AP 0361: How Do I Promote My New Podcast?

AskPat 361 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: What's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 361 of AskPat. I hope you're having an awesome day. I'm feeling good. Are you? Hopefully. As always, I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions five days a week. We have a great question today from Saj over in the UK.

Well, before we get to Saj's question, I do want to thank today's sponsor, which is FreshBooks.com, making it super easy for you to keep track of your finances. Everything coming in, going out, and the invoicing that you do. They are the number one cloud accounting solution, help you keep track of you finances much better than excel, which is what I used when I first started. So I was so happy to finally get on to something like freshbooks.com because it just makes it really easy so you don't have to think about it especially come tax season. You can just hand those reports off to whoever is doing the taxes for you and that's that. So if you'd like to try it out for 30 days for free, head on over to GetFreshBooks.com and enter “AskPat” in the “How did you hear about us?” section. Again, that's GetFreshBooks.com and enter “AskPat.”

All right, here's today's question from Saj.

Saj: Hey, Pat! How we doing, mate? This is Saj from the UK. I did actually send you an email as well. First of all, thanks a lot for putting out so much information. The first one I've have ever heard about you was the YouTube video “How to Create a Podcast,” and it's really helped me to start getting used to all the software. And I'm just about to launch my first few episodes. I'm still waiting for my artwork and things like that to go through. My main concern at the moment is, how do I go about launching and promoting my podcast? I mean, I don't know how people are going to come across it, because obviously when you search on iTunes, I know you need to put keywords and stuff like that. But is that it, or are there any other ways I can actually promote my podcast? So that's what my question is for today. Anyways, thanks a lot for everything once again, and I'll be listening to your each and every audio or video you have got on there, and hopefully I will be in touch. Thank you.

Pat Flynn: Hey, Saj. What's up? Thank you so much for the question today, and I also appreciate you going through my podcasting tutorial. It's really exciting to hear that you're so close to launching. You're just waiting for your artwork, which is great. Very exciting. Hopefully this will help you out. For those of you who are interested in starting your own podcast, if you'd like to start one … it's not very difficult. I walk you through the whole process for free. No emails required or anything. Just head on over to PodcastingTutorial.com. You can check it out from there. Those are the videos that Saj watched. There's six of them … takes you through the whole process.

So, Saj … let me help you out here. Yes, keywords are important, but they aren't everything, especially when you first start out, because it's going to take a while for iTunes, and also for you to post enough episodes for you to be found by a number of different keywords. The most important thing is that you … here's what I would do. This is going to be sort of in chronological order as best as I can coming from my brain right now … anyway. First of all, hopefully your artwork is great because the artwork is important. When you think about it, when people search for things, or even when they find it amongst the sea of other podcasts that are out there on iTunes that are shown, whether it's in the rankings or the New and Noteworthy, or the What's Hot section … I'll talk about those in just a minute. Before people even see what episodes you have to offer, before people even hear your voice … they see your podcast. They see the graphic with your podcast. So hopefully that stands out. Hopefully you've done some research on what other podcasts are out there in the same category so you can see how to stand out … and again, just try to make it different. That's the biggest thing. You want to make sure that the text is readable or legible, especially a small size … because think about it, when people are searching on our phone, a lot of people are searching for podcast on their phone, it's going to be a really tiny icon, so make sure it's very enticing but also it's readable in terms of what it is.

The title of it is really important as well. You want to make that exciting and interesting because, again, that is something people see before they start to listen to your show. Again, another thing that's important is to make sure the description of your show is really important too, making sure those keywords are in there; that plays a big role in it as well. But also that it's very enticing and it makes people want to listen in. You want to put as many keywords in there as possible, but make it sound like it's written for a human, because as much as we all want to rank really high in search engines, if we just write for search engines only … then when people come across it, they're going to see that its kind of just robotic sounding and that's not how we want it. Luckily, search engines like Google, I'm sure iTunes as well though they're more secretive on their algorithms … they want to give their audience, and the people searching through their search fields, the best results. The most human-like responses are going to be the ones that are going to stand out and eventually rank at the top as well. So again, making sure that you're writing for humans as well in your description.

Now, here is what's really going to help. Every podcaster, at least at this point in time … if you have great artwork, you have a good description, and your audio quality is good, you're going to get featured in the New and Noteworthy section. It just happens for most podcasts, especially nowadays. Now, it's been less and less, in terms of the top ranking exposures in the New and Noteworthy section. Meaning, for a while there, a few years ago when I was starting out, you could be featured on the front page of New and Noteworthy for your category, or even the home page of iTunes, without a lot of competition. So it would stay there for quite a while, but either way, now, you will get in the New and Noteworthy, and people do search through there, and that is something that just happens if you have great artwork, great audio quality, and a good description for your show. Apple loves to show things that look good. Apple stuff always looks good, so they want to showcase stuff that looks good. Again, that reiterates the importance of that cover as well.

