Influential Introvert: Communication Coaching for Professionals with Performance Anxiety - The 3 Ways to Grow Your Podcast Audience

Episode Date: July 3, 2020

Do you ever feel like the rest of the world knows a secret that you don't about growing an audience? Like when you're in a Facebook Group and someone humble brags that they just started their podcast and already have 100,000,000 downloads (this statement is usually followed by the online equivalent of Bambi blinking his eyes all innocent-like and saying, "I don't know, is that good?") And then you start to feel crummy. “What am I doing wrong?”    You’re not doing anything wrong. It takes time to build your audience, but some podcasters start out with a larger following because they’ve built one up on their blog or social media or maybe they are a celebrity of some kind.    Also, some podcast categories will always have a bigger audience than others. True crime and comedy will always have more downloads than an obscure hobby podcast.   Having said all that, we all want to grow our audience, and in this episode, I break down the three ways to do that.    But let’s jump to the spoiler: The most effective way to grow your show is to guest on other people’s podcasts.    The bad news? Lots of people are pitching pods. The good news? Most of these pitches aren’t good.    Would you like to cut through the noise and learn how to get podcast hosts to say yes to featuring you?   Check out my new online course Podcast Pitch Perfection (I’ve got a special offer waiting for you).  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.

There are only three ways to grow your podcast audience, and in this episode, I will break down what they are and also tell you about the number one thing that I think you should be focusing on right now if you want more podcast listeners. And who doesn't write? Let's dig in. 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 Micatel 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. Okay, you launched your podcast and you're feeling pretty happy about it. After a few episodes, you've got like 50 or so downloads per episode. Then someone in a Facebook group that you're in does this humble brag saying, I just launched my podcast today and I only have a million downloads. I can't tell if it's good or not. I don't know. What do you think? And then you're starting to feel crummy like, what am I doing wrong? Why is my audience so small compared to other people? Well, you're not doing anything wrong. It takes time to build an audience. And some podcasters have a head start. They may have grown a blog or have like a ton of people following them on social media. Maybe they are a celebrity of some kind. Also, some podcast categories, they are always going to have a bigger audience than yours. True Crime, Comedy, those huge, huge. kinds of shows, they're always going to have more downloads than something that's more obscure.

For some reason, the one that's always thrown around in podcasting circles is underwater basket weaving. So if your show is about that, it's not going to be as popular as something about murder, unfortunately. I don't like that. That is the way society is. Should all be basket weaving underwater. But anyway, as we've talked about before on this podcast, more downloads doesn't equal more success. Success is whatever goal you set out for yourself, whether that is to attract more clients to your business, your ideal clients, whether it's to build community about a certain topic. Plus, downloads don't equal listeners. If you put out a show every single day, yeah, you're going to have more downloads, but you're not going to have any more listeners than

if you did a weekly show. Downloads don't equal listens. Someone could it download an episode of yours and then abandon it if they decide it's not for them. So it counts as a download, but they didn't actually listen. Having said all that, yeah, of course we all want to grow our audience. There are more people that we want to reach. There are three ways that we can do that. We can grow our audience organically. We can pay to grow our audience. And we can get in front of other people's audiences. Marketers label these three buckets as owned, earned, and paid ways to get attention. So let's talk about owned attention. So owned is your podcast. It's also all of the content that you are creating. So your website, your social media, the Facebook group that you

created, Pinterest, YouTube, you might not own a lot of these channels like Facebook, Instagram. you know, you've probably heard the phrase you shouldn't build your house on rented land. That's why you have a podcast. That's why you have a website. Like, those are the things that you own your newsletter. That's why it's so important to have email. However, the content that you're creating and putting out on platforms, social media platforms, that's still your own content because you're creating it. And it's part of building your brand. So let's talk about some basic ways that you can beef up your own content to attract more people. To start, make sure that you're in all of the most important podcasts. directories. Right now, the biggest ones are Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Tune In, that's the default for Alexa, and IHeart Radio. You want to make sure that you are creating content that you know your ideal listener is going to love and using keywords that they'd probably be searching for. So that is good for SEO, which is search engine optimization. You want to make it really easy for guests to share the episodes that they're on. So when you are posting about an interview that you did make sure that you're tagging them in social media or creating graphics that

they can post themselves if they choose to do so. You want to have subscribe buttons on your website to make it really easy for someone to subscribe to your show. And James Cridland from podnews.net has created a free little tool that we can use to make these subscription badges. So just head over to his website to learn how to do that. You want to ask your listeners to share your show with a friend. include a link to your podcast page in your email signature. And email your audience. Weekly emails can help build up your relationship with them, but they can also easily forward an email to a friend, if it's something that really resonated with them.

And to accelerate the growth of your own media content, you could hold a giveaway, you could host a five-day challenge, you could host a webinar or some other kind of online event. You could create an app for your show. Libson lets you do this if they're your podcast media host, but that is something that you have to pay for. And in fact, the last few that I mentioned, giveaways, challenges, doing online events, those will all be more successful in growing your audience

if you put some money behind it, which leads us into paid attention, the second way of growing your audience. So paying for promotion is the fastest way to grow your podcast. And obviously it's the most expensive. You can pay social media micro influencers to promote your show. You can pay to get into relevant newsletters. You can join courses and memberships owned by podcast hosts who often feature their students. And of course, there's paid advertising. So when we think of paid advertising these days,

