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Ongoing Marketing

you're on to marketing your podcast podcast. This is personally my favorite part in the entire process. I do really love the interviews and creating the content and scripting it all out and deciding what each episode should be about. But it's the best feeling when you have your produced episode, it's edited, it sounds great, you're proud of it and you're ready to share it with the world and let everybody know about this awesome new episode you just created. If you've been following through, you've already done the launch plan. Your episode is out at this point and it's live and people know about it. But now you want to be thinking about how you're gonna market it on an ongoing basis, right? How can you create almost like a checklist of everything you do every single time you release a new episode? This is also great if you ever when you get so big that you're outsourcing steps in your process and you can really just provide this checklist to someone else and let them know here's all th...

e steps involved with marketing marketing each episode. So we're gonna go through some of these. Now, the first and most important thing is, is you want to lead with value, so make it about your listener. What is the listener going to get for listening to this episode? Yes, your podcast is likely free unless you've done a gated content monetization strategy, which we'll talk about soon. But if it's a free piece of content, you're still asking for someone's time, they're dedicated attention and then this like attention economy when there's just so much noise out there, that is a pretty big ask of someone, you know, you want them to listen. So tell them what they're going to get out of this episode. I like to have bullet lists of, you know, key topics that we talk about and of course highlight the ones that I think are interesting and valuable. Not just every single topic we discussed have like 3 to 4 things that your listener is going to get from from each episode and really use that in your marketing at all times. I really love to use instagram stories and I, you know, put the camera on myself and I talk about, hey, this is why I'm so excited about this episode and here's why you should listen to it. I'll tell you later, a pro tip on why instagram stories are amazing for promoting podcast, even if you don't have 10,000 followers and that's swipe up feature. So the next thing is use keywords. So back to that point about how 77% of people will listen to podcasts on demand. So they'll click something and listen to it right away. They're in the zone, they want to listen to a podcast. Maybe they have a topic in mind and they want to search for it. So really use keywords to your advantage. I try to stack the key word a few times in each of my blog post. So for example, if the keyword is remote work, I'll put it in the title, I'll put it in the description and I'll put it in the first paragraph of the blog post. That's really just going to help me from a search engine optimization standpoint. That's what's amazing about having a blog post and a web presence for every single episode is that people can find it in other ways that are more traditional and that google really favors when people are searching for certain topics. So just because someone was looking for a blog on remote work, you're now going to be an option and they can consume the same thing that they wanted to learn about. But an audio versus just a blog. So think about your keyword in each episode. Pick one smart length smart links are amazing. Back to that point on how 49% of people have still never listened to a podcast before. And remembering just how much friction there is in that process, what's great about smart links is you'll often see people say listen here for apple podcasts. Listen here for android and having separate links based on the device of your phone. Well what smart links does is it creates one link that you can share on instagram email newsletters, twitter social pages, your blog post with your guest and anyone who clicks on it, it will automatically detect what type of device that they have. So if it's an iphone, it will automatically open in apple podcast, if it's an android, it will open in google podcast if it's a desktop or anything else in between, it'll open to the web page for that episode. So that blog post, I only recently discovered smart links, but it's so helpful. I used to have like a number of different things you can click on in my email newsletters, Spotify, SoundCloud this Now, it's just one link to rule them all facebook groups. I'm a huge fan of facebook groups. I have a facebook group for freedom lifestyle, you should totally join, you should totally promote all of your work in it. We have a collaborative feeling it where one of the values is like co creating freedom together by having this community and supporting each other and realizing we're not in competition. So a lot of other facebook groups have that same ethos where it's all just about supporting people and discovering interesting things that other people that are just humans like them, you know, not huge brands that have these massive marketing budgets. A lot of these indie podcasters and creators are just using facebook groups to get the word out about what they're working on. And so I actually have an excel called facebook group, hacking and I have probably 50 facebook groups in it. I have a category of like what that facebook groups about. So maybe it's about podcasting, maybe it's about entrepreneurship, maybe it's about travel, maybe it's about digital Nomads and then every episode I go to that and I just post in all of those groups and you don't want to be too spammy, right, you want to lead with the value. So be like, this is why I created this episode. This is why I think this group will like it. And sometimes groups have rules where you can only promote yourself on certain days. Sometimes you can't promote yourself at all. Sometimes there's no rules. That's like my facebook group, another plug for that. So just look at the admin settings and consider creating an excel that you could use every time you have a new episode as well, email newsletters. So if you followed the launch plan that I talked about, the pre launch plan, you will already have a list of emails built up. I personally send an email for every single episode that I have. I think it's a great way to pin people. It's a great way to add some visual elements to the podcast for people that are subscribe to my loyal listeners, but I also know that not every episode is going to be relevant to every single person. And so to avoid people unsubscribing from my email list at the bottom, I'll include some value add. So I'll