Why hasn’t my podcast got many listeners?

I am a regular reader of the subreddit Podcasting, it’s a great resource for new and established podcasters to exchange notes, swap tips and share information.

As is customary with lots of these podcaster destinations, some similar questions often arise. One of the most frequent is “I’ve been podcasting for XX episodes and we’ve only got 10–200 listeners and it’s not really going up, why is that?

The answers are basically the same for everyone, so I thought I’d recap them here.

First, however, a note about creative endeavour…

It’s great that you’re doing a podcast. I love that you enjoy making it. It’s absolutely fine if it’s an excuse for you and your buddies to get together to have a laugh. Podcasting as a hobby is cool. However, there is a difference in doing it for you and doing it for listeners. Doing it for the listeners means you have to be focused on them. This often means doing annoying things that you’d rather not do. Welcome to the professional world!

If you want to not just have fun, and build an audience, then these are the things that you need to think about.

I am also assuming you’re not super-famous, or have 100,000 twitter followers or mailing list subscribers. You’re just a regular Joe digging in those podcasting mines.

Clearly these ‘rules’ can be ignored and you can still find success, it will just be much harder. And why give yourself more problems? Great shows find it tough finding an audience.

1. Reviewing your concept

Before you focus on the road to get more listeners, it’s probably right to have a bit of a sense check on your show concept.

To be successful you need to make sure that your show has a good concept, is on a specific topic and is designed for a specific audience.

But “My show’s for everyone”. No it’s not. Any media product — TV show, book, film has a group of people in mind for who will consume it. This makes it easier to market — as you can look for these groups. It means you can have a filter for your show, you can think about whether the content is relevant for that group of people. It doesn’t stop other people liking what you do, but a target audience is important for you to sculpt the product.

Examples of groups could be:

• People in Liverpool
• Undergraduate college students
• Recent Mums
• Young men who are fans of RPG video games
• People that go to high end restaurants

Nearly every successful podcast, and go through the Apple top 200 to check, is about a single topic, idea or concept.

There are no successful shows where three unfamous people just chat about a variety of things they find interesting. There are no successful shows where three (unfamous) people just try and make each other laugh by shooting the shit each week.

Almost all successful shows cover both a specific topic and have a good treatment of that topic. A treatment is like a format — it’s the container for the topic. Treatments/formats help listeners navigate a topic.

Perennial podcast favourite Off Menu is just an interview show, but it has a format/treatment to do those interview: Comedians Ed Gamble and James Acaster invite special guests into their magical restaurant to each choose their favourite starter, main course, side dish, dessert and drink.

Now they’re famous, but they have still created a reason for interviewing someone each week. A recurring feature that hooks listeners in. A roadmap for each episode.

The Rest is Politics is broadly a ‘talk about the week in politics’. But it does that around a format: Two men who’ve been at the heart of the political world — former Downing Street Director of Communications and Strategy Alastair Campbell and cabinet minister Rory Stewart — join forces from across the political divide. The Rest Is Politics lifts the lid on the secrets of Westminster, offering an insider’s view on politics at home and abroad, while bringing back the lost art of disagreeing agreeably.

The two hosts are from left and right and they have lots of experience on the topics they talk about. But the fact they’re from different sides gives it the structure to talk about the topics.

If your show is not structured nor set around a specific topic that you can communicate your chance of success is zero.

Your concept should also be pretty unique. Trying to do a better job than someone who’s already successful is destined for failure. Find your niche, angle, style…

If you are convinced your podcast is already around a great topic, with a target audience in mind and a killer format, then read on…

2. Your title doesn’t work

Your potential listeners come from two directions. One — word of mouth (someone recommending you) and two — from browsing. Browsing is when they’re scrolling through an app, a chart or a list, and they might glance your show.

They only get to see two things your image and your title. We’ll talk about image next.

Your title needs to communicate what your podcast does. Clever ones, esoteric ones, in-joke ones are a massive waste of time. They’re not intriguing. In the half a second someone’s scrolling through they have to decode what your show is about from the title. Make it easy for them.

3. Your podcast square image isn’t very good

More important than a title is the image. If your image doesn’t look professional, doesn’t demonstrate what your show does, isn’t welcoming, isn’t on brand for your topic etc people are not going to give it the time of day.

It’s really easy to see good artwork — look at the top of the charts:

It’s really easy to see bad artwork, just do a search for “shooting the shit”

Faces can be good. Obviously famous people put themselves in their square. But a professional head shot can show you take the show seriously. High contrast colours that capture the eye. Titles are often included, but fonted in a way that demonstrates the tone/style/content of the show. Fundamentally try and make it your show look good.

