Podcasting Made Simple

How to Grow Your Podcast Audience | Justin Schenck

February 15, 2022 Episode 162
Podcasting Made Simple
How to Grow Your Podcast Audience | Justin Schenck
Show Notes Transcript

Every podcast host is looking to grow their audience. In this talk, Justin Schenck shares five (free) things podcasters can do right now to ensure their show's continual growth. These strategies that Justin shares have worked for countless podcast hosts who have seen 2x, 3x, and even 10x audience growth after implementation. The best part? These simple and effective ways to grow your podcast don't require you to spend money on advertising!

More: https://PodPros.com/162

Hey, my name is Justin Schenck, and today I'm going to share with you the five ways to guarantee the growth of your podcast. Right? But I want to begin by telling you a little warning here. This is not a hack. What I'm about to share with you takes work and consistency. And so if you're looking for some sort of hack pay some money, you know, hack the system, this talk isn't for you. But if you're willing to put in the work, consistent work to grow your show then, this is absolutely 100% for you. As a matter of fact, this is proven to help podcasters all over the world, double, triple, and even 10 X, their audience. I've shared this at Podfest and many other places, and it is absolutely a proven way to grow your show. Now, before we get into the five ways, most important thing you guys need to know is to make sure that your branding is on point. I see so many podcasters, they come to me and say, "Justin, my show, isn't growing", and I look at their show name and it doesn't tell their audience, what the show is about. And so they're really lost right from the beginning. If the title of your book, doesn't tell the people what's in the book, then you're not going to sell the book. If the title of your podcast, doesn't tell people what to expect once they get into the show, your podcast, isn't going to take off. So the first thing is you want to ask yourself this question, does my show, tell individuals, or does my title tell individuals what the show is all about? Now, unless you're a celebrity like Tony Robbins or Gary V or Oprah, I would highly recommend not making your show, the name of you, uh, your name, right? So my show wouldn't be the Justin Schenck show, Alex's, wouldn't be the Alex Sanfilippo show cause we're not Tony Robbins or Oprah. And so we want to let people know upfront what the name is all about. So ask yourself, does the title, tell the audience what they're about to hear, if they click play? The second thing is, does your logo look professional or look like it was made in MS Paint, right? Like those shows stand out when it's done professionally. Right off the bat, if you present your brand as a professional up-front brand, you're going to win every single time. And I'll give you an example of this. I had a client a number of years ago and he hosted a podcast called transformationcoach.me podcast. He did that because that was the name of his website. He was like, "hopefully it'll drive traffic to my website", but he didn't tell anybody what the show is all about, and it doesn't make sense as a title. And so I said to him, "Well, what's the goal of your show? What are you trying to get across?" He goes, "Well, I personally lost a hundred pounds. I helped my, town lose 35,000 pounds and I want to help the world lose a million pounds." And we rebranded the show to million pound mission. And he went into these five steps that I'm about to share with you and his show ended up 10 X in growth. But a lot of that was because we now told the audience before they even clicked play what to expect when they get into the show. So ask yourself those questions, you know, is my title on point, is my branding on point, do I look professional? And if the answer is no to all of those, these next five steps don't even matter. So make sure your branding is on point. Now let's dive into these steps. Step number one in podcasting, that in order to grow your show is consistency is key. Obviously this makes sense, right? Some people say this, be consistent with your show. My show releases every single Tuesday at 3:00 AM without fail. Right? And the reason I do that is because I know that podcast listeners are creatures of habit. And so every Tuesday, when they decide to listen to me and I'm honored that they do, whether it be at the gym or driving to work or doing laundry that day or whatever they're doing at the time of listening to my show, I need to make sure that I'm there for them, because if they show up to the gym on that Tuesday morning and my show, isn't there, they're going to find a different show to listen to. And honestly, like that show is probably better than mine. And so I want to make sure that I'm there. So I don't give them an opportunity to miss me, right. I become part of the routine and I'm honored that I'm there. So make sure you are consistent with your show. Now you can vary by adding a second episode every couple of weeks or whatever. Like I do a short Friday episode, but the consistency with my show is every Tuesday I have a guest, and my audience seems to really love it and it works for them. Number two. You want to utilize your guests' audience. Now I know a lot of you guys have had people on your show. They've got a big audience, you're really excited because finally, they're going to share it out and your show is going to grow immediately. But the issue is a lot of times they don't share it, right? They might tell you they're going to share it. They might say that, "Yeah, I'm excited. Let me know when it comes out, I'll have my team share it out over Twitter" or whatever. And nine times out of 10, those bigger names or those people with large followings, they either don't share it out or do a simple Instagram story, which doesn't get much traction for you. And so what I've realized is that, people who are guests on your show, they have an ego. Not an ego in a bad way, but they're worried about whether they were good guests on your podcast or not. Whether they said something dumb or said something smart. And so if they have that doubt in the back of their head, they're not going to share it out. And so I want to share a story with you, I had a guy named Ed Mylett on my show. If you're not familiar, he's a phenomenal human being, you know, he's got millions of followers on social media and he came on my show. And it was an incredible interview, like absolutely incredible. And he goes, "Hey man, you know, let me know when it comes out, I'll share it out." And I was like, "Yeah, okay, I will." And so what I did is I stroked his ego and on the day of the release, and here's a huge tip and secret for you guys to get these people, to share out your episode. On the day of the release, I sent him an email and the subject

line is:

