Influential Introvert: Communication Coaching for Professionals with Performance Anxiety - How to Run a Giveaway to Grow Your Podcast Audience

Episode Date: October 31, 2019

I'll jump right to the good stuff: This week I'm running a special giveaway. The prize? One lucky entrant will win access to Podcast Launch Academy, which will open its doors later in November. If you’ve been wanting to start a podcast for awhile, but fear of getting it wrong is keeping you silent, you are not going to want to miss this.    Enter to win a spot in Podcast Launch Academy.   This online course is the roadmap you’ve been waiting for to walk you through the exact steps you need to plan, launch, and grow a podcast that builds your brand and influence, connects you to your community, and shares your message with the world.    Now, I could have offered you a more generic prize, like an Amazon gift card, but anyone can offer you that. I know how important podcasting is to you, and I want my prize to be really beneficial to you. That’s what makes a great giveaway: Offering something really special that’s ideal for your ideal listener.    On this episode of Podcasting Step by Step, I’ll talk about how to use giveaways to grow your podcast audience.   Don't forget to enter the Podcast Launch Academy giveaway.   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.

We all love winning free stuff, right? The chance to win a prize excites us. It's what motivates us to play the lottery and carnival games and to fill out random surveys. A chance to win motivates us to take action, especially if the prize is something we actually want. On this episode, I will talk to you about how to use giveaways to grow your podcast audience. And I have a special giveaway just for you. 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 Mikital 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. Earlier this year, I participated in a giveaway for tickets to the first she's

podcast live conference. I was able to give away two tickets and both winners were able to go and they told me about how much fun they had and how much they learned. And I even got to have dinner with one of them. So hello, Caitlin. Giveaways are such a great way to engage your audience. And in addition to that, they can help you build your email list, your social media following, your podcast, and to promote you in other ways. But unfortunately, there are a lot of legal things that we need to think about when running giveaways. Also, contests, lotteries, these are all different things, by the way. A giveaway or sweepstakes in legal terms is kind of like a lottery, but there's no monetary fee involved. Sweepstakes contestants enter to win a prize, and the winner is selected

randomly from the submitted entries. A contest, on the other hand, is merit-based, so you shouldn't call your giveaway a contest unless you are actually judging the entries on some sort of criteria. To recap, giveaways slash sweepstakes, those winners are chosen at random, no purchase to enter, that's really important. Contest, that's merit-based, and a winner is chosen based on skill. And lottery is pay to play. Now, rules and regulations about giveaways vary across social media platforms, but also from country to country, also from state to state.

But basically, you have to be clear that you don't have to purchase anything to win, and you also need to state your official rules, like who is ever. eligible, open and closed dates, how the winner is going to be chosen, and other rules. I'm not a lawyer. This is not legal advice. I'm just telling you what I have discovered. But since there are a lot of legal issues to consider when running a giveaway, using a service to help you out is a smart idea. So this week, I'm testing out King Sumo, which is a company that helps people host viral

giveaways. And this is totally free, but they do have a pro version. I'm not even sure what's in the pro version, because, the free version seems pretty cool. Here's how King Sumo giveaways work. You as a podcast host, and these giveaways can be done by anyone, not just podcast hosts, but we're podcasters, so let's stick with this. You as a podcast host offer your ideal listener something that they want, and to enter to win

this, they need to sign up for your email list. But then they get bonus chances to win if they take more actions, like following you on Instagram or liking your Facebook page. They can even get points for subscribing to your podcast, though this one's kind of on the honor system because we can't really tell if they subscribe, but hopefully they did. King Sumo lets you choose how people can get these extra points and how many points each action they take is worth for these bonus entries. As part of my King Sumo experiment, I am offering one lucky person a chance to win a spot in my online course Podcast Launch Academy, which will be opening its doors later in November.

Now, I could have offered you something more generic like an Amazon gift card, but anyone can offer you that. I know how important podcasting is to you, and I want my prize to be really beneficial to you and super special, and that's what makes a great giveaway, offering something really special that's ideal for your ideal listener. For your chance to win a spot in Podcast Launch Academy, go to sarahmicatel.com slash giveaway.

I have also included a link in the show notes. Setting up the King Sumo giveaway was really simple. They've got everything set out for you. You just register for an account and then fill out some basic information. So the title of your giveaway, a very short description, start an end date, which they've got defaulted to one week, but you can change that. When the winner will be chosen, time zone, number of winners, who's running the giveaway in their email, that's you. Prize name, that's what you're giving away, prize value. and you can also upload an image. Once you've got all of your info filled out, you save and then you're

good to go. You'll get a few options to promote your giveaway. It's easier if you have WordPress. I don't, but it's not a problem. We can still get a link which we can share in our newsletter and then also on social. And once people get access to our link, either through newsletters or social media or some other way, they're going to click on the link, hopefully enter their email so they can enter to win the giveaway. And after that, King Sumo is going to send them a confirmation email. After they accept that, they're going to get some extra chances to win the giveaway. The first way is by sharing on social. And by default, King Sumo has Twitter, Facebook Messenger, and email featured as sharing options that they can use to get more points by promoting your contest on their social channels.

You can also add LinkedIn and Pinterest. I actually deselected Twitter and Messenger because I thought there were too many options for my audience and I don't care about Twitter and sharing Messenger as much. So I cut down a little bit. Then people can get more bonus entries for taking extra actions like the ones that I mentioned before. So liking your Facebook page, following you on Instagram, subscribing to your podcast. During the competition, King Sumo sends out a few emails on your behalf.

On their website, they say that they send out three, for legal reasons and also to boost your promotion. The first email is a confirmation email, which is pretty common when people sign up or something with their email. The second email is a mid-giveaway email, just sort of like a promo boost for you. And the third email is a 24 hours left reminder. And all of these are automated. So a computer is crafting these emails, which makes me a little bit nervous.

Side note, the guy who created King Sumo also created Sumo, which is a service that helps people grow their email lists with pop-ups and other tools. He also created AppSumo, which gets people super software discounts. And he also just created this new company called FAM, which is a new automated email app that does everything for you email-wise. It's even writing your emails for you, literally everything. This sounds a little, it's too much for me. It's too, I want to be writing to you. I don't want a robot writing to you on my behalf. So you can rest assured that for now, any email you receive from me, I'm writing it. So we will see how this King Sumo experiment goes.

My giveaway will end November 7, 2019, at 8 p.m. New York time. So you have from now until then to enter to win a seat in podcast launch academy, which, as I mentioned, will open its doors later in November. If you have been wanting to start a podcast for a while, but fear of getting it wrong is keeping you silent. You are not going to want to miss this. Podcast Launch Academy is the roadmap you've been waiting for to walk you through the exact steps you need to plan, launch, and grow a podcast that builds your branded influence, connects you to your community, and shares your message with the world. For your chance to win a

spot in Podcast Launch Academy, go to sarahmicatel.com slash giveaway. 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 worksheets called eight 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 cheat 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 sarahygotele.com slash blank no more.