we usually think of Facebook. You can use Facebook to promote social media posts or products related to your podcast. But Facebook ads are also great, if not essential, for as I said, promoting challenges, webinars, and other events if you want them to be successful because ads get you in front of new people. You can't grow your podcast audience if you're only talking to your existing subscribers. You need to get in front of new people and ads are a very fast and effective way to do this. You can also use paid ads to drive people to a freebie that you've got, to build your email list, or you could send an ad right to a low. ticket offer. That's the trend right now to skip the traditional marketing funnels and just send people

directly to a paid offer, which is usually $37 or less. And advertising goes beyond Facebook. So there's also Google ads. And you can also advertise in podcast apps directly themselves, which is very effective because you know that these people are already podcast listeners. I experimented with Spotify's ad studio a while back. And I didn't think it was that great. I didn't see any results. It just didn't seem worth it for podcasters, at least the way they had it set up at the time. However, I found advertising on Overcast, my favorite podcast playing app, to be very effective to getting new listeners. How it works is Overcast shows a little banner to non-paid members of their app. So they have a very cheap membership. I think it might be like $10 a year or something.

And then for people who don't pay that, they will show like a little ad on the player. as people are listening to their shows. And they even let you choose which podcast category you want to be in. So let's say you have a kids podcast. You can actually select to advertise to people who are listening to kids shows so that your ad is showing up in like the relevant places, which is pretty cool. Castro is another app that offers paid features via banner ad. You can choose to advertise for seven days, or 30 for overcast, it's a full 30 days. If you have a ton of money to spend, you can pay a company like Midroll to get a sponsored ad in an already popular podcast, and this is probably going to cost you a few thousand dollars depending on the show that you choose.

Because this isn't just normally one-offs, you would be paying to advertise on an ongoing basis. You can also sponsor smaller podcasts directly by reaching out yourself, or you could do a podcast swap for free with a podcaster who has a related audience to you, which leads us into earned attention. So we've talked about owned attention, paid attention, and now earned attention. And this is getting in front of somebody else's audience, but for free. So this is writing guest blogs, hosting a joint webinar with somebody who has a related audience to you, so who could bring their audience to the webinar. This is contributing to conversations in

Facebook groups so you don't have to start your own Facebook group. You can build your audience by participating in other Facebook groups that already exist. You can pitch to media outlets and you could start building relationships with these journalists and editors. You know on Twitter, they are always hanging out and chatting on Twitter. So you can engage with them there, ask questions. You can sign up for emails from Harrow, which is help a reporter out. So Monday through Friday, they will send out newsletters filled with reporter requests. Then they're working for, they're working on a specific story and they're looking for people to either quote or interview. So in the show notes, I'll link to how you can sign up with them. That's free. They also have a

paid service, but the free one is fine. I don't think you need the paid service. You can apply to be featured in a podcast app like Stitcher. They also offer paid promotions, but you can apply to be promoted for free on their homepage and in their news. newsletter and also on their social media. And CastBox is another podcast app that lets you apply to be featured for free. They do have a number of prerequisites, but you can also pay to partner with them as well. You can speak at conferences. And my favorite way to get earned attention, you can guest on other people's podcasts. Guesting on podcasts is the best way to grow your podcast audience. Think about your own podcasting behavior. When do you subscribe to a new show? It's usually when

you hear that person as a guest on somebody else's podcast. Last week, I interviewed Danielle Dezier, host of the Thought Card podcast and also founder of WOC podcasters. And she reached out to me after hearing me on somebody else's podcast. And she was already on my list of potential guests who I really wanted to talk to because I heard her on somebody else's podcast. Getting on podcast not only helps you grow your own audience, but it also gives you the opportunity to develop a relationship with the podcast host, which can lead to collaborations, it can lead to friendships, which I think above all is the most important. And the next thing you know, you find yourself road-tripping down the Croatian coast. I can speak from experience. I have had so many really

fun in-person experiences and friendships from people who either I was a guest on their podcast or they were a guest on mine. So I love that about podcasting. Guesting on podcasts can also help you acquire customers faster because as you know with podcasting, the no like and trust factor is immediate and strong, even in front of a new audience. Getting on other people's podcasts helps you build your own email list full of what they call warm leads in marketing. Those are the people who really love what you're all about and they are the kinds of people who will want to buy your products and services when you are ready to sell something. And getting on other podcast positions you as the leader in your niche.

you are the authority. And podcasts are timeless. You can post something on social media and depending on the platform, sometimes it disappears within minutes and nobody has even seen it. But when you get on somebody else's podcast, that is beautiful evergreen content that new listeners are going to discover every single day. Plus, you're saving money on ads. Sharing your story on podcasts is essentially free marketing. Of course, it's gem packed with valuable insights and stories and it's a really enjoyable conversation, but it's free advertising for you. And what does advertising do? It promotes you. It gets you in front of new listeners. And as I said, that's how you grow your audience. If you want to grow, you can't just keep talking to the same people. You need to branch out.

And being a podcast guest is the best way to do this. So the benefits of getting on podcasts sound pretty great, right? Well, many people agree. And podcast hosts are being flooded with requests to be on their shows. Maybe you have even sent a few and you haven't heard anything back and you're wondering, how can I cut through all of this noise? Well, my friend, good news. Doors are open to my online course, podcast pitch perfection. This is your fluff-free roadmap to getting booked on podcasts that put you in front of your ideal audience. These are the people who will really resonate with you. Check out your website. Subscribe to your email. Subscribe to your podcast, of course. And become your customers and fans and the biggest advocates of who you are and what you stand for.

In podcast pitch perfection, you will not only learn how to pitch and get a heck yes from a host. You are going to learn how to build your personal brand. If you're ready for more podcast listeners, then head on over to sarahmicatel.com slash podcast pitch perfection for a special offer on this course today. 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.