One of my new years resolutions for 2015 was to start podcasting on a regular basis. Since the launch of my podcast about crowdfunding, I’ve grown it to 1,000+ total downloads in a few weeks. While I realize that these numbers might might not reflect total listeners or subscribers, I think it’s still an indicator to watch when growing a podcast.
I’ve included a screenshot of my podcast statistics below to give you an idea of how the podcast has grown over time. These are stats from Libsyn.
I’m not sure whether or not this is typical progress for a podcast, so I invite you to share how your stats have changed over time! After reaching the 1,000 downloads point, I realized I had a few tips and lessons learned that might be helpful for other podcasters. Check them out below.
1. Leverage your existing online platforms.
I have an existing blog in my podcast niche where I have actively published helpful content over the last 2 years. I have been leveraging my social media profiles including twitter, facebook, linkedin, and my email list. I have also been cross posting the podcasts on my blog under a “podcast” section.
If I didn’t have these platforms, I would be building them concurrently while doing the podcast. I think that blogging and being active on the mentioned social media platforms are crucial for building up awareness for your podcast in the longterm.
Start building your email list from day one using a tool like Aweber or Mailchimp.
2. Create content that solves problems or enlightens.
With every guest or episode, I’ve tried to think deeply about how the content will help whoever is listening and what problems or questions the people listening might have that the guest or myself can answer.
I like to think of the interviews as a conference call with a high-status individual. You have the opportunity to interview them, but just because you understand their slang or industry terminology doesn’t mean that the third person on the conference call (the listener) will.
If the listener is a beginner in your podcast niche, then be sure to explain complicated concepts and terminology. You may need to re-iterate or rephrase what your guest is saying to effectively communicate the takeaways.
3. Set up a regular posting schedule
This point, above all others, has helped with the growth of the podcast. You can clearly see the progress from January onwards. I set up a schedule to post the podcasts on Fridays on my blog and in the iTunes store.
While I could do more, I’m more concerned with being consistent at this point. I’ve lined up over a months worth of podcasts in advance to make sure that the train won’t stop for nothing! I may increase that frequency in the future, or offer exclusive episodes, but for now that is my blueprint.
In addition to posting regular content, I would also schedule regular social media content to go out on your Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, etc. You can do that with a social media scheduling tool like Hootsuite.
4. Don’t go it alone!
Having guests on my show has also spurred the growth of my podcast because it doubles the amount of promotion each episode gets! I am also now encouraging guests to embed my podcast player on their website if they want to share it directly with their audience .
If you haven’t had any guests on your show yet, but you want to, I’d recommend checking out my other article on how to get guests for your show.
5. Tease your audience with incentives.
If someone is on your website, it can be difficult to get them to open up their phone and listen to your podcast, or even to sit through an entire episode on their computer. The same is true if someone is listening to your podcast and you’re trying to convince them to check out your website.
So far, I’ve found the best way to get people to click through and listen to a podcast episode is to highlight what they will learn or to “tease” some part of the podcast that might be interesting.
This is similar to the way that television shows will tease viewers about what content will appear next after the commercial. “Don’t go away, after the commercial __insert famous celebrity__ will reveal how ____.” It makes you want to stay around!
6. Cross-link your podcast episodes.
I’m pretty sure that it would be rare that someone discovers your podcast and begins listening from the beginning. In my experience, they seem to discover an episode which is relevant to them first.
Seeing as that first-time listener might not know what other kinds of episodes you’ve published, it’s important to tell them! If they liked this episode, they might like episode ___ where they can learn about ___. I also cross-link the podcasts on my blog.
Make it as easy as pie for them to discover the content they want to find. Rather than having to wade through all your episodes, they can hear from you directly which ones they should check out.
7. Optimize the search-ability of your podcast
You can have the best website in the world, but if it’s not SEO optimized, not many people are going to find it. The same is true of podcasts. I found this article from the SmartPassiveIncome blog to be very helpful. The videos in the post cover some easy ways to include keywords in your podcast and to make sure that people are able to find it via iTunes or another podcast library.
My question for you!
What kinds of downloads are you experiencing on your podcast? Let me know in a comment below!
