November 21, 2024 • 22 mins
Are you ready to grow your podcast audience and reach listeners you’ve never tapped into before? In this episode, we dig into the latest and most effective marketing techniques to expand your show’s reach. From creative social media strategies to leveraging unique platforms and partnerships, we explore actionable tips that can help you attract new listeners. Tune in to learn about 10+ innovative podcast marketing techniques!
Today's Hosts: MacKenzie Bennett and Todd Cochrane
Here are some innovative and fresh strategies to market a podcast to new listeners, tapping into unique digital spaces, interactive content, and community-driven engagement:
1. Interactive and Personalized Audio Clips
Dynamic Audio Clips: Create short, personalized audio previews using platforms like Headliner or Audiogram. Share these clips on social media with captions that directly engage the viewer, like “Ever wondered how to…? Listen to this quick tip!”
Interactive Audio Experiences: Use tools like Descript to make interactive, editable transcripts or snippets, allowing listeners to engage with your podcast before committing to a full episode. Add clickable timestamps or key highlights to make clips more engaging.
2. AI-Powered Recommendations and Voice-Activated Marketing
Podcast AI Tools: Blubrry's podcast AI tools allow podcasters to plan, produce, and promote their show seamlessly from their publishing dashboard.
Podcast Recommendations with AI: Use AI-based recommendation engines, like those in Goodpods or Podchaser, to increase your reach. Engaging in communities that leverage AI for podcast discovery allows listeners to find your show through shared interests and listening behavior.
Voice Assistant Marketing: Optimize your podcast to be found through voice search on platforms like Google Assistant, Alexa, and Siri. For instance, “Hey Alexa, play the latest episode of [Podcast Name]!” prompts listeners to find you easily through voice commands.
3. Collaborative Playlists with Other Podcasters
Cross-Podcast Playlists on Spotify: Collaborate with similar podcasts to create themed playlists on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Curate episodes that cover complementary topics, and promote the playlist across each podcast’s platforms.
Collaborative “Best Of” Episodes: Work with other podcasters to create a collaborative episode featuring clips from each show. Make it a fun, joint project that gives listeners a sampler of several podcasts.
4. Interactive Content on Social Media
Polls, Quizzes, and Games: Design social media content that’s interactive and aligns with your podcast’s theme. Run polls, quizzes, or mini-games related to your latest episode to engage your audience in a fun, low-commitment way.
Live “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) Sessions: Host live AMAs on Instagram, Twitter, or LinkedIn, answering questions about recent episodes, upcoming guests, or behind-the-scenes stories. Promote it as a way for new listeners to get to know the podcast.
5. Geotargeted Ads and Local Marketing
Location-Based Advertising: Use geotargeting on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or Spotify to reach listeners in specific areas, especially if your podcast has local or regional appeal.
Collaborate with Local Businesses: Partner with local businesses or events, offering small “ad” segments in exchange for them sharing your podcast through their own social media or email newsletters.
6. Cross-Platform Content Diversification
TikTok and Reels Content: Create short, highly engaging clips specifically for TikTok and Instagram Reels, capturing funny moments, hot takes, or teasers of upcoming guests. Ensure the clips include captions or graphics to grab attention even without sound.
LinkedIn and Niche Community Forums: For professional or topic-specific podcasts, LinkedIn can be a goldmine for reaching new listeners. Share insights, episode highlights, or exclusive tips in posts and groups related to your niche.
7.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to today's episode of Podcast Insider. I'm
Todd Cochrane, CEO of Blueberry Podcasting.
And I'm Mackenzie Bennett, marketing specialist at Blueberry.
The team here is always thinking of innovative
ways that podcasters
can market their podcast.
Today, we'll share a few of our favorites.
You're listening to Podcast Insider hosted by Mike
(00:21):
Dell, Todd Cochran, and Mackenzie Bennett from the
Blueberry team,
bringing you weekly insights, advice, and insider tips
and tricks to help you start, grow, and
thrive through podcasting,
all with the support of your team here
at Blueberry Podcasting.
