Embarking on the journey of creating your own podcast is a thrilling adventure. But once your podcast is ready to hit the airwaves, the next challenge beckons - how do you ensure that your potential listeners can find you among the sea of over 4 million podcasts and almost 30 million episodes published in a year?
Fear not, for in this ultimate guide, we will be your compass, guiding you through the uncharted waters of promoting your podcast. From submitting your podcast to various platforms, to discovering cost-effective ways to advertise it; from utilizing social media, to building a dedicated podcast community of your own - this guide covers it all, from the basics to the advanced.
Let's dive in and make your podcast stand out in this crowded digital landscape.
Your Path to Podcast Promotion Success
1. Get Started - Connect with Your Listeners
Submit to Podcast Directories
As a podcaster, you never know where your audience chooses to get their podcasts. While Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts are some of the biggest podcast directories available, listeners may choose to stream and download their podcasts from other platforms. Keeping this in mind, it’s important to ensure that, to promote a podcast, your podcast is listed in as many directories as possible to give it the best chance of being found by your potential listeners.
We have a list of directories to start with here, which also includes both written and visual instructions on submitting your RSS feed to their directories. And remember, you only have to submit to a directory once (and submitting to directories is free). So once you’ve submitted to and been accepted by the directories, you don’t have to go back and resubmit anything!
Ensuring that your podcast can be found in as many places as possible makes sure that there are as few barriers between your listeners and your content as possible. This, in turn, makes promoting your podcast that much easier; if your audience only has to go to their podcast app to find you your podcast, they’re more likely to give it a listen, as opposed to having to download a whole separate podcast app. Think of submitting your podcast to the directories as the groundwork for all the other podcast promotion paths you take.
Leverage Social Media
One of the biggest places that both podcasters and podcast listeners congregate is social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and the like. Thanks to the ease of posting and sharing links as well as images and video, platforms like these are one of the best places to promote your podcast and find your audience.
There are many ways to promote your podcast on social media, but the key here is choosing the best platforms for you and your audience and focusing on them. We’ve spoken before about audience avatars and posting on the platforms that you’d want your audience interacting with you on. Promoting your podcast on social media rests on the same principals. Choose one or two platforms that you think suit you, your podcast, and audience the best and focus your posting on these platforms. Not only does this help you maintain your personal bandwidth, it also allows you to craft better content for your audience.
It’s also important to create content tailored to the platform you’re going to post it on. Essentially, you want to craft content for the platform it’s going to be posted on. Catering the content to the platform you’re posting it on optimizes it for that platform, and ensures that it doesn’t get negatively affected by the platform’s algorithm.
So choose a couple of platforms to promote your podcast on, and focus on making content catered to each platform; this will garner a higher rate of engagement for your podcast content!
Establish Your Website
Why are websites important to have when it comes to promoting a podcast? Your website is going to be the best place to bring everything from your directory links to your social media handles to your email-list sign-ups together. Your podcast website can function as a landing page for your podcast, meaning that this is the number one site to link to when promoting your podcast.
Having your website act as a landing page for your podcast also means that anyone who stumbles upon it will automatically have access to all the platforms and places that you’re available online. Going to your website means that they’ll quickly be able to find you on social media, sign up for your email list, and check out your episodes with just a few simple clicks.
Finally, your website means that when you’re promoting your podcast to podcast advertisers and sponsors, you have a quick way to link them to all of your podcast content. We’ve spoken before about having a media kit for your podcast available, and your podcast website is the ideal place to have this available for anyone looking to advertise on your podcast.
Utilize Embeddable Players
As stated before, you want to remove as many barriers between your listeners and your content as possible. This is where the embeddable players come in! By utilizing these for your website, you’re once again placing your content right at the fingertips of listeners visiting your podcast website, increasing their likelihood of listening.
Podbean offers two different embeddable players, along with the option to customize the player and the playlist listed in the embeddable player itself.
Many hosting platforms now offer services to make these tasks easier. For example, Podbean is a great option that provides a one-stop service featuring:
- All destination podcast distribution including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and podcast apps
- Professional podcast website with a variety of professional themes
- Social media auto-sharing and video generation for use on Facebook, YouTube, and more
- Single-episode and multitrack embeddable players with customizable looks
2. Step Up - Expand Your Audience Reach
Once you have established the basics, it's time to step up your game. In this chapter, we will discuss advanced strategies for promoting your podcast to reach a wider audience and increase your listener base. These strategies include running audio ads on other podcasts, in-app advertising, and cross promotions.
Don't be overwhelmed. Platforms like Podbean also offer various marketing tools and opportunities for podcasts of all sizes to choose the most suitable ways to promote themselves. Let's now explore the resources provided by Podbean as an example.
Advertise on Other Podcasts
An effective strategy for promoting your podcast is running audio ads on other podcasts in the same genre or with a similar target audience. You can effectively reach new listeners who are already interested in content similar to yours.
Audio ads on other podcasts also have the benefit of allowing you to showcase your podcast in a dynamic and engaging format. With the power of voice and storytelling, you can create compelling ad content that resonates with listeners and persuades them to check out your podcast.
Podbean offers cost-effective solutions and a wealth of resources to help you effectively market your podcast through running audio ad campaigns. Whether you’re using Podbean as your hosting platform or not, you can easily kickstart.
