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 the truth is, 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 getting the word out: listening to ourselves and following our instincts about how to share our own work.
As a podcasting advocate, 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 your social posts, 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…
One of the things we spend the least amount of time on? Teaching people how to actually listen to our podcasts.
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 get my show” page, blog post, video, something on your site or social.
And don’t overthink it!
Literally show people how to listen.
Where can they find your show? What app should they use? Do they need to follow or subscribe? Can they listen right on your website? What happens when they click that button? If they like an episode, what’s the easiest way to get the next one?
We know all of this because we live in podcasting. Aaaaand... um ... some of y'all don't even know how to do this yourselves.
How do you expect other people to do it?
And I think we forget that.
Create “how to consume my podcast” education.
Make it a series. Share it more than once. Put it on your website. Talk about it in your episodes. Show people what to do instead of assuming they already know.
You could even make content like:
How to follow my podcast on Apple Podcasts
How to listen on Spotify
How to listen without a podcast app
How to find older episodes
How to send an episode to a friend
How to make sure you don’t miss a new episode
I can hear you already... yes, this is totally boring marketing. It's so not sexy, and sometimes it's harder to do because creating something step by step, where you're actually helping someone do a thing, is not easy.
But education is imperative. Education removes friction. It also gives the listener autonomy.
No one else is going to do that part for us.
It’s not about waiting for the big podcasters, platforms or the podcasting industry to magically teach everybody how this works.
It ain’t happening, folks.
As we all know, there are plenty of vested interests when it comes to where audiences are directed to consume podcasts.
We need to be our own number one advocates and take responsibility for that ourselves.
AND, this is exactly the kind of thing we can dig into together in a Creative Sovereignty session.
If you’ve been doing all the things you’re “supposed” to do with your podcast and still feel stuck, disconnected from your work, or unsure what actually makes sense for you, we’ll make space to look at what you’re doing, why you’re doing it and what you want to do next.
Not because there’s one right way to podcast, but because there needs to be room for your way.
