Influential Introvert: Communication Coaching for Professionals with Performance Anxiety - Social Media for Podcasters: How to Become a Micro-Influencer in an Hour a Week

Episode Date: October 10, 2019

Don’t have a massive following on social media? No worries! Who needs a million followers anyway? Right now, sponsors are loving micro-influencers, people with smaller but loyal followings. This is, of course, fantastic news for podcasters.    On episode 31 of Podcasting Step by Step, I talk to Andrea Jones, founder of the Savvy Social School and the Savvy Social podcast, about how we, as podcasters, can grow our influence — and our podcast audience — via social media in only an hour a week.   Head to sarahmikutel.com for full show notes and to download your 6-Step Strategy for Social Media Growth.    You’re also cordially invited to join the Podcasting Step by Step community :D  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.

And so if you're a podcaster and you're like, man, I just don't have the numbers yet, if you could show any sort of upward growth, a lot of brands and businesses, that's exactly what they're looking for. So keep going. 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 Mikea Tal 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. Hello, hello, I am so excited to share today's episode. I am speaking

with Andrea Jones from the Savvy Social School and the Savvy Social Podcast. Not only do we talk about what's working in social media right now in terms of engagement and how to use that to our advantage, Andrea also walks us through a social media strategy that can cut down our time spent on social media to an hour a week. Now, that sounds doable, right? If you want a cheat sheet on how to set up this strategy for yourself, head on over to sarahigatel.com slash social, and I will also include a link in the show notes. I wanted to interview Andrea after I heard her speak at podcast movement this year. And then I discovered that she's an expat like me.

She's from Atlanta, Georgia, but now lives in Canada. So if you would like to learn more of that story, including how Andrea met her husband on YouTube, you can listen to my other interview with her on an upcoming episode of The Postcard Academy. In this episode, we dive right into all things social media. So let's get to it. Welcome, Andrea. Thank you so much for joining me today. Thanks so much for having me.

You're the founder of the Savvy Social School. who are you serving in this school? So it's really those business owners or influencers who want to learn more about social media. Like they want to use it strategically outside of looking at cute cats and dogs. And they want to leverage it to grow their audience. And so a lot of the students in the school fall into two categories. One, they either work in the industry. So they're a virtual assistant or they're in social media and they want to learn how to use it for their clients.

or they're maybe new to business or maybe their business is kind of established, but they're new to social media. And they went to open Instagram and they go, how do I even use this for business? And then they come to the school and they learn how to do that. What advice do you have for podcasters who know they should be on social media, but they're feeling a little bit burned out? Maybe not burned out for doing social media for their podcasts or their businesses, but just burned out in general from all of the calls. culture war stuff that's happening over the last few years, you know, Cambridge Analytica, da, da, da, da, da, da, and are feeling a little bit like, is this, should I be on here?

Yeah, and it is a huge battle, I will say this. It's definitely evolved over the years. You know, starting on social media back in 2012 was a lot different than starting today. And so I think the first step is really getting intentional on what social media means for you. I talked about this in a recent podcast episode on my podcast, The Savvy Social Podcast. And it's really important to understand why you use social media. Because that burned out feeling comes from using it in a way that isn't going towards your goals. So we get burned out when we feel like we're doing something and it's not working or we're doing too much of something and we're not seeing the results that we should.

So really digging deep and going, okay, why do I want to use social media? So if you're a podcast and you're like, I want to use this to grow my show and you're still feeling burned out, maybe it's time to take a break. Or maybe it's time to kind of analyze what's working and what's not. I think the challenge is that as podcasters especially, we're usually the person doing everything for the show, including marketing it on social media. So we don't have to be on all of the platforms. So maybe just start focusing in on one platform to cut down on that burnout or maybe really. reduce how much time you're spending on that platform and get really intentional with the time you're spending on there. So either any of those things will really help you kind of reduce that