Now, that's going to help you get exposure without you having to do very much, because you're going to get that free exposure from iTunes. Now again, that only happens in eight weeks, so after that eight weeks is over, then you're going to have to work a little bit harder to promote. But by then, you'll have a number of shows that are available, and you'll have a number of guests on your show, and that's what I want to talk about next. The guests who are on your show, can help you promote your podcasts as well, and hopefully you're going to be launching with at least three. Five is optimal … but you want to launch with three to five. That way, when people listen to one, they're more likely to listen to more, especially when the show just comes out and they're really excited about it, and especially if that first one is great. Hopefully it is. The more people that listen, the more opportunity they have to subscribe and leave a rating and review, the more inclined they will be to do so, especially if it's great, like I said. Hopefully you're providing value, that audio quality is great, and you have great guests on the show if it's not … hopefully you have guests on the show.

That's one of the reasons why I decided to do more guest interviews now than I did before. I still do some solo shows, although I still have a lot of guests as well, and it's pretty cool because … when you have guests on the show, a few things happen. For one, you were able to provide content to your audience that you wouldn't be able to provide to yourself and, yeah, maybe you would be able to provide it yourself, but hopefully, you would get experts to come on your show or people with amazing stories that you don't have yourself, so that you can provide even more value to your audience through somebody's guest appearance on your show. Also, what it does, is that conversation you have with the person who's on your show becomes a budding relationship that you have. I've become friends with a lot of people who have become guests on my show, and then they're more likely to talk to you for that long if they are a guest on your show instead of you just calling them and saying “Hey, can we talk for 10 minutes?” People are usually too busy for that, but if they know they're on a show, they're promoting their own stuff, they're talking about their story, they're going to be shared on iTunes through your podcast, they're more likely to do it, and oftentimes, you're often going to … I say often a lot now, actually … you are going to talk to them for much longer as a result of them having … be a guest on your show. Which means you'll have even more opportunity to build the relationship with them and just connect with them, which can help you out. When people are a guest on your show, you can give them the link after that show is published and say “Hey, here is a link just in case you'd like it, if you want to share it, that'd be awesome. If not, no worries, but here is some copy you can use to share it.” And that's a great way that a lot of new podcasters are promoting their show as well, through the guest's kindness and generosity of sharing shows that they're on as well. I mean, they're going to want to share a show that they're on because they're on it and they're featured, and it only makes them look better, and that's going to help you as well in terms of building your audience. So, that's another way to do it too.

Also, making sure that you have a good mix of different kinds of shows as well, making sure that within the title of each of those episodes you have some good keywords as well. That's been something that's really been helpful for me, something that's not talked about very much, because we always hear about SEO and Google, search engine optimization with Google, for the title of the show and what the show is about, and in that particular category, but the actual episodes that you come out with are very important as well. I've gotten a lot of people who have found me through different episodes. If you look up affiliate marketing, for example, in iTunes, you don't find me at the top in the podcast section, but you do find me at the top at the podcast episode section, I believe, if things haven't changed. I am ranking for blogging, though; if you look up blogging, I believe I'm number one in blogging for iTunes. I'm not exactly sure yet. I haven't checked in a while, but those keywords do play a role, but they play a role in due time … But again, making sure you're setting up yourself for success with putting the keywords in the episodes as well, and also the metadata within those episodes is really important.

And finally, when you are coming out with episodes, it's great to make sure that you are promoting and encouraging people to leave ratings, and reviews, and subscribe. The more ratings, the more reviews, and the more subscribers you have within a short period of time, the more of those you can get in a short time period, the higher your podcast is going to just launch into the rankings and the rankings are free exposure on iTunes, because when people search on their phone, they're scrolling through and they're going to find your episode sooner than if they didn't see if there obviously. And then you're not just relying on search. You're using the platform that iTunes has built and the rating system, which is, again, done through the ratings, rankings, and subscribers that you have within a short time period. That's why the launch is so important: you can make all of those happen in a very short time period, which will help you not only get exposure in new and noteworthy, but it'll help you get exposure in the rankings as well, and that's social proof for everybody out there listening, when you can get rankings next to all those other big podcasts and just see that you're in the top 10 means something. And people who are more likely to listen, which helps you get more subscribers, more ratings, more rankings … all those sorts of things.

So, hopefully that helps, Saj. It's just kind of a brain depth base on what's kind of top of mind for me right now on podcasting and, you know, I wish you the best of luck. I can't wait to see what it's all about and see you in the rankings with some downloads as well. So, best of luck to you. I appreciate it. We're going to send you an AskPat t-shirt for having your question featured here on the show, and you'll hear from my assistant in the next couple of weeks to collect that information.

For those of you listening, if you have a questions you'd like potentially featured here on the show, just head on over to AskPat.com and you can ask right there on that page thanks to the speakpipe.com widget.

I also want to thank FreshBooks.com for being a sponsor here for this particular episode. They've been great and very support of the SPI community. If you want to get a free 30-day trial of FreshBooks, a free 30-day trial, go to GetFreshBooks.com and enter AskPat” in the “How did you hear about us?” section. They're serving over 3 million small businesses, and they can serve yours as well … you as well. I don't know why that came out weird … but yeah. Check it out. It's the number one cloud accounting solution to help you with your organization of your finances for your business. Check it out. GetFreshBooks.com and enter “AskPat” in the “How did you hear about us?” section.

Thanks so much for listening in, and here's a quote from James Cameron to finish off. And he said, “If you set your goals ridiculously high and it's a failure, you will fail above everyone else's success.” Cheers. Take care, and we'll see you in the next episode of AskPat. Thanks so much.