If you have no skill, find a designer on something like Fiverr. You wouldn’t buy a product in a shop if the branding and design was weird and amateur. Why should someone listen to your podcast if it’s like that?

3a. If someone’s recommended your show by giving a title etc. The potential listener will search for it. They will be more likely to click on the professional looking square!

4. Description.

If someone has made it through the gauntlet and actually clicked on your podcast then it’s because you’ve generated some interest with your title/image. The next thing you have is the description.

In Apple and Spotify you have about 35 words in the description before it’s cut off. Someone at Spotify told me that 93% of people who look a description don’t hit the ‘more’ link.

So you need to make sure that every word is valuable and describes your show well from the first character. They’ve been enticed by the image/title, now seal the deal with the description.

Don’t just stop at 35 words, if they do click more, you need to give them that. It’s shown that they’re really interested, so go into more detail about the show, the kind of guests you have on, the features, any awards that you have etc. Your description is a dating profile — sell yourself as much as you can.

4b. Episode Descriptions

It’s the same deal for episode descriptions. Great first section, then more detail later.

The text in Descriptions is often surfaced in search. So make sure you use the core words connected to your episode — people, buzzwords, topics, events etc — make sure you show up in search.

4c. Episode Images

On some platforms you can upload images for your episodes (distinct from your channel image). Create a template that makes it look similar to your main image, but with something connected to that show. That way when someone searches for a topic and your episode shows up — the obvious image-based connection to the topic will make the more likely to click

5. First 30 Seconds

If you have a small amount of listeners and your focus is on growing your audience to 10x, 100x or 1000x what you have at the moment, then you need to think about the beginning of your episodes being entirely for the benefit of new listeners.

Existing listeners you’ve already got. They’re locked in. Cater for them later in the episode. Your job up-front is to focus on new ones.

New listeners are the ones you’ve spent all the time courting through imagery, title and description. You’ve sucked them in enough so they hit play to ‘sample’ you. They are still not a listener. They are auditioning you to see if you’re worthy of their time. This audition is unlikely to last more than 30 seconds.

That means your first 30 seconds needs to be killer every time. If you have no listeners you don’t need to run pre-roll ads. You’re not making any money anyway.

Your first 30seconds need to sound professional, reflective of your brand, gets into content straight away, gives them a reason to keep listening and delivers a one line description about the content.

This is Money Talk, where you’ll learn how to save cash and make your money go further. On today’s show Jeff Moneystein is angry: [clip] “if you don’t change your ISA you’re a fool”; we’re answering your questions [clip] “so how can Dave save money for a deposit” plus this week’s money tips. That’s all coming up in Money Talk.

Now, that might seem a but dull or formulaic. And I’m sure there’s loads of ways to make it more creative. However the job of it is to make that person auditioning you to take their finger away from their phone, and to keep listening.

6. Obvious pitfalls

Most podcasts don’t do very well because they’re not very good. The reasons yours might not be very good could include some of these things:

1. Dreary delivery — Sit up straight, lean forward, sound interested.
2. Don’t be self-deprecating. When you’re uncomfortable with yourself and what you’re doing, an obvious thing to do is be self-deprecating or apologise for things etc. No no no. Your job is to inspire confidence in the listener. You need to (at least pretend) to be the best person at doing this podcast. Fake it till you make it. No putting yourself/show down.
3. No planning — do you think any TV show in the world has no script or no plan? Do you think any book is just written in one go and submitted to the publisher? You need to know what you’re going to do and in what order. If you have a co-host they need to know what they’re going to be doing. It doesn’t need to be a script, it can be bullet points. Sections going on too long are because they’re badly planned and you don’t know what the ‘out’ is to move onto the next thing. The great thing about plans is that you can always change them, but please start with one.
4. Voices. Do you all sound the same? This particularly afflicts male podcasts where there’s three or more lads who you can’t tell apart. This makes a show harder to follow. When you start a show, think about who you’re inviting to be a part of it. Maybe your closest mates aren’t the right choice. Could different genders, ages, backgrounds make your show more interesting?
5. Role definition. Does each person have your show have a role. It’s much easier to get into a show if the characters in it have jobs to do. Someone should be in charge — the lead. Their job should be opening and closing segments, moving it all along. Other people could be ‘the funny one’ or ‘the one with the facts’ or ‘the serious one that gets annoyed with the jokes’. Your inspiration should be The Simpsons. Homer, Marge, Bart and Lisa all have really specific character traits. If they were to start a podcast tomorrow I bet you could tell me now how each of them would react to topics, and who’d do what. Be like The Simpsons.
6. Editing. No TV show recorded in front of a live studio audience is broadcast unedited. Your job is to provide the best version of your output for your listeners. If you leave in material that is sub-optimal then you are diluting the quality of your episode and you are wasting the time of your listeners. Particularly when you’re starting out, you should remove anything that gets in the way of getting to the point you want to deliver. Every word matters, don’t include the crap ones.
7. Long off-topic introductions. New listeners do not know who you are. They do not know your in-jokes. They are listening for a reason. And, for any new listener, that reason is not “I love the 20minutes off-topic chat they have at the beginning of each episode”. If you think this personality bit is important, just put it at the end, not the beginning.
8. Begging for reviews, subscriptions, patreon etc. All have some value. Don’t put them in the beginning, and actually probably don’t put them at the end. Standard outros are usually skipped. Include it in the middle and work out a different way each week to do your sells that are engaging and meaningful. Information, black-mail based, pull on the heart-strings — whatever you decide, mix it up each week, but make it well thought out and delivered well.

