With the growth to make traditional media green with envy, podcast has become a staple of marketing strategies. Practical, intimate, and fairly simple to implement, it appeals to many entrepreneurs, who rely on their soft voices to whisper in the ear of their target. Conversion promises, unbeatable engagement rates: on-demand listening platforms are not lacking in arguments to convince us! You yourself may have launched your show. However, despite a scrupulous application of the recommended method, your audience does not take off. Despite the audio quality of your recordings and the care you take with the content, you are struggling to promote your podcast. Discover without delay our 5 tips for making your podcast known and attracting new listeners.
1. Promote your podcast using a website
Like many podcasters, you have probably opted for a hosting and distribution platform such as Ausha, Soundcloud, or Pedometric. In addition to storage, these specialized platforms ensure the distribution of audio files on all listening applications. An essential practice to reach as many listeners as possible within your target audience, whether they use Deezer, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.
This solution, certainly very functional, should not hinder the sharing of your program on your Internet domain. It will also be advisable to choose a name consistent with that of your channel. This way, listeners will easily identify you. With a site, the goal is to have a space that is unique to you and over which you have control.
You can decide on a simple showcase site, intended to present and represent your podcast. It will promote the link between you and your audience, who will find you more easily, outside the listening platform. You will make sure to write an impactful about page. It will give your visitors the opportunity to discover the person behind the voice that captivates them.
In order to boost your chances of getting your podcast known through SEO, you might want to start a blog. We will come back to this at the end of the article. In either case, consider adding a form to collect the email addresses of your listeners and thus have a direct and independent means of contacting them.
2. Promote your podcast on social networks
In 2020, according to a study conducted by Mediatory, 8 out of 10 French people regularly connected to a messaging and social media verification agency. It’s no longer a secret: social networks are now an essential digital marketing tool. Creating excitement, buzz, and virality around content, that’s all their power. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn…: identify your target’s preferred network and communicate!
- Use your social accounts to reveal the upcoming release of an episode and generate excitement. You can even broadcast an extract, like a trailer.
- Encourage Internet users to follow your content so as not to miss the publication of the expected subject.
- Of course, on D-Day, share the listening link.
- Encourage your subscribers to download and forward it.
- On networks like Facebook or Instagram, add an attractive visual to your publication.
Similarly, if the news resonates with an old issue of your podcast, surf on the occasion! Re-disclose it with relevant, copy-written text. You can also join Facebook groups or forums related to your theme. After checking in the administrative rules that self-promotion is not prohibited, help the community thereby sharing targeted episodes. Add value by commenting on posts. Your expertise on the topics will be noticed and will encourage the curious to learn more.
⏩ The mere mention of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or LinkedIn gives you cold sweats? Discover our articles dedicated to social networks and let yourself be guided.
3. Expand your audience by leveraging the community of content creators
Like bloggers, who write guest posts on third-party sites to promote their business, pitch your talk to other podcasters. Choose programs popular with your target or dealing with a similar theme. This will be an opportunity to make your channel known to the media producer, who is probably a fan of this format. But also, above all its audience, is already consumers and lovers of audio content.
You can also invite these podcast hosts to appear on your show. This is the principle of cross-promotion. By working alongside you, they gain visibility with new listeners. Choose podcasters whose listening volume seems comparable to yours; they will be more inclined to accept your invitation. Mathematically, even if your respective statistics remain modest, the operation can only prove profitable for both parties.
“You may be an expert on your podcast’s topic, but it’s always interesting to hear another point of view than yours, whether for you or your audience. — Jon Clark, SEO manager of a New York digital marketing agency.
In addition to podcasters, don’t hesitate to interview different content creators (blog articles, newsletters, YouTube videos, etc.). You may offer them a unique, motivating, and enjoyable experience. They will undoubtedly communicate on their passage behind your microphone, encouraging their subscribers to follow their intervention. And you will reach potential future listeners, ready to welcome you back in their headphones!
4. Work on the description of podcast episodes to gain visibility
When creating your podcast, you can write an overall description of the show and then, when they come out, provide details about each episode. Don’t neglect this step! Indeed, on-demand audio enthusiasts often use their music platform as a search engine. In other words, if they want to hear a podcast on a general topic or on a specific subject, they will enter keywords in the query field of iTunes, Amazon Music, or any other streaming application.
Do you want to help the listening software algorithms understand your description texts?
- Think about expressions your target might type.
- Write a pitch for your show or episode that will incorporate these keywords.
- Don’t try to attract as many people as possible, but the right people: make sure that the summaries you offer really correspond to the audio content.
These few reflexes, well known to natural referencing professionals, will undoubtedly make you progress in the results of on-demand listening platforms.
Attention: beyond the algorithms, your descriptions will have to convince the listeners to take action, to choose your program among the results. Be persuasive! Copywriting, or the art of writing impactful messages, will help you with this.
5. Improve your natural referencing thanks to the written transcription of audio episodes
As mentioned, creating a website will help you promote your podcast. This is all the truer if you associate a blog with it. The latter will improve the visibility of your domain in the eyes of search engines and will allow you to reach a target that favors reading over audio formats.
Software exists to transcribe sound files. However, to feed a blog, this method lacks efficiency. On the one hand, the word-for-word reproduction of verbal exchanges is not very pleasant to read. Onomatopoeias, hesitations, and potential decryption errors: such content is unlikely to excite Internet users. In addition, offering the podcast episodes in writing has the particular objective of attracting the digital eye of Google robots and others. As with descriptions for listening platforms, provide algorithms with structured and readable text. You will then allow them to clearly identify the subject addressed and to judge its relevance to satisfy cyberarts.
Thus, the transcription of your broadcasts should not strictly reproduce the spoken content. Your mission will be to create one or more (depending on the duration of the intervention and the themes covered) articles optimized for natural referencing. This SEO work takes time to produce its first effects, but will undoubtedly contribute to the development of your audience in a sustainable way.
Website, blog, social networks: there are many ways to promote your audio on demand. Making your podcast known nevertheless requires investment and perseverance. Your schedule is overflowing? You do not want to leave the microphone and headset to sit behind the keyboard? Delegate the management of your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn accounts to a social media manager. And entrust the transcription of your podcast episodes to SEO web editors, it’s our job!