Effective Podcast Promotion Strategies

In this our 6th episode of the Audience podcast we dive into the tactics you can use to broaden your listenership through better promoting your podcast.

Promoting your podcast comes down to finding new ways to reach prospective listeners outside of your existing audience circle.

Effective podcast promotion starts with knowing your ideal listener and the places where you can connect with them, and then building the systems and practices to connect with people in those communities every time you publish a new episode.

Resources Mentioned:

• Audience Persona Worksheet
• Podcast Promotion blog post
• YouTube Republishing
• Headliner Audiograms
• Podcasting Directories To Submit Your Show To
• Email Marketing for Podcasters

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 00:05 Welcome to audience. I’m your host Craig Hewitt from Castos. Here we uncover it the best tactics, strategies and plans you can use to grow your podcast from zero to a meaningful and impactful marketing asset for your brand. Here with audience, we’re using ourselves as kind of a crash test dummy to build a podcast from scratch, literally zero listeners just a month ago to a meaningful and impactful podcast and marketing tool for our brand Costos and today we’re going to be talking all about promotion of your podcast. We’ve covered a lot of the kind of nuts and bolts in the basis of what constitutes a good podcast here in the first six episodes. Covered a lot about storytelling and creating interesting and meaningful content that’s share worthy with your audience and other. We’ve covered that and the basics of how to get started. Podcasting and some of our first two episodes. We’re going to talk all about podcasts for promotion today.
Speaker 1 01:08 If you do a quick search for how to podcast on Google, you’ll find a lot of content out there about how to get started and rightfully so. This is a big barrier for a lot of folks. You know what podcasting microphone to use. What the heck is an RSS feed, where to host your files, how to submit to places like Apple podcast and Spotify. But a lot of the resource out there really stopped there and, and don’t talk about how to promote your podcast and how to grow your audience. And that’s really what this show is all about. A bit of fair warning here. This is a super tactical and practical episode. So, uh, if you’re, if you’re on the go, uh, you’ll probably want to come back and catch the show notes for this episode. We also reference one of our blog posts in here.
Speaker 1 01:50 That is a really good resource too. It’s going to give you a checklist of exactly how to, how we like to promote a podcast episode. We’re going to run through some of our favorite tactics and strategies, but first, I think from a very high level, it’s important to think about the two. We call them pillars of what makes a successful podcast. And the first is really high quality content. That’s the reason we spent two of our early interviews talking with subject matter experts in this field. The first talking about effective storytelling and creating that arc of a story that makes your podcast content interesting and people want to follow along with. And then we followed up with somebody who’s really an expert in kind of creating your own voice and creating content that you want to create and following your guiding light as far as the the kind of content you want to create and what it’s gonna do for your brand.
Speaker 1 02:39 Those two episodes kind of drew a nice circle around what really good, meaningful and impactful content is for your podcast. And now we’re, we’re sitting back and kind of letting this simmer a little bit. The key now is is time and promotion. I put those two as kind of the, the, the two parts of the second pillar. The first one is really good content and the second is creating that content over and over and over every week like we’re doing in the audience podcast. We will not miss a week of of publishing our podcast, and that really is good for relaying to your audience that you are invested in this, that you are here to stay, that you’re not just a flash in the pan and you’re not going to go away in a couple of weeks. They can subscribe to your podcast feeling good, that you’re going to be there every week, giving them good content, connecting with them and providing value.
Speaker 1 03:27 And the second thing is effectively and consistently promoting your podcast to new audiences. So you would hope that the audience you’re already reaching via email list or social media channels are already subscribed your podcasts, that they’re already getting every episode. Now the key is to to promote and share your podcast content with in places where new people can find you. Subscribe and start listening. Now with this in mind, I think one of the important things is is thinking about who your audience really is. We have a an audience persona worksheet that we’ll include in the show notes for this episode. And I encourage everybody, whether you’re a new podcast or you’ve been podcasting for a while, I encourage you to download this and at least take a look at it, maybe print it out or on your computer, fill it out and think about specifically who your audience is, what they’re interested in, what their pains and their kind of desires are.
Speaker 1 04:19 And with that, that will focus a lot of the, the content that you create. It will also form a lot of your marketing efforts and your promotional efforts. It will help you think about where do my ideal listeners hang out, what social media channels maybe would be best to reach them on? How can I grow my email list through something like a giveaway or a campaign to, to help engage my podcast audience or my potential podcast audience better? So we’ll include a link for this audience persona document in the show notes. It’s a really great worksheet for you to, to dive in and start giving some real hard numbers around, uh, around kind of who your audiences and how you can best both create good content for them, but as well as as reach them and people like them
Speaker 0 05:00 don’t scale.
