Growing Your Podcast Audience

Welcome to episode 276 of Hit the Mic with the Stacey Harris.

Once again this is episode 276. I am your host, The Stacey Harris, Social Media Strategist and trainer for online entrepreneurs looking to build epic communities through social media. I’m really, really, really excited to talk about podcasting today because I love podcasting. I know, it’s shocking. 276 episodes of the show, and I still get excited to share this stuff with you guys.

I want to talk a little bit about growing your podcast audience today. I’ve talked it a little bit in the past about my setup and how I got started in podcasting, and if you haven’t listened to those episodes go over to the show notes for this episode over at TheStaceyHarris.com/episode276 and I’ll have links to those episodes, but today I want to talk about growth because I’m assuming that podcasting would be a lot less fun if no one listened to the show, so we’re going to talk about how to get people really engaged with the show and listening to the show and how to share the show with a larger audience and use it to help grow your community.

I’m going to share three things. Heads up, I’m going to be diving deeper into everything I’m talking about today and sharing some additional stuff on Thursday, June 30th, live inside of Hit the Mic Backstage exclusively for members, so if you want to check out that go over to HittheMicBackstage.com and get your membership access and we’ll be going a little but further and a lot deeper into each of these pieces, so let’s jump in. What do you say? Ready? I’m ready.

The first thing I want to talk about is really looking at other podcasts and I really like this as a first step because you’re going to podcast listeners. You’re not having to buy anyone into a new platform, you’re just having to sell them on a new show. One of my favorite ways is to be a guest on other people’s shows and the way I do this is first I talk to my audience and ask them what other shows they’re listening to. It’s a really easy way to do it.

Second, I look at what other shows are around my category and doing well. Maybe it’s new and noteworthy, maybe it’s the overall rankings, and I look at the other people, and this is where it comes back to knowing who your ideal client or ideal listener is. For me they’re one in the same, but knowing who I want to listen to this show is really helpful in figuring out what other shows to be a guest on because I can look at, “Well what other shows would serve that same audience?” I can pitch them content that’s going to be of value to their audience and when I go over there and I genuinely give value, it’s going to make them more interested in listening to my show.

Now I will say I do not treat these guest appearances as one long pitch fest. The more value you add the more likely you are to make your community look appealing and so pay attention to that as you have the opportunity to be on these shows. How can I provide maximum value? How can I make this worth coming on over to show as well? Again, this is one of my favorite ways to do it, but not only because I’m able to get people who are already listening to podcasts, I’m able to look at people who are also serving my podcast audience, but I’m also able to connect with other podcasters and that’s a really cool thing to do because other podcasters get how much work it is to run and produce and promote a show, and so they really understand that this community is supporting each other.

This podcast medium gets more popular as we share it and so when connecting with other podcasters, you become a really great way to share other shows, or when they’re sharing other shows or talking about their favorite shows, you know I always recommend shows I’ve been on or who the host of that show has been on my show. Building relationships within the podcast community is a really good way to strengthen your business, your network, your community, and your show, so that’s why I always start there.

Number two, you have to actually promote your show. I think podcasting, like blog posting, like video, like our Facebook pages, like our websites, like everything we create, it would be super nice if there was this, “I will build it and they will show up and be like, ‘This is the best thing ever,'” but that’s not actually how it works, unfortunately. Trust me, I would love if it did, but it’s not. You have to talk about your show and you have to talk about your show more than you think will annoy them, because they’re not listening to everything you’re saying.

I don’t have any real figures for you here, but I’m guessing like, 30% of what we way is actually sinking in. Less so if you’re talking to, you know, me. Make sure you’re talking about your show, you’re promoting your show. In your Facebook groups, during Twitter chats, on your social media channels, to your email list, are you telling them when you have new episodes coming out?

I have episodes that go out twice a week for this show. Our episodes go up on Tuesday and our episodes go up on Fridays, so I make sure that that’s right, I send an email out every Tuesday with the episode from that Tuesday and the episode from the past Friday. I don’t send an email out every time a new episode goes up. I don’t really want to send two emails out a week personally. I don’t want to write that many much less you have to read that many, so make sure you’re telling everyone.

