Podcasting Q&A

Podcast Promotion: How do I get my podcast in front of more people?

• Buzzsprout

Share episode

Jonathan from Halfwits & Failed Crits asks, "How do you promote a podcast?"

TL;DR
One thing most podcasters don't realize is how much work it takes to grow your audience and find new listeners. Podcast marketing and promotion often take as much time as creating the podcast episodes themselves. The key to making any marketing strategy work is to find new listeners that would be interested in your podcast and telling them about it. Here are the top 3 strategies for promoting your podcast.

1. Social Media

Social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit, Twitter, and Instagram are great places to find potential podcast listeners. Use each platform's built-in community tool, whether it's groups or hashtags, and start engaging with people. Leave helpful comments, establishing yourself as a trustworthy expert, and point people back to your podcast when prompted.

2. Be A Podcast Guest

Going on someone else's podcast is a great promotion strategy. The people listening to that show have already shown they're interested in the subject, so if you're able to spend 45 minutes to an hour demonstrating your expertise there's a high likelihood that good chunk of that podcast's audience will follow you to your show. Make sure the audience has a decent overlap with yours to ensure this strategy will actually work.

3. Be Easy To Find

Make sure your podcast is listed in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, TuneIn, and Stitcher. These directories make up close to 95% of all podcast listeners.

For bonus points, use SEO keywords in your podcast name and episode titles to leverage the search function inside of each podcasting app and on Google.

Learn more about Podcast SEO Strategy in this SEO-focused episode of Podcasting Q&A.

Bonus. Overcast Ads

If you have some budget and want to juice your subscriber count, run some ads on the Overcast podcast app. This puts your show in front of new audiences and tracks how many new subscribers you get as well. The ROI on Overcast ads consistently beats Facebook Ads and Google Adwords.

Learn more about Overcast ads.

Looking for some more promotion strategies? Check out our guide with more than 50 podcast marketing ideas.

Record your podcasting question at Speakpipe.com/Buzzsprout to be featured on a future episode.

Review Podcasting Q&A in Podchaser to let us know what you think of the show.

Travis :

In this week's episode of Podcasting Q&A, you'll learn how to get your podcast in front of more people. Welcome to Podcasting Q&A, we're bringing the best tips and strategies to launch, grow and monetize your podcast and this week's question comes from Jonathan.

Jonathan :

Hey, my name is Jonathan from Halfwits and Failed Crits. My question is, how do you promote a podcast? Thanks.

Travis :

That's actually a really great question, Jonathan, because most podcasters don't understand that podcast promotion is just as important as making the podcast episodes themselves. And as wonderful as it would be that whenever you put out an amazing podcast episode, all of these new listeners just flock to you and shower you with praise and five star reviews. That's just not how it works. And so we have to put in the work to actively seek out the people that would enjoy listening to our podcast and then telling them about it. That's going to be how you grow your podcast audience. So in this video, we're going to dive into three steps. specific strategies that you can implement to grow your audience. Strategy number one, number one is to use social media. So you're looking for Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups, Twitter and Instagram, hashtags, Reddit threads, specifically geared towards the people that you know, would also be interested in your podcast content. And then when you find those groups, those little pockets of your target audience, you want to actually engage there, don't just find the group and start spamming it with links to your podcast, that'll just get you kicked out of the group. Instead, you want to develop meaningful relationships and trust where they look to you as an expert, someone who knows what they're talking about. So that when you do say, hey, by the way, I go super deep on this particular question. In my podcast, they're much more likely to click on that because they already know that you know what you're talking about. They already trust you, because you become a meaningful part of that community. And then yeah, they're gonna actually want to go and listen to more. And in fact, often you'll have the moderators and the admins of some of these groups actively promoting your podcast, because they themselves, listen to it and get a lot of value out of it. Strategy number two, is to be a guest on other people's podcasts, but not just anyone's podcast, podcasts that have a similar target audience that you do. So let's say for example, that you talk about online marketing, for instance, you want to find other podcasts in your space where they talk about online marketing, where they talk about how to grow your business where they talk about the entrepreneur life, because those are the groups of people that have already self selected and said, Hey, I want to hear this kind of podcast content. If you can pitch yourself as a guest to be on those podcasts, then they will immediately trust you because they already trust the podcast host of the podcast you're guessing on because they listen to it every week. And then when you're able to demonstrate your expertise and say at the end of the episode, hey, by the way, I also have a podcast where I talk about x, y, and z, you're going to get a good number of people from that podcast to come over and subscribe to yours. So do some research and find 10 to 15 podcasts that you think have a very good crossover with your audience where the kind of people that listen to your podcast, also listen to that person's podcast. And then when you pitch them to be a guest on their podcast, make sure you answer the question, what's in it for me? Not not what's in it for you? What's in it for the person whose podcast you're trying to be a guest on? How are you going to make their podcast? Better? How are you going to provide value to their audience? What is the expertise and the experience that you bring to the table that would make them say, I have to get this person to be a guest on my podcast? And then the last thing you have to do to really make that strategy work is be the best guest they've ever had. Don't go on there and just try and find every opportunity to promote yourself give as much as you possibly can to that podcasts audience. When you do that, then you'll see a significant number of them come over and check out yours as well. And then the third strategy is you need to make it easy for people to find you. And there are some very low thresholds that you have to cross in order to be in most places. The first one being get into all the major podcast directories. So that's Apple podcasts, which used to be iTunes, if you were finding it on your Mac computer at Spotify, that stitcher that's tune in even Google podcasts, those are the main five that you absolutely must be in, in order to be easily accessible, because what you don't want to happen is to say, hey, go and check out my podcast and someone says, great, I will do that. I can't find you in any podcast app on my Android phone. Oh, well, that's because I use an iPhone. So I only submitted my podcast to Apple podcasts and then to take full advantage of Google's SEO goodness, you want to make sure that you use SEO friendly keywords. Now, what does that mean? Well, SEO means search engine optimization. Essentially, you make it really easy for Google to find your stuff and give it to people as an answer. That means you want to name your podcasts, something that people are actually searching for, or you want to use words that you know your podcast listeners use on a daily or weekly basis, and put those in your episode titles that will ensure that Google surfaces those episodes as answers and promote your podcast to new listeners. And then as a bonus, number four strategy, you can use overcast to grow your podcast audience. So overcast is a podcast listening app that's pretty popular on iPhones and iOS devices. And what you can do in there is actually pay to promote your podcast to people that aren't subscribed to it and depending on when Category your targeting for your ad promotion. The rates differ from under $100 to seven $800 for a month of promotion. But what's really unique about overcast is you are marketing your podcast directly to people that listen to podcasts. So I hope that was super helpful. I Know podcast marketing can feel really intimidating, especially if you're just getting started. But if you follow those three strategies, focus on social media with your target audience, be a guest on other people's podcasts. And then also make sure your podcast is widely available so people can find it, you're gonna put yourself a way ahead of the curve and really set yourself up for success. Now, if you have a question that you'd like us to answer here on Podcasting, Q&A, all you have to do is go to speak pipe comm slash Buzzsprout. I'll also leave a link in the show notes and you can record a short message and send it to us. And we can create an entire episode around that now there's actually a video and podcast version of Podcasting Q&A. So if you like Watching videos, you can subscribe to the Buzzsprout YouTube channel to get new videos every single week. Or you could find Podcasting Q&A in your favorite podcast player. And it would also mean the world to us if you went and left us a review in pod chaser. So let us know what you like about the show so far, and then also what we could do to make it better in the future. Well, that's it for today. Thanks for listening and as always, keep podcasting