What should you do after publishing your first podcast? Here’s the answer: you should start promoting!
Many people think that hard work stops after publishing your podcast episodes. But in reality, you still have to think of strategies to promote and grow your audience. Because if not, you will be stuck in a certain number of listeners. And you won’t be able to reach out and give value to a larger audience.
To help you with your podcasting, here are some marketing strategies you can use to promote your podcast:
Assess Your Audience
The first thing that you can do is to assess your audience. After publishing your podcast, listeners will have their reactions and give comments. Get all the feedback you can get from your audience. From there, you will know what are the things that they like and dislike about your episode. If you must, build a community for your listeners so you can easily reach out to them.
The data you have gathered can help you make a better episode in your podcast. In addition, your audience will be happy to know you considered their opinion and will continue to be your listener. Making them feel that they are heard and noticed is something you should never forget in keeping your audience.
You can also attract more listeners once you know what the public likes about your podcast. And vice versa, you can avoid things they don’t like so you can give them a better-quality podcast. Aside from that, your current listeners can share and recommend your podcasts to other potential listeners.
Promote on Social Media
After knowing your audience, you can now start promoting on social media. We all know what power social media holds when it comes to marketing. Results will just come through if you use this platform correctly. You can start by creating a community on your social media account and invite your listeners and potential listeners to join. By doing so, it will be easier for you to reach them.
Post updates on your social media accounts if you have a new episode. Make a captivating description. Use appropriate hashtags. Like and reply to some of their comments. Finally, and most importantly, do not forget to show your gratitude to the people who support your podcast.
If these steps are taken correctly, you will grow your audience in no time.
Podcast Cross-Promotion
Another strategy that you can do is to do podcast cross-promotion. Podcast cross-promotion is when one podcaster and another promote each other’s podcast. As a result, both podcasters benefit from each other. It’s a win-win situation.
There are two ways to do podcast cross-promotion. You can do it either actively or passively. Both are effective in promoting but different on how to execute.
One podcaster invites and interviews another podcaster to his podcast. This kind of promotion is called an active podcast cross-promotion. You can also do this in a way in which one podcaster will promote another podcaster in his podcast. In return, he will also get interviewed or promoted in the other podcaster’s podcast.
Passive cross-promotion is more subtle than active podcast cross-promotion. For example, you can mention the other podcaster in their show or tag them in social media posts.
Either way, choosing your partner in doing podcast cross-promotion will also affect you. Your partner’s podcast should have the same vibe or theme as your podcast. If not, this strategy may not be successful.
Host a Podcast Contest
Hosting a podcast contest is also one of the best strategies for promoting your podcast. You can do this strategy at any point in your podcasting journey. You can do this at the beginning of your journey or any time you think you want to.
Have something for your giveaways. It can be gift cards, products, subscriptions, or anything. Just make sure that won’t hurt your budget too much.
In return, your listeners would have to do something for you. First, they should follow your podcast. Download an episode. Leave a review. Share your podcast on their social media accounts. You can also require them to take a screenshot as proof.
With these requirements that you posted for your podcast contest; your podcast can gain more followers. It can also receive many comments and have a better rating. Also, you can get free promotions from the participants using their social media accounts.
Find the Best Time to Publish an Episode
Another thing that you should consider is finding the best time to publish your new episode on your podcast. Again, you can use the analytics on your podcast’s host to do this.
Analyze the result and see the peak time and day when your audience listens to your podcast. For example, if the result says that your audience usually listens to your podcast during weekends, then try posting your new episodes on weekends. Avoid posting during the weekdays for a while and see the results.
You might find this strategy hard if you are still at the beginning of your podcasting journey. Your podcast doesn’t have many listeners yet. With that, you won’t have enough data for you to analyze.
Some podcasters suggest Tuesday and Wednesday. You can post on these days first and see if it will work for you. If not, you can do more experimentation until you find the best time to publish.
Publish Your Podcast on YouTube
The last on the list is publishing your podcast on YouTube. It can transcribe audio too. Some people may wonder why YouTube. YouTube caters for videos, and you are a podcaster – your audience listens and doesn’t watch your episodes. This statement is true, but you should consider that YouTube has more than two billion users.
YouTube is an excellent platform for you to promote your podcast. Suppose you don’t want to take a video of yourself making your podcast. You can still upload your videos on YouTube.
Use an image while you play your episode. The image can be something related to your topic. You can also use your podcast profile photo to show people who you are. If you do this, they will be more familiar with your podcast.
If you are confident enough to record yourself while making your episode, that’s better. Make sure you are using the right file type. For example, you can convert WMV to MP3 by Transcribe Wreally.
These are some marketing strategies that you can do to promote your podcast. Some might work for others and not for you. Some might not work for them but it works for you.
Don’t feel discouraged if one strategy doesn’t work. You can even apply more than one strategy to your podcasts.
What’s more important is you should never be afraid to experiment until you find the best one for you.