When you think of the phrase podcast growth, you might think of metrics and data. This information often includes highest performing episodes, subscriptions, reviews and ratings, the number of downloads and listens per episode, times the episodes were downloaded, listening lengths, listener demographics such as location, number of shares and website traffic, to name a few.
While understanding metrics like these are important to the success of a podcast, podcast growth is more than just numbers. It’s also about creating valuable connections with your audience and podcast network.
In this article, we’ll explore three methods for growing your podcast audience. After the initial podcast launch, there isn’t one correct way to successfully grow a podcast audience—you’ll need to rely on multiple strategies.
Audience development
While having marketing strategies in place to attract your audience is important, sometimes, instead of waiting for your audience to come to you, you have to go to them. One way to do this is to search for communities with similar interests and listen. In marketing, listening is the act of observing social platforms for conversations and trends related to your brand.
Here is a list of places that you can find and learn more about communities:
- Social media platforms (LinkedIn networking, Facebook groups, Reddit subreddits)
- Messaging platforms (Slack groups, Discord servers)
- Newsletters
- Events
In addition to building your external community, don’t forget to pay attention to your internal community. As your podcast brand grows, you will be able to tap into the experience and knowledge of your employees. A podcast’s employees can have valuable insight about the audience that you’re hoping to build.
Strategic marketing strategy
Marketing strategies take many shapes and forms, but there are a few basics that everyone can follow when starting to grow a podcast.
Multi-channel approach
This may seem fairly obvious, but one of the most effective ways to achieve podcast growth is to reach people from across platforms. It may be tempting to post the same content across platforms, but it’s important to tailor content specifically for each platform that you use. If your podcast includes video, a TikTok post might include a series of interesting snippets from a podcast episode. For Instagram and LinkedIn, you might consider an infographic along with an engaging caption that gives the audience a sample of the kind of topics your podcast explores. For Twitter, a word count exists—so think about how you can be interesting and succinct.
Engaging visuals
Podcasts typically rely on audio to deliver engaging content to their audiences. With that in mind, having an interesting visual logo or cover for your podcast can play a significant role in creating interest. While tying a visual to the title is obviously important, you might also try exploring a different aspect of the podcast through your visuals.
Trailers
Once you’ve put some episodes out, you can begin to develop promotional content. There are various types of trailers that you can use to spark audience interest.
One thing to keep in mind when creating a trailer is that you want to appeal not only to people who are unfamiliar with your podcast, but also to current listeners. Retaining the interest of the audience that you already have is just as important in terms of growth. Maintaining an active relationship with these audience members can lead to having active fans, who can act as valuable advocates for your brand.
Key partnerships and consistent networking
One way to achieve podcast growth is through building partnerships with other podcasts and networking in the podcast community. If you build partnerships with other podcasts in your chosen niche, you can leverage the interest of their audience.
Collaborating with other podcasts can include anything from quick mentions and shout outs to being guests on each other’s shows. Though guesting on podcasts with topics related to your own is certainly effective, don’t shy away from the unexpected collaboration. If a podcast is interested in your work, audiences can tell.
The bigger picture
While focusing your efforts on your target audience is of utmost importance, don’t forget to pay attention to discussions and trends happening in other communities. By listening in on these conversations, you can potentially find interests that might hold relevance with your own community. Whether it’s recreating a trend or commenting on larger social issues in your content, your audience will appreciate that you’re tuning in to what’s happening beyond your social bubble.
