How you promote your podcast and grow your audience should align with the type of podcast you want to create. There are many different podcast promotion strategies, but some may work better for you than others. Here are some key podcast promotion strategies that should increase your audience no matter what kind of podcast you’re running.
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Picture your Ideal Listener
A key component to podcast promotion is having your ideal listener in mind at all times. Many podcast creators are only focused on gaining as big of an audience as possible, and don’t think about who they want their audience to be. Without a narrowed out and specific target audience in mind, a podcast can quickly become too broad, causing people to become uninterested. The idea is not to gain as many listeners as possible, but to create a specific niche for a targeted audience. This way, those who belong to that niche are more likely to stay interested and share your podcast with others in that interest area.
Instead of picturing a vast group of people as your audience, think of one particular imaginary person that would be your ideal listener. This ideal listener will actively engage with your podcast, listen to every episode and share it with other people. Imagine what this person’s personality is like, what their interests are beyond your podcast topic, and what their behavioral traits are. What’s their sense of humor? What are their goals in life? Are they an optimist or a pessimist? Think about where and how they might listen to your podcast. For example, will they listen with headphones undistracted or while doing other things like driving or working? Thinking of all of these things ahead of time will allow you to market to that type of audience more effectively. Once you’ve pictured your ideal listener, start marketing yourself and your podcast to them specifically, and not just a vague sea of potential listeners.
Perfect Your Logo
Before creating your podcast, come up with a logo for your podcast that aligns with what you want to stand for. First, think of what kind of logo you want to have. Do you want to have a word-based or an image-based logo? If you go with an image, would you want an animated or a real image? If only words, what colors and font would you want? Although creating a logo may be easy with online tools, it requires this type of thought. Your logo should be pleasant to look at and easily remembered. There are many free online logo maker such as Free Logo Services, Tailor Brands, PhotoADking, and Canva.
Once you have your logo, upload it as your profile picture for your podcast-dedicated social media accounts.
Our logo for the Mack Talks Podcast reflects our company with our signature colors and font. We are a digital marketing agency, so our podcast is only a portion of our work. To reflect this, we’ve put our Mack Media logo under the microphone on the left, followed by “The Mack Talks” in the same format as our Mack Media logo.
Social Media
There are many ways that you can share your podcast on social media. Having an online presence is extremely important, especially for marketing. Create a dedicated podcast account on every platform that suits your podcast. At the very least, you should have a dedicated Twitter and Soundcloud account. First, you should announce when your podcast will be available and why your targeted audience should care. You can share short snippets of your podcast to raise interest. A good way to do this is to upload the snippet to Soundcloud, then share that link through Twitter. This makes it easier for your Twitter followers to hear your snippet because Twitter has an embedded Soundcloud player. Make sure your snippet is interesting to your target audience. Don’t clip the intro or outro of the show, but rather a significant piece of conversation central to what your podcast is about.
During your show, you should encourage your audience to engage with you on social media. You could set up challenges, giveaways, or create a hashtag. If you decide to create a hashtag, put some thought into it before you post. What are people in your niche likely to be searching for on social media? With that in mind, think of something catchy, short, and to the point.
Be sure to share each episode multiple times. Be active on social media beyond only promoting your podcast. Interact with fans that mention you in their tweets, and thank them for being a listener. In the description of each podcast episode, put just enough info to raise interest, but not too much to kill the curiosity factor.
At Mack Media, we have our main account, Mack Media Group, but we also have a separate account for our podcast, The Mack Talks. We post everything from video snippets of our podcast to inspiring quotes and funny memes. On our main page, we retweet some relevant podcast snippets, and post about other things that are going on around the office not necessarily related to the podcast.
Make notes and outlines for each episode
Your podcast should have an underlying structure. Although some podcasts may give the impression of a stream-of-conscious conversation, there is usually an underlying structure that the showrunners are following. Before you go live, write out several topics that you want to touch on. Each topic could be a subtitle with additional notes underneath each.
It’s also a good idea to share your show notes on social media. If you decide to do this, make sure your notes are organized and contain keywords for your niche market. Your notes should be search-engine-optimized, meaning that they will easily show up in a Google search for topics relevant to your podcast.
Paid Advertising
Podcasting is an exponentially growing medium, so it is a competitive market regarding getting noticed. However, there are marketing companies that specialize in advertising specifically for podcasts. If all else fails, consider searching some up to get some help with your marketing strategies. They can promote your show throughout major podcast networks to be sure that you get noticed. An entire advertising campaign can be created for you, so you can sit back and let all the work be done by professionals.
Conclusion
Although it may seem daunting at first, there are many tricks to help you improve your podcast marketing skills. Have your ideal listener in mind at all times. Consider which social media platforms you want to market on. Generally, the more platforms you’re on, the better. However, you may want to avoid a certain platform if you’re unfamiliar with its etiquette or don’t typically use it. Have a solidified structure and direction for your podcast as a whole, and make guided notes for each episode for your audience can refer to. There are always paid options that can help you boost your audience.
You can find all of our podcast episodes on The Mack Talks page, with links to all of our social media accounts.
