Podcast Pontifications

Every time someone requests a proposal from my firm to help promote and or market their podcast, I always politely decline.

I turn down those jobs because I know the only predictable way to make a podcast successful is to nail the basics first. I know that spending money on promotion before the basics are in place is a waste of money. And I don’t like wasting anyone’s money.

Before you spend any marketing/advertising/promotional dollars on your show, you have to get these three things nailed down.

Thing One: Foundational Fundamentals 

There are actually four parts of Thing One, and they are equally important. No corner-cutting:

1. A web presence for your podcast. I mean a real and functioning website for your podcast. I do not mean an automatically generated website that is powered by your podcast’s RSS feed. Your RSS feed is designed to distribute episodes of your podcast to directories and apps. It is not designed to propagate a  website.

2. Complete distribution of your podcast. The right way to use your podcast’s RSS feed is to send out your episode to various apps and directories. Yes, that means Apple Podcasts. It also means Spotify and Google Podcasts. But it also means a dozen or so other directories and apps that maintain their own list of podcasts. You don’t get to control where people find your show. 

3. Don’t forget listenability! Before you throw money at getting people to sample your audio, make sure the sound quality doesn’t drive them away. No, “good enough” probably isn’t. Not when you’re talking about investing ad dollars. Listenable audio files are table stakes, and I’m a little ticked that I have to keep saying that.

4. Rinse & repeat & repeat & ... You have to be able to repeat your processes with every episode. You have to be able to do that and meet your self-imposed release schedule. And if you can’t, then you need to make an adjustment. 

Thing Two: Remarkable Content

“Advertising is a tax paid by the unremarkable.”  Everything I just said above is moot if the contents of your episodes aren’t remarkable. You can have the best-looking and most-optimized website in the world distributing pristine audio files to every single platform on tight schedule… and still fall flat if the content is “meh”.

Thing Three:  Leverage Your Network

Before you try to bring in people from the outside (ala advertising), you have to start at home. Notice I didn’t say leverage “a” network. I said leverage “your” network. If you honestly have no network: start building one! And if you can't build your network, then you borrow one. 

You have to do all three of those things before you spend a dime marketing your podcast. But here's the cool thing: If you do all three of these things really well, you probably won't need to spend any money advertising or promoting your podcast. 

You may still want to spend money to grow your show even more, and that’s fine. Especially if you can draw a straight line from more listeners to more income. But don’t do that before you have all three of these things nailed down.

I know you’re probably busy with things, but if you could spare a minute or two telling me about your experiences as podcast living through the novel coronavirus pandemic, I’d love to feature you on Thursday’s episode of the show. Put a minute or so worth of audio on Dropbox and then send the link to evo@podcastlaunch.pro, please? 

And if you have one more minute for me, please use that minute to tell one friend about Podcast Pontifications. It really makes a difference when you personally reach out to someone and tell them why you think they should listen. It's great when you retweet me and you share my content on Facebook, of course. But nothing beats an individual outreach to one person.

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Podcast Pontifications is published by Evo Terra four times a week and is aimed at the working podcaster. The purpose of this show is to make podcasting better, not just easier.

Follow Evo on Twitter for more podcasting insights as they come.

And if you need a professional in your podcasting corner, please visit SimplerMedia.pro to see how Simpler Media Productions can help your firm. Podcasting is our only business!

Mentioned in this episode:

Support For Abortion Rights

While Americans overwhelmingly support the right of an individual to make their own decisions about abortion, unfortunately, that right is no longer protected everywhere in the U.S. The Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade on June 24th. Abortion is a basic healthcare need for the millions of people who can become pregnant. Everyone should have the freedom to decide what’s best for themselves and their families, including when it comes to ending a pregnancy. This decision has dire consequences for individual health and safety, and could have harsh repercussions for other landmark decisions. Restricting access to comprehensive reproductive care, including abortion, threatens the health and independence of all Americans. Even if you live in a state where abortion rights are upheld, access to safe medical procedures shouldn’t be determined by location, and it shouldn't be the privilege of a small few. You can help by donating to local abortion funds. To find out where to donate for each state, visit donations4abortion.com. If you or someone you know needs help, or if you want to get more involved, here are 5 resources: 1. ShoutYourAbortion.com is a campaign to normalize abortion. 2. DontBanEquality.com is a campaign for companies to take a stand against abortion restrictions. 3. Abortion.cafe has information about where to find clinics. 4. PlanCPills.org provides early at-home abortion pills that you can keep in your medicine cabinet. 5. Choice.CRD.co has a collection of these resources and more. We encourage you to speak up! And spread the word.

This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:

OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy
Chartable - https://chartable.com/privacy
Podsights - https://podsights.com/privacy