3 Things To Master Before Promoting Your Podcast

PP298 3 Things To Master Before Promoting Your Podcast

Evo Terra: [00:00:00] After 16 years, the amount of misinformation, some intentional, some just misguided around podcast promotion continues to grow. Now, before you spend any money or effort promoting your podcast, make sure your house is in order.

[00:00:22] Hello and welcome to another podcast. Pontifications with me, Evo. Tara. Listen, I turn down work at least two or three times a month, at least two or three times a month. People, podcasters reaching out to me in one form or another and say, will you help me promote and or market my podcast? Happens all of the time.

[00:00:49] Well, as I said several times a month, and I always, always, always turn those jobs down. I turned those jobs down because I know flat out know that in order to make a podcast successful, you need to get some basic elements done first before you go start a big promotional effort. Promotional efforts are really good at giving you good numbers as far as engagement and as far as clicks and impressions and all that, but none of it actually often really results into what you want, which is more people listening to your show.

[00:01:31] So. I tell those people when I say no, I just don't say no. I always tell them, look, you need to do these three things. This is my approach to promoting and marketing podcast, and I only do this in conjunction with the other services that my firm offers, but I don't do it as a one off because before we do any sort of marketing dollars, we got to get these things nailed down first.

[00:01:55] Ready? Break out your pens and papers, go to the website. Where I listed these things out in detailed, this is one time you're going to want to look at the episode details, either in your app for some information or on the full webpage for another. There's a link inside of your app. Whatever you're using glistened to that should have a link to get more details.

[00:02:15] That's where you're going to want to go because this is dense stuff. Ready? Here we go. Number one, you got to have the foundational fundamentals nailed down. You gotta have these four things inside of these three things. Is it just, there's one thing, one, but there's four parts of the thing. One part, one of thing.

[00:02:40] One is a web presence, and that means a real website. That does not mean an automatically generated website. That comes straight from your RSS feed. Your RSS feed is designed to distribute your podcast episodes to directories and apps, not a website. Yeah. There's some very pretty ones. They look nice. They don't work.

[00:03:05] They don't do the things you need them to do. It's not enough information. You need a solid web presence. You need that so that you get discovery. You know that thing. We're always harping about podcasters. The best place for discovery, search based discovery is through search engines. Which requires a website.

[00:03:22] You really have to do it. Take it from me. I'll have a case study to share on this where I am the subject probably next month. All right, number two, out of that web presence, fundamentals is the other thing. It's good for his conversions. When somebody finds out about a show, you want to send him to a website so they can actually do something, but make sure it's optimized for conversions.

[00:03:44] You know how many websites I go to where I can't listen. Let alone subscribe. It's hard. Go look at your website. Is it easy for somebody once they've discovered you to actually become a listener? That's part one of thing. One part two distribution. You've got to make sure your distribution is nailed down.

[00:04:02] That means your RSS feed, that thing that's not powering your website, that's sending your show out to all the directories. Yes. Apple podcast. Yes. Google podcast. Yes. Spotify, but also about 15 other places where you should be able to submit your show. You want to make sure that your show is everywhere.

[00:04:19] People are listening, and I'm stunned. There aren't more shows in Spotify or Spreaker or some of the other apps that are out there. Make sure you're distributed everywhere. Part three if thing, one, listen, ability. This is back to foundational fundamentals again. Listen, inability is your show listenable.

[00:04:40] Does it encourage people to keep listening? It's all about the quality. Yes. It's all about the quality. Yes. Is it sound good? Is it worthy of them listening to it? Thing number four, part four of thing. Number one is make sure this is all repeatable process. Can you do this week after week or month after month or whatever your timeframe is?

[00:05:02] Can you do it? Can you keep going? Because if you can't. If you find that it takes a lot of work to build that website or money, it takes a lot of work to make shows that are actually listened to, well then that's going to be hard for you to keep going. Is it a repeatable process? That's one. One thing, foundational fundamentals thing too.

[00:05:22] You've got to make remarkable content. You have to make remarkable content. Advertising is a tax paid by the unremarkable. If the content you make, which you've already made sure it was listened to, will, if it's not something that is remarkable, if it's just a, that sounded good, but it didn't really do anything for me.

[00:05:44] It really wasn't a remarkable thing, and people aren't going to remark about it. Make remarkable content, make the kind of content that makes people say, wow, I had no idea this information was out there. That's what you're looking for, not just another voice thing. Number three, leverage your network before you go outside of your network to try and bring people in.

[00:06:11] You've got to talk to the people who you already talked to. Leverage your network. Once you've got the foundational fundamentals done, once you've got remarkable content done, leverage your network. What if you don't have a network, you say to me, you probably do. You probably have a network. You're just not thinking about that network.

[00:06:35] Where do you engage with people who are not your friends and family? Just regular engagement. Who are you talking to? What groups do you have access to on a regular basis? And if you don't have that, if you really, really, truly, honestly don't have a network. Two things. One, start building one. Now I don't mean inside of podcasting.

[00:06:58] I mean start building a network outside with whatever it is that you do. Maybe you start writing publications for someone else. Maybe you start putting out a newsletter that starts grabbing and gathering information. Maybe you reach out a network with events. Once we can go to events once again, or other people who need to hear expertise, build that network first.

[00:07:18] And if all else fails and you can't build your network, then you go borrow one. Don't pay to be on one yet. Borrow someone else's network. That means getting good guests. If in fact you're going to have guests or that means you being a guest, getting out there, your name and the things that you do to somebody else's network.

[00:07:36] Somehow networking and interfacing with people who can help elevate your show because people might want to listen to your content. You have to do all three of those things. Before you spend a dime marketing your podcast. And here's the cool thing. If you do all three of these things really well, foundational fundamentals all done, you're making a remarkable content and you're working inside of an existing network.

[00:08:04] Here's the secret. You probably won't need to spend any money on podcast advertising. Yeah. Because you're doing things the right way out of the gate. Now while you ponder doing that, because you've got nothing else to do, right? Except, you know, watch your kids and hope things don't go down. But nonetheless, in those free, that's magical free time that you might actually have.

[00:08:27] I want your lockdown stories. I still want to share these with the people who listened to podcast pontifications like yourself. So please sit down, record me a minute or two of audio, put it on Dropbox, and then send the link to evo@podcastlaunched.pro and I'll share it with the world. And before I go, tell one friend.

[00:08:47] I know you'll have to do it remotely now and that's fine. Please tell one friend about podcast pontifications. Really, really means a lot when you personally reach out to someone and say, Hey, you, you should listen to podcast. Pontifications I mean, it's great when you retweet me and you share my content on Facebook and all those things.

[00:09:05] Wonderful. But nothing beats an individual outreach to one person. You to them saying them some they should listen to. That really works really well. All right. Enjoy the rest of your day. I shall be back tomorrow. We did another podcast. Pontifications cheers.

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