How I got my podcast to rank №3 on iTunes 3 days after launching
I had been wanting to create a podcast for a really long time, but had no idea how to start.
I don’t have a huge following (currently at 813 Twitter followers with approx. 200 odd people adding me since the podcast launched) and this is my first time doing a podcast or editing audio. Coming in completely blind, it took me 3 weeks to get all the equipment, setup interviews and launch. Within 3 days, my podcast was ranked #3 on iTunes for the Management & Marketing category on iTunes in Australia.
I wanted to share the tools that I used to start my podcast and more importantly, share some of the marketing and distribution strategies that allowed my podcast to get the traction that it did in such a short time period.
Context
First some context on why I wanted to launch a podcast talking about startups.
I meet with 5–10 early stage startup founders each week who often have the same set of questions, problems and issues in starting or growing their business. I wanted to create a more scalable solution where I would be able to point these founders for answers and that’s why I setup a created list of tools and resources for startup founders at startupplaybook.co and a private community for startup founders, investors on Slack. (fill out the form here to receive an invite to the private group!)
From my time in the startup ecosystem over the years founding my own startups, building communities etc, I have been fortunate to develop a strong network of successful founders and investors, who have given me a lot of insight and continue to do so. I wanted to share these insights that I received personally from chatting with them and create a wider platform for people to learn the things that I had been learning.
The Why — find your niche
The Podcast market is now a fairly saturated space and (as with any startup) to make it valuable to my listeners and cut through the noise, I had to find a way to stand out from the other podcasts that are out there. I quickly realised that there was a gap in the space for a podcast that:
- Provided access to high quality entrepreneurs, investors and industry experts
- Were able to extract deeper levels of information from these people (i.e. the personality characteristics that investors look for in startup founders when deciding to invest)
- Provided REAL practical and actionable advice/ strategies that people would be able to implement into their own business
I still have a strong connection to the grassroots movement of the start up ecosystem and being still on the early stage of my own journey within the space, I knew the common questions, issues and challenges my specific audience was looking for.
Getting a podcast up and running
So knowing nothing about podcasts, what equipment to use, how to set up an RSS feed (or initially what exactly is a RSS Feed?), I turned to google to get my head around the basics and shouted a few people coffee to pick their brain on what to do and what not to do. A big thank you to Steve Glaveski who runs a very successful podcast about corporate innovation called Future Squared (Check it out on iTunes and Stitcher!) and Fab Mackojc who hosts The Journey Podcast. Also a big shout out to Mark Pesce who hosts the hugely successful TWISTA (This Week In Startups Australia) Podcast and allowed me to sit in on a few of his interviews earlier this year to see how he works his magic.
I won’t bore you with the details, but if you are interested in finding the details of the equipment I use, here are links to recording equipment, audio editing software and the camera (for promotional images) I use for the podcast.
Getting speakers:
One of the common questions I have been asked since I started the podcast was how I got the speakers on the show. There are a couple of ways I have been able to get access to such amazing guests
- Personal connections — The easiest way to get the first few speakers is to look into your personal connections and networks, the better your relationship, the more likely they will be to agree
- Build credibility — If you are just starting out, use the one or two speakers that you have got from your personal connections (assuming they are impressive enough) to show credibility for you and your show. If you are really struggling, you may be able to “fake it, till you make it” by mentioning people you are “in talks with” — but I don’t recommend doing this.
- Find connectors — Want to interview the founders or senior people at a large company that are hard to reach? Find people within the company or individuals who can connect you on to this person. As with every relationship it takes time and your chances of a warm introduction will be significantly increased if you can provide value to this connector.
Distribution and Marketing strategies
Now that you have your podcast up and running, the next part is getting you listeners! As I mentioned at the start of this blog, I didn’t have a large following on social media who I could reach out to so I had to develop a structure around how I was going to get listeners for the show. Here is a look at some of the marketing and distribution strategies I used to get the reach out as far as possible (and others that I am now exploring).
Have a goal:
As there are now many channels where you can distribute your show (iTunes, Stitcher, Youtube, SoundCloud etc), it’s important to know what your goal is. Mine was to hopefully get featured in the New & Newsworthy section on iTunes to get more reach and hopefully be able to attract more speakers to the show down the line. This is why I directed most of my audience to the iTunes link for the podcast.
Diving deeper into iTunes, from doing a bit of research I found out that launching with several episodes gives you a higher chance of being featured as their ranking system is based on downloads over time. This is why I decided to launch with 6 episodes instead of 1. Launching with multiple episodes also provides more options for people who come across your podcast to find a relevant episode for them (I ensured the episodes I launched with had a very diverse set of speakers) and also allows for people to immediately download multiple episodes if they are engaged with the podcast!