burnout feeling. The first step is to just take a break. It's okay to take a break. You can time it with maybe a break you're taking from your podcast itself if you're in between seasons or over the holidays and give yourself time away from social media. And then you can really analyze how to use it effectively for your show. Well, thank you for saying we can take a break. Sometimes we just like to hear that permission from somebody, especially somebody like you, who knows what they're doing when it comes to social media. Like, okay, we can take a pause. We're not a slave to this. Yeah, absolutely. And I think it feels like that everybody's on social media all the time because we're looking at that. But I think oftentimes, you know,

we're looking at people who are quote unquote celebrities in the space and they actually have their people doing social for them. So that burned out feeling comes from trying to, you know, to do all of the things when you're only one person. And so as one person, you're absolutely allowed to take breaks. Let's say that we know who our ideal listener is. How do we find them online? You said that we don't have to be everywhere. So how should we go about choosing what platform we should be on?

Yeah. I'll give you a little shortcut because there's two right now that are really popular and really great for finding people. Instagram and LinkedIn. So if your podcast is for business owners or even other podcasters, LinkedIn is such a great place to connect because you can get super specific in search terms and find the right people. So let's say you teach yoga instructors how to build yoga businesses.

Then you can literally go on LinkedIn and search for someone's job title like yoga instructor and connect with them. And if you have a podcast about starting a yoga business, they're probably going to be interested. On the flip side, LinkedIn, or sorry, Instagram, Instagram is such a great place to connect with people using hashtags. So there are so many people adding hashtags into their posts or they're checking into specific locations. So all of those data points make it really easy to find the right people. So you can look through hashtags. You can even look at competitors, seeing who's interacting with their accounts, or you can look at locations to find your people.

Could you talk a little bit more about hashtags? Because I was always confused about this. Because I use hashtags sometimes. I know other marketers are using hashtags, but I'm thinking who is actually looking up hashtags like in the normal world? Who's not a marketer? How are people using hashtags? Yeah, I'll give you an example of my sister.

So my sister right now is trying to get on Master Chef. She's been a home cook her whole life. and she's literally going on Instagram and looking for people cooking specific dishes to see how they plate them. So she's looking at, you know, like, hash, I don't even know what she would look at specifically, but hashtag steak dish.

Oh, you can probably don't talk, great. She knows the fancy words. And that's what she's looking up. Or she'll specifically look up restaurants. So if people are checking in at those restaurants, she'll go and look because people take pictures of their food. And so she's actually looking at it for herself to study up. If you are in a specific location, people like to see who's checked in at that location. It's definitely your more

kind of tech savvy crowd who are doing these things, but they're definitely putting themselves out there. That was a great example about your sister. Do you have any advice on how we can find the best hashtags for us. Yeah. So if you're just starting out, the easiest thing to do is look at someone else in your space who's a non-competitor. And it's really easy to find someone who doesn't have a podcast. So I like the yoga podcast examples.

I keep using it. But there's a yoga teacher who I like who's on YouTube. Her name is Yoga with Adrienne. She's a pretty popular YouTuber. But she doesn't have a podcast. So if you have a yoga podcast, go look at what hashtags she's using because her people obviously like consuming content, but she doesn't have a podcast. So you could be that podcast for them. So kind of looking at people in the industry and seeing what hashtags they're using is a great place to start.

That is a great tip. Yes, you could look up her on what hashtags she's using on Instagram and you said she's on YouTube. Are the hashtag similar that they use on, I mean, I guess YouTube's more key. words, but are the keywords similar to what you'd see on Instagram or are they kind of different things? They're a little different. Um, Instagram or sorry, YouTube is definitely more, um, search oriented. Whereas Instagram has this kind of like, um, insiders club with hashtags. So sometimes on Instagram, you'll see hashtags that only people who are in the know would know. Um, so for instance, um, her kind of community calls themselves the hive.

So they have claimed the hashtag B-E-Y-Hive. So Bay Hive, I guess, is how it would be pronounced. But that's not a search term. Like, you wouldn't search that and find anything. But they're using it amongst themselves as a member of the community. So that's a really interesting thing about Instagram is that it's not just search terms. It's kind of like internal language that your community members are using. you just kind of have to figure out what that language is.