Welcome. Let's dive in.
Well, you know, coming up with fresh and
(00:41):
innovative strategies to market your podcast to new
listeners,
You know, there's
probably a 100 ways to Sunday to do
this.
But, you know, in the in the end,
it really
is about getting out there and and getting
engaged.
And, today, socially getting folks engaged,
(01:01):
is is basically building curiosity for people that
don't know about your show. Building
some intrigue on why they should why they
should interact or even check your show out.
You have to give them a reason.
And the first thing we've got up here
is talking about personalized audio clips, where you
can create a short
personalized audio preview.
(01:23):
And, you know, again, you can just record
this on your standard recording platform. Kind of
do an intro or
you can use headliner
or audiogram.
You can even use pie to grab,
blueberries podcasting AI assistant to grab,
clips from a previous,
version. But you can share those clips on
social media with captions that directly engage
(01:46):
the the viewer.
And
it's it could be that I've ever wondered
how or listened to this quick tip.
Again, it has to have something that brings
value that, that definitely
gets them in engaged and and curious about
your show. And not everyone is always going
to be engaged with purely audio. So an
interactive audio experience,
(02:08):
might grab the attention of
those outliers. So we've worked with Descript,
and you can use a tool like them
to make it interactive with
a transcript or a snippet that allows them
to,
you know, read along while they are listening
to the episode.
You can also do that probably with clips.
So you can add the time stamps and
(02:30):
the key highlights
to make your clips more engaging, and you
can also do this in blueberry pie. And
I think the interaction is important because I
know many times I will have something going
and maybe I'll be on Facebook and I'll
see a clip that
initially intrigues me and I'll click into it,
kinda go down a rabbit hole, but you
want to be that clip that they engage
(02:51):
in and you set the mind set that,
hey. There's a podcast associated with this.
Of course, AI powered recommendations
and voice activated marketing.
You you can use AI based recommendation
engines like those
in good pods or pod chaser to increase
your reach,
engaging in communities that leverage AI for podcast
discovery, allowing listeners to find your show
(03:14):
through shared interest and,
listening behavior. And I think the challenge that
a lot of folks are gonna find with
podcast recommendations with AI
is you may not be on that list.
You may not have been surfaced by the
AI to come up as a recommendation.
So your mileage is gonna vary on that.
But,
(03:35):
definitely,
it's something that,
will allow you to at least have some
some different ways to engage. Yeah. The the
capabilities
of AI and how that functions is
rapidly changing all of the time nowadays.
But something that used to be more popular,
and I don't know. I don't really have
(03:55):
any type of,
quote unquote robots in my house, but search
platforms like Google Assistant, Alexa, Siri,
you know, a lot of the time people
will have their shows on there, and you
can say,
hey, Google. Play the latest episode of such
and such.
So that's an easy one that they can
do without actually searching on their own. They're
(04:17):
just doing that command.
The key is to make sure that you
know what is the command that allows them
to find your show
so that you can give them that direction
clearly so they don't end up on someone
else's
podcast. That's the key. So the clearer the
better.
Yeah. The clearer with, you know, you may
have to add a few extra words in
(04:38):
there. You might have to say like,
you know, hey, Siri,
play the latest episode of podcast insider by
Blueberry podcasting. You may have to say something
like that for that to guarantee
to find the show. But,
one of the fun things that has been
done,
(04:58):
and is becoming more popular, especially in the
podcasting 2 point o space is
collaborative playlist with other podcasts.
So across across podcast playlist
are also available on Spotify. So you can
collaborate with similar podcasts, create themed playlist
on Spotify.
I think on Apple Podcasts too is a
little harder, but create episodes that cover complementary
(05:21):
topics and promote the playlist across each other's
platforms.
You know, something that I like is,
like an ask me anything
section.
