Not sure how to increase your podcast listeners? Then you’re in the right place. Because after all that time and effort researching and recording, you need to know how to grow your podcast too.
So, to help increase your podcast listeners, below are six crucial tips that can help people find you.
1. Create a Podcast trailer
Whether you’re already established or launching a new podcast, create a podcast trailer episode that pins to the top of your feed.
Your trailer should introduce you, your topic and any guests. Include snippets from the episode to entice listeners to subscribe.
Keep it short – from five seconds to a minute or two.
2. Use Calls to Action
A Call-to-Action (CTA) at the end of every show is an effective way to encourage your podcast listeners to do something. You CTAcould be to review your podcast, follow you on social media, or share your podcast with their friends and family.
Have a strong yet simple CTA on your website encouraging people to listen to your podcast. Depending on your podcast genre, write something funny, clever or motivating to ensure they click on your ‘listen here’ button.
Ask listeners to share your podcast on social media – word of mouth referrals are powerful. A quick shout-out at the end of an episode asking for a share should work a treat.
On another episode, ask listeners to leave a rating or review to help others discover you.
Only use one CTA at the end of each episode to prevent listeners getting confused on what action to take.
3. Promote your Podcast on social media
It’s a wrap! You’ve just finished recording another awesome show. Now, promote it everywhere! Facebook, Instagram, Twitter … wherever your audience tends to lurk.
Highlight some powerful quotes from the episode to use as posts alongside the link to your latest episode.
People love to see ‘behind the scenes’ pictures and videos. So, ask someone to film you and a guest in action. Then share that short video in social media.
Audiograms are a great way to promote your podcast and attract new listeners. Don’t know what one is? It’s short part of your podcast turned into a video that you can share on social media.
If you don't know how to make audiograms, reel.so has you covered. With just a few clicks, you can promote your podcast on social media with beautifully designed audiograms with no design skills needed.
4. Creating and repurposing content
Written content is needed to improve the searchability and ranking of your podcast. That’s because Google finds text easier to crawl than audio.
If writing blog posts about your podcasts isn’t your thing, either get someone else to write them or, better still, convert your transcripts into blogs. How? The easiest way is with rev.com. You log into your account, choose an episode to transcribe, and hey presto! Transcription in progress.
Then check it for inaccuracies and edit it to create a decent blog. Now you’ve got content for your website and fodder for lots of social media posts.
Create show notes from your transcripts. They help your audience find a specific point of interest to listen to again.
Share transcription snippets on your social media channels to attract new listeners to your website.
Keep sharing previous episodes. Just because it’s done and dusted doesn’t mean it’s not still relevant. That one you did two years ago may be just what someone needs to hear now.
Want to grow your mailing list for email marketing purposes? Then repurpose previous episodes into downloadable content. Create infographics, checklists and more. To download this valuable info, your listeners need to give you their email address. So, make sure they offer good value, help people to solve problems, or enable them to take action.
5. Podcast SEO
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is necessary for your podcasts, website and blogs to be found, helping to grow your podcast.
Google now shows podcast episodes in search results, so good SEO will attract listeners searching for your niche or topics.
Include keywords in episode titles to help with discoverability. Think about what people would need to search for to find your podcast. Then use those words.
Write detailed but concise episode descriptions using the most important words – your keywords – at the beginning. That’s because podcast apps only have around 120 visible characters in search listings.
6. Invite guests and star as a guest on other Podcasts
Having a conversation with a guest on your podcast show helps to bring your topic to life. Guests can provide valuable, fresh insight as well as, hopefully, some lively and entertaining shows!
Do you have plenty of contacts to invite on as guests? If not, try MatchMaker.fm – it’s like Tinder but for podcasters!
A guest provides double the promotional opportunities. Your separate social media platforms help to reach a wider audience, as will your individual marketing activities.
Better still, guests introduce you to their audience, a brand-new bunch of people, providing you with more podcast listeners.
Wrap Up
A really important point to remember is that the better the sound quality of your podcast, the more likely people will stick with you and recommend you to their friends. And good quality means using the best equipment, which Story Ninety-Four has.
So, to make sure your podcasts are clear as a bell and really professional, get in touch today.