That is a brilliant example. Thank you for that. So in savvy social school, is it a membership community? Yes. You teach your students how to simplify their social media scheduling process. I think that you also spoke about this at podcast movement this year. Could you share some of these steps with us? Absolutely.

Because I think, especially if you have a podcast and you look at what to post, on social media. The easiest thing to post is your new podcast episodes, right? So as you're producing podcast episodes, you go, great, this is easy. I'm going to share this on social media. But there's so many other things that you could talk about on social media. And so what I recommend doing is giving yourself a strategy towards creating that content. So basically you're going to assign yourself different topics, and those different topics get different days. If you get stuck here, one of the things I teach in the school is to just do a brain dump, literally start writing and give yourself 15 minutes and see what kind of topics you can come up with. But generally speaking, you can pull these topics from your

main content. So as a podcaster, you can pull these topics from podcast episodes and you can kind of outline them per day. So for instance, on Monday, if you're sharing your new podcast episode, on Tuesday, you can give a tip of the day based on that podcast episode. On Wednesday, you can share a quote from that podcast episode. On Thursday, maybe you can ask a question based on that episode's topic. And so you can see how an outline can start forming. And we'll actually outline this like for our clients as well, our private clients, but it's also what I'm teaching in the school.

So it may feel a little repetitive and it's supposed to. So that's where that kind of you reduce the decision fatigue and you reduce the chances of you kind of getting burned out by having that repetition. It's a lot like working out. When you go to work out at the gym, you could try everything. But if every time you walk into the gym, you go, hmm, what should I do today? Then you may start getting lost in the mix. But if you have a regimen, like today I'm going to work on my arms, tomorrow I'm going to do legs,

then I'm going to do cardio on Wednesdays, it kind of gives you that path to success. So you want to give yourself that path to success. just with your social media post as well. Yeah, I think that is the secret to life because I've definitely had days where, you know, you feel like you're so busy and the whole day goes by and then you're like, what did I even do today? Because you didn't plan it. Or you had like a to do list of a hundred things, but you didn't prioritize it.

And so you're just ping ponging around to different tasks. Like I've wasted so much time this way, which is why I really like. you just having like a simple intentions to follow on Monday. We're talking about this, Tuesday, this, Wednesday, this, Thursday this, Friday this. Absolutely. I used to think I was a free spirit. Honestly, I used to think I love to just do it. Go wherever the wind takes me.

And I do love that. I love to explore the world. But also my most productive self is very strict. And so I kind of have to be kind of strict with that. and then allow myself freedom within those boundaries. So I gave the example of a tip of the day. So I can get as creative as I want with that tip, but I know that every Tuesday I'm going to give some sort of advice.

And so that kind of constrains it a little bit, but also I can still get creative within those constraints. Yeah, I think those constraints will set us free. And I'm like you, as we talked about in my other podcast that you joined me on, we're the same person, just on different. continents, but I am also a free spirit who loves to explore the world. And I'm not a natural planner organizer. I'm just like, woo, let's just do this. But that could be really stressful if you don't have like you need a proper plan to get your head on straight, I think. Yeah,

absolutely. It's the key, really. So how much time should we be spending on social media? Yes, this is a great question because we spend a lot of time already. And I recommend spending about an hour a week scheduling out your content. So I usually sit down on Friday. So today's Friday as we're recording this. Later today, I'm going to sit down and write my post for the next week. So an hour writing those posts. And then I spend about 10 to 20 minutes a day actually going out and networking on social

media. So an hour scheduling, 10 to 20 minutes a day networking. And that's per platform. So if you have, you know, Facebook and Instagram, that may be, you know, 30 to 40 minutes, however many platforms you have. And so you're spending about two to three hours a week on social media. And as a podcaster or business owner, we have so many other things to do that really reducing that time to about two hours, three hours a week is so much more manageable.

