The How To Grow A Podcast Podcast – Growin Ain’t Easy Folks
OK, so you are contemplating launching a podcast or already have one.
OK, your friend has a new one. Ok, the advertising agency down the street has a new podcast.
OK, I have 21 as of late May.
Cool. Now what? As in there are so many freakin podcasts, and growing daily (Apple had a record new podcasts added in June), that one has to wonder how to grow a podcast. Hmm, lots of people talking about this online. But, I wanted to cut to the chase by going to a podcasting and podcast marketing expert for her opinion. Here is the podcast plus the added energy of an edited portion of my podcast interview with Priscilla McKinney of Little Bird Marketing. My suggestions… listen and then read for emphasis.
I know you want the bottom line. I’ll give you a quickie to set this up. The answer to how to grow a podcast is that being a smart podcast publisher is so much more than just doing the podcast. Here you go…
An Expert Interview With Priscilla McKinney Of Little Bird Marketing – The Pace and Process Gems
Peter Levitan:
Priscilla, how did you grow Ponderings From The Perch – your popular podcast?
Priscilla McKinney:
Well, in my years of experience as a podcaster, I would offer this advice to anyone. First of all, if you’re going to start a podcast, really know your audience. Like you need to ask some questions of people that you think might listen and then pander to the audience, do what they want. But the biggest thing for me no matter what it is you do is pace yourself. Because it’s not as simple as you think it is. It does take longer to get to market. It can create stress if you’re saying, “Oh, I’m going to do this every week. Some people do it every day…” It took us a long time to get where we are. We went from once a month, to two a month and kept building things up from there. So I do think pace is really important.
A big part of your strategy is also being effective at search engine optimization because as you keep adding podcasts to your website, don’t just add the audio. You need to put show notes in there that can be really mined by search engines.
And so take the time to write smart show notes so that you’re being indexed and ranked, it takes time. You just can’t really rush into it. Do as much as you can do comfortably, because the moment you start getting stressed is the moment you show up unprepared on interviews and you kind of talk all around someone and you’re not really listening, and that quality really comes out.
The other thing I’d say is you need is time because you need to get a lot out of every episode. I mentioned the gem about interviewing someone on who’s amazing and has a great sphere of influence because you’re leveraging their audience. But when you’re leveraging their audience – they will market for you – you should be getting a lot out of it.
When I do a podcast, I’m getting the podcast, the show notes, I’m getting on, like whatever, 50 other syndication things.
I’m also getting a blog out of it. It’s getting wrapped up in my quarterly blog recap that goes out to my email list. I do at least 12 different social media posts. I also take a recap and put it in LinkedIn articles and connect people to that. So you can’t just go, “I did the podcast and I put it out.” And that’s why I say pace yourself because I think where people really miss the real benefit of having a podcast is to not convert the audio into a transcript. Remember SEO.
They don’t use pod quotes. They don’t make a blog post. They don’t put the shares in there and social, and they don’t engage people on it.
Peter:
I want to come back to the idea of pacing and how much time it takes to create content.
Priscilla:
People are struggling for content. I hear this all the time, “Oh, Priscilla we’d write marketing or put something on social. We need something to write about. What should we write?” I’m like, “Oh my gosh, you’ve already written a million things. You’ve already interviewed a million interviews. You just need to effectively use that content.” So that I hope is a gem for people. That’s the reason why you need to pace yourself is that it’s not just a podcast episode. A podcast can be so much more content.
Peter:
That is a big gem, and I am going to write that gem on all of my cans of Red Bull so I can on going. So that I can control my pace.
Priscilla:
It takes a village, Peter, it takes a village.
Another idea is to do batch processing. I’ve got like nine interviews lined up on August 4th because I want to batch them all that I’m in the right frame of mind. I’m going to interview a range of people. I’m going to get really focused that day to create content. I’m really thinking about the audience, I’m thinking about that. And then my team can go parse that out over time, but it also leaves me less harried. Batching is a good thing.
Okay, and I do want to tell all of your listeners, you’ve given me a lot of kudos in the show, but just so that we’re clear, I do everything Peter Levitan says. And early on in my career, I was fortunate enough to have some good sense to hire you as a consultant. And I think you can see from this, is that the biggest thing you taught me was having a process. Get processes in place. Process, process, and I’m like, “Oh, okay, that’s what I need.” And this is a part of it. I looked at podcasts and I saw it as a part of the process, and because of that, I honored all the pieces and the things that needed to be done. So I think that’s a big part of the kind of wisdom that you gave me, and I integrated it into this success.
Peter:
Well, then we’ll have two P words, pace, and process.
Priscilla:
I love it.
MORE:
You can see the growing list of all of my Advertising Stories podcasts right here. Use the handy subscribe buttons that we’ve placed on this wonderful page.
A nice thing… Feedspot has already recognized Advertising Stories as being a top 15 advertising podcast.
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