PodSchool Podcast | How to promote your podcast

Hello there, welcome to the show. I hope you are safe and self-isolating and staying at home and looking after yourself and working on your podcast. What better time to do it? Today's episode is all about how to promote said podcast because nobody gets into podcasting with the hopes they will be broadcasting their show to nobody but their mother. So if you don't want that to be the case, it's important that you tell people about your show and not just people that you know, but people that you have never met. So in today's episode, I'm going to take you through a bunch of ways that you can promote your podcast and really you can get as creative as you like. This is not an exhaustive list. There are always going to be new ways to do it and there will be ways that specifically suit your show. And it's always exciting to see how people promote their show using strategies that are unique to their content, because you want to be sharing interesting stuff that makes people go "This sounds like a cool show, I want to check it out!" Rather than just sending out a boring old link to your episodes and thinking anybody's going to care about it.

So to kick off, I just want to go through some of the things you must do when it comes to podcast promotion. The first is that you must make sure your show is submitted to podcast directories. That might seem like a silly thing to say, but that is really where you need your show to be to make sure that people can find it. You want it to be in all of the apps that people will be looking for it. So at a very minimum, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts and Spotify. There are plenty of other podcast apps out there and you can submit until your heart's content, so if you want to know more about submitting your show to the podcast directories, I've got another episode of this show on that exact thing you can check out. The other thing is you want to make sure you are sharing your show with a universal link. And by that I mean a link that works for everybody no matter what device they're on. You might not know this, but if you have just been sharing your iTunes link, if there is anybody on an Android phone that's been clicking on that, they've probably rolled into Internet purgatory, which is not a great place to be. So it's essential you have a link that works for everybody. You can either send people to your website, you could send them to the page your podcast host creates for your show or there are also a bunch of platforms that create a link that automatically opens in Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts. Again, I have another episode of this podcast that takes you through some of the different ways that you can create a universal link. You also want to make sure your show is optimised for search. SEO is very important in podcasting now since Google stepped into the podcasting space. They are turning up playable episodes in their search results and really putting podcasts front and centre in a way they weren't doing a number of years ago. So you want to make sure you've got your SEO right in your titles, your descriptions, your show notes, absolutely everywhere in the hopes that people searching for keywords that relate to your content will find you, even if they don't know that you have a show or have never heard of you before. I also have another episode of this podcast on podcast SEO so make sure you check that out. I will pop into the description of this episode, links to any of the other episodes that are applicable to the stuff that I talk about in today's podcast so you can have them all in one place. Speaking of SEO, you should also be creating show notes for each of your episodes as well, because that can be a great way for people to find your podcast through search rather than popping across your show directly. They can come in via your website and your show notes page and find your show that way. And then finally, the other must do is that you must share your show on social. You don't have to be across all platforms. In fact, it's probably best to choose one or two and do them really well rather than trying to be across everything and doing it half-arsed. You want to try and share things on your social media that capture the essence of the content you are doing on your show and the vibe of you as a host so people can really get a sense of what they're going to get if they do click and listen. Some of those things could be behind the scenes content. You can also take quotes from interviews that you do or even quotes from yourself if you're sharing on a show page and make those into social tiles. You could do an audiogram, where you take a little audio snippet from the episode and make a tile to share on social. You also want to make sure that you are sharing your show more than once, especially if your content is evergreen, which means that it doesn't date. You don't want to just share your show once when the episode drops and then never speak of it again. You can schedule social content for weeks and months in advance and keep on plugging old episodes from your back catalogue so that people can keep on finding your show over time. If it's evergreen and the content sits there and can be consumed at any time you can get new eyes and ears on that content for years to come. You don't want to have spent all of that time creating shows and then think, oh well I'll just share it once and not bother about it. And also think about hashtags as well. Do a bit of research and think about the right hashtags to share your content with, because they can be a good way to get your show in front of people that might not know anything about you or your show, but are searching for keywords and content in that particular niche.

So those are some of the things you should be doing at a bare minimum. Now I'm going to talk about some of the additional strategies that you can use and you can really pick and choose which ones of these that you like and focus on a few and try and do them really well. Again, not an exhaustive list. Always interested to hear what you're doing. So please, if you've got great ideas for sharing your show and promoting it send me an email. Just head to PodSchoolPodcast.com and hit the contact page.