You might be thinking ‘but hey, our listeners like what we do’ — yes, they might, but your aim is to find 100x that many listeners. If you haven’t grown its because of the things that you are doing now.

7. Platforms

Your show should be on all the main platforms — Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts — plus a load more too. Podnews has a great list. Yes, it’s long, but if you’re not on someone’s favourite app they can’t listen to you. Don’t be lazy.

8. Website

If someone has heard about you they might search for you. Alternatively someone might be searching for a show about a topic they like. A half-decent website for a podcast should have:

1. An about page describing what you do
2. Information about the hosts
3. Some articles like “top five episodes to start with”
4. An episode page with all your recent episodes on. This should have a player. It should also have links to all the main podcast platforms.
5. Contact information. A form is fine, but have an email address too. The form might be broken, or they can’t attach something etc. Give an email address.
6. Link to your show’s social media.
7. Ideally you should also have a page per episode that has a transcript. Transcripts are great for Google SEO. Google loves words. You have lots of them! Make sure they’re not just in audio form

Taken together this helps you be found, builds your brand and is another route to your audience.

8. Social Media

Social media is the cheapest way to grow an audience, but it’s a tough slog. You should have a social account for your show on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Whether you use them personally is irrelevant. These are places your audience live. They may also live in some particular other places because of your location or topic. Great — be there too.

At a minimum you should be posting about each new episode. This should include a link to your episode (a podfollow link is probably best), and should tag in participants. Retweets (or equivalents) by these people bring your show to new people. Your followers won’t see every tweet you send. Send a similar one for each episode at least three times!

Separately you should also be posting about every episode on your personal social media. As a podcaster you are a personality. People will follow you. Make sure you’re connecting those fans to each new episode.

On you show channels you should also be posting about your topic. You should be giving value to your followers who like your take on your topic. You should follow similar accounts and quote-tweet (or equivalent) the posts you like. The person you retweet will like this, and to your followers you’ll look on it.

You podcast is one element of being knowledgable about your topic, your social media is another.

Be generous on social media, follow people back, engage with them and their posts. Be a good citizen of the internet.

PR

People will write about your show if you make it easy for them and relevant to their job.

Every podcast should be able to get in their local paper with “Local man makes successful podcast”. What success is, is up to you, and how you write a press release.

When emailing a journalist:

1. Address them individually by name.
2. Explain there’s a press release below and why it’s of interest to them specifically, pull out the key message
3. Say that you’re happy to provide any more information and give them a phone number
4. Link to a dropbox (or similar) with the episode in question (or a best of compilation). Include photos of people doing the podcast that look good (gone are the days of photographers being sent to you). Include your podcast logo (square, hi-res). But it’s mainly people that they’ll want to see.
5. Under your name paste the press release. Write it cleverly so that the journo could cut and paste elements of it. Write a release like someone would write a news story. Include quotes from you/your guests. Tell people how to listen.

If you’re launching a new show — send it three to four weeks in advance. If you’re selling a news line (ie someone’s said something interesting). Send it 24 hours before the episode comes out — and tell them that. Transcribe the good bits (and give them a link to the audio in your Dropbox etc)

On your website, create a press section (it doesn’t need to be public) that has all the background information to you, your co-hosts, the show, how to listen, success etc and include a link. This helps show your professional and there might be some assets/information that helps the journalist write a piece.

Conclusion

Hey — so that’s a short list (!) of things to do. Got more ideas, leave them in the comments.

Hardly any shows get success from being lucky. Most lucky people have worked really hard to be ‘discovered’ etc. Be like them.