The silver bullet in growing podcasting
I’ve seen overarching themes when working with my podcasting clients in the past 6 months.
- They are amazingly talented
- They have a vision and a mission
- Man are they passionate!
- They are producing high-quality episodes: production and content
It would seem that this is enough no?
Unfortunately, they’ve come to me because their growth feels stunted and they wonder what they are doing wrong.
After diving into their workflow, content creation, research, and even their online presence, there are a few little things here and there that would help to ‘grow their audience’ but its truth, I was shocked that they weren’t being seen or heard.
They are doing all they are “supposed” to do, so what the heck?
We all have to step up
As podcasters with such clear missions, we are missing something imperative to get the word out: listening and following our instinct about how to share our own work.
As a podcasting advocate and pedagogist, I’m also at fault.
I don’t do enough of it either.
We get stuck in online marketing ‘best practices’.
We want a step by step solution.
We look for (frankly) the easy thing, that gets results quick.
Expanding your listener base is not about tweets, the length of the episode, type of podcast, FB ads, an email newsletter, etc. etc. and so forth.
Those are great for supporting an already solid foundation.
So what’s the silver bullet?
EDUCATION (and CURIOSITY) but I’ll chat a little bit about what I mean about education…
The least amount of focus for most podcasters is in educating their potential listeners about how to consume their content.
There is an expectation we have as podcasters that people will know exactly what to do and how to do it.
Most of us podcasters do not explain what our podcast is about nor how to get it. We take it for granted that consuming audio content is ‘a thing.’
I hate to break it to you but, it’s not.
Y'all are falling for the hype. Stop it.
We cannot even explain to someone what a podcast is.
In fact, if you’re a podcaster and you’re reading this, when was the last time that you explained what a podcast is to someone, in real life?
What do we do about it?
Number 1: get at least a 'how to listen to my show' page, or blog post, or video, something on your page.
No one else is going to do it for us.
It's not about all the Pro-casters aka the public media folks to do it for us. It ain't happening folks. We need to be our own number one proponents.
AND, that’s ONE of the many things that we’ll be tackling together on The E-League, my dream advocacy experience: An empowered pairing of intimacy + community, one on one and hive mind amplified by a time frame of 5 weeks.
If you’re are truly interested in growing your show, growing the podcasting medium and getting our voices and missions into the ears of those that need to listen, check out The E-League.