Use your speakers
Everyone loves additional exposure. If you have guests on your show, make sure you leverage their audiences. Send your speakers the relevant links to the show and ask them to share with their followers.
Test with social
Test with a number of different social media channels. Find the ones that bring you the most engagement and double down on them. To be honest, I could have done more with social media and i’m now actively trying to spend more time on it. I mainly focused on Twitter and LinkedIn as my social media promotion strategy as that is where most of my speakers spent their time and had their own audiences that I could leverage off.
Find distribution channels
Unless you have a large following, you need to find ways that allow you access to large email lists. I made a list of people with large mailing lists and contacted them directly or found a way to be featured.
An example of this is Paul Bennetts Daily News Bot (highly recommend signing up if you haven’t already). In his Daily News Bot, he has a section that features the top tweets in the last 24 hours that use the hashtag #startupaus. So I made sure that every day, I posted a relevant, highly shareable tweet that included the #startupaus hashtag, with my personal twitter account and the Startup Playbook Twitter account both getting featured on Paul’s daily email most days.
Right Hook
One of the inspirations behind me getting off my butt and launching the podcast was listening to Gary Vaynerchuk’s Daily Vee videos. One of his philosophies (and the name behind one of his best selling books) is Jab, Jab. Jab, Right Hook — which essentially is the concept of giving and providing overwhelming amounts of value to people, before asking them for a favour or to buy/ promote your product.
This is a philosophy that I have believed in and followed for a long time. I made a list of people I had met with for coffee, provided connection to my network or helped in any other way over the previous 4 months.
The list came out to 107 people (that’s a lot of coffees!) and I emailed each of them with a personal message, telling them about my podcast launch and asking them to share with anyone in their network they thought might be interested in listening to the podcast. Although there is no direct way to measure the impact of doing this, my educated guess is that a large number of the initial downloads came from this group and their extended network.
Do talks/ Guest lectures
Another way to get additional exposure for your podcast is to do as many public talks as possible. Around the time of the launch of the podcast, I gave guest lectures at several universities in Melbourne, The Founder’s Institute and Fuckup Nights Melbourne.
I ended each of these talks with a promo of my podcast, a list of 3–4 relevant speakers that the audience would be interested in listening to and my contact email if they wanted to get in touch or wanted a copy of the slides.
Guest posting
One of the tips I picked up from one of my podcast guests ( Sujan Patel— contributor for Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur and Inc. Magazine) was to use guest blog posts on different blogs and publications.
Blogs and publications are always looking for interesting, relevant content to share and I reached out to Denham and Dinushi — the awesome people behind StartupSmart (Australia’s no.1 publication for the startup community) — about writing some exclusive content for their publication, providing a list of topics I intended to write. They were kind enough to like my article suggestions and posted all of the pieces I sent to them.
If you are planning to write for blogs or publications, I highly recommend putting a press kit together to make the life of the journalists/ blog hosts easier. In your press kit, include the finished article along with relevant images, logos and references/ links so it’s easy as possible for them to upload your content online.
Create great content
At the end of the day, you can have the best marketing and promotion strategies, but if your content isn’t up to scratch and isn’t valuable to your readers/ listeners, it’s not going to go anywhere. Focus on creating valuable content that people actually want to share.
*still a work in progress for me*
Thanks for reading! I hope you found the article useful in helping you launch and promote your podcast.
If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me on Twitter or LinkedIn.
I would love for you to check out some of the podcast interviews! The interviews launched to date are list below:
Ep1 — Tim Mundy (Director of Digital Affair) on how to get clients, build partnerships and build teams
Ep2 — Shelli Trung (Angel Investor) on how to approach investors
Ep3 — Justin Dry (Co-CEO of Vinomofo) on building communities, deciding when to pivot and how to choose between multiple options
Ep4 — Alex McBride (Founder of The Fifth Watches) on getting 500,000 Instagram followers and turning weaknesses into strengths
Ep5 — Paul Naphtali (Managing Partner of Rampersand VC) on investor turnoffs and the key ingredient in successful founders
Ep6 — Part 1 James & Matt (M5859Apps) on finding the right co-founders and contacting Taylor Swift
Ep7 — Part 2 James & Matt (M5859 Apps) on creating virality, building marketplaces and getting 500,000 downloads
Ep8 — James Cattermole (Founder & Investor) on enterprise sales and spotting good ideas
Ep9 — Angus Mcculloch (Growth — The Fifth Watches) on the Instagram algorithm
Ep10 — Sujan Patel (Author, Writer, Founder) on creating scaleable and shareable content
Ep11 — Tristan Pollock (EIR and Venture Partner at 500 Startups) on funding, marketplaces and the sex, drugs and rock’n’roll of San Fran
Ep12 — Adir Shiffman (Chairman of Catapult Sports) on the challenges of scaling and the characteristics of fast growing companies
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