It’s almost impossible to filter through the best industry advice, info and news amidst the abundance of content worthlessness scattered across the online marketing ‘blogosphere’.
You have a business to work for. You have sales to make. You have repeat customers to delight. But you still know how important it is to see the jungle through the trees.
You know you should be reading industry news, analysing current trends, and ‘fast-tracking your career with self development’. But come 6 o’clock, you’re staring at a bunch of bookmarked links and queued browser tabs – hiding a dark secret of unread online marketing articles.
The last thing you want to do is slog through a whole stack of reading before you go home.
Prepare to have your industry learning guilt banished.The ecommerce podcast is set to become your new best friend. Just slip in some earphones and let the audible teachings of the industry’s best orators wash over you as you go about your daily commute/dog walk/lawn mow/treadmill session.
Here’s 8 of the best ecommerce podcasts around (with a juicy little bonus thrown in for good measure).
Ecommerce Podcast #1: Build My Online Store
With over 40,000 monthly downloads in over 100 countries, Terry Lin’s Build My Online Store Podcast is a worthy number 1 in the iTunes Ecommerce Podcast rankings. Terry left the investment banking world in 2012 to dominate the online jungle, developing one of the best online education hubs for ecommerce marketers.
Terry’s podcast is 100% ecommerce focused. You’re sure to find a bunch of niche ideas specific to your online store from Terry’s interviews with successful ecommerce store owners from America and abroad.
From milkshake marketing and product image strategy to selling supplements online or managing a beard oil brand, Terry’s ecommerce podcast covers some ground. His enthusiastic delivery and youthful approach should get your motivation flowing. If you only have a half hour window each week – this podcast is compulsory listening.
Ecommerce Podcast #2: Smart Passive Income
Pat Flynn is famous within the online marketing world for his generosity in sharing every ounce of his intellectual property with his followers. Pat even publishes a monthly income report, breaking down his earnings so that you can see exactly where Pat makes his money online.
In the Smart Passive Income Podcast, Pat shares his secrets about making money on line, with a plethora of tips about blogging, email marketing and building an active community. Pat regularly interviews ecommerce business owners and marketers to share their success stories.
At around 45 minutes each week, Pat’s in depth podcast will leave you with at least one actionable tactic you can use to improve your online sales.
Ecommerce Podcast #3: Social Media Marketing
The guys at SMExaminer have become the worldwide authority source on everything that moves in Social Media. From the branding mainstays of Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, to emerging platforms like Pinterest, Tumblr and Vine, Mike Stelzner and his team manage to lure the best of the best to share their online secrets.
The podcast is hosted by Mike himself, an experienced copywriter who started social media examiner off the back of a successful book he released on how to write a great whitepaper.
Using his connections (and generous charm!), Mike started interviewing industry heavyweights for the Social Media Examiner Podcast at big industry events. Within two months of publishing his site, he was dominating the online jungle with over 55000 unique visitors per month. He gives you a rundown on his success story in this super 3 minute vid.
The podcast is wedged full of fresh insights and tips. Apart from the advice of Mike’s expert marketing guests, you also get to learn from the successes of Social Media Examiner. The expert guest is not always an online store operator, but you can always find some online marketing lovin’ from Mike’s weekly 40 minute social media gospel.
Ecommerce Podcast #4: This Old Marketing
This Old Marketing is brought to you by the forefathers of content marketing Joe Pulizzi and Robert Rose.
Joe and Robert are the kingpins of the Content Marketing Institute, a worldwide authority source with an abundance of thought provoking blog articles and peerless educational resources.
Joe and Robert are also hilarious. Their weekly wrap up of the latest and greatest trends in content marketing is like stepping into a couple of guys having a chat at the bar over a couple of cheeky lagers. Quick to tear each other to shreds, the pair aren’t backwards in coming forwards – far from afraid to take aim at brands and business personalities who’ve dropped the marketing ball.
PNR (Pulizzi and Rose) have inspirational examples of start ups, agencies, small business and the big end of town creating jaw-dropping content to delight their customers into more sales. Laughs, learnings and lashings of banter, PNR will have you revolutionising your marketing strategy in no time at all.