Some of the additional strategies are leveraging the audience of guests on your show. So if you have guests come in and you're interviewing them, that's a whole new audience you can get in front of just by providing the right collateral for them to share when they've been on your podcast. So make sure when you have guests on your show after they finish up you send them an email with a really easy link and some really nice assets that they might be able to share. If you share about it on your social platforms, make sure you tag them because it's often easier for people to re-post something that's already been posted than it is to fashion a social media post themselves. A bit of a tip with these social platforms of guests... remember they are not yours. So it is entirely up to your guest whether or not they are going to share your show on social media. A lot of people are very particular about what they share on their platforms and you have to be respectful of that. They've curated and cultivated their following and sometimes people can be very, very picky about what they share. So if they come onto your podcast, make it as easy as possible for them to share your show. But if they don't. Don't be a pest. Don't bug them and bug them and bug them until they eventually think "Go away!" Because sometimes they might not want to share it and that's okay. You have to be appreciative of the content that they have given you and realise they've given you something great to actually put onto your podcast. But all you can do is make things as easy as possible, and that includes creating assets that actually fit on their social media feeds. So go and have a look at their feeds. And if they have got a perfectly curated Instagram page with soft pinks and greys that all fits in with the same colours and the same brand hues, then do not send them a garish image with primary colours that wouldn't fit in with their brand at all. You have to try and make assets that will fit as best as possible with their branding.

Another strategy is to create content hubs on your website. So if you have got content on your podcast and you are creating show notes for each of those episodes and your using categories and tags inside WordPress. Then you can create hubs of content and share that content out. So rather than sharing individual episodes, you're actually sharing content in a similar theme. So for example, if you've got a business podcast and you've got a bunch of different episodes that are about startup culture or things associated with startup businesses, then maybe you can tag that content "startup" and then you've got a hub on your website that has all the content on your show related to startups that you could share for people looking specifically for content around starting up a business. Think about how you can group your content together, particularly once you get to the point where you've had quite a few episodes and you've got quite a lot of content on your site. Then you can start to share that out in more themed chunks rather than just talking about one episode at a time.

Here's another strategy that some people often forget... rope any friends and family. I know it seems like you know the very bottom of the rung of the promotional strategies, but people often forget that they know a lot of people and that those people would probably be very interested in checking out a podcast that you've started. So don't feel embarrassed or silly about sending a blanket email to all of the people that you know or sharing it on your personal Facebook page and encouraging people that you know to listen to write reviews, to rate your podcast, to share their thoughts and to give you some feedback as well if you're just starting out. It can be good to get a sense of what people think about your show. So don't forget your friends and family.

Next strategy is building an email list. This isn't right for everybody and maybe you've already got one and you can start sharing your podcasts to your email list. Do not do this if you just want to collect email addresses to have a bunch of emails to send out saying "there's a new episode." You need to cultivate your list and create content quite regularly to get people to be engaged enough to click on things when you share them. So this is not a simple strategy and it doesn't work for every single show, but it's certainly something to think about. If there's some constant contact that you could have with your email list where you're providing interesting content or you can touch base with them it might work for your show. It might not, but it's something to think about.

Next strategy is groups and forums. So things like Facebook groups can be great, especially if you have a podcast that's in a specific niche. You can jump into those communities and develop relationships with people and share your show. A word of warning on this. Most groups will have rules that say that you can't spruik. So do not be the person that jumps into the group and starts going. "Listen to this!" Jumping into some of these groups and forums is a long term strategy. You need to build a relationship with the people in those groups. You need to provide a lot of value and then you can start to occasionally share your show. Or alternatively, they'll often have a specific day where you're allowed to spruik things and you can share your show then. But I often find groups and forums a better source of content than promotion.

On that, a website, Quora is a Q&A website where people ask questions and then experts or people that aren't experts answer those questions. There are questions about just about everything you can think about but sometimes you can build up a profile in there if you're answering a lot of questions. And that could be another good promotional tool as well.

Paid social is another option. You don't have to start with big budgets. You can start small and test and see if it has any impact on your listening. One of the problems with this is attribution. So you can tell if somebody clicked on the link that you put in your ad, but you're often not sure if they have listened. So sometimes it's about setting yourself a timeframe, maybe two weeks or a week or whatever you're going to do to send out the ads and then measuring the listens in your podcast hosts to see if there was any significant difference. The other thing I'd mentioned about paid social is that often it's about awareness rather than direct listening. So rather than actually having somebody listen straight away often with social media ads it takes people seeing things about 19 times before they actually go, "Oh, I might look at that in my podcast app!" so it can be a bit more of an awareness play and can be harder to measure sometimes, but it is often a good part of the mix. Again, don't blow a whole bunch of money on it if it's not working for you. Try and test and learn with smaller amounts and then spend more if it seems to be working.