Speaker 1 05:06 Okay. So let’s dive into the tactics that we’re going to use and that we think you could definitely use to promote your content. The first it has to do with the episodes that will release on launch day. Uh, so we definitely like to include a couple of episodes on launch day for the audience podcast. We had four episodes really for launch day. The first was a teaser episode that we launched about a week before our official launch day. This is about a 10 minute episode of me explaining what the podcast is going to be about and why we’re creating it and who it’s for and what people who are listening can expect. That’s a really great way to give a nice frame for the podcast as a whole of of what people can expect, why they should listen and give them a chance to subscribe is also a nice way to build some buzz ahead of the launch of your podcast.
Speaker 1 05:51 But when you do go to launch your podcast, you want to launch with at least two episodes. We launched with three because fit kind of the the content structure and strategy that we had, but we definitely encourage you to launch with at least two episodes. If you have the capacity to record more than too easily and you don’t think that you recording content will be a limiting factor in your production ability going forward, then I definitely would consider publishing as many as you can on launch day. The balancing part of this is, you know, say you, you released a hundred episodes on launch day that it’s very unlikely that a new subscriber would listen to all of those at one time, so you might want to save some of those for later. So at least two or three five is probably okay. Probably more than 10 would be would be too many.
Speaker 1 06:38 Uh, you have saved those for later. Have a backlog of episodes that are ready to go so you don’t have to worry about keeping up with the content creation as a, as you proceed after launch. The second strategy that we really like is converting your podcast episodes into YouTube videos. So if you’re using a service like Castillo’s that has YouTube republishing built in, then this is automatically done for you every time you publish an episode and cast as this is a one click, one time setup, you connect your cast account to your YouTube channel and playlist, upload a custom cover image that will be applied to the videos. And then every time you publish a new podcast episode automatically gets converted from audio format. Like we listen to podcasts in to a video and then publish to YouTube, to your YouTube channel directly for you automatically every time DOD not to think about it.
Speaker 1 07:27 I love these kinds of things because it’s on autopilot. It’s helping me repurpose my podcast content without me doing anything, literally every episode. So it’s on autopilot to no brainer. If you’re not doing this, you should be, uh, it’s just a, it’s a no brainer. YouTube is the second biggest search engine on the internet. And if you’re not there with your podcast content, you’re missing out on something. The third thing we really like is audio grams. So we use a tool called headliner. A headliner will be directly integrated into caseloads as well here shortly. It allows you to create these short video clips that are really great for social media. So these audiograms have the sound wave marching across the top as well as it transcribes the audio into text and has that at as closed captioning in the bottom. And these are great for giving a visual representation of your podcast episode for places like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram even because there are video files.
Speaker 1 08:20 So if you’re not using something like headliner, uh, you, you definitely should check it out. It will be, like I said, it will be integrated into cast here very shortly. And so this will just make this content creation so much easier. So it’ll just happen pretty automatically. When you publish a new episode, you just have to select the snippet that you want to create, an audiogram and two and we’ll take it from there. The next one is pretty self evident I think, but just wanted to touch on it and it is to to submit your podcast to the directories where your audience is already listening. So everybody thinks about Apple podcast as kind of the place for everybody to submit their podcast episode to and I would agree it’s still King of these days in most all places, the one that definitely everybody needs to be paying attention to these days as Spotify in some regions and in some countries, Spotify has actually taken over the market share from Apple at this point.
Speaker 1 09:10 So if your podcast isn’t on Spotify, you’re missing out on a lot of potential listeners. Definitely get on Spotify as soon as you can. Your podcast hosting providers should have a direct integration to this cast us does. It’s just a one click. Once you’ve created your podcast and your feed in your hosting platform, it’s just a one click submit to Spotify. The others to think about are a Stitcher, Google, play a tune in Deezer, iHeartRadio pod Bay and pod tail. If you have your podcast submitted to all of these directories, uh, I think you have your bases covered really well here. Some of the third party podcasting apps that a lot of people use will crawl directories like Apple podcast and automatically populate your podcast and their directories after a couple of days of your podcast being live in places like Apple podcast. The the third thing that a lot of people think about with with web content, like conventional web content, written written form, is SEO.
