A radio audience is passive. It’s a dead medium. But a podcast is a medium with an active audience. They are all listening to you, not tuning in to a 100 different channels in tandem.
Podcasts are a splendid manner to grow your following. It’s an attractive way to funnel leads and it’s a fantastic medium to get people to take action.
This post will be guide to executing a podcast strategy, get downloads and followers.
1. Go niche specific
Thankfully podcasting isn’t as crowded as blogging is. You have a blog on any topic imaginable and after a while it just seems like a rising pile of trash that everyone is lifting off.
But with podcasting there are millions of untapped niches. Sitting there. To be tapped. Be part of the movement where you talk about one of these.
Cryptocurrencies are blowing up. So is a lot of things around personal finance.
And you might discover there aren’t enough podcasts covering these opportunities.
A podcast quite literally is an audio blog. You can and should talk about what you love. Doing so affords opportunities for you to keep talking about the said topic.
2. Up the frequency of content
The more content you publish the better your odds of reaching more people. For one it directly affects how much longer your content will be featured on its New and Noteworthy.
WIth fresh content everydaythe odds of getting featured last long. It can even be featured for say 2 or more months.
And it doesn’t matter if those episodes are short. As long as you churn out enough content youre odds are high. You get more traffic. The content as it goes without saying should be highly engaging.
After a few months of these cool down the daily churn to weekly publishing.
Most podcasts as discussed elsewhere publishing about once a week.
This makes it easy for people to keep track and build anticipation. This builds growth for your audio blog.
With just once a week of posting your listeners are keenly waiting for what’s next. Each episode is a celebration in anticipation
3. Use All Distribution Networks
Your podcast will sit gathering dust if you don’t take the initiative to spread the word about it.
Submitting to directories is one of the best ways to grow your podcast effectively.
Submit your RSS podcast feed to get into each of these platforms. Get before a new audience.
iTunes (www.apple.com/itunes/)
TuneIn (www.tunein.com)
Stitcher (www.stitcher.com)
Spreaker (www.spreaker.com)
SoundCloud (www.soundcloud.com)
audioBoom (www.audioboom.com)
PodOmatic (www.podomatic.com)
PodBean (www.podbean.com)
Podbay (www.podbay.fm)
Blubrry (www.blubrry.com)
RawVoice (www.rawvoice.com)
Player FM (www.player.fm)
These are some of the biggest ones out there. They have users and subscribers and a link from these sites is splendid for your SEO.
4. Brand your podcast with a separate website
Some hosts give you the option of allowing to host an additional site with your podcasts.
If not, hosting a simple site is easy and it gives you an edge.
Most podcast bloggers publish their episodes on iTunes and don’t budge from there.
You submit podcasts to all these new directories to get traffic. But don’t be foolish to just get the traffic one-time and quell your quest right there.
You should be able to bring them over. Where?
That’s where a site comes in.
Post blog articles on your site or send listener’s emails.
There are ton of things you can do
Updates about episodes
Survey on which guest to feature
Feedback collection
Thoughts on show
Marketing messages.
Not everyone wants to jump into iTunes or is interested in going there. That’s why favorite podcasts need to be on another channel.
There are many ways you can use this to your advantage.
Having big name guests will help with Google traffic rankings.
Mailing List
Mailing list is one of the most in-demand features to grow your podcast business.
A mailing list is something to set up quite easily.
It’s an easy way to engage your audience outside the podcast. Have a website with a free newsletter.
If you have already spent a ton setting up the initial few items, and want to skimp somewhere here’s what you can do. Go for an option that offers a free tier of trial for a few hundred subscribers. You don’t want to drop a ton on the ESP.
Second, one of the preferred mailing list services is Mailchimp. Mailchimp is easy to use and grow your site’s mailing list.