When it comes to marketing podcasts, here at Heard we’re looking for shows that teach you how to think. We don’t want to just be told tactics that might not be relevant tomorrow. We want to be a part of conversations where thinking is ongoing or being demonstrated and figure out ways to brainstorm new ideas.
You need some balance of the two but, if you’re going to miss in one area, it would be better to learn how to think than what to think. This applies to every medium but especially podcasts, so here are three for you.
#1 — Brains
This is a non-traditional marketing podcast hosted by Julian Shapiro and Courtland Allen. The idea is to mix multiple genres or areas of study and bring in people who are great in those areas to have conversations with each other.
To give an example, they’ve had podcasters and entrepreneurs alongside very famous Twitter or Instagram influencers, so you have somebody who’s in the weeds practicing, operating, building a business and someone who has built their career doing something like funny videos.
When you bring them together, there’s this mesh of ideas that happens. That brainstorming mechanism is what’s so interesting about the show. It demonstrates how to pull ideas from one area and apply them in another, whether that be for content, marketing, or something else.
#2 — Social Media Examiner
Going in the opposite direction (and this is more what to think than how to think), this is one of the oldest shows and seemingly a kind of a boring answer to give, but you should still check it out for a couple of reasons:
- They’ve lasted this long. A big critique of marketing commentary is that they are time-bound and therefore become irrelevant very quickly. This show, however, has proven to have longevity past any specific tactic and the ability to adapt as the internet evolves.
- They get very pragmatic and very practical in their advice. In talking to so many people who are looking for help, that’s something that everybody needs. There’s not enough really practical, in-the-weeds advice that comes out in a lot of these shows.
So for those two reasons, I think you should check out the Social Media Examiner.
#3 — My First Million
Again, this is not necessarily a traditional marketing podcast where Shaan Puri and his co-host Sam Parr get together and brainstorm a business idea where they take a trend in the marketplace and brainstorm how they could start a business around that trend.
Having the brainpower of these two people who have built very successful companies and the guests that they bring on to brainstorm other ideas, the results almost always tend to go to…
- here’s the concept
- here’s how we would grow it
- here’s how we would extend the brand
- here’s how we would drive customer engagement/revenue
As entrepreneurs, their minds immediately go to growth, marketing, and scale. While a great podcast in general, for marketing specifically, they give so many insights and ideas while they’re brainstorming these different ideas that you will become a better content creator by tuning in.