AP 0013: How Do You Promote a Podcast to an Audience That Isn’t Podcast Savvy?

AskPat 13 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: What's up, everybody? This is Pat Flynn. Welcome to Episode 13 of AskPat. And this is where I answer your online business questions every single day, five days a week. And first of all, I just want to thank you so much for listening to the show, and all the support. We're ranking extremely high on iTunes right now, a ton of reviews coming in, all very positive. Thank you so much for the kind words. It just motivates me to keep doing what I'm doing.

I also want to give a quick shout-out to my buddy Cliff Ravenscraft, and his site PodcastAnswerMan.com. He is the man who helped me get started with my podcasts. This is my third one actually—AskPat is my third podcast—and it wouldn't have happened without Cliff's help. So again, PodcastAnswerMan.com, from Cliff Ravenscraft. And I mentioned Cliff—actually I get a lot of help from Cliff to help answer today's question, which comes from Emilio. Emilio asked a question about creating a podcast for an audience that might not necessarily know what a podcast is, or how to subscribe. Very important question, so let's hear from Emilio.

Emilio: Hey Pat, my name is Emilio Rodriguez. I'm a big fan of you, your shows, and your kid; he seems to be a pretty cool kid. I'm launching a podcast in Spanish, but I have a question. I've been asking around and seems to be like in the Hispanic community, there is very little knowledge about podcasting. I have asked for some tips to some of the big guys in the podcasting world such as Ray Ortega and John Lee Dumas, and they have been very helpful. But I wanted to see if you have any more tips for me, to help me spread the word in not only Spanish, but in any other language for any of your listeners who could get some help in this. Thank you so much for doing this, and I would appreciate any help. Thank you.

Pat Flynn: Hey Emilio, thank you so much for your question. I love this question, because I think beyond the Spanish audience, which is your audience, and the international audience, there are a lot of niches out there where podcasting can be a challenge simply because that audience isn't podcast savvy. If you're targeting an older generation for example, then you have the same challenges when it comes to getting your audience to learn how to find your podcast, or what exactly a podcast is, or how to subscribe. And then perhaps beyond that, take that information they hear and take action with it, depending on what your topic is.

You can have the best information in your podcast in the world and the most interesting content ever, but if your audience doesn't know how to get onto podcasts, or find you, then you might as well not even exist, right? Because to them, you don't. So, Emilio, I'm going to address your question specifically, but I think this will answer everyone's question out there who wants more help with helping their audience understand how podcasting will work. And actually to get help to answer this question, I emailed Cliff from PodcastAnswerMan.com and I got his take on it because I know he's dealt with this before. And so he gave me a nice bullet point list of things you can do, or suggestions. And these are all fantastic suggestions, and I'll perhaps sort of expand on them.

So the first one that Cliff mentioned is that you just want to get people to listen, even if it's only on your website. So you can create your audio files. I mean, even if you're going to do a podcast you still have to create audio files and put them on your website, because that's where the podcast directories get the feed from. So, you just need to get people to listen to the show no matter what, even if it's only on a website, even before you subscribe to iTunes, or get onto iTunes or Stitcher, because you just want to have them listen first, and get addicted to your show and understand that they have some audio to listen to, and then you can teach them to subscribe later.

So, depending on how you have your podcast out there . . . for this podcast we're using a custom SoundCloud player on AskPat.com. You can check that out. You can also embed your audio files if you upload them to SoundCloud. You can do the same thing with Libsyn. They have their own player if you're on Libsyn.com. PowerPress, if you're running through PowerPress, they have their own players as well. So just get a player on your website, and write a blog post and actually give people a call to action: “click the play button below to listen.” And then from there, they can listen and see what it's like to listen to something instead of read it, and then you can teach them to subscribe later. So that's the first bullet point from Cliff.

The second thing is you want to create a page called “What is a Podcast?” And this is something you want to do especially if your audience perhaps doesn't understand what a podcast is. So you create a page, not necessarily a post. I mean you can create a post perhaps, but a page would be nice—something you can consistently link to in each of your podcast episodes for example, or the show notes of your podcast episodes when they come out so when people get those blog posts, and see that audio file in there, they can play that. But then they can say, “Oh, well this podcast thing, what's that about?” And that's where they can learn about what exactly that means, sort of like an audio show, if you compare it to a radio show that they can get automatically delivered to their devices. You really want to make sure you describe the benefits of a podcast and how to subscribe there as well.

You don't need to get into the detail of okay, here's the history of podcast, you can just say . . . always remember what's in it for them, so you want to keep it short and sweet. “Hey, this is a podcast, you can subscribe to it, every time I come out with a new episode you get notified and you just have to come on and it gets downloaded to your device. You don't even have to come on to your computer, you can use it on your iPhone,” so on so forth.