I think that, yeah, people listening to this are just breathing a sigh of a relief, like, oh, that's actually not so bad. So when you say you spend most of your time, like networking or like connecting with new people, what do you mean by that? How do you do that? Yeah. So I love social media because of my introverted nature. I can choose to be social because I'm not antisocial. I still love spending time with people. I just find people to be exhausting sometimes. So I just go out and socialize. And so what that looks like is a little formula I call the savvy engagement growth recipe. So I'm liking, commenting, following, and direct messaging people within my circle or new people. So I kind of split my time in half between people I already know and people who don't know me.

And usually I'm liking and commenting. That's where I spend the bulk of my time. So I'm scrolling through Instagram, for instance, double tapping, liking some pictures. and then I see one where I can leave a comment and I'll leave a little comment. Now, on Instagram especially, there's these like robots kind of taking over. So I really make sure I'm not confused with one of those robots. But I'm just kind of being social on social media. I do find, though, that the direct messaging right now is so, so much more important

because it's a one-to-one conversation with someone. And so for me, especially being a podcaster, I like talking. I like to leave voice messages for people. And I've been testing this out lately, not consistently at all, but it's something I'm testing out, which is when someone follows me either on Instagram or LinkedIn, I'm sending them a voice message just saying like, hey, thanks for following. I saw you had a podcast about books, great job, or something like that. And just kind of putting it out there.

The first few times I did it, it was awful, and I was really bad at it. But that's okay. we keep going. And I think it just adds that level of personality to social media because it's feeling a little kind of disingenuous sometimes. And so if we can kind of make that connection, we're going to leave such a lasting impression with someone and we're playing into people's natural curiosity. So if you like their picture or you left a comment or you follow them or you left them a direct message, they're going to go, who is this person? And they're going to look at what you do. And if they like it, great, then they may, you know, connect with you, listen to your podcast,

follow you. If they don't like it, that's cool too. They're going to move on. You're not for everybody. But it's kind of putting yourself out there that gives you the opportunity to connect with somebody. Yes, I love all of this. And you said there's a lot of bots out there. And you're right.

I think what you meant by that was like somebody will use like a bot to go and put like a bunch of smiley emojis on, on people's post hoping that they'll follow them back and what you're saying is you're leaving like real messages that you actually mean and are being a human being about this. Yes, exactly. Imagine that being a human thing on social media.

But it can be a little challenging. So there's two like kind of tips I have if you're stuck on starting this. The first one is with stories. So Instagram or Facebook stories. if someone has a story, just respond to it. That's the easiest way to kind of get a direct message going, respond to it. The second thing is, if it's someone you don't know, look for a commonality.

So for me on a platform like LinkedIn, if I'm getting staff, I'll actually just start looking at people who graduated from the same university I did. Because then I can be like, oh, cool, you graduated from Georgia State University. I graduated from Georgia State University. Common things that we can start a conversation on. And sometimes it doesn't go anywhere. Sometimes it does. But just putting myself out there is like opening up the opportunity for more.

Yeah. So you, for DMs, you said you direct message people on story. And then you also will direct message people who followed you. Is there any other ways that you use it? No, that's kind of the primary ways I use it now for direct messaging. on platforms like LinkedIn. Sometimes if they are someone who would be a good client or a good guest for the show, I'll try to get them on that way.

But again, really try to keep it personalized. And I like to use that with a voice message because, again, the robots, there's people automatically spamming messages to everybody. And I don't want to be confused with those people. So the key is just to be specific so you don't get confused. with those robots. But yeah, I'm just kind of starting conversations and seeing where they go.

Yeah, for people who don't know the weirdness of Instagram, there are people who use like bots to follow people and then as soon as somebody follows them back, then they'll unfollow them. Like the really gross follow unfollow. What do you have?