Speaker 1 10:04 So search engine optimization. This is kind of a fancy term for tools like Google to be able to find your content after somebody searches for a term, and this really should apply to podcast episodes as well. If you’re not creating detailed show notes for your podcast episodes, then you’re missing out on Google. Being able to understand your podcast content in its written form and linking to it when people search for something that’s associated with what your podcast is about. And so this can, this can be really detailed and it can go a way into the weeds, but it doesn’t have to. So I think somebody would think of that about is like what is the title of your episode? What are some of the subheadings that you would have within the article that describes what your podcast is about? And then you just want to make sure that the relative keywords that describe what your podcast is about are in that description as well.
Speaker 1 10:52 Of course, you don’t want to do things like keyword stuffing, cause then you’ll get in trouble with Google and then just make sure the content is relevant and describes what your audio content is all about. But the next one is, is a call to action. This typically happens at the end of a podcast episode. Our call to action here is not the typical a subscribe and leave a review, but ours is to share this podcast with someone who you think would like it as well. We like this call to action because I think it, it’s easier, it’s easier to do. Uh, you know, even on the native Apple podcast app, it’s kind of arduous to go leave a review these days and sometimes spilled. Don’t know how to do that, but everybody knows how to say, Hey Bob or Susie, you should go listen to the audience podcast.
Speaker 1 11:34 Just go search audience and Apple podcaster and overcast and and check it out. It’s by the dos team and that’s just a really easy thing to do. Everybody can do it on every medium. You don’t have to be kind of tech savvy or anything like sometimes you do to be able to leave a review. A reviews are cool and they give a lot of social proof in the directories, Apple podcasts. But for us a more impactful thing cause we just want to share this message with as many podcasters as we can. Thus the call to action for us is to, is to, if you’re enjoying this show, share it with someone who you think would enjoy it as well. The next tactic that we use is again, something that you said it once and forget it, is to to add a link to your podcast and your email signature.
Speaker 1 12:17 So presumably you have a an email address associated with whatever brand you’re podcasting for, whether that’s your, your hobby, your business, your church group, your special interest and all these tools, Gmail and all these email clients have a way for you to customize what the signature is in your email and just include a link to your podcast right there. And so you would have things like, this is my website and this is me on Twitter and LinkedIn. And then you say, Hey, subscribe or check out my podcast here is a really nice way for you to include a link to your podcast in a place that people might not see at otherwise. Again, really easy one time setup thing. The next one is really about guests and I think that the term is like leveraging a guests audience and encouraging them to share content and share episodes that they’re a part of.
Speaker 1 13:01 So if you have a guest who is on your show, contact them as your episode is going out. Give them some resources like an audiogram. If you’ve created one through headliner or if you have a custom image or tweetable quotes or things like that that you have for the episode, contact the guest given these resources, ask them to share it on their social media accounts. Maybe an email as well. Say, Hey, I was on this podcast. I really enjoyed it. You should check it out and this is just a really easy way to, to kind of spread your word and connect with other people’s audiences and kind of get out of the box maybe that that you’re operating in. We talked about email and the the value of email and and it being kind of a unique platform for you to reach your audience members.
Speaker 1 13:42 Then in, I think our first episode, and this is a really big one, if you haven’t started an email list yet, I think anyone in the marketing space will tell you that you should start it today. It’s maybe the most important marketing asset that you have reaching your podcast audience via email. Even here in 2020 is the best place to reach them. Most consistent, probably the highest opening engagement rates and uh, there’s a ton of content out there. We have a really great article on the Castillo’s blog about email marketing for podcasting and encourage everybody to check that out. We’ll include a link for that in the show notes as well, but if you haven’t started an email list yet and you’re not announcing your podcast episodes on your email list to your subscribers, you definitely should do that. They’ll thank you. They’ll be able to check out an episode here or there if they haven’t already.
Speaker 1 14:29 And it’s a great way to keep people up to date on what you’re doing with your podcast. Social media is something that is a little different for everybody, but I think the, the theme here that you can apply to your specific scenario in your specific case within the social media realm is to add value and be helpful. Uh, and so I think that you want to ask yourself, you know, kind of like what social media channels do I like hanging out on? Where do my potential audience members hang out? Is it Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest? And then how can you provide the most value to people in those communities so that they say, wow, you know, Craig really knows what he’s talking about. I should probably check out more of his stuff. Oh, I see. As a podcast all subscribe. I’m sure it’s great.