your episode is live. And inside of that email, I actually tell them that my audience is already loving the show. So I say, "Hey, I just wanted to let you know, the episode came out this morning. My audience is already in love with the show." Now here's the secret. I then pull something out of the show that they said, and I say, they're loving this part in particular. And so with Ed Mylett he talked about the blue Honda effect, right? You buy a blue Honda, you drive off the lot and you see a lot of blue Hondas. And so I said, they're loving what you talked about with the blue Hondas and how, what we focus on, we get more of. I think the world absolutely needs to hear this message. Now remember that, I think the world absolutely needs to hear this message. I'd be honored if you shared it out. And doing that and stroking Ed's ego, and going that step above and beyond and saying, my audience is already loving what you're saying, more people need to hear it. He actually took that episode and shared it out to his email list of a million people. Now imagine what that can do for your show, if you get one person to email to a million people and say,"Hey, I did this podcast interview. I think you need to listen to it." And it's not something that he regularly does. And so I was honored that that happened. And obviously I saw a lot of growth with that episode. So make sure you stroke their ego, make sure they share it out. That's going to help you grow, absolutely. Number three, you want to get featured on other podcasts, right? The one thing I realized is that 28% of Americans listen to shows on a regular basis, only 28%. 99% watch YouTube, 28% listen to podcasts. So I need to make sure that I go where they are. That means I got to get onto the podcast that fit my demographic. And so I realized that as podcasters, we get pitched a lot. I probably get pitched upwards of 20 to 25 times a day for people to be on my show. And so I very rarely even open those emails. And so how do you break through the noise? What I ended up doing was I went through and I reached out to podcasters that I liked their show. And I said, "Hey, I love what you're doing." And so I host a self-development podcast, this part's important. I host a self-development podcast, and so I reached out to other self development podcasts, because these are my niche, right? Those are the people I want to talk to. I reached out to the host and I said,"I absolutely love what you're doing. I love your message. I would love it. If you were a guest on my show" and I left it at that. I didn't say a pod swap, I didn't do any of those things. I asked them to be a guest on my show. They came on my show, I build rapport. I tell them my story a little bit and nine times out of 10, they invited me onto their show. Now these are shows that at the time they were doing more downloads than mine. And so I got in front of a larger audience and I shared my story and I said, "Hey", at the end of when I was a guest, I said, "Hey, go check out my podcast, wherever you're listening to this, go check it out". And that was the only call to action I gave and I absolutely built great audience, strength, over time, right? Every single time I'd guest on the show, be another 10, 100 downloads, however many people they're getting, were driven to my show. So make sure you build those relationships. Number four, you want to write, write, write, write. You want to guest blog, you want to be written about. See podcast listeners nine times out of 10, aren't YouTube Watchers. They might watch YouTube, but not for the same type of content, right? There's audible learners and visual learners. But I found that audible learners that listen to podcasts, they also read things like blogs and books and articles and all those things. And so you want to be able to guest blog on somebody's blog or be written about, and by guest blog, I mean, reach out to somebody who writes about your niche for your podcast and say, "Hey, I'd love to offer some value and be a guest writer." And a lot of times these bloggers are looking for people to write for them because it becomes very exhausting to write a new blog every single day. And then at the very end, your sign off is Justin Schenck Growth Now Movement, check it out, blah, blah, blah. And you're going to be able to drive traffic that way to your show. So make sure you get everything in writing, send it out and really kind of canvas the area in order to grow your show. Number five is social media promotion. Right, everybody has a podcast now. When I started podcasting over five and a half years ago, I would tell people that I had a podcast and they would go, what's a podcast? This really happened most of the time. They're like, wait, what's a podcast? And I had to explain to them what a podcast was. And now I say, I have a podcast, anybody who doesn't know and they go, oh, you have a podcast too, everybody's got one. And so you have to break through the noise on social media. Obviously, number one, look professional. You want to do it the right way, whether it be through video promotion, through professionally done slides, quote cards, whatever. But here's the important part; every podcast they're shouting, they think that their message and their show needs to be heard by everybody. And so their episode comes out and they release it and they go, "Hey, I have a new podcast episode, go check it out." and that's all they do. And really what that does for them is nothing because the people are in that death scroll on social media. And so you want to do something that stops people dead in their tracks, something that will stop them from death scrolling and go, oh, I need this, let me go find this episode. And so what I call it as I call it "the hook". And this is the way to stop somebody from scrolling and you hook them in and then hopefully you can reel it in, right? And so what, for instance like this, and so this is how you do it. You want to ask them a question that peaks their interest, that you then answer that question in the episode. So say you bring a divorce expert on your show, right? You use the hook. Are you going through a divorce? Have you been through a bad divorce? Do you have you thought about divorce? Are you trying to not get divorced? You do these types of hooks, right? And they go, oh, well, yeah, that's me. I'm trying not to get a divorce. And then you go great. In this episode, I sit down with divorce expert, blah, blah, blah, and we talk about this, this, this, and this. And what that does is that it immediately hits their emotions, cause you're asking them a question which makes them go into their subconscious and go, this is me. He's talking, he or she is talking to me. I need more of this. So you want to make sure you get that social media hook every single week, whether it be one time or multiple times. If you're early on in your show and you don't have the growth that you want, I recommend two to three posts for every single episode. If you're a little bit further along one post would be just fine, especially when you know, you've already grown to a point where you're very kind of comfortable. Now I wanted to share one bonus tip with you before I sign off with you guys. That bonus tip is to understand that your network, is your net worth. I really began to see growth in my podcast, when I started to surround myself with other driven individuals who also happen to be podcasting. These people who understood it as a business, instead of just something fun on the side. These people understood the art of growing an audience and growing a community. So make sure you find a community to jump into that's focused on growth, whether it be audience growth or whatever. Find that community dive in, and I guarantee you, if you go through these steps that I just shared with you in the last 15 minutes, your podcast will absolutely double, triple or even 10 X its growth. I hope this was a ton of help for you guys. Thank you so much.

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