And some people really get upset about this when somebody unfollow them or what commentary do you have on this behavior? Yeah, it really sucks. Like, I don't like it at all, but there's nothing we can do about it. Instagram is actively working to reduce that. So they're actively trying to stop the follow and follow game, but there's nothing around it. So it's kind of a mental toughness of like just don't pay attention to those people, pay attention to the people who are actually there to show.

up and who are actually paying attention because the ones who follow and then unfollow aren't your people anyways. Yeah. And at first I was like, why, why do they even care how many followers they have? Is it just like a vanity thing? Like it's a weird to be obsessed with, to be obsessed with this. And then I was like, oh, well, I guess if you had a ton of followers, like a few years ago companies were just throwing money at people who had a lot of followers. And weren't really paying any attention to engagement, but now they're actually looking like, oh, did people buy all of these followers? Are they using bots or are they actually like engaging with people? So can you talk a little bit about what engagement rate is and how we could calculate that?

Absolutely. Yeah. Engagement's important because it shows that people are paying attention to your posts. Now, I will say this. You still need to focus in, on the quality of engagement and not the quantity. And right now, at this moment in time, less is more. So it's a battle. There's just too much content online, basically. So less is more. So engagement rate is how many people engage with your posts

in comparison to the number of followers you have. So, for example, if you have 100 followers and you got 10 likes on a post, that's an engagement rate of 10%. So 10% of your followers liked a post. And so that's actually a very good engagement rate. Industry standard right now is about 1% to 2% across the board. Some people have less. One of my clients who has over 50,000 followers,

we get half a percent of engagement on posts. That's pretty typical right now in the industry. If you have less followers, you tend to have a higher rate of engagement. And so you mentioned working with influencers earlier. That is actually a very good thing. There's a lot of companies right now looking for micro influencers who have a high rate of engagement because their people are actually paying attention versus these mega influencers who have over

100,000 followers. But when they post something, maybe 200 people will pay attention. And so that kind of level of attention is what people are going after right now. It sounds like an amazing opportunity for podcasters, right, who could be these micro-influencers that sponsors are looking for. Absolutely. And that's actually worked in my benefit. So I have a sponsor on the show who I got just because I have, I'm very niche.

So I'm talking about social media. They're a social media scheduling tool. And because I have some engagement. So I'm posting things and people are paying attention. I've got the membership. And so they really like to see that. And one of the things they said when they first talked to me, because I was like, me, who me?

They said they wanted a podcaster who they could grow with. So it wasn't about where I started. It was about where I'm going. And so if you're a podcaster and you're like, man, I just don't have the numbers yet. If you could show any sort of upward growth, a lot of brands and businesses, that's exactly what they're looking for.

So keep going. That's such great advice. This is gold. This whole interview has been called. You're so great. Andrea, I love it. So algorithms, I know that they change all the time. I guess we throw around this word algorithm,

but that's just sort of like the automated system working in the background that these different platforms are using to decide what kind of content gets like promoted more than others, I guess. Does that sound right? Yeah, that's about right. And honestly, like apps like Facebook and Instagram, they want us to spend as much time on the app as possible. So their system, their automated technology, is trying to do that.

So if your content fits with that, great. If it doesn't, then it may not get shown as much. So it's kind of like a weird, a weird automatic system, but it's trying to keep everyone on the app. So it's not against you. really. What are some ways that we can, what are some things that we can do to make the algorithm like us? Like it doesn't matter when we post. Are we getting penalized for using like something like HootSuite that would publish content on our behalf as like a scheduler? Yeah. So the scheduling apps

aren't working, are not kind of penalized by the system. They do tend to get a little bit less reach than an organic post when I've tested it, but it's better than not posting at all. And so oftentimes for my clients especially, but also for students, I do recommend using a scheduling tool because it'll help you get content out there in a timely fashion without having to be on the app all the time. As far as kind of like what we can do about the algorithm, posts great content. Right now, things that are working great are video. So if you have a podcast, using an audiogram is a really great way to get attention.