This used to be really, really popular on
Reddit, the AMA, but now has kinda taken
over on,
on other platforms that now include quizzes and
(05:42):
interactive
interactivity like Instagram and Twitter. So
very popular for people to do. You just
post it on your story, or you can
even do, you know, like a full post
to it or tweet or something like that.
But a lot of the time it is
if you
have
a active community on whatever platform you're doing,
then they will probably be receptive to
(06:05):
playing along and as answering your questions.
Of course, you can come up with a
best of episodes as as well when you
work with other podcasters
to create a collaborative episode
featuring clips from each show. It can make
it a fun joint project that gives listeners
a sample of several podcasts
and best of episodes. Now this works good
(06:26):
for those of you that have
a long tail content. For those of you
that have content that expires pretty quickly,
this may not be a strategy that will
work well for you. Maybe you have to
go with a very recent episode if it's
if it's within the time
age of the of the episodes. AK, if
you like my show, I do a tech
show and within a week, the content is
(06:48):
kinda old and everyone's already heard the the
information. So, again, depends on your content.
Something that people can do very easily but
might think is more complicated than it is
is geo targeted ads and local marketing for
their podcast. In fact, I was just
explaining
to a,
(07:08):
friend of mine's mom this weekend
how all of that works, and she had
no idea
that by living in Cleveland or Cincinnati that
she was getting specific ads to that area.
So
location based advertising, aka your geotargeting
on Facebook, Instagram, Spotify, Twitter, whatever how you
know, whatever platforms you're using.
(07:30):
Especially, this is helpful if your podcast has
local or regional appeal to listeners,
as well
as collaborate
collaborating with local businesses in your area. So
you can do small
ad segments in exchange for sharing your podcast
through social media, email newsletters,
(07:51):
you know, a shout out on their website
or,
them on yours.
Anything like that is easy to to negotiate
with local business owners.
One thing that we do when we go
to trade shows and different events is we
actually geotarget
maybe a mile or 2 square around the
(08:11):
venue because you can actually geotarget that close
with, Facebook and other platforms.
And we will actually advertise the company,
to and the target is the podcasters that
are going to the event.
So, like, when we were in London, we
were able to target the the civic center
we are at in about a mile area
around London. So while people are checking Facebook
(08:34):
at the event,
they were getting ads from Blueberry, which in
turn caused them to come to the booth
and say hello. So it's kind of a
nice way. If you're doing an event someplace,
maybe do event targeted advertising in our location
based advertising.
And the best part about that is it's
relatively inexpensive because it's so
so highly targeted. We set a pretty high
(08:55):
budget, but usually,
we'll spend 60, $70
on a 2 or 3 day event just
because it's so targeted.
You're not spending a lot of money, but
you're reaching that very focused audience. And this
could go
for an event that's happening in some place
in the country
around a topic around your show. So if
there if you know of a business convention
(09:16):
or, you know, whatever the topic of your
show is, you could actually target that event,
with location based advertising
and not even be there, but advertise your
podcast.
A lot of options here.
So another thing that you could do is
cross platform
content diversification,
and that's a long way of saying,
(09:39):
do social media content together.
So like TikTok or reels content, create short,
highly engaging clips,
specifically for those platforms,
and make sure that you're including, you know,
teasers of
upcoming episodes or guests,
maybe you're like a blooper reel or something
like that. And definitely make sure that your
(10:01):
clips include
the transcript, you know, the captions or graphics
to grab attention
even without sound.
Going back to when we were talking about,
you know,
interactive stuff
just beyond audio on social media,
generally, at this point in 2024,
(10:21):
almost 2025,
if I don't see captions alongside a video
and I have to click click on it
to hear what they're saying and get the
content,
I'm not going to probably.
If I'm in private and I'm you know,
if I'm at home or a friend's home
or something like that, yeah, I might click
on it and listen to it, but I'm
not gonna do that in the public ever.
(10:43):
I'm not gonna have
sound coming from my phone.