Start Advertising with Podbean
Podbean is the best Podcast App & Podcast Player on Android & iOS with over 6M downloads, 150K reviews, 1 Billion+ episodes downloaded, and an average rating of 4.7/5. As one of the top podcast apps on both the Apple Store and Google Play Store, the Podbean app can help you grow your podcast audience by reaching passionate podcast listeners right in their podcast app.
For our banner ads, your podcast will appear on the Podbean app’s homepage in the banners that run across the top, for high visibility to everyone who opens the app.
For our players ads, your podcast will appear as a recommendation in the episode player, for exposure to everyone who plays a podcast in the same category as yours.
3. Next Level - Build Your Own Fan Base and Community
Email Lists and Newsletters
As we advance further and further with our social media platforms and technology, we start to find more and more people who wish to pull back from it. That’s where email lists and newsletters come in. Using email lists to promote your podcast gets your podcast content directly in front of your audience, without putting the onus of hunting the information down on your audience.
Also, with the ever changing landscape of social media’s algorithms, posts that promote your podcast often have a chance to be buried to a wide majority of your audience. Your email list is composed of fans who manually subscribed to it, and gives you a direct line to your most loyal listeners. With mailing lists, you can tools like Mailchimp to reach your subscribers and deliver your new posts, ensuring that they’ll always see your latest episodes and posts.
Email lists are also a great way to reward your loyal listeners with extra content, such as behind-the-scenes or cut content, podcast tips and tricks, and more!
Create and Join Online Groups
There are many online groups and forums for podcasters to join and connect on, which does more than allow you to grow a podcast community. It also gives you a place where you can talk about your podcast, and find promotion opportunities.
For example, Podbean’s Facebook group and Reddit’s r/podcasting subreddit offer opportunities for self-promotion among podcasters, making it easier to learn about other podcasts and find cross-promotion opportunities. Alternatively, creating your own group on platforms like Facebook or Discord can help build a sense of community around your podcast, attracting new listeners and creating an exclusive club-like atmosphere.
Live streaming is another fantastic way to enhance your podcast and interact with fans. With services like Podbean Livestream, listeners can send instant messages and call in to your live shows, enabling you to engage with your audience on a deeper level. Incorporating live audio shows can offer a unique and interactive experience for your listeners.
Attend Podcast Conventions/Meetups
Whether you’re planning on hitting up every podcast convention across the country, or just hitting up a local group of podcasters that met on Facebook first before going for drinks, there’s nothing like sitting together with a group of people in the same industry as you. They can offer advice on common podcasting issues, get the same in-jokes about microphones, and understand and celebrate your podcasting achievements.
For these get-togethers and conference runs, always keep a steady supply of business cards on hand, and be ready with some storage ideas for the business cards you receive. If you’ve got the effort and the budget, you also can’t go wrong with things like stickers or buttons. (Our marketing writer loves collecting podcasters’ stickers, so if you’re going that route and making your way to some podcasting conferences, be sure to stop by the Podbean booth!)
4. Other Promotion Tips and Tricks
Remember, First Impressions Matter!
Creating a podcast means that you are now effectively the CEO of your podcast – as well as the COO, the secretary, the mailroom clerk, and the support team. Like it or not, being the public face of your podcast – such as attending events in your podcast’s name, reaching out to guests/interviewees, and interacting on social media – means that you have to act like it. Any interactions a potential listener will have with you will color their feelings towards your content.
Consider how you phrase things and how you come off in your interactions with listeners, fellow podcasters, and other industry professionals. If people see that you’re someone they’re comfortable around, they’re more likely to check out your content and collaborate with you.
Utilize Multimedia Tools/Platforms, like Audiograms and Youtube
Utilizing multiple forms of media to promote your podcast will widen the accessibility to your audience. Using video platforms like Youtube also help you grow the amount of places your podcast can be discovered, much like with podcast directories.
Audiograms are when you convert a chunk of your podcast to video, usually with a static background of your podcast cover or your chosen image, created with the intention of posting to social media platforms such as Instagram and Twitter. Platforms such as these benefit from shorter-form videos, which is perfect to highlight a clip of your latest episode, your favorite chunk of livestream, or even a past episode that’s relevant to a trending hashtag or seasonal event.
With this, your audiogram will function as a podcasting sampler for people who haven’t heard that particular episode, or your podcast in general. By utilizing the video player native to the platform, you give them a chance to see what your podcast is like before they click the link to check out the full episode. It also breaks up your feed to create a more diverse and interesting first look for anyone who comes to your social media page. (If you’re wondering where to go, we’ve been using Headliner with spectacular results!).
Optimize Your Podcast’s SEO
SEO means “search engine optimization.” Regardless of what methods you choose to promote your podcast, it’s important to keep SEO in mind. Utilizing keywords is important, as is making sure that your podcast is easily searchable. If you type your podcast name into a search engine and your podcast isn’t one of the first things to appear in the search results, that becomes detrimental to you and your content. Be sure to search your podcast name and note how quickly it pops up in the search results. By ensuring that your podcast can be easily found, you make promoting your podcast much easier on yourself!
Final Words on Promoting Your Podcast
It’s important to remember that while you’re working to promote your podcast, you’ll also want to keep making the best content you can! As long as you’re crafting great content, you will be able to find your podcast audience.
For more tips and tricks from the Podbean team on how to promote your podcast, check out our free webinar!
Start a podcast today. It’s FREE.