Podcast promotion is one of the most important pieces in running a successful podcast. If you have been struggling to find ways to promote your show, then this episode is for you.
As a podcaster, you know how difficult it can be to get your show heard by enough people. In order to grow your audience, you need to promote your podcast in as many ways as possible.
In this episode, we’ll look at some of the proven techniques to promote your podcast and also some of the techniques that don’t work so well in podcasting, and some very simple and nifty tricks that can work really well in podcast promotion.
But before we get into the details, something that you as a podcaster needs to keep in mind is the fact that, if you want your podcast to grow, then you and only you will have to put in the effort to promote it.
And when it comes to promotion, I am an advocate of the 20-80 principle in marketing.
The 20-80 marketing strategy, says that you have to spend 20% of your time creating your content and about 80% of your time promoting the content that you have created. Now if you are not doing that then there is a high possibility that your content will not reach the audience that you want it to reach out to.
Podcast Promotion – Conventional strategies
First, let’s discuss some of the obvious promotional tactics which most podcasters use. These are strategies that you will find being discussed on every other forum, blog post, and video.
But do these strategies really work?
It can but these aren’t the most effective strategies out there. By saying this, I might be breaking a few norms, but that is the truth.
But then, we still cannot write off these strategies because these can help in audience retention. So let us take a look at these –
Social Media Promotions
Social media promotions are one of the most important primary promotional tactics that most podcasters use.
While it is an effective way of promoting your podcast it isn’t something that can get you, new listeners.
Social media promotions can help you get in front of your existing audience with your latest episodes and can get your listeners to tune in to the latest episodes.
It can help you get a trickle of new listeners as well but that will be minimal.
Why?
Because social media channels don’t want you to drive their users away from their channels. So if you are posting links to your episodes on social media channels, then the probability of those posts showing up in front of the users is very minimal.
This means, low traffic to your episodes!
If you are looking to gain new listeners for your show then you need to look at some of the other promotional methods that we’re going to talk about in a little while from now.
Inviting influential guests
Most podcasters have the goal of inviting influential guests to their show. One of the primary reasons for doing this is to leverage the reach and influence of the guests.
Once you’ve released your episode it is a usual strategy of podcasters to reach out to these guests and ask them to promote the episode on their social media profiles and websites. The objective with this is to get in front of the influencers’ audience thereby gaining new audience for your show.
While this is a good strategy this isn’t really a practical strategy.
Why?
It is because in most cases these guests don’t have the time to go and create posts and graphics to promote your episodes on their social channels.
So what I would recommend is to make it easy for your guests to share your episodes on their social media by creating a nice graphic or, post and tagging them on the post.
Once you’ve tagged them you can reach out to them and ask them to share the post on their profiles as well.
There is another very effective strategy that I recommend which I will be discussing in the section where we talk about SEO in podcasting.
Submitting to Podcast Directories
A podcast directory is a page with a list of all podcasts that have been submitted to that specific directory.
One of the most important things to do when you are starting your podcast is to ensure that your podcast is submitted to as many directories as possible.
While most podcast hosts do this automatically for you, it is important that you spend the time to check that your podcast is appearing on the most prominent directories if not all.
Some of the directories where your podcast needs to essentially be present are Apple podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn radio, and some of the other directories that might be specific to a country like Jiosaavn and Gaana in India.
Most of these directories also have their own apps which music lovers and podcasters use to listen to their favorite music and shows. So submitting to these directories help you get in front of an audience who might be using these apps to listen to music thereby gaining a new audience for your show.
So if your podcast is not there on any of these directories then the first thing that you need to do is go ahead and submit it to those directories.
These were the conventional promotional tactics that most podcasters use in podcast promotions.
Now let us look at some of the unconventional promotional tactics which I recommend if you’re looking at gaining a new audience for your podcast.
Podcast Promotions – Unconventional promotional tactics
These unconventional promotional tactics can be very effective but might be a little difficult to implement. But if you are able to implement these, it will be worth the time that you are spending to do it.
So if you are into podcasting for the long term, then I would highly recommend these methods of podcast promotion.