So definitely something to think about. Another thing
to think about is LinkedIn, you know, depending
on your show, if you have a community
or if there's community forums on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn can be a gold mine for reaching
new listeners where you share insights
or episode highlights, exclusive tips and posts and
(11:06):
groups related to your niche. Doesn't mean going
there in spam that you're, you know, you've
got a podcast. That means go in there
and give
actionable information,
or maybe respond to a community thread. Say,
hey. I did a podcast episode on this
and, you know, at the 15 minute mark,
I talk about exactly what we're talking about
here. That's a great way to pick up
listeners for people to engage
(11:28):
and being able to,
to connect with your podcast.
Of course, interactive listener contest and challenges.
Listener challenges
are fun. They can run a challenge related
to your podcast theme,
encourage listeners to participate and share their entries
on social media. Example might include a 30
day challenge
relevant to a self improvement podcast or a
(11:50):
best advice challenge for business podcast.
These rewards,
don't have to be big,
but could be an Amazon card or something
like that. But again,
have something that challenges your listeners and basically
get the community involved. One thing that I've
always thought,
(12:10):
is fun is doing a podcast referral contest.
Offer rewards for listeners who refer new listeners
to your show.
Use a unique referral link or just say,
hey. They your new new listener needs to
send an email to the show said, hey.
Susie recommended a podcast, and I'm a new
listener.
There might be ways there to have,
(12:33):
to, again, to build more community by getting
a referral. I think on almost every
episode of my own podcast, I tell my
listeners to share,
the show with their friends and family,
especially if there's something that I've talked about
in a recent episode that can help
someone.
And,
these rewards for listeners who refer new listeners,
(12:55):
again, you can be very creative there in
coming up with stuff. And it doesn't have,
again, to be expensive. Maybe it's
a shout out or it's a sticker.
Something simple.
People love getting swag and, sticker to slap
on their laptop is always fun too. On
a different route with that is
augmented reality, which is AR and QR codes
(13:17):
for promotion.
Ever since
the pandemic, QR codes have come back with
a vengeance,
and
you can do what is called a QR
code scavenger hunt. So you create these codes,
link them to teaser audio clips or special
special episodes or anything you really want them
to be. You can place these in both
(13:39):
physical and digital spaces. You know, this is
kinda one of the scenarios in which you
see a random QR sticker on a telephone
pole in your park when you're, you know,
taking your your daily walk, and you're like,
okay. What is this?
And now all of a sudden, hey. You
are a potential listener. You are listening to
this podcast. So I think that's a really
cool one.
(14:00):
AR experience,
I have less experience with this, to be
completely honest, but you can do episode highlights,
to create an augmented reality
to fit your podcast theme. That sounds really
cool. Todd, have you ever done anything like
this?
No. But I I've done the QR thing,
but I've done it in a way that
(14:20):
is fully transparent. It's like when I'm doing
live
video,
I will have a QR code that will
link to my subscribe page.
Mhmm. And,
people that are watching the show for the
first time, of course, here's the trick. If
you're watching the show on your phone, the
QR code is worthless because
you really how do you
(14:41):
how do you scan a QR code
from your your phone? So they have to
be watching you on a laptop or a
big screen for that to really work. So
you need to make sure you put that
QR code
in a place where if the actual mobile
user is gonna be able to get to
us. I always have the additional link there,
form to link to. But, that's what I've
(15:03):
kinda done with QR codes. But I do
always kinda wonder if they're ever gonna do
something to
get around that, like, you know, using a
QR code while you're already on your phone.
I have no idea how that would work.
It'd be nice if the you saw a
QR code in a video on your phone,
and you could just click on the QR
code and it would pick it up. Right.
(15:23):
But,
yeah, I don't know if I've gotten that
far yet. But again, you know, there's lots
of ways to market your show. One of
the fun things that you can do and
especially if you,
have some friends that are are influencers
is you can partner with a,
well, maybe a big influencer or even a
micro influencer,
collaborate
(15:44):
with them and,
have them help grow your show,
with their engaged audiences. Invite them to be
guests, share episodes, or simply recommend your podcast
to their followers.