include, you know, some articles this week, I read that I think people would like or a quote that I think people will like a job posting an event, um a freebie. If I'm working with a brand, who wants to offer a discount? I'll include that. So that's a way to keep female followers despite having content that might not always appeal to everyone just by nature of each episode is going to be a bit different cross promoting with other podcasters. I've seen some really interesting things done here. One is episode swaps, that's literally where you will upload an entire episode of someone else's show into your feed and they'll do the same and you kind of agree, okay, once we each get x amount of downloads, then we'll release, we'll remove it so that it's fair and it's a great way to get your show introduced to people that are already listening to podcasts. So remember you want to have a strategy for those 51% of listeners, but then also a strategy for those 49% of non listeners. This would really be targeting that 51% people who already love podcasts and are eager for new shows and ideally you collaborate with podcasters that have a similar value and have a similar kind of vibe to the show because then they'll have an audience that makes sense for you. Another thing you can do that. I do really well. I probably do it once a month. I just go into instagram and I searched the word podcast or podcast host and I copy and paste the same DM to everyone and I just say, hey, I have a podcast to do you want to cross review each other's shows And it's such a simple ask, like who's gonna say no to that? And every podcaster knows you want to get more reviews, It makes your show look more legit, it helps with the ranking. And so I get a ton of yeses. I probably get maybe like six or seven shows a month that I find myself listening to some really random shows that I never would have listened to because I literally just searched podcasts. So it's been really fun. It's been a great way for me to hit over 100 reviews on Itunes, which I'm really proud of. So think about how you can collaborate with other podcasters, you can also get featured on each other's shows or this is actually a link I've included, where you can apply to be on other people's shows so you can create a little profile and it's a marketplace for people who are looking to have interesting guests on their show, lean on your guests. This is huge. The most painful thing ever is when you spend hours and hours recording an episode you're so proud of and it's an interview with a guest and they don't share it. It's so heartbreaking. It does happen in my workshops. People always ask me why, why wouldn't someone share it? And I think there's a couple of reasons. one. Hopefully they're proud of it, but maybe they're just not that comfortable putting themselves out there right? There is an element of, oh, look at me, I'm in a podcast, I'm being interviewed. If you're a business owner, you're probably pretty used to doing that, you realize that this is good for your business, so you've gotten over that, hopefully. But if you're not someone who's really promoting something to sell and you got featured on the show because you have a personal story or just your affiliation with something, maybe you're not as comfortable self with self promotion and so you might not do that. Um, so something that I've done that seems to work is in my google form that I send my guests beforehand. The last question is, would there be any reason that you wouldn't share this episode? And I get them to essentially like opt in to saying no, of course I'll share it. That helps as well as letting them know a couple of days before the episode launches, give them all the marketing materials, all the links make it super simple and tell them, hey, for the next week I'll be promoting your episode. That also creates a sense of urgency so that they don't realize I'll just promote that next month. It's literally like they have a week to be relevant on my show. You can pitch media list. Tickles is very popular right now. That's when it will be like 10 podcasts from Canadians 10 podcast about this. That's elliptical so you can find existing list. Tickles find the email of that reporter and just send the casual email. Hey loved your list. If you're putting together another one or you're updating yours, I'd love to be featured. Here is a link to my show. Super helpful and makes their job easier. And anything you can do to get more back links to your show, which is essentially links from other websites is a great way to increase your S. C. O. Keep it simple. Stupid. That's the next point. Going back to the whole subscribe and Itunes podcast, Spotify, SoundCloud. It's too confusing. It's too complicated for people make it simple once they're already in your show, you can ask them for bigger asks um getting them to subscribe. Getting them to leave a review. That call to action for listeners is so important. Something I sometimes have heard and like to do is if you like a part of this episode, I want you to pause it, take a screenshot and either posted on social media or send to a friend that really need to hear this doing things like that for your listeners. They're more than happy to do it. They want to be part of your show. They want to feel like they're supporting and helping things they love. So just ask and you'd be surprised what people do for you. Of course there's paid advertising. I went to an event once with some experts in the space and I asked, Okay, for advertising my podcast, what would you do? They said you'd buy an add on overcast. Overcast is really an app for like hyper podcast users. It's a great interface, it's very easy to use. So these are people who are primed and ready to listen to more shows so you can advertise their and of course facebook ads are really great. I've also included a really great link there to knit, which you've got to check out my pro tip here without having 10,000 followers on instagram and not having that swipe up. Is that Spotify has this amazing integration with instagram stories. Go check it out right now. Going to Spotify and click share. You can see instagram stories as an option. It will automatically open to instagram stories and it will click a clickable thing in the top left to Spotify. And if your listeners click on that or your followers click on that, it'll automatically open to Spotify. So that's a great way to increase those people who have never listened to a podcast before. Most people are listening to Spotify and streaming music. So it's a great way to Get them to easily click on that with little friction and you don't need 10K followers. So those are some tips with marketing your podcast on an ongoing basis. I look forward to seeing how you use these tips