keywords I should probably be focusing anyway. I would have that in mind ahead of time.

Now, obviously, once you actually have the conversation, if you're having a guest, it could go in a different way and it's perfectly fine. But then I would do some recapping. I don't know what you do afterwards, but if. Okay, we talked about this subject as well.

I'm going to add this to my three to five keywords that I already had in mind for this episode. So we want to tell the AI what to do. We don't want to just let the AI do what it's want because it's like a three year old or something.

Like it's super powerful, a lot of potential. We love it, all those things. But in the day, if you let it run around, it's just going to do what it wants to do.

I had a great conversation about us being both being with children over the past few days. So I really wanted on a, on a children basis right now. But if you let it do what it wants, it is going to do what it wants.

It's going to get in all the snacks and it's going to do all the things. So that's why we have to direct it and tell the AI what we're looking for. I. Number one, I would not leave it to AI to choose the keywords for you.

You choose it for yourself. That'll help with everything. Number two, I would take the transcript that you're able to get of your Kai cast. You can upload that tip to.

I'm just saying chat GPT, you can upload into chat GPT and give it a prompt of these are the keywords I have in mind for this episode based on the transcript.

Please give me, you know, three to five titles that integrate my keyword choices that also are within this character limit because they probably can't be super long.

And that is going to give it direction based on the transcript of the actual episode, what you all actually talked about and the keywords you have in mind. And that's how you can use AI to kind of ideate for you.

Not saying you're going to use the titles that it directly gives you, but it can bring up your creativity. Okay, I like this, but I'm going to tweak this, I'm going to tweak that and so on and so forth. You want to have it ahead of time.

And if you are podcasting on a regular basis, you should also book already thinking about these keywords.

So for this episode, I wouldn't be surprised if your keywords were podcast automation, podcast marketing automation, podcast marketing systems, or something like that, because that's what we're talking about in this episode right here. And those keywords are going to be relevant for you, for the people that you want as your audience listening to this episode.

Because automation and podcasting, while it's not always in mind, it's probably thought about in the sense of how can I save more time on my podcasting? How can I make it more efficient?

What can I do to get guests on, how can I be a guest on other podcasts so that I can also be promoting my podcast on other podcasts and so on and so forth.

Rachael: 00:21:26

Yeah, that's great advice. I do use AI, too. I do put my transcript, I've been using Claude.ai for the last few months, and I found that to be quite good.

A lady from our podcast community recommended it, so we were, I was giving it a bit of a try, and I quite like using it. Put the transcript in and then to get some titles, I use it to help, you know, craft little excerpts and things like that as well.

But you're right, it's a great jumping off point. I think it's easy to start with some suggestions and starting from a blank slate, isn't it? Sometimes I think it is.

Anyway, for myself, I just don't like it when it keeps putting, elevate and journey too many of those kind of buzz, buzz buzz words, AI words kind of thing. But yeah, it's great. I think using it in that way just. Yeah, it's like a.

Especially if you're a solo business owner, if you haven't got anyone else to bounce off of that time, it's somebody. Something that you can bounce off of with ideas and different ways to write things. Yeah, it can be super helpful in that way.

Khadirah: 00:22:32

No, absolutely. Yeah. I would try to use as much as possible in your. It's called a tech stack to just make it easier for you.

And there's even ways where if you're using a popular riverside mentioned the script, these are all apps that also integrate in Zapier. And chat boutique also integrates with Zapier, so you might be able to even automate it even more.

Wherever after an episode is done, maybe via Zapier, that episode transcript automatically goes into OpenAI or Chag GPT and it'll automatically spit out a few podcast titles or suggested and or suggested keywords. And you could put that in your airtable CRM and it could already be there. Already start as soon as episode.

Rachael: 00:23:24

Oh, you just blow my mind with that. So you can set. So you're saying I could set. Potentially set a zap from descript.

From descript to chat GPT with the transcript, and then from chat GBT to my airtable with the information that I want. My God, that sounds amazing. Gonna say, write that down, everybody. Write that down. That sounds amazing. Yeah, I just.

I guess I never really thought about automation in that way. That's obviously why you're the expert and I am not in automation. I'm very new to airtable and zapier and everything like that.

That's like in the last twelve months, it's fairly new. I guess I haven't really delved really into like specifics about what? About what kind of things I could zap together.

But I'm definitely very interested in that one. You have just talked. That's amazing. Tip everybody. Try that if you're podcasting already.

Khadirah: 00:24:27

Oh, definitely.

Rachael: 00:24:28

Yeah, I know that.

We would love for you to come and talk with Sarah and I in the podcast club exactly about these types of automations, because I think everybody will be wanting to hear your expertise and recommendations.

And maybe we're going to have to get you back on the pod to talk about those for the next season, because I think they would really help, especially as business owners as well. Not just for your podcast. Everybody listening here, this is a podcast aimed at women in business.

And as I've just proved that I haven't really thought about some of those automations, it really could be doing. Saving me so much time, those simple little things instead of going into different programs.

And that's already just got me thinking about what little things in my podcast process that I could automate, that I do go into different steps. So that has definitely given me a lot to ponder on. Khadirah, thank you so much.

I really enjoyed chatting with you today and I have definitely learned something new from you. Thank you so much for sharing your expertise on this. I know this will be a really interesting episode for everybody to listen to.

Before we go, would you just like to share how people can find you and where you hang out on social media?

Khadirah: 00:25:39

Absolutely. So you can find me. My website is just my first name, kadira.com and I'm on all social media, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, all other things.

Just Khadirah S. Muhammad. You just search me up. It's not like Khadirah so you'll find me there.

Rachael: 00:25:55

Brilliant. I will pop all of those links in the show notes so you can get in contact with Khadirah if you need.

And it sounds like everybody needs this awesome automation experience that she has. Thank you again, Khadirah and we will see everybody next time. Thanks for listening to the show show.

If you'd like to connect with me or get in touch then head on over to my website. If you like the episode then I'd love it if you could leave me a review in your chosen podcast app. Your feedback is much appreciated.

See you next time.