So, beyond that, the third bullet point from Cliff was beyond the page called “What is a Podcast?”, you can create a video tutorial on the benefits of a podcast and how to subscribe. This is really smart. If you can actually show people how to use their device, or how on their computer using a screencast for example, how they can actually subscribe to your show. Use iTunes, search for the name of my show, and click on this button here to subscribe. This is what happens and now every time I come out with a new episode you'll see a new episode right here, and you can just click here to play. If you show people that, that's so much easier than describing it on a page or mentioning it in your audio show, because a video people can just see exactly what happens.

In addition to showing people what happens on your computer when they subscribe, you also can perhaps show them okay, this is how you leave a review. That's a good opportunity to do that as well. Maybe on your “What is a Podcast?” page you have your video tutorial showing people how to subscribe, and you also have a video on how to leave a review on iTunes or Stitcher as well, which I think would be really important, and go a long way too.

The fourth bullet point from Cliff, he said, ” I go to conferences and show people how podcasting works on their smartphone.” And I've heard Cliff talk about this before. He goes to conferences and he talks to people and he says “Hey, do you listen to podcasts?” And of course, Cliff is the podcasting king, and when people say, “No I don't understand podcasts or how they work.” Cliff will actually say, “Do you mind if I borrow your phone, I'll get you hooked up with a podcast right now and show you exactly how easy it is.” And so right in front of their face he'll go, “Okay well here's the podcasting app from iTunes, here's where you can search, and then you can find my show and click here, and now every time a new show comes out it'll be right here, and you can play it. You don't even have to be in front of a computer. You can listen, again here's another benefit …”

Make sure you tell people the benefits on every place where you mention podcasting. You can listen on your commute, you can save time and actually educate yourself while you're driving. You can listen on walk, while you're at the gym, so on and so forth. So he actually goes to conferences and shows people how podcasting works on their smartphone, which I think is really cool. And of course that only makes Cliff more authoritative in the niche.

And then the fifth bullet point from Cliff was the above can be done any place you meet someone face to face. So you can get people to listen to the show face to face when you're face to face with them. Maybe if you're just sitting down and having coffee with someone. “Hey, do you subscribe to podcasts?” “No I don't know what it is.” Well, you can show people how to do it on their smartphone, you can talk about the benefits, you can help people find a show that they like. And I've done this with people before, and they get hooked. They're like, “Wow, I didn't even know this was possible.” So when you show them what's possible, when you give them those instant results, they're going to be immediately hooked, and of course they're going to listen to your show if you give them the option to do that, and show them perhaps a video tutorial and give them an explanation on how to do that.

So, some things beyond those bullet points from Cliff—and again, Cliff, thank you so much for that—from the audio that they listen to, if they're just listening on your website, make it easy for them to view your tutorial. You might even want to get a specific URL or maybe use the WordPress plugin Pretty Link to create a really easy link. For example it might be SmartPassiveIncome.com/howto. That's it. “If you go to SmartPassiveIncome.com/howto you'll see exactly how to subscribe to the show.” That URL doesn't exist, so don't go there but I'm just giving you a quick example. Giving listeners an easy way, people listening on your website, an easy way and a quick reminder to go and do that.

You might want to put a “how to subscribe” at the end of every post on your website for example, and try to make it as short and easy as possible to do. Of course the more steps you include, and the more complicated it is, the longer those videos are that you create, the less likely someone is to complete those things. So again, the video I would reiterate that point, create a video on how to subscribe and again mention the benefits of subscribing. So they don't have to visit the website later to download your shows, it gets put automatically into the devices so they can listen any time you come out with a new episode anywhere. And that's it.

So, Emilio, I hope that's helpful. For everyone else out there, if you're trying to create a podcast for an audience that might not be podcast savvy, those are some great tips. Cliff, thank you so much. PodcastAnswerMan.com. Check out Cliff Ravenscraft there. I want to leave you with a quote as always, and this quote is from Sir Peter Blake. And he says, “New technology is common, new thinking is rare.” So yes you might be expanding onto podcasts, you might be expanding onto videos, or there might be this other thing that we don't even know exists yet that comes out later. And yeah, new technology will always come out, and technology is going to change, but new thinking is rare. And always deliver value no matter what the platform. That's the thing that's never going to change. You always want to deliver value and help your audience and provide solutions. It doesn't matter what that technology is, what matters is you're finding ways to help people, so just continue to think about that.

So good luck on your podcast for those of you who are going out there to start one. I appreciate you, thank you so much, and I'll see you in the next episode.