So what that tells the algorithm is, okay, I'll put it like this. When you're scrolling through Instagram, for instance, and you stop and you look at a picture, you maybe look at it for a second and then you move on. Whereas with a video, if you stop and you look at it, you're looking at it for a few minutes. And so the algorithm goes, hey, this person stopped on this post in particular for maybe it was just 30 seconds. This must be important content. We should show it more. And so video is a really great way to kind of encourage that kind of eyeballs on your content a lot more.

Also, announcement content. So, and this is kind of hard to curate. It's something that definitely happens organically. but if you can announce a new product, a new podcast, if you can announce, you know, you're getting married, you're having kids, like that's the kind of content that instantly jumps to the top of the feed. If you can celebrate, you know, some sort of milestone, any of that type of content is really popular right now. And so that can help as well. But as a general role of them, if you can create content that people actually want to engage with,

that they actually stop and they look at it, that is what the algorithm is, looking for. They want people to pay attention to the content on their app because what Instagram and Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn, what they don't want to have happened is someone scrolling through their feed and they see like 10 posts in a row and they go, I don't like any of these. And then they're moving on to a different app. So you kind of have to kind of play into what the apps want. And does it matter how often we post? Do we have to post every day? I used to say yes to this, but what I'm noticing is less is more right now. So I gave that kind of time limit of an hour a week.

If you can post every day in that time, great. If you only get three posts put together in that time, great. Go for it. I think the actual engagement that you're doing on your account is far more valuable than the posts. You still have to have regular posts, and I wouldn't go below, say, one post a week. So I would still consider a weekly something. But how many that is, it kind of depends on your audience and it kind of depends on how much time you have.

And should we be consistent? Like if we decide, you know, I think three posts a week is what I can handle. Should we do them Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday? Or should we always be doing the same day? It doesn't matter. Yeah, I do recommend that starting out, mostly so that you can understand your data. So whatever you decide, you've got. to stick with it. And I'll give you this example. If you decide that you're going to do three posts a day

in August and then in September, you do two posts a day and then you compare August in September, you're going to be like, huh, I didn't get as many likes in September as I did in August. And that sometimes is simply because you didn't post the same amount of times or you didn't post on the same day. So you really want to have that consistency so you can see the data. And the great news is that Instagram's analytics will tell you after you start a consistent posting schedule when people are actually engaging with it. So even if you decide you're going to post Monday, Wednesday, Friday, but you go into analytics and you go, oh, look, Thursday for some reason is getting a lot of engagement. You can now switch it up and go, okay, I'm going to switch this Friday post to be on

Thursday now. You have a podcast called Savvy Social. How has that podcast helped your business? I think it's the most consistent I've ever been with content creation. I'm a reformed YouTuber. So podcasting is just an excellent way to produce content. It's a lot easier than video because it doesn't matter what my face looks like at the moment. But more importantly, I've been able to interview some amazing people who have opened some really good connections and opened some really good doors for me for clients. I can send potential clients topics that I've already covered. And I use it as a lead generator to get people into the same.

savvy social school. So when members join the school, they're usually coming in from the podcast or from a speaking gig I did and that they already know my philosophy. They already understand kind of my teaching style and what I'm all about. So it primes them to learn even more in a paid program. It's doing its job as being a lead magnet to bring you new customers. Yes. Yes. So I do have a free course, which is the main lead magnet right now. And so at least once a month on the podcast, I'm referencing that free course so that people go and join it.

And then once they join it, they kind of get into my funnel, which promotes the savvy social school. Which is a great model to follow for other podcast business owners on how to use your podcast as a marketing tool to get new customers. Yes, absolutely.