That's that's always a bonus. You know, if
you know someone that has a great,
great presence, maybe they don't have a podcast
or maybe say, hey. I've got a podcast.
(16:06):
I'd like to have you listen to it.
And, you know, maybe make them a fan.
So that so it requires a little more
work. And maybe sometimes you have to write
a check too. But at the same time,
micro influencers
probably the cost to get a promotion is
is pretty low.
At the same time, you can engage in
Reddit and topic specific forums. I've always thought
(16:27):
this has been a very underutilized,
niche. And I'm not talking about going into
a podcast
or Reddit. I'm talking about going into your
specific
content topic forums
and, even on discord.
And it can be powerful for podcast promotion
if you're active in those groups.
And you can share insights and value without
(16:48):
spamming to build report and casually mention your
podcast
as as a resource.
And this might be another way to even
get guests for your show if you if
you do interviews.
Yeah. Finding the guests on there would be
really great. Another way
to market your podcast is with podcast specific
advertising
platforms. So Spotify
(17:09):
ad studio and overcast ads do this, dynamic
ad insertion, which Blueberry offers, and, you know,
we we've been doing
advertisements on and off for many, many years
with Blueberry.
One thing to think about on the over
cast ads is it's pretty effective,
for a relatively low
low cost. I know Marco's,
(17:31):
done that for years with his app, and
people have seen pretty good success. So don't,
don't listen. There's a few apps that additionally
that do that as well. I think
fountain is one where you can advertise. There's
a couple of them that allow it. Just
look into it. Go to the, podcast app's
website to see if they they offer that.
Of course, you can host special episodes
(17:52):
with listener involvement.
Listener co created episodes where you allow listeners
to submit questions, topics, or even short audio
clips.
Letting your audience be part of the creation
can increase excitement, incentivize them to share the
episode,
make them a producer,
Make them, you know, when they submit content
like that, you can always give,
(18:12):
give credit to always, and
it really allows people to become a big
part of the team and more likely to
share
the show.
And, of course, you have a monthly or
themed or guest takeover.
You can invite fans or guest host to
take over your podcast for an episode. Interesting
fresh perspectives
that appeal to new listeners while keeping your
(18:33):
current audience engaged. Now the only thing I
think about the guest takeover pieces, you need
to have someone that you can trust.
Use yeah. Usually, when I do guest takeovers,
it's someone that I have worked with or
podcasts that I'm familiar with and I'm friends
and they're willing to fill in for me
for an episode.
They still follow the same format, but they,
(18:56):
again, they give their own their own spin
on things.
And lastly,
we wanna talk about how you can leverage
your analytics to optimize
content and outreach.
So
this is
topic based targeting, going back to kinda what
we were talking about with geotargeting.
Yes. You can do geotargeting, but also if
(19:17):
you have
any demographic information
about your listeners,
you know, we provide an audience survey for
all podcasters to use to try and
gather that audience demographic information,
and then we integrate it into the stats
so that you can really see everything altogether.
(19:39):
But you can tailor future marketing efforts to
emphasize
specific topics that you know that they would
be interested in and appeal to new listeners
with similar with similar interests.
And alongside that,
time sensitive push notifications is really cool.
So you can do this
to your followers whenever a new episode goes
(20:00):
live,
timed around your high engagement periods
that you see within your analytics. You know,
we we tell you
how many people are listening within the first
couple days and, you know, what that drop
off is, how long they are listening to
your episodes. So all of this can be,
really useful for
optimizing your content to your audience. Now one
(20:22):
thing to remember too is people that are
subscribed
via certain podcast apps, they will actually do
a push notification
for you as well.
Apple Podcasts, if they are actually followed your
show, if you they follow it or subscribed,
they will get a push notification. If you
allow the Apple Podcasts app to do,
if the listener has allowed the the podcast
(20:44):
app to send notifications, they'll actually receive it
on their end saying, hey. There's a new
episode of exec show,
and they'll get that notification. But,
a lot of folks have even went to
the point where they are now
using a service where you can actually collect
their, mobile number and you can do an
SMS push through a third party service
(21:06):
that does require a subscription.
