The Low-Hanging Fruits of Growing Your Audience

On this new season of PodCraft we're going to be answering your podcasting questions. Here's how to submit yours!

This time around, we have a question from Brooke of Let's Talk Art With Brooke.

Brooke has been podcasting for six years and as well over 200 episodes, but is concerned with lack of audience growth.

This is a big question in and of itself (so big, in fact, that we actually wrote a book about it). But we find that there's always a few low-hanging fruits that can have an impact right away. These include good, compelling episode titles, Calls to Action, thorough SEO-friendly shownotes, and appearing as a guest on other relevant podcasts. 

Transcript

 Colin:
Hey, and welcome to another episode of Podcraft. This is the show all about podcasting, from launching your show to monetization and everything in between. I'm Colin Gray from ThePodcastHost.com. Joined by Matthew, as always. Matthew, how are you getting on?

Matthew:
Very well, thanks, Colin. How about you?

Colin:
Good. Really good. Really good. [inaudible 00:00:22]-

Matthew:
I never ask how you are, do I?

Colin:
I know. You never do. So inconsiderate.

Matthew:
There. I've done it. [inaudible 00:00:28]-

Colin:
Well, I am excited about this. We haven't done a listener question episode in quite a while, which is terrible. We should have done this more often. But we are back to it, which is great. And we have a bunch of questions in which is excellent. But we're still taking questions. If you're out there, you have a question you want to get on Podcraft, maybe even get a wee bit of free promo as well. Go over to ThePodcastHost.com/answers and you can record your question right in there. We'll include your wonderful voice right on the show. So Matthew, shall we fire straight into this one? Should we get right into the question? Do you want to play the question right away?

Matthew:
Yeah, let's go for it.

Brooke:
Hi, my name is Brooke. I'm the host of the Let's Talk Art With Brooke podcast, where I chat with curators, artists, creators, about their projects. I've been doing that for about six years and I absolutely love it, and I really want to make it a business and make money off of it. But to do that more effectively, I need listeners. And I always thought if I just kept doing it, the algorithms would work in my favour and hits would come. I do have to say they've increased from what it was, two to three hits a day, to an average of about 30 a day. And when I start feel proud of myself, I see numbers like 10,000 downloads a day and I just can't even fathom that. So I guess I'm just looking for ways to increase my audience. And I cater to an audience that doesn't really know that they need me. I really like my format. So I'm open to suggestions. Hope you can help. Thanks so much. Bye.

Colin:
All right. That's brilliant. Thank you, Brooke. So just to remind you, that's Brooke's show, Let's Talk Art With Brooke, all about art. So Matthew, what are we going to talk about on growth first?

Matthew:
Yeah, this is such a huge topic that we literally wrote a book on it, didn't we?

Colin:
We did. Yes.

Matthew:
We've got a book called Podcast Growth. But we're not here to sell you the book, we're here to give you something here and now. So thinking about the lowest hanging fruit here for me, the thing that you could just do straight away that's going to have an impact is just to make the most of your outros or your calls to action at the end of your show. Are you asking the listeners who've already bought into your content, already subscribed, already enjoy it. Are you asking them just to share it with someone else that might like it as well? Because word of mouth, as we know, through experience over the years, is by far the most powerful thing, by far the most common way we see podcasts grow. So just taking advantage of that. You've delivered a good episode, your listeners enjoyed it and then you get to ask a wee favour. So I think that's always a good starting point, Colin, wouldn't you think?

Colin:
Yeah. Yeah, totally. Yeah. The calls to action in general, aren't they, they're always something that ... Whenever we get somebody sending in a podcast to review, which is a service we used to run, one of the most common ones was they were asking two or three things. Every single time, there was a call to action. Like start of the show they would say, "Go and do this please on social." And then, "Go and fill this in." And then, "Go and download this." And there was always two, three, four things. And our general advice is try and stick to just one thing. Podcasts have got so much power. There's so many great things about podcasting, the engagement, the trust, all that kind of stuff. But one of its weaknesses you could argue is that, because people are listening to a podcast on the go, they're often in the car, they're often walking the dog, stuff like that. They often need reminded. They often need just a lot of focus about that call to action.

