TPU88 – Podcast Recommendation Techniques to Get New Listeners for Your Podcast

Podcast recommendation techniques can help you acquire a lot of new listeners. Stats by Buzzsprout showed that about 29% of new listeners discover podcasts through search and about 21% of listeners discover new podcasts through recommendations.

In this episode, we will discuss how you can use some simple podcast recommendation techniques to get others to recommend your show and thereby gain new listeners for your podcast.

New Listener acquisition.

How do you get new listeners.

Statistics show that the three primary ways of discovering podcasts is through search, recommendations and social media.

Search is all about optimizing your show for search engines which is something I had discussed in one of my earlier episodes.

But for now let us focus on recommendations.

Word of mouth or, recommendations is an important factor not just in discovery of podcasts. Network marketing companies and their distributors use it to grow their business, affiliate marketing is totally about recommendations and in fact professional services too rely heavily on recommendations to grow their business.

I read about 40+ books in the last year and almost 80% of those books, roughly about 39 of them were something that I picked up because somebody recommended it.

Similarly, there were at least about 5 podcasts that I started listening to solely because somebody recommended them to me.

I listen to about 14 different podcasts and 5 of them were through recommendations which is about 33% of my podcast consumption.

If your podcast is not being recommended by your listeners and social media followers, then you are losing out on a huge chunk of listeners.

But how do you make people to recommend your show to others.

Podcast Recommendation Techniques to make people recommend your show

Let us look at some tips for doing it –

Make your content recommendable

First and foremost is your content. Your content should be worth recommending. Make it valuable enough for people to recommend your show.

If your show is unable to provide value to your audience or, address their problems, then it is unlikely that they will recommend your show

Use “recommendations” as your call to action

Keep in mind that you need to make people take an action by explicitly asking them to do that. So if you want people to recommend the show to others, then ask people to do that.

Use a call to action that gels well into the overall structure of your podcast, asking people to recommend your show.

You would have heard that at the beginning of this show here.

Unless you ask, you won’t get.

Make recommendations as easy as possible

For anybody to take action, you have to reduce the friction involved in taking the action. The more difficult taking the action is, the more difficult the chances of the action being taken.

Make the process as easy as possible for your audience.

The best way is to ask your listeners to direct people to your website.

But if you want to use a URL shortening service to shorten the URL to your preferred listening app, you can do that as well.

Or, you can also ask the listeners to forward the link to the episode to their friends which is still a little difficult to do.

But asking people to search for the show is not going to give you the results you desire.

Incentivize your audience for recommending

People look for what’s in it for me in order to do something. If you want your audience to take an action, you will also have to give them a reason to do it.

It is hence important to incentivize your audience.

If you can do that, you will see your conversions sky-rocketing.

So if possible put an incentive in place for people to recommend your show.

Use your social media circles for recommending

Don’t only rely on your audience to recommend your show. Reach out to your social media followers and friends too to recommend your show to others.

Make simple recommendation posts and send it to them so that they can simply share it with their social media friends.

Reach out to your email subscribers as well and request them to recommend the show to others. Make the process simple for them to do it and they will respond positively.

Use Promo-Swaps

This is by far the most effective way of getting new listeners.

Promo-swaps essentially means that you are swapping a promo for your podcast with another podcaster. He/she agrees to play your promo on their show and you play their promo in yours.

Usually these swaps happen between podcasts with a similar audience size.

You can find a lot of such services out there that can help with promo-swaps.

You can also reach out to other podcasters on social media channels or, through emails to check with them if they are willing to do a promo swap with you.

Using Paid ads

If you have a marketing budget and are ok to run ads, then I would recommend buying ads on other podcasts.

I don’t prefer Google or, Facebook ads to promote a podcast because the ROI is pretty poor in those cases.

But Podcast ads work well for show recommendations.

You can reach out to podcasters and check with them if they are willing to run ads on their show and negotiate the cost.

You can also use services like Buzzsprout. They have something called as Buzzsprout ads which helps place your ads on shows of all sizes.

The only thing you need to take care of is that you are customizing your promo is such a way that the audience of the podcasts that you are running these ads on are able to relate to your promo.

So those were the 7 podcast recommendation techniques to building an audience using podcast recommendations.

Thank you for joining

Thank you all for joining me on the show today.

If you enjoyed this episode then I am sure you will love some of the previous episodes as well. Pick your favorite ones and give it a listen.

The podcasting university is available on all podcasting platforms. You can pick your favorite one to listen to the show there. The links to some of the prominent ones are mentioned below.

Recommended Resources for Podcasting

Here are some of the recommended resources for Podcasting. These are the ones that I personally use and am satisfied with and hence am recommending them.

• Acast Podcast hosting – Acast is my favorite podcast hosting company. They have excellent customer support, have a pocket-friendly plan, and even have a free option with no limits.
• Behringer Audio Interface – You will need an audio interface if you are using an XLR microphone. This is my recommended audio interface.
• Zencastr – Zencastr is the easiest option to record interviews, both audio-only and audio+video. This is a must for an interview podcast. Go to zencastr.com/pricing and use my code “thepodu” You’ll get 30 percent off your first three months of Zencastr professional.
• Audacity – This is the best and the most feature-rich free audio editing software. It gives you a lot of options while editing your interviews.
• Blue Yeti USB Microphone – My recommended microphone
• Tidycal – My recommended calendar and booking solutions
• Fusebox – Embeddable Podcast Player
• Descript – Audio Editing, Transcription and Video editing software
• Zlappo – Twitter scheduling tool

AMAZON DISCLOSURE: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. The Podcasting University is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

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MIXERS –

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2. Behringer Q502USB

MONITORING HEADPHONES –

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DESK-STAND/BOOM ARM –

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2. Bulfyss Professional Recording Microphone Stand : https://geni.us/mV4S

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