Some of those are are very inexpensive to
use,
when you have a low number of subscribers.
When the numbers get up higher, it can
be a bit costly,
but it is another way for you to
send a push notification to current subscribers to
say, hey. There's a new episode out. Make
sure you, you go listen.
So these strategies combine
(21:28):
creativity and activity and, of course, our platform
specific advantage is to reach a broader audience
while keeping listeners engaged and eager to share
your content. I hope you found one of
these of about 20 tips here,
maybe even 22, 23 tips,
useful.
Take 1 and try it.
Definitely check out the show notes because the
(21:48):
show notes will have
a broader breakdown of all of this for
you to review.
Yeah. If you try any of these out
and loved it or even if you hated
it, let us know, and we'll be happy
to go over it with you. Thanks for
listening to Podcast Insider.
Thanks for joining us. Come back next week.
And in the meantime,
head to podcast insider.com
(22:10):
for more information.
To subscribe, share, and read our show notes.
Check out the latest suite of services and
learn how Blueberry
can help you leverage your podcast. Visit blueberry.com.
That's blueberry without the e's because we can't
afford the e's.
Welcome to today's episode of Podcast Insider. I'm
Todd Cochrane, CEO of Blueberry Podcasting.
And I'm Mackenzie Bennett, marketing specialist at Blueberry.
The team here is always thinking of innovative
ways that podcasters
can market their podcast.
Today, we'll share a few of our favorites.
You're listening to Podcast Insider hosted by Mike
(00:21):
Dell, Todd Cochran, and Mackenzie Bennett from the
Blueberry team,
bringing you weekly insights, advice, and insider tips
and tricks to help you start, grow, and
thrive through podcasting,
all with the support of your team here
at Blueberry Podcasting.
Welcome. Let's dive in.
Well, you know, coming up with fresh and
(00:41):
innovative strategies to market your podcast to new
listeners,
You know, there's
probably a 100 ways to Sunday to do
this.
But, you know, in the in the end,
it really
is about getting out there and and getting
engaged.
And, today, socially getting folks engaged,
(01:01):
is is basically building curiosity for people that
don't know about your show. Building
some intrigue on why they should why they
should interact or even check your show out.
You have to give them a reason.
And the first thing we've got up here
is talking about personalized audio clips, where you
can create a short
personalized audio preview.
(01:23):
And, you know, again, you can just record
this on your standard recording platform. Kind of
do an intro or
you can use headliner
or audiogram.
You can even use pie to grab,
blueberries podcasting AI assistant to grab,
clips from a previous,
version. But you can share those clips on
social media with captions that directly engage
(01:46):
the the viewer.
And
it's it could be that I've ever wondered
how or listened to this quick tip.
Again, it has to have something that brings
value that, that definitely
gets them in engaged and and curious about
your show. And not everyone is always going
to be engaged with purely audio. So an
interactive audio experience,
(02:08):
might grab the attention of
those outliers. So we've worked with Descript,
and you can use a tool like them
to make it interactive with
a transcript or a snippet that allows them
to,
you know, read along while they are listening
to the episode.
You can also do that probably with clips.
So you can add the time stamps and
(02:30):
the key highlights
to make your clips more engaging, and you
can also do this in blueberry pie. And
I think the interaction is important because I
know many times I will have something going
and maybe I'll be on Facebook and I'll
see a clip that
initially intrigues me and I'll click into it,
kinda go down a rabbit hole, but you
want to be that clip that they engage
(02:51):
in and you set the mind set that,
hey. There's a podcast associated with this.
Of course, AI powered recommendations
and voice activated marketing.