So if you want to try it out, you can go to online dreya.com, slash free. And you can just see what the funnel looks like. And learn a ton of great stuff. Yes. Final question. How did you use social media to launch your own podcast? Yes. So I did my podcast quietly because I was nervous about it for my own show. So I just spent a month kind of putting it together and then I launched with, I think, three episodes. And I just said, here they are, three episodes. But for my clients, we do an entire launch campaign. Actually, I'm working on one for a client right now where we really tease and lead up to the show. So those first few episodes is very

important to get people kind of bought in and paying attention. So you can definitely use social media to tease out the idea of the show. And if you do that, I really want you to focus in on what's in it for them. So why would someone listen to your show? How is it going to change their life? How is it going to inspire them? How is it going to encourage them to try something new? How is it going to entertain them? Like really dig deep and figure out what it is that makes your show different. And that's what you should be posting on social media leading up to the launch of your show. Because that's what gets people excited. And people love being the first person to discover something awesome. So play. into that. And I know sometimes, and I went through this myself, we go, oh, I don't know if,

you know, anybody's going to like this or, you know, I don't really want to bother them with my promotions, but there's people waiting for what you have out there. So you have to put yourself out there. You have to kind of give yourself the opportunity for people to go, yeah, I like this. I want more of this. So, you know, talking about it repeatedly really helps. And then the last thing I'll say about launching is sometimes we feel like we're talking about things. is too much. We're talking about our show too much. We're talking about what we do too much. And I will say this, you look at your content way more than anyone else is looking at your content. I think sometimes we forget that our social media posts are mixed into this feed of other posts. So someone's looking

at 100 to 1,000 posts a day and yours is just one of them. So if you talk about the same thing today and tomorrow, that's, you know, mixed in with hundreds and thousands of other posts. So that's okay. That's okay. Do it. Go for it. I love it. And I love that you mentioned there's different ways to launch your podcast. So you can go out big if you want to or you can do it quietly. I think a lot of people like to start out quietly test things out because when we're new, you know, we don't know what we're doing. And so, you know, we figure. things out. And to be honest with you, I really like starting out a little bit quietly because then as your community starts to grow, it feels just like nice and cozy and, you know, like a little

family is starting to like grow. Even if you're not like, even if people aren't messaging you right away or anything like that, you can start to see like, oh, I'm getting like this growth. And I don't know, it makes, it feels cozy to me. I like it. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it works for some people too, especially if you don't have kind of over, I don't know how to say this without being mean, but I think sometimes as podcasters, we go into it and we go, I want 100,000 downloads right away. And so I think that's sometimes what drives the bigger launches. And I actually think the podcasters who kind of have that longevity behind them do start off a little slower where they go, I just want to see where this goes.

And so I think that sometimes that mentality of let's just see where this goes can actually produce a better show because you're tuned into that process. You're tuned into the feedback that you're getting along the way and you're not so obsessed over the numbers. Yeah, I think some of these people who want 100,000 downloads like at the beginning, as you mentioned, it's just a number. They're going after a number, whereas I think people who are more comfortable starting out slower and smaller, like they know who they want to reach. They know what their message is. You know, they know why they're doing this and they're setting themselves up for more long-term success because there's meaning and purpose behind what they're doing. It's not just like, how do I get more downloads? Yes, exactly.

Well, Andrea, I'm going to see you in Atlanta soon, right? Yes, for She Podcasts. I'm so excited. Oh, I can't wait. It's happening so fast. All right. Well, we're going to hang out in your hometown then. Yes, yes. I'm going to be going in a bit early to hang out with family. So that should be exciting. But I'm really excited. I love podcasting events. They're just so much fun. All right. Well, I can't wait to hang out. Andrea, thank you so much for joining me today. Where can we find out more about you? Yes. So I am on. Online Dreia, everywhere online. So that's online, D-R-E-A. And my favorite place right now is Instagram to kind of hang out. So check me out there. And then, of course, listen to my podcast. It's called Savvy Social Podcast. Thank you again. I really enjoyed our conversation. And I feel oddly very connected to you because of our shared commonalities here. I know. Me too. We are best friends. Let's hang out in Atlanta. Yes, let's. I love what Andrea had to say about micro-influencers and how demonstrating steady growth of your show and engagement can help you land a sponsorship deal that's right for your brand. To learn more about sponsorship, go back and listen to episode 16 of this podcast with guests to Jessica Kupferman, who is co-founder of She Podcasts. And to get your social media cheat-she, head on over to sarah micotel.com slash social.

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 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.