7 Awesome ways to promote your podcast

Podcasts have become an effective way of learning new things online. Recently, with our Gadget Flow Podcast, we've been exploring the minds of various entrepreneurs and crowdfunding experts. This is a guest blog on podcast promotion by Giles Dawe from Hyperstarter.

• What is Hyperstarter? Hyperstarter is a crowdfunding marketing as well as an analysis tool that will help you fix your campaign page and grab more attention from the right audience.
•  Where can you find Giles on the web? With over 18 years of online marketing experience, he’s been in the crowdfunding space for quite some time now. Feel free to find him on LinkedIn.
• Why should you subscribe to the Gadget Flow Podcast? If you are a crowdfunding enthusiast, an entrepreneur, or simply a startup lover, our podcast gives you valuable tips and tactics from industry experts and CEOs.

Online marketing can range from blog posts to social media posts, video guides to visuals, and infographics to audio. But, what exactly makes podcasts so effective and do people even bother to listen to them? A 2017 study by Edison Research found that the average listener age range is 25 to 54 years old, 85% of listeners hear all (or most of) a podcast, and 42 million Americans listen to podcasts weekly. That’s five times more than go to the movies!

The growth of listenership on smart devices along with my recent podcast interview on Gadget Flow inspired me to look for the best podcast promotion strategies. Here are 7 of the best ways to promote your podcast.

7 ways to promote your podcast / Photo from UnSplash

 1. Use SoundCloud to post audio snippets

Sure, most podcasts are interesting, but they’re often too long. To make it easier to grab a listener’s attention, you can break the podcast into 30 to 60-second useful soundbites using an online mp3 audio cutter. Then, share the links from a platform like SoundCloud. The description could contain a bit more information about the podcast and a direct link to the full version.

2. Get proper support from your network

Posting a link on social media and collecting “likes” is great, but it doesn’t necessarily get listeners. Instead, engage with your contacts, whether it’s friends, family, or people you know and ask them to share your podcast link. It’s even better if they could personalize it with interesting quotes to get some more attention. Phrases such as “Listen to how my brother/friend/work colleague was able to quit his job and make a fortune…” are powerful in grabbing attention and driving clicks (and listeners).

3. Post pull quotes

Audio snippets are useful, but short paragraphs are even more effective as they’re entirely visual. Canva is a great tool to quickly generate visually appealing quotes. The more interesting the quote, the better the response.

4. Ask for promotion (AKA piggybacking)

This could include asking the interviewer for a mention within their social network or email lists, which isn’t always taken as a given. In podcast interviews, the interviewer usually asks which projects you’ve had the most success with or brands/influencers you admire. If you’re able to contact the project owners or influencers and mention they were in the podcast, ask them to promote your link.

5. Promote yourself

This may be stating the obvious, but using a custom newsletter for your contacts gets a ton of exposure. A blog post on your site, with a mention on Medium, also helps. LinkedIn is a great platform for business and submitting the podcast link to ProductHunt also helps.

6. Repurpose episodes

If you have permission, you can repurpose your podcast to work on YouTube or Vimeo. Again, you can add notes in the description to link to the original podcast and also get discovered through a different search platform. If the podcast episode wasn’t submitted to iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher Radio, or the Google Play Music Podcast Portal, then it’s worth adding to these popular sites.

7.  Create shownotes

By transcribing your podcast, you’re opening up to a brand new audience. In terms of SEO, this is a great growth tactic to rank on what was discussed during the episode using headlines, images, and other features which helps to make your text stand out.

Have you had success with your podcast? Which are some of your favorites to listen to? Tell us in the comments below!