Colin:
So they need to get one thing, and one thing only, and to be reminded that over a couple of episodes. So what do we say, Matthew? Often, you just pick one thing. So if it's that, if it's two, three episodes at least of saying something like, "Now, if you've enjoyed this show, I would really love it ... It's such a big difference to us if you just go and tell one or two people that like the same stuff as you, so friends of yours, someday at your local community group, somebody in a community you're online in. If you just tell them about our show, it's so much appreciated. It makes a huge difference. Even two or three extra listeners is a massive effect for us. So if you can do that, it'd be much appreciated." So that message going out two or three episodes in a row and only having that one. Not then saying, "Oh, and also get in touch on social and give us a review and a rating," and all that kind of stuff. That's the best approach, or a good approach, at least. Isn't it, Matthew?

Matthew:
Definitely. Yeah. That's you leaning on the people that are already listening as well. And I think the next thing to look at is how we then start finding the people that aren't listening already. The people that perhaps don't know that you exist. And that's where we start to look at the exciting topic of SEO, isn't it, Colin?

Colin:
Indeed. Yeah. Yeah. This is the other one that people often miss as well. And it's the fact that we are found certainly in Apple Podcasts, in Google Podcasts and Spotify, and we need to think pretty heavily about the SEO, the search engine optimization for those search engines. But we also need to think more widely about search engine optimization for the wider web. So Google and YouTube and places like that. I'll get to that in a sec, but let's talk about the quick tips around the internal, the audio only search, like Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts. So Matthew, what do we say? Titles, titles and podcast. What are we going to go for? I mean, the podcast title itself, like the actual podcast title, Brooke's is good here, isn't it? Let's Talk Art. Really obvious, keywords in there.

Matthew:
Yeah, that's right. That does what it says on the tin I'd imagine. I've just actually found Brooke's show on the old Apple Podcasts.

Colin:
Cool.

Matthew:
So one thing that jumps out. I've linked that to you, Colin, if you want to check it out.

Colin:
Yeah, perfect. Yeah.

Matthew:
But one thing that jumps out to me right away, Brooke, that you could definitely improve on I would say is the episode titles. So you've got a lot of, "My chat with ... " You've got Scott Ginsburg there. Sorry if I got the name wrong. "My chat with. My chat with ... " There's a lot of these. Now if your listener has heard of that person, or your target listener's heard of that person, then that's fine. But a lot of your target audience won't know who these people are. So I would, by all means get the person's name into the episode title, but what you really want to do is take one key component, one key takeaway from each episode, and make that your title instead. Whether that's a how to or how somebody did something or just something a bit more compelling that's much more likely to appear in search engines when people are typing questions into Google basically. So I think-

Colin:
[inaudible 00:07:00].

Matthew:
-there's definite room for improvement here where your episode titles and you'll see a big difference in that.

Colin:
Yeah. Yeah. Quick one here. The Scott Ginsburg one here. In the description it says he talks about success, marketing and thinking. So, I mean, it could be something like ... It's showing in the title what problem you're solving for the listener. So it might be ... Take the marketing one there that he's obviously talking about. How to reach more art buyers through social media marketing or something like that, with Scott Ginsburg, the name tag guy. So it's all about that. So it's about showing the problem and really draw people in so that they're just compelled to click on those episodes. They know exactly what they're getting, they know why they're going to click on it, they know why it's worth their time. That is a huge growth tip there. So that's inside things like Apple Podcasts.

Colin:
Also the cover art there, Brooke, you've got a pretty simple one, which is great to start with. But I'd suggest at least having the Let's Talk Art on there because the podcast cover art is actually ... it's a huge growth lever. Because it's [inaudible 00:08:07] you're not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but actually, you go through and you get hooked on the visuals when you're looking through the catalogue. When you do a search in Apple Podcasts, there's tonnes of stuff pops up and you don't even necessarily see the title because it's smaller than the artwork. So the artwork really needs to have what the podcast is about in there. So Let's Talk Art on that cover art would make a big difference to me as well I think. And maybe even a bit more colour potentially.