The next thing that can be great to increase awareness is getting your show featured in Apple podcasts in their feature section and also in the iTunes charts. Do not be fooled by people who tell you they have a way to trick the algorithm of getting into new and noteworthy because it's curated by somebody. So the features section you need to submit your artwork and your show to be featured. And it's important to have a really good show with great artwork that adheres to Apple's guidelines because they're not going to feature shows that don't meet those criteria. When it comes to the iTunes charts not even Apple can tell you how those things work but most of the pros say that it is about new subscribers rather than ratings and reviews. So ratings and reviews, they say, don't have that much of an impact on the podcast charts. But getting new people to subscribe to your show is what shoots your show up the charts. That is why podcast promotion is so important so you're getting your show in front of new eyes and ears because you want new people to be clicking and trying your show and then enjoying what they hear and subscribing to your show. So to get your show featured you can submit your show to Apple but in terms of the charts you just need a solid show, you need to deliver it consistently, you need to promote the heck out of it and you need to get people subscribing and coming into your show regularly.

You can also promote your show by being a guest on other podcasts. You could also purchase ads on other podcasts that you think are going to appeal to people who would like the content that you have on your show. You can also do ad swaps or episode swaps with other podcasts, so have a look around and search for podcasts in your niche and see if you can find shows that you really like that seem to fit with the vibe of your show that you think all my audience would really dig the content. You can do an episode swap where you drop an episode of their show in your feed and they do the same for you. That's probably only going to be possible if you are working with somebody who has a similar amount of downloads to you. But you can always buy ads on a bigger show and contact them directly and see if they'd be interested in having your show promoted on their podcast for a fee. There are lots of ways to get your show in front of other listeners because really the easiest people to convince to listen to your show are people that already listen to and enjoy podcasts. And if you can find shows in your niche that people are listening to that might enjoy your show as well that can be a good way to get your show in front of people who would enjoy the content.

The other thing to remember is that little bit at the end of your show where you are wrapping up and saying goodbye. The people who have gotten all the way to the end of your show have clearly enjoyed your content so why not ask them to do you a little favour and share your show? They can often be your biggest advocates, and word of mouth is still a really important way to increase the number of listeners on your show. It's not a fast way to grow your audience, but it is a good way to get people in the door that might not have found you before. So encourage people who listen all the way to the end to share your show with someone they know. And obviously, if they've stuck with you all the way through the episode, they are going to probably give it a good ol plug. So encourage them to do that.

The other thing you can do is run giveaways. I say this with a caveat because I don't want you to be a dick about it. It's a fine line between trying to buy off likes and listens. And I think that's a bit icky. In my old show, Paul and Rach, we used to get quite a few five-star reviews and we thought I'd be really nice to shout these people out. So we used to do a segment at the end of the podcast called 5-Star Shout Out, where we would shout out the people that had left us a five star review. Now, the important thing to remember is that this is still content, right? You've still got people listening who didn't leave a review, who need to be entertained. So we would often encourage people to send us a little message in the review. And they were really funny. So we would use those little messages as a bit of a conversation piece. It was a mix of shouting out people that left us reviews but also having a joke around about the funny things that they had said in their reviews. So it was still content, but it was still encouraging people to leave a review and it was also encouraging them to be a part of the show and be a bit more creative by leaving us a little message. So that was a giveaway in a sense because we were giving away a shoutout on our show in exchange for a review. But it certainly wasn't "Hey, leave us a five-star review and we'll give you a chocolate" which gives me the creeps a bit. I think if you can't get people on board with your content, that's a problem and you don't want to bribe people to do it. So think of an interesting way that you could do a giveaway without it feeling too icky.

And then a final strategy that you can do is you can buy ads on podcast platforms like PodBean and Spotify as well. This can be good because you are putting your ad in front of listeners who are already in an audio on demand platform. They don't have to go through a bunch of hoops or jump into another app or click a link and follow a trail to find your show. They can listen right there where they are at that point in time. And that can be a good strategy to get people across to your show.

So those are some ways that you can promote your podcast outside of just sharing a link and saying, please listen to this, even though you don't know anything about it. I hope that's helped you think a little bit more creatively about podcast promotion. If you need more help with your show, please head to PodSchool.com.au where you will find details of my online podcasting course. I'm actually right in the middle of a gigantic refresh of it and I will be doing a brand new launch very shortly. So if you would like to be a part of the course and get your podcast up and running if you've got a bit more time on your hands at the moment if you've decided now is the time to start the show you've always wanted to do, then please head to podSchool.com.au. I would love to help you get your show off the ground.

Thank you so much for listening to the show and if you have gotten all the way to the end, why not share it with somebody else who might be interested in making their own podcast? How about that? Practising what I preach. I'll see you in the next episode and until then, happy podcasting.