Influential Introvert: Communication Coaching for Professionals with Performance Anxiety - 4 Social Media Mistakes Podcasters Make

Episode Date: October 4, 2019

You’re invited to join the Podcasting Step by Step community on Facebook.    What’s that? You have a love hate relationship with social media? Join the club. A lot of podcasters wonder if it’s worth spending time on social media to market their podcasts.    For a long time I felt completely burned out by the screaming and negativity found on some of the platforms. But social media does have some tremendous benefits, including the ability to attract a global audience. But we have to avoid some common mistakes.    On episode 30 of Podcasting Step by Step, I talk about four of the biggest mistakes podcasters make when it comes to social media.   Even though social has its problems, right now I’m loving Facebook Groups. I’m loving the conversations that are happening there. The connection. The learning. That is social media at it’s best, which is why I’ve just created the Podcasting Step by Step Facebook Group.   I love receiving email from listeners, and everyone I hear from is so lovely and curious and interesting. I wanted to bring us together so we can connect and help each other out.    So I invite you to head on over to Facebook and join the Podcasting Step by Step Facebook community. Do you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free Conversation Cheat Sheet with simple formulas you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you’re in a meeting or just talking with friends.Download it at sarahmikutel.com/blanknomore and start feeling more confident in your conversations today.

Social media, do you have a love-hate relationship with this as well? Is it worth it? How can we make sure that we are not wasting our time with social media marketing that doesn't work? There are some common social media mistakes that many podcasters are making, even me, and I will dig into these on today's episode. Have you been wanting to start a podcast for a while now, but something's holding you back? Maybe it's fear of putting yourself out there or confusion about the technology. I'm Sarah Micahettell, and on podcasting step by step, I'll break down how to podcast with a little loving motivation to give you the skills and the confidence you need to finally launch that show of your dreams. Let's get started. Most of us know that social media can help us grow our podcast audience, but we don't post consistently for a number of reasons. So I remember when social media first became a thing and I was all starry-eyed and excited about the opportunity for people to connect with the world. and I did not expect the extreme trolling or Russia manipulating elections and fueling culture wars around the globe.

And I didn't expect Facebook to intentionally addict us to their platforms by using psychology and gamification, not just Facebook, a lot of the social media platforms. There's so much yelling and noise. And over the last two or three years, I have just felt completely burned out by social media, by the outrage that social media, companies encouraged to keep people on the platforms. So I've pretty much rejected social media a lot over the last few years, especially since 2016. I've deleted accounts. I just don't want to be part of such negative conversations. But then I open up social media accounts again because I need them either for a job or for marketing purposes. But my resistance has pretty much stayed with me. I've kind of of my guard up and there's just sort of this wall. And so I recently took a few weeks off of social

media to evaluate what I liked about it, what I didn't like about it. And I will be honest, there's still a lot that I don't like about social media. I want to spend my limited time here on this earth exploring and creating and connecting to people and not mindlessly scrolling through videos and images that I don't even care about. And yet this is so easy to fall into that trap happens to me too, even though I don't feel that addicted to social media. In fact, I have the opposite problem. I don't want to be there often. So those are the negatives of social media, but social media can be used for good, which I kind of forgot because I had been too focused on what I didn't like about it. I'm not usually a negative person at all. It must be all the social

media that has got me all pumped in on this rant. So what's good about it? social media. Well, podcasts and small businesses and brands now have the ability to attract a global audience. You can compete with a business that is a hundred times your size, thanks to social media marketing, which is pretty incredible. I've personally become great friends in real life with people I have met through Instagram. We've traveled the world together. I've interviewed on my podcast. The second interview I ever did for my travel podcast. I interviewed a Instagram influencer named Crystal, and we've since traveled to three countries together. We've been to Wauca, Mexico, we did a road trip through Croatia and Albania this summer.

So I'm really grateful that I was able to connect with her and with other people through Instagram. So that is really great. And that's another thing. Social media makes it so easy to connect a potential podcast guests. I've successfully pitched many guests through direct messages on Instagram. and then stayed in touch with them afterward by following them on social, and it's just a really good relationship builder, as long as we keep showing up. I don't really suffer from FOMO, I think, if you want to do something cool, you should just go out and do it. But I have been inspired by

Instagram a lot. I've visited some new countries based on photos that I've seen, things that just looked really cool. I've learned about new books, new podcasts. I've read articles that people have shared online. And right now I'm really loving Facebook groups, not because it's on Facebook, but because that's just where everybody's spending their time. But I'm loving the conversations that are happening there, the connections that I'm seeing between people, the learnings. So that to me is social media at its best, which is why I have just created the podcasting step-by-step Facebook group. I love receiving email from listeners. and everyone who's written to me so far has been so lovely and curious and interesting.