Ecommerce Podcast #5: Ecommerce Fuel
eCommerce Fuel host Andrew Youderian may not be as experienced as the likes of Mike Stelzner, Robert Rose or Joe Pulizzi, but he has been around the block quicker than most. Like Terry Lin, Andrew left the corporate rat race to start a number of highly successful ecommerce stores.
His podcast is an access all areas exploration of everything ecommerce. His guests might not be the keynote speakers of the marketing world, but what the podcast lacks in star power, it makes up for it with ultra specific ecommerce insights. Andrew’s guests are successful ecommerce store owners who chronicle their online business journey.
The eCommerce fuel podcast will keep you on top of all the major new developments in technology, operations, marketing and user experience so you don’t have to trawl through your favourite blogs for your weekly snapshot.
The best part of Andrew’s podcast is the niche focus. He delves into areas you probably have next to no idea about. Issues like selling an ecommerce store, shipping and inventory control, increasing conversion rates and sourcing products from abroad aren’t your usual marketing blog topics.
Ecommerce Podcast #6: The Lede
So you don’t have a time slab of an hour at a time to tune into a podcast? Find the time! While you walk the dog, mow the lawn, hit the gym, catch the train…
Even if we can’t convince you, there’s no excuse to miss The Lede Podcast from the Shakespeare of copywriting; Copyblogger. Founder Brian Clark is the godfather of blogging education and this snappy little 10 minute podcast lives up to the Copyblogger mantra that brief is better.
Simple, concise and incisive, the Lede gives you one writing lesson per week to help you improve your marketing content. Their no nonsense approach is perfect for the ecommerce pro on the run.
Director of Media Jerod Morris hosts the show, taking you to school on the basics from how to nail your opening to writing effective bullet points.
10 minutes. Better copy. More sales. No excuses. (Brian would be proud of that precision…)
Ecommerce Podcast #7: Marketplace
If you’re a business news junkie you can’t go past American Public Media’s Marketplace. Although the program reports on the latest happenings in the financial world, the Marketplace team are also right on top of the biggest news in business technology and online commerce.
Genial host Kai Ryssdal has achieved pseudo cult status amongst American business media nerds. Apart from his sultry tones and cheeky, inquisitive tone, Kai gives an objective delivery of the news in business, with a sneaky sardonic aside slipped in every once in a while.
Marketplace is a glorious hodge podge of economics, marketing, finance and technology. From big business case studies into the Target’s and McDonalds’ of the world to exposés on the ability of Amazon shipping drones to Taser customers, you’ll delight in Marketplace’s surprising array of business titbits.
The Marketplace Podcast is a general wrap up of the day’s best news, but the Marketplace Money podcast is worth a listen if you want to hone in on everything economics. You’ll find a generous smattering of ecommerce news in each podcast, owing to the team’s lust to stay on top of the latest in the online world.
Ecommerce Podcast #8: Planet Money
This podcast is business entertainment. Yeah – there is such a thing.
Business easy listening from the best investigative journalists in the finance business. Each weekly episode is spliced with ‘a-ha’s, ‘you’ll never believe it’s and ‘now I finally get it’s.
Sure, ecommerce itself is not a regular focus for the Planet Money team, but you’re bound to earn yourself some ROI on your half an hour by grabbing a better understanding of the core principles of our apparently marvellous economy.
They’re living out the dream of every high school business teacher, somehow making economics fun.
If you’re not convinced, hop on over to Planet Money Makes a T-shirt. The podcast team was deployed across the globe for months to chronicle every step in a t-shirts production from start to finish in an effort to help you understand the hidden intricacies of our modern global economy. We explained why Planet Money’s T-shirt Podcast may have been the best interactive story of 2013.
Invest a twenty minutes of your week, you’ll be hooked in one episode.
Don’t Forget Your Bonus! Radiolab’s Brown Box Episode
One for the road…
Here’s the Radiolab team with an insider’s view of Ecommerce’s messy operations underbelly. In this 20 minute show stopper, reporter Mac McClelland tip-toes into the creature that is the online retail system.
What she finds leaves her breathless. Literally. And weak in the knees. Literally.
Jaw-dropping stuff, listen and learn.
Thank us later. Or thank us now and share the good stuff with your social media tribe.
Have I missed any super ecommerce podcasting gems?
Let me know! I’m all ears…