Speaker 1 15:13 Uh, this is kind of the natural link and progression that you want to build in people’s minds. Whether that’s in something like a community, like a Facebook group or a discourse group or a forum or something like that, or on conventional social media. I think the theme here is the same as to be there consistently add value, answer people’s questions, post interesting articles, and then when it’s time for people to want to check out new things, they’ll say, Oh, I remember that. You know, Gary was creating this, this awesome content in our community and OIC has a podcast. I’ll go check it out. We talked about guests being on our podcast as a way to expand our audience and I think the inverse is also true is that you can and should be a guest on other people’s podcasts, so if you’re not already actively and consistently reaching out to other podcasters in your niche or in adjacent niches, this is a great way to, to boost kind of the exposure you have to to you and your brand and your message and your theme, and so I would just kind of create a list of, okay, these are the top 10 or 20 or 50 podcasts I want to get on at some point and start connecting with those people.
Speaker 1 16:20 Again, maybe in your communities, maybe on social media, maybe directly via email and start booking those podcasts. We like to do this pretty consistently. I don’t think that doing the conventional kind of podcast tour where you’re going to be on a podcast all at once, all in one month or something, you would appear in 10 podcasts or something. I think that’s too much of a flash in the pan. I would much rather be on a podcast every month for 10 months. Then to do all of it right at once. Uh, the next one is something that we are definitely gonna be exploring once we have a, a bigger base of content is going to be to purchase paid ads for podcasting. Why do I say that? We’re only going to do this once you have a bigger base of content. I think part of it is a bit of social proof.
Speaker 1 17:07 We want to be able to say, Hey, we have 20 or 50 episodes. We cover podcasting from a to, you know, where we are of, you know, X number of listeners and now we’re showing how to grow from there with, with paid advertising. So here we’re kind of laying the foundation for what a podcast is really going to be about how we’re building it and how we’re growing it organically at first. And then we’re going to layer on top of that some, some paid acquisition for podcast listeners. We’re going to do this through probably both Facebook, Cora and podcasting apps like overcast. So, uh, those are the, the few places I would look at originally. If you have a lot of content already and you feel like you’ve saturated a lot of the organic and natural acquisition channels, then I think you could look at doing this as a way to, uh, to kind of amplify that.
Speaker 1 17:55 Again, you have to have the budget and the resources to do this. If you do, that’s great. If you don’t, then there’s plenty of the, the previous strategies and tactics we use that really don’t cost any money and just take some of your time maybe to, to spread the word there and promote your podcast content. The last one I’ll mentioned that is, is kind of a corollary to, uh, to leveraging other people’s networks is influencer marketing. I think depending on the space that you’re in and the niche that you’re podcasting about, this could be a really big one. Uh, there are things like Instagram influencers that have hundreds of thousands or millions of followers. If you know them are able to get in touch with them and they’re able to mention something about your podcast, you will see a huge spike in your downloads because this is the ultimate form of social proof, right?
Speaker 1 18:41 A bunch of people follow these influencers and listen to everything they have to say about their topic. And if you can get on your audiences radar via these influencers, then I think this is a really powerful way to boost your, your podcast exposure. This may be very difficult depending on the space that you’re in, but if you can pull this off or if you have an N or a way to do this, I think this is definitely worth exploring. So if there’s an influencer in your space and you know them, you’re able to get in touch with them. This is definitely something I would recommend. So we’ve covered a lot here and I know this has been a really practical and tactical episode, but, but wanted to to run through these to hopefully give you some ideas and a bit of a plan of how you can think about promoting your podcast.
Speaker 1 19:25 If you’re not doing all of these today, that’s okay. The good news is we have a lot of kind of room for improvement, right? But I think the goal is to kind of take stock mentally at least of what you’re doing already, what you’re maybe doing well, and then where you have some areas for improvement. If you’re not doing all of these, then you can take a look and say, okay, I’m not connecting with influencers already. I’m not being a guest on other podcasts. I don’t have an active email list. Those are all things I can do. As we’re starting a new year here, we’re all kind of anxious to, to improve ourselves and our podcasts. So this is a really great time to take stock of what you’re doing well. Um, maybe look at places where you could do a bit better and, and kind of grow from there.
Speaker 1 20:03 So have you’ve enjoyed this episode talking about podcast promotion strategies. If you have, our ask is to, uh, to share this with someone who you think would enjoy it as well. Whether that’s on social media, on email, in online communities, Facebook communities that you’re a part of. Uh, we would love for you to share the audience podcast with fellow podcasters or people that are looking to get into podcasting if you think they would enjoy it as well. You can check out the show notes for this episode and share it at audience dot dot com thanks so much for listening
Speaker 0 20:34 and we’ll see you next month.