How can one grow their podcast audience?
With the number of podcasts increasing every day, the one big question that looms is how to attract listeners.
Every single one of the podcaster around wants to build and boost their number of listeners. But, the question again comes down to “HOW?”
For someone who is from the Indian subcontinent, I do know how tough it is for podcast channels to grow here.
Well, I am no expert but having interacted with a lot of podcasters, here’s what I can say.
Enhance your social presence
The very first and possibly the most important and effective way to boost the online presence is by ensuring that you take it to the social media platforms.
Social media has an outreach like no other. If you wish to boost the listeners and the audience, you need to promote it on social media. This will not just help boost the overall outreach, but even give you a chance to interact with the listeners.
Not just the traditional format of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, even answering Quora questions have been found to have effective impacts.
So, the next time you are trying to look around for ways to gain more audience, start promoting it on social media.
Apart from social media, increase your media outreach- reach out to newspapers, magazines, publications- get published. Saif from The Musafir Stories podcast is big on this.
In his interview with Storiyoh, he mentioned a few tips which can help you approach PR efficiently.
Align the podcast with a blog
Aligning a blog with your podcast can do wonders if done consistently, which is a challenge because it is a time-taking process. It helps you because it expands your audience base even to readers.
Maintain a blog by posting timely updates with the transcripts of the podcast that you just produced. This can take up some time on your part but trust me, doing this helps a lot. Spext, with the automated transcription feature, is a software that can help you do this efficiently.
You will yourself witness drastic and noticeable changes in the overall number of listeners that you get.
Transcripts on the blog help ensure that your podcast is understood better by the audience. Take, for example, the way Tim Ferriss does it.
His interviews are as entertaining as it gets. But if you have ever listened to one of Tim’s episodes, there is inevitably one thing or the other that you’ll like to check back later. Transcripts are amazing for that.
So, transcripts add to the listener’s experience, and did I mention the SEO juice that all that text can bring to your website? 🤫
Engage in the podcast forums/community
As I did mention before, Storiyoh is one such podcast platform that helps build community. People can discuss and even share their opinions on certain podcasts and the subject surrounding it.
Engaging with the potential audience and even other podcasters on such platform do help a lot in bringing the forth a better number of listeners.
Additionally, there are a number of online forums where you can share your work and engage more with the audience.
Take in feedbacks and see what other people think. If someone likes the content you are producing and sharing, chances are that they will definitely come back for more.
Focus on the trends
This is more or less of an “additional” suggestion, I would say. Primarily because of the fact that I can’t deduce what kind of content people work on.
If you want a better audience and listeners for your podcast, you need to talk about topics that are trending.
What this does is provide you with better visibility and hence brings in more listeners. Do something with your podcast that not every other podcaster is doing.
This is what helps convert and helps in growing your audience too. It definitely does take time but if you are adamant with your strategies, results are bound to channel in.
How do you feel about it?
Drop your 2 cents as comments anywhere on this story. Will love to discuss.