Colin:
Although just black on white could stand out actually pretty well if you make it nice and bold. So all good, really. But yeah, there's a few things in there. The next thing is show notes, isn't it, Matthew? I mean, if we're going to look at the show notes side of things. So that, just to be clear, that was the search engine optimization side of things within Apple Podcasts, within Google Podcasts, within Spotify. It's all about the title of the podcast, it's all about the title of your episodes, and it's all about the cover art really to grow that listenership there. But there's a tonne of value too in actually putting a bit more work into the website that your podcast lives on as well.

Colin:
So whether you use the website you get with your podcast hosting. So for example, Captivate, Transistor, they have really good podcast websites that you get with your hosting. You can use them, you don't have to create anything else. Or you can create your own site through something like WordPress or Wix, something like that. We use WordPress for most of our podcast sites, really easy to set up and really easy to work with. And when you do that and set up with your own domain ... So you've got, letstalkart.com, for example, with a WordPress site on there, you can start to actually attract people to your podcast through Google search. And Brooke, you said you'd been doing this show for ... What did she say again, Matthew? Was it three, four years? It was a long time, wasn't it?

Matthew:
Six years.

Colin:
Six years. So six years worth of content here. In fact, I can see on the Apple episodes, on the Apple page, you've got 99 episodes. About to hit episode a hundred. I mean, that's brilliant. So you've got a hundred episodes there. That is a lot of content. If you're not already creating pages for each of those episodes, then that is something hugely valuable. Get that one. The, "My Chat with Scott Ginsburg." Rename that one and give it a good title and then actually put about work into these show notes as well and make sure that you've got a page, which is five, 600 words long, which actually outlines some of the stuff that Scott teaches so that it's a standout blog post on its own. It's a blog post that people would go and read on its own, whether it had a podcast attached or not. It gives value and it lets people learn about what's in that podcast episode. The value of that is twofold. One, it helps grow loyalty in your existing listeners because it lets them go and read this page, which can [inaudible 00:10:57] what they heard in the podcast.

Colin:
Lets them revise it, go in there, remember what it was and go and put it into action. And two, it puts out this bit of content that people can find in Google search. And Google search is still, and will be for a long time, way, way bigger than Apple Podcast search, than Spotify search, than Google Podcast search. It's just, people type in a text question and they'll find the text answer and they'll read through it. And the hope is that that massive amount of people that could find an answer to their question because you're titling that episode well, that one with Scott, they'll find it because you've got a good title and you've got keywords and all that content there. They'll find that. They'll read a bit of it and they'll go, "Oh, there's a podcast attached here. I'm going to listen to that." And they'll listen and they'll get hooked and then they'll be listeners of your show. And that's a massive way to bring in new listeners to your podcast as well. All right. That's SEO. Anything you wanted to add to that, Matthew?

Matthew:
No, no, I don't want to dwell on the point. Just some of the takeaways obviously. Yeah, take a look at those episode titles, try and make them a bit more compelling. Maybe reword your cover art so that you could get your full podcast show title in that, make it nice and clear. And yeah, like Colin says, look back on your content and just pick three or four [inaudible 00:12:15] show episodes that you could just make some really good blog posts out of and start bringing in some Google traffic there that you could then push to the podcast too. But yeah, great work on the amount of episodes you've got. Very consistent. Not many people get to that stage.

Colin:
No, that's excellent.

Matthew:
Nice one.

