How Do I Repurpose My Episodes Into Promotional Content?

In today's episode, we break down how to repurpose your existing podcast episodes into promotional content without piling more work onto your plate. You'll learn how to plan for standout moments and repurpose those moments into short and long-form content that keeps listeners coming back to your show.

Resource Mentioned: Cohost AI

If you have questions about creating promotional content for your podcast, reach out to us on the Podcaster Success team by emailing support@buzzsprout.com. 

Keep podcasting!

Transcript

Integrate key takeaways into your episodes

Create bite-sized content from your episode

Create long-form content from your episode

Cara Pacetti 0:00

Welcome to Podcasting Q&A, brought to you by the people at Buzz sprout. I'm your host, Cara Pacetti, and I'm bringing you the best tips and strategies to keep you podcasting with confidence. Thank you for joining me for another episode of Podcasting Q&A. Today's question that we're answering is how do I turn my podcast episodes into promotional content? So today's question is a fun one because you already are working so hard researching topics, booking guests to create amazing content. Who says you can't repurpose that content to promote your podcast? The real heavy lifting starts with episode planning and creation. So let's let these episodes work for us to make our promotional job a little bit easier. First, you want to make sure you are starting with a strong core episode. Before you can repurpose anything, you need a solid foundation. That means your episode should have a clear structure and a few standout moments. When you're scripting your episodes, I want you to keep these three concepts in mind that would also make great promotional content for your podcast. The first is to include key takeaways or tips. Think about these are those short pullout moments when your listeners are tuning into your episode and they find themselves writing down key points or something they want to share with their friends. Those are those key takeaways that you can use for promoting your podcast. The second is a compelling story or example. Stories are what people remember. It allows them to put themselves in the shoes of the person in the story. It makes it very, very human and relatable. And stories also make amazing clips. I want to share an example of something I might say on Podcasting Q&A that would be a compelling story I could use later to promote the podcast. I once worked with a podcaster who experienced pod fade just after six weeks because they tried to post daily. We scale them back to once a week and they've been consistent for over a year now. That is something that people will want to tune into, especially if they find themselves in a similar situation where they're just really leaning into pod fade and they hear how just a simple adjustment can take them to another level. Stories like this that are relatable and compelling will entice your listeners to tune into your podcast. The third concept is to share a strong quote or opinion. Like a compelling story, strong opinions on a subject can really intrigue listeners. Whether they agree or not, they're tuning in. They want to hear your stance on it so they can cheer right along with you and agree, or they may want to learn a little bit more about the other side of something they have a strong opinion on. So if you are strong in your opinion and the way that you share that in your podcast, that is a great part of your episode that you can later pull out for some promotional content. So now that we've created the episode with these concepts in mind, this makes the promotional part a whole lot easier. Think about it this way: you're not creating new ideas, you're just repackaging the same idea in different ways. So first I want to focus on breaking down your episode into bite-sized content. We have a tool here in Buzzsprout called a visual sound bite, but in the podcasting industry, they are known as audiograms. This is a short clip of your audio that you can play on your social media sites and share just a little segment of your episode. And so when you are recording and you have those key takeaways, you can timestamp that audiogram to share just that compelling part and your listeners will want to tune in. I did a whole episode on visual sound bites. So I'm gonna list that in the show notes if you want to go check out how to incorporate those in your podcast. So when you create transcripts for your episodes, this makes it really easy to grab written content directly from your episode and create some fun graphics to share across your social media sites. You can create some graphics, add that written text to them, and then you can also share it on your social media platforms as a carousel post. If you're not familiar with the carousel post, it's actually an interactive post where your listener has to scroll in order to see the next slide where more text is added. So I recommend taking a quote from your transcript and making it interactive with your listeners so they have to scroll through each image in order to get the full concept of what you're saying. And then, of course, always link back to your episode or to your podcast so that your listeners can hear the whole episode. The third way of offering bite-sized content for your listeners is actually to share short form video. So we know that short form video is very popular right now. TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, they all are highlighting videos and listeners tend to really like it. It's easy to access, it's easy to quickly hear a little bit about your podcast, and the video aspect of it makes it really engaging. And in saying this, I don't want you to think that you have to go straight to video production. So if you're not producing a video podcast, that is okay. One option is if you have stock video that you've purchased. So it's not even you, but it's just something related to your podcast. You can create videos that will have your text from your podcast episode, that quote, that takeaway, that story, whatever it is, and you can have that text added to the video. And that animated text will appear word by word or phrase by phrase. So that's one way of incorporating short form video without having to do the extra work of producing a full video podcast. Another little tool that you can use, if you are recording long distance podcasts and you are using a service like Riverside or Zoom, you actually already have video. And while you don't have to produce the entire podcast as video episodes, you do have clips where you are speaking to your guest and you can show your face and their face. And so you can cut those little clips and even use those for short form video sharing. That's another way of just utilizing what you're already doing. So you already have those recordings, you're using the audio for your actual episodes. But if you want to take some of those clips and share them across your social media platforms, you can absolutely do that. Another fun way of using both the short form video clips and also the visual sound bites that I mentioned before is to offer these as an episode teaser. So maybe the episode hasn't even gone live yet. But if you want to share those little takeaways, those little snippets of your episode so that your listener knows what's coming, they'll be sure to tune in on your episode release date. But of course, always make sure you are mentioning what your podcast is called, where it's listed, and a link to get your listeners there. The last option I want to share here is repurposing your episodes into long form content. So this one's a little bit different and is going to be consumed a little differently. Don't just stop at social posts. You can expand your episodes into deeper long form content. The first option here is to create a blog post or an article. Anytime your content is written on the web, it provides another opportunity to be discovered. So if you have your episode summarized in a blog post, that written web-based content that points to your podcast equals new potential listeners and connections. Here in Buzzsprout, we actually have a feature called co-host AI that will take the audio that you upload into your Buzzsprout account and will produce a full blog post based on your audio. So that tool is super helpful. We make it really easy to create a full blog post that you can edit, of course, to make your own and then share that on your website. I'll be sure to include some resources about co-host AI in the show notes. Another version of long form content is to release an email newsletter so you can share the episode with a personal touch. Make sure to include some content from the episode you are sharing and also a link on how to get to your podcast. You can make this exclusive in your call to action. Let listeners know how they can sign up for your newsletter and they can get a sneak peek of the upcoming episode or maybe even a recap of your most recently released episode, however you want to spin it, offering a newsletter is just using your content to create more promotional opportunities for your podcast. The last option I want to share here is on LinkedIn. So if you are already using LinkedIn, you can create a post there. And what I want to recommend here is to make sure that the point of the post is to communicate the same point from your episode. So create the post based on the content, but make it educational and resourceful for your connections on LinkedIn so that if they want to go check out the episode, then they are motivated to do so. Take the time to kind of write out a longer post based on your content and then invite your listeners to get a deeper dive on the content you're talking about by subscribing to your podcast. And so that is another option for long-form content. So the options for using your episode to create promotional content do not end here. This is not an exhaustive list. I know there are many creative ways of having your episodes work for you in order to promote your podcast. If you have questions about repurposing your content, please reach out to us on the Podcaster Success team by emailing support@buzzsprout.com. I'd actually really love to hear which promotional methods have been working for you or even lessons that you've learned along the way so I can share with our Podcasting Q&A listeners. Go ahead and click the send us fan mail link in the show notes and let me know. This is also a great place to ask any questions you have about podcasting, and I'm happy to cover those as well. Be sure to join us every Monday to kickstart your week. Thank you so much for listening. And as always, keep podcasting.