I’ve become a morning walking companion to people I may never meet. How is this possible? They take me along in their earbuds as they stream my podcast, Build a Better Agency It’s a wonderful sign of things to come for marketers willing to venture into the podcasting universe. Once a fringe platform, podcasts are now surprisingly mainstream. According to Nielsen, six out of 10 people understand what they are, and 112 million Americans -- 40 percent of the nation’s population -- have listened to at least one. Though podcast listeners lean male, it isn’t by much: 56 percent are men, while 44 percent are women. Discover instructions on how to get a podcast up and running. Marketing professionals must not only be aware of these statistics, but they must also leverage them in their own campaigns. When 67 million men and women are monthly podcast consumers, it’s a niche that deserves serious contemplation. Add to that fact the amazing statistic that 63 percent of podcast listeners made a purchase based on something the host recommended, and you have yourself a veritable gold mine. Of course, you have to crawl, then walk, then break into a steady trot to glean the benefits. A no-nonsense primer from a podcast experimenter. In my case, I’d written blog posts, conducted webinars, and published articles in places like Forbes and Fast Company for some time. These content producers worked, but I felt a different portal would help connect with more agencies and leaders in an accessible, easy to find, on-demand format. As a longtime podcast listener myself, I recognized that the podcasting platform was the next logical step for me -- especially if I wanted to reach a narrow [...]