Colin:
Yeah. Yeah. The last one I'll mention actually, Matthew, another one I think works really well, especially when you've got a good bit of content there already. Brooke's obviously ... I'd imagine she's going to be a good speaker here. She's done a hundred episodes. You can't do that many and not become a great presenter. So you'll leverage that by getting on other shows as well. And this is a standard kind of tip. It works for any podcast, really. Just to try and get on other shows of a similar type. So any art type shows, anything that relates to your topic, Brooke. If you get out there and get on those shows, that can work really well. And there's a couple of good tips here in terms of the tools you can use for it because it's so much easier these days to do it. There's services like, so you've got matchmaker.fm. Matchmaker.fm is one service. You sign up and it starts matching you with other shows that are looking for guests. You've got another one called PodMatch as well.

Colin:
Podmatch.com I think. Yeah, podmatch.com as well, similar kind of service. And they're both websites you sign up for that match you up. And then you've got one called podcastguests.com as well. Podcastguests.com is a mailing list actually that you can sign up for and it helps you get guests for your show but also you can list yourself as a guest and people can get in touch with you and get you on their show as well. And it's worthwhile as well ... A lot of people don't really prepare for that. They don't think about how to be a good guest. But go over to our site, ThePodcastHost.com, and do a search for how to be a good guest. And you'll find an article that we wrote a while back about how to prepare for a podcast interview. And this is something you can do actually just once and it'll help you for interviews forevermore. Because you can do some general prep that helps for any interview and then you can do some specific prep for certain interviews. And it just really makes you stand out and actually have the biggest impact you can with that interview.

Matthew:
Yeah. If you do want to reach out to podcasts as well, there's obviously those dedicated services that Colin's talked about. You could use one of them. That's ideal. But you could also just approach podcasters directly. If there's a show in your niche that you like and you'd be interested in getting on it. What I tend to recommend is instead of writing them an email, by all means, write the email, but maybe include a wee personalised video or audio file. Because it then shows that you're not just copying and pasting this to hundreds of people in the hope that one will stick.

Matthew:
This is a personalised outreach to someday. It shows that you've taken a bit of time and consider that you're going on there and telling them what their audience is going to get by having you on, what value you could bring to their audience. And by doing the audio or the video as well, they get to hear that you've got a decent level audio. It's not like they're going to be bringing someone on and they're recording down a well. So yeah, there's lots of wee tactics you could use there to try and get on another couple of shows as well.

Colin:
Indeed. Yeah, excellent stuff. I mean, we've got so much content on the website about growth as well. So do we have a short link for our growth index, Matthew? Would it be [crosstalk 00:15:46]-

Matthew:
I think it's promotion.

Colin:
Is it promotion? Perfect. So ThePodcastHost.com/promotion and that'll take you to our big how to promote a podcast guide, which summarises all different methods and it'll guide you towards all the more specific ones as well. But yeah, I mean, by all means, if you want some more too, we've got our book. Our book is ... you can find that on Amazon, if you just search Podcast Growth. Podcast Growth on Amazon and you'll see it. Black cover with a rocket on by The Podcast Host. It'd be great. Matthew put a lot of work into writing that. Turned out really well.

Matthew:
Wrote it in the pub.

Colin:
So yeah. Indeed. Indeed.

Matthew:
And now it's sold 10 million copies. And that's why I live in Bermuda.

Colin:
Both lies.

Matthew:
None of that ... The pub bit's true. Pub bit's true.

Colin:
Cool. All right. Thank you, Brooke. That was brilliant. Really appreciate your question. Again, if anyone else has any questions out there, you want to send them in, go to ThePodcastHost.com/answers. And I'll quickly mention again, supported by Alitu of course, our podcast maker app. You can record in there, you can edit, you can produce and you can publish into even Alitu's new in beta testing hosting of its own. [inaudible 00:17:01] that as well. So yeah, go over to Alitu, A-L-I-T-U.com, and you'll get a 7 day free trial. Give it a shot. Cheers, Matthew. That was good. I'm enjoying this, answering some questions again.

Matthew:
Yeah, it's good. It's good. I enjoy it. So yeah. Get yours [inaudible 00:17:15] ThePodcastHost.com/answers. And it'd be good to have a wee look over your show and see where we could help and give you some pointers.

Colin:
Perfect. All right. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next time.