You you can use AI based recommendation
engines like those
in good pods or pod chaser to increase
your reach,
engaging in communities that leverage AI for podcast
discovery, allowing listeners to find your show
(03:14):
through shared interest and,
listening behavior. And I think the challenge that
a lot of folks are gonna find with
podcast recommendations with AI
is you may not be on that list.
You may not have been surfaced by the
AI to come up as a recommendation.
So your mileage is gonna vary on that.
But,
(03:35):
definitely,
it's something that,
will allow you to at least have some
some different ways to engage. Yeah. The the
capabilities
of AI and how that functions is
rapidly changing all of the time nowadays.
But something that used to be more popular,
and I don't know. I don't really have
(03:55):
any type of,
quote unquote robots in my house, but search
platforms like Google Assistant, Alexa, Siri,
you know, a lot of the time people
will have their shows on there, and you
can say,
hey, Google. Play the latest episode of such
and such.
So that's an easy one that they can
do without actually searching on their own. They're
(04:17):
just doing that command.
The key is to make sure that you
know what is the command that allows them
to find your show
so that you can give them that direction
clearly so they don't end up on someone
else's
podcast. That's the key. So the clearer the
better.
Yeah. The clearer with, you know, you may
have to add a few extra words in
(04:38):
there. You might have to say like,
you know, hey, Siri,
play the latest episode of podcast insider by
Blueberry podcasting. You may have to say something
like that for that to guarantee
to find the show. But,
one of the fun things that has been
done,
(04:58):
and is becoming more popular, especially in the
podcasting 2 point o space is
collaborative playlist with other podcasts.
So across across podcast playlist
are also available on Spotify. So you can
collaborate with similar podcasts, create themed playlist
on Spotify.
I think on Apple Podcasts too is a
little harder, but create episodes that cover complementary
(05:21):
topics and promote the playlist across each other's
platforms.
You know, something that I like is,
like an ask me anything
section.
This used to be really, really popular on
Reddit, the AMA, but now has kinda taken
over on,
on other platforms that now include quizzes and
(05:42):
interactive
interactivity like Instagram and Twitter. So
very popular for people to do. You just
post it on your story, or you can
even do, you know, like a full post
to it or tweet or something like that.
But a lot of the time it is
if you
have
a active community on whatever platform you're doing,
then they will probably be receptive to
(06:05):
playing along and as answering your questions.
Of course, you can come up with a
best of episodes as as well when you
work with other podcasters
to create a collaborative episode
featuring clips from each show. It can make
it a fun joint project that gives listeners
a sample of several podcasts
and best of episodes. Now this works good
(06:26):
for those of you that have
a long tail content. For those of you
that have content that expires pretty quickly,
this may not be a strategy that will
work well for you. Maybe you have to
go with a very recent episode if it's
if it's within the time
age of the of the episodes. AK, if
you like my show, I do a tech
show and within a week, the content is
(06:48):
kinda old and everyone's already heard the the
information. So, again, depends on your content.
Something that people can do very easily but
might think is more complicated than it is
is geo targeted ads and local marketing for
their podcast. In fact, I was just
explaining
to a,
(07:08):
friend of mine's mom this weekend
how all of that works, and she had
no idea
that by living in Cleveland or Cincinnati that
she was getting specific ads to that area.
So
location based advertising, aka your geotargeting
on Facebook, Instagram, Spotify, Twitter, whatever how you
know, whatever platforms you're using.
(07:30):
Especially, this is helpful if your podcast has
local or regional appeal to listeners,
as well
as collaborate
collaborating with local businesses in your area. So
you can do small
ad segments in exchange for sharing your podcast
through social media, email newsletters,
(07:51):
you know, a shout out on their website
or,
them on yours.
Anything like that is easy to to negotiate
with local business owners.
One thing that we do when we go
to trade shows and different events is we
actually geotarget
maybe a mile or 2 square around the
(08:11):
venue because you can actually geotarget that close
with, Facebook and other platforms.
And we will actually advertise the company,
to and the target is the podcasters that
are going to the event.