Be a Guest
This is a strategy that is probably the most difficult of all because it needs you to put yourself in front of a new audience and talk about something that you are an expert in.
The reason why this can be difficult is, because it is always uncomfortable for us to talk impromptu to an audience, especially when it is in the form of questions and answers.
Another challenge with this strategy is in finding shows where you can appear as a guest. Now even if you are able to find a show which suits your expertise and knowledge the show host need not accept your request to be a guest on that show.
The key here is to ensure that you don’t give up and keep trying with as many podcasts as possible and also in ensuring that your pitch to be a guest on the show is such that the guest is not able to deny your request.
A very simple tip that I have for you is to ensure that you have done your homework in researching the show that you are planning to appear as a guest on, about the host who’s running the show, and what the host is looking for in his guests before you actually approach him with your pitch.
SEO or, Search Engine Optimization
SEO in podcasting is applied in 2 different ways.
The first is to ensure that your podcast and your episodes are optimized for search engines.
Secondly, you need to also ensure that you have a website with show notes that is optimized for that specific episode as well.
Optimizing your podcast and your episodes involves a lot of things and we will cover more about it in another episode. But for now, just ensure that you are using your keywords in the name of your podcast, the title of your episodes, and the description for every individual episode.
If you are interviewing influential guests, then I have a nifty little trick that you can use for optimizing your episodes.
Use primary keywords like “interview with the guest name” or, “conversation with guest name” for your episode title. Use the same keywords in your description as well.
If you’re posting these episodes on YouTube, then use the same keywords there as well.
Since there will be people who will be searching Google and other search engines with these keywords just because your guest is an influencer, the possibility of your podcast showing up on their search results increases thereby getting you a new audience.
The second aspect of SEO is to optimize your website and show notes for your podcast which is something that we will discuss in the next promotional strategy.
Promotions using a website
A website is a very important part of a podcast and I recommend that every podcaster set up a website for their show.
This is not only to host your episodes but also with the objective of promoting your show, building listenership, building credibility, and branding yourself and your show.
Following some of the basic search engine optimization techniques can help your website, podcast and episodes rank pretty easily on search engines.
Since search engines today can easily crawl textual content, supplementing your podcast with a show note, transcript, and blog post can easily help rank your content on search engines thereby getting a new audience for your podcast.
Reddit, Quora, and other communities
These are some of the techniques that can take some time but can give you long-term benefits.
Websites like Reddit and Quora are full of people who are looking for help, tips, and advice. If you are able to provide them help with whatever it is that they’re looking for, on topics that you specialize in then you can build a community who loves you and your content.
And once you have done that, it’ll be pretty easy for you to promote your podcast to this audience or to even channel them to other things that you offer like building an email list, selling your services, etc.
While the results from these websites might not be immediate and can take some time, they can be long-term and extremely beneficial for growing your podcast.
You will find a lot of such communities on Facebook as well where you can join, contribute and build a following which you can then use to channel to your podcast.
Collaborations or, Promo-Swaps
This is a very effective strategy that we have used in both of our podcasts and have found to be very beneficial as well.
This involves recording a 30-second promo for your podcast and then reaching out to other podcasters to do a swap. They give you a 30-second promo which you integrate into your episodes and in turn they will integrate your promo into their episodes.
This can work really well and can give you immediate results.
Interested in doing a promo swap with me?
Then reach out to me using the contact button.
Over to You
Podcast promotion involves a lot of thought. You will have to experiment and try whatever different methods and strategies that you know of and see what works best for your specific show.
Once you found what works, try to scale it up by refining these strategies. You can test out different things to see what is working and what is not.
To conclude, my single advice would be to not bind yourself to any one of these techniques that we spoke about today, but rather keep trying and look for newer methods of podcast promotion.
Resources that I recommend
I don’t recommend putting a lot of money into fancy pieces of equipment when you are starting off. In fact, podcasting doesn’t need fancy equipment. All you need are functional equipment, tools and services that can help you with achieving your goal with your podcast.
Here are some of the resources that I recommend, if you are interested in podcasting.
Thank you for joining in
I hope you enjoyed this episode and found value in this discussion about podcast promotion.
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