Learn How to Podcast: Are You Doing Everything To Grow My Podcast Audience?

I was listening to the Book Feed the Muscle Burn the Fat and he relayed the story of a man at a Tony Robbins event (Tony is a major Business Guru). He told Tony that he had done EVERYTHING to grow his audience. Since he had tried everything Tony asked him, "Tell me the last 100 things you've tried." To this, the man answered, "Well I haven't tried 100 things." Tony then stated, "Then tell me the last 50 things." The man replied, "I haven't tried 50 things" Tony replied, "Then tell me the last 10 things you've tried." It turned out the man had tried about four things.

We think we've tried everything, but there are more ways to connect with your audience, many of them that require just a little bit of time to setup up some technology. Today we need to look at ourselves in the mirror and ask, "Have I really done everything I can to promote my show, connect with my audience, and increase my reach? I think if we look deep into our hearts we know there is more.

Here Is The Low Hanging Fruit

Social media:
You should be promoting your show on the social media channels. There are plugins such as social warfare. There are automation tools like Social Jukebox. Media hosts like Spreaker and Blubrry will publish your audio file as a video on YouTube. Spreaker will tweet out about your episode. Blubrry will create a sample of your show to tweet out and paste on Facebook. Libsyn will post to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, iHeart Radio, LinkedIn, Blogger, Tumblr.

Podcast Directories:
There are four main directories you should be listed in. Apple Podcasts (formerly iTunes), Stitcher, TuneIn, and Google Play Music.

Do You Have Subscribe Buttons On Your Site?
One way to keep your numbers going up is to get people to subscribe. This includes buttons for ANDROID. Subscribeonandroid.com is a free site from blubrry where you can point people to that site (using your RSS feed) and if they don't have any apps to subscribe they will be prompted to download one. My friend Daniel J Lewis has a great plugin call Social Subscribe and Follow that creates amazing looking subscribe buttons

Do You Have Share Buttons on Your Website?
There are plugins (again I love social Warfare) that make it easy for your audience to tweet out your show. There are players like the coolcast player, the Smart Podcast Player, the Simple Podcast Press player. Don't get hung up too much on players as 80% of people are listening on on portable devices. With that said, can people share your episodes from their phone?

Local Meetups
I've had three people sign up for the School of Podcasting and I got to be on TV all from meeting local podcasters in Ohio. If you don't have a local meetup, do what I did. I created one. In the words of my friend Glenn "the Geek" Hebert, it's not who you know, it's who knows you. Check it out at www.meetup.com I run a local podcasters group for Northeast Ohio www.neohiopodcasters.com

Reach Out to Other Similar Podcasts

Some of my best friends are my "Competition." Daniel J. Lewis from the Audacity to Podcast, Ray Ortega who does the Podcasters Studio, Mike Dell works for Blubrry and does the Podcast Help Desk, there are others as well. Reach out to them and see if they'd like to co-host an episode or a segment, or be interviewed, or... or ... or.. Remember there really isn't any competition in podcasting. They can listen to you on Monday and your competition on another day of the week. It's not like radio where you are both on at the exact same time.

Reach out to Businesses?

If I did a show about weddings, I would reach out to every dress shop in the area and see if I could put some CDs at the check out for exchange for a link to their site, or a mention in the show.

Go Record People at Events

You can get a portable recorder for as little as $99 for the Zoom H1 or just use your phone. Then give these people your business card, and tell them they will be on a future episode. You do have business cards right?

There are TONS of ideas

Speaking of Daniel and Ray, we do a show together called the Podcasters Roundtable and we did an episode pointing out ways to promote your show (how to grow your audience from 100s to 1000s). The point here is you can't think about these ideas, you have to do them.

In a recent (not safe for work) video Gary Vaynerchuck explained that he would Google his topic and connect every blog/podcast about his topic. He said 1 in every 347 will write your back, and that is better than zero.

You Need to Quit Reading, Quit Watching, Quit Listening, and Start Doing

If you're thinking of getting into podcasting, you can read articles, get confused cause some say to launch with 15 episodes, and some say (like me) it doesn't matter. Some say New and Noteworthy is the goal, and others (like me) say it's not that great. You can't improve what you don't start.

How NOT to Make Money In Podcasting

She's back! Jessica Kupferman runs the JKM Agency has a fun story today. In the same way that you learn new skills when you start podcasting, you will learn new skills when you take on a sponsor. You will need to learn how to read an advertisement. It's not as easy at it sounds. If you just read the bullet points, you can be boring. If you stray too far from the bullet points, you may forget to hit all the talking points. Today she talks about someone who had to redo an advertisement three times.

The lesson is, read all the paperwork that comes with the sponsor. Know what you HAVE To say, know what you are ALLOWED to say, and then try to say it in an entertaining fashion. If you mess up, you don't get paid for that sponsor.

For more information about getting a sponsor for your show check out Jessica at http://www.jkmagency.com

Because of My Podcast Story

Jessica Rhodes of Internet Connections had a live panel on her latest episodes. The people on the panel had been interviewed on other shows, as well as some have their own podcast. Becuase of their podcast:

Getting interviewed has helped his public speaking ability 100 fold
It has brought clarity about his message from telling his story so many times
One guest was very nervous in the beginning, but in ten years he can trace back all his clients to podcasts and many of his best relationships

Check out the episode at http://www.jessicarhodes.biz/ic023/