And I would just love to bring this little group together so we can connect online and ask each other questions and help each other out and just get to know each other. So I invite you to head on over to Facebook and join the podcasting step-by-step Facebook community. Okay, so we've established that social media has its good sides and its bad sides. So is it worth it? Can social media help us grow our podcast audience? Yes, but we have to avoid some common mistakes. So mistake number one, not knowing why you're

showing up. Social media can feel like a real drag, just total drudgery. When we think about it as an obligation, we know we're supposed to market our podcast, but we forget about that why, and we need to get into that mindset. So that's something that I have had a problem with which I'm trying to shift. So why do we want to promote our show? Why do we care about it? Who are we talking to? where is your audience right now? What do they want to achieve? And what do they need to learn to achieve that end goal? These are questions we want to answer when writing our social media posts. And we also want to be clear on what we want to be known for on social media. What are your core values that guide your life? What do you want to talk about? What do you stand for? What is this

reputation that you want to build online? It takes a lot of work to create content. And so if we're not driven by purpose. We're just going to quit. Mistake number two, being obsessed with followers. How can I get more followers? It's the same question is, how can I get more downloads? It's a vanity metric that everyone gets obsessed with now and again. All of us do. It's just human nature. But someone might buy 100,000 followers on Instagram. Does that make them an influencer? No, it does not. When Instagram influencers first became a thing, brands were kind of throwing money at them, just look at.

at high numbers and not really like digging into what these numbers mean. But now they're realizing, okay, it doesn't matter if somebody's got a million followers, if they've got no engagement, if nobody would listen to their podcast, if nobody would buy their products. So a small audience that loves you is a much more valuable than a huge audience that doesn't pay any attention to you. Mistake number three, promoting episodes with no context. So there's a habit of a lot of podcasters to do the easy and effective way of sharing on social media, which is to write a caption that says something like, I have a new episode out today, check it out. Your existing audience might appreciate this heads up, but people who aren't as familiar with you and your

work are not going to pay attention to posts like this. Instead, write your captions so they focus on what the audience will get out of the episode. And mistake four, and there's plenty of other mistakes, but we'll just stick to four today. Not planning our content ahead of time. So has this ever happened to you? You look at the clock and think, oh, I never posted anything on social media today. Or maybe it was that week or that month. I guess I should do that now. What should I post about? When we do this, we're not thinking strategically. We are just slapping something together so we can get it out the door. We're not being mindful of who our audience is or what we want to communicate to the world. We should be planning our posts ahead of time.

and tying them back to our podcasts and our businesses and the other things that we want to be known for. Now, you might be thinking, I don't want to spend my whole life mapping out social media posts, and I totally hear you, and neither do I, which is why I am so excited about next week's episode. My new friend, Andrea Jones, from the Savvy Social Podcast, is going to be coming on here. We're actually totally best friends now, thanks to the power of podcasting. We're actually going to be hanging out in Atlanta next week, which I can't wait. But I digress. Andrea Jones is a social media genius and she is going to teach us how to create a social media strategy so we can just spend two to three hours a week max on social media and we can use that time to develop meaningful connections. So I can't wait to share this with you. She's also going to tell us all about growing our community hashtags calculating engagements, rates. It's like a serious masterclass that Andrea should be charging us. but we're going to give it to you for free.

So don't forget to hit subscribe if you haven't already subscribed to this podcast. And until next week, you can come on over to the podcasting step-by-step community on Facebook. I cannot wait to get to know you better over there. Thank you for listening to podcasting step-by-step. You are now one step closer to launching that podcast you've been dreaming about. But I want to get you even closer. I created a free guidebook for you with actionable work. worksheets called 8 mistakes new podcasters make and how to fix them. To find that, head on

over to sarahmicatel.com slash fix. Do you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free conversation sheet sheet with simple formulas that you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you're in a meeting or just talking with friends. Download it at sarahmicatel.com slash blank no more.