The other option is to run things like Facebook ads or LinkedIn ads or Pinterest ads or Twitter ads. Put some money behind it. Invest in it. Make sure it’s listed in places, podcast rankings and things like that. Share your show in all of the places. That so, so important, and it’s going to be really, really, really valuable in getting an audience outside of your own. What’s funny is the more that you share these things on Facebook and on Twitter and to your email list and occasionally with ads, the more you do that, the larger each of those audiences will get in addition to your podcast audience because when you speak to one person, they then go tell their friends if you’re providing value, or on the flip side if you’re not providing value, so make sure you’re providing value.

It really is a circle. All of these things feed each other, so growing your podcast audience grows your Facebook page. Using your Facebook page growth to fuel your audience growth of your show, these things all build on each other and all work together so make sure you’re utilizing them. Make sure you’re promoting your show. If you’re somebody who has launched your show a while ago and you’re finding that your download numbers are kind of leveling out, they’re kind of plateauing, and I’ve been through that a couple of times now, where it’s been like, “Okay, we need to re-energize the growth of this audience,” then treat it like you would any other promotional period. Really give it four, eight weeks of your attention where you’re doing a lot of promo. You’re running some ads, you’re doing the guest thing on other people’s podcasts. Make sure that you are consistently doing this. I think it’s easy to think about promotion in that first eight weeks when we have New and Noteworthy and the show is exciting and the show is new.

The show is a little less exciting to promote at episode 110 and episode 204 and episode 175 and episode 39, you know what I mean? As your podcast moves along and it becomes more of a habit, I mean I’m sitting at the edge of three years doing this show. In the beginning of September we’re going to do episode 300 of this show. I’ve been doing this a while now, and there are definitely times where as much as I love this show, I don’t want to talk about it anymore, and so building in promotional periods where I treat it just like a launch of anything else, It just gets extra attention, it gets some extra energy, has been really important in revitalizing my excitement and also growing the show month after month, episode after episode, year after year. Okay?

The third thing I want to talk about and what I want to wrap it up with is repurposing your podcast content. This is something we’re going to dig into deeper during the live training in Hit the Mic Backstage, but I wanted to tell you that this audio content you’re creating for your podcast or the video content you’re creating if you’re doing a video podcast, it doesn’t have to live and die in this medium. Repurpose it because it’s a fantastic way to grow your overall audience, either by offering it in a transcription in your show notes or using it to create guest posts. That’s something that I do.

In fact if you go over to the Media page on my website, and I’ll put a link to it in the show notes, you’ll see things that are very similarly titled to the podcast episodes of the show. That’s because several of those blog posts and guest posts that I’ve done are in fact … Ready for this? … Episodes of the podcast that were transcribed and then edited into blog posts, because that allows me to make more of this content, which allows me to get this same content in front of a larger audience, which allows me to get in front of a larger audience, and that drives traffic to my site which dries traffic to my podcast.

Remember the power that you have in this content. Remember the power that you have in the fact that you’re already creating an insane amount of value through you show and then use it in as many ways as possible. Use it over and over and over again, and you’re going to repurpose it a lot of ways. Again, we’re going to dive deeper into all three of these things, but especially repurposing when we do the live training in Backstage on Thursday. If it’s after that, guess what? That training is still in there, so come join us in Backstage. We dive deeper in all of this, but it’s going to be incredibly powerful when it comes to growing your audience if you can showcase that same value in as many places as possible. Use what you’ve already got. Repurpose the existing content. That’s so, so important.

A quick recap: one, guest on other people’s shows that speak to the same audience. That’s important. Number two, promo your show. Run ads. Talk about it on social media. Email your list. Tap your network. Do all of those things that you would do to promote literally anything else. Your podcast is a part of your business. It’s part of your sales funnel. It’s part of your marketing. Treat it that way, okay? It’s part of your offerings. Treat it that way.

Of course, we wrapped it up with repurposing your content. Utilize the value you’re creating on your show in as many ways as possible. It’s absolutely critical that you be leading with value when it comes to podcasting and a great way to get new people to listen is to show then what kind of value you have here, okay?

All right, so that’s me today. If you, again, if you want to join us backstage, so basically 25 bucks and you can come to see this live training, or if it’s after we’ve done the live training you can come watch that training, and of course come ask questions and engage and talk to other podcasters and myself inside of our private Facebook group that is for members only. Just go over to HittheMicBackstage.com. If you want to learn more about launching your podcast, we have an entire podcast launching program inside of Backstage as well, but I’m also going to link to some episodes about how I’ve gotten started and things like that. Just head over to TheStaceyHarris.com/episode276. There is links to all of the things mentioned in today’s episode. Thank you so much for listening. I will see you next time.