So, like, when we were in London, we
were able to target the the civic center
we are at in about a mile area
around London. So while people are checking Facebook
(08:34):
at the event,
they were getting ads from Blueberry, which in
turn caused them to come to the booth
and say hello. So it's kind of a
nice way. If you're doing an event someplace,
maybe do event targeted advertising in our location
based advertising.
And the best part about that is it's
relatively inexpensive because it's so
so highly targeted. We set a pretty high
(08:55):
budget, but usually,
we'll spend 60, $70
on a 2 or 3 day event just
because it's so targeted.
You're not spending a lot of money, but
you're reaching that very focused audience. And this
could go
for an event that's happening in some place
in the country
around a topic around your show. So if
there if you know of a business convention
(09:16):
or, you know, whatever the topic of your
show is, you could actually target that event,
with location based advertising
and not even be there, but advertise your
podcast.
A lot of options here.
So another thing that you could do is
cross platform
content diversification,
and that's a long way of saying,
(09:39):
do social media content together.
So like TikTok or reels content, create short,
highly engaging clips,
specifically for those platforms,
and make sure that you're including, you know,
teasers of
upcoming episodes or guests,
maybe you're like a blooper reel or something
like that. And definitely make sure that your
(10:01):
clips include
the transcript, you know, the captions or graphics
to grab attention
even without sound.
Going back to when we were talking about,
you know,
interactive stuff
just beyond audio on social media,
generally, at this point in 2024,
(10:21):
almost 2025,
if I don't see captions alongside a video
and I have to click click on it
to hear what they're saying and get the
content,
I'm not going to probably.
If I'm in private and I'm you know,
if I'm at home or a friend's home
or something like that, yeah, I might click
on it and listen to it, but I'm
not gonna do that in the public ever.
(10:43):
I'm not gonna have
sound coming from my phone.
So definitely something to think about. Another thing
to think about is LinkedIn, you know, depending
on your show, if you have a community
or if there's community forums on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn can be a gold mine for reaching
new listeners where you share insights
or episode highlights, exclusive tips and posts and
(11:06):
groups related to your niche. Doesn't mean going
there in spam that you're, you know, you've
got a podcast. That means go in there
and give
actionable information,
or maybe respond to a community thread. Say,
hey. I did a podcast episode on this
and, you know, at the 15 minute mark,
I talk about exactly what we're talking about
here. That's a great way to pick up
listeners for people to engage
(11:28):
and being able to,
to connect with your podcast.
Of course, interactive listener contest and challenges.
Listener challenges
are fun. They can run a challenge related
to your podcast theme,
encourage listeners to participate and share their entries
on social media. Example might include a 30
day challenge
relevant to a self improvement podcast or a
(11:50):
best advice challenge for business podcast.
These rewards,
don't have to be big,
but could be an Amazon card or something
like that. But again,
have something that challenges your listeners and basically
get the community involved. One thing that I've
always thought,
(12:10):
is fun is doing a podcast referral contest.
Offer rewards for listeners who refer new listeners
to your show.
Use a unique referral link or just say,
hey. They your new new listener needs to
send an email to the show said, hey.
Susie recommended a podcast, and I'm a new
listener.
There might be ways there to have,
(12:33):
to, again, to build more community by getting
a referral. I think on almost every
episode of my own podcast, I tell my
listeners to share,
the show with their friends and family,
especially if there's something that I've talked about
in a recent episode that can help
someone.
And,
these rewards for listeners who refer new listeners,
(12:55):
again, you can be very creative there in
coming up with stuff. And it doesn't have,
again, to be expensive. Maybe it's
a shout out or it's a sticker.
Something simple.
People love getting swag and, sticker to slap
on their laptop is always fun too. On
a different route with that is
augmented reality, which is AR and QR codes
(13:17):
for promotion.
Ever since
the pandemic, QR codes have come back with
a vengeance,
and
you can do what is called a QR
code scavenger hunt. So you create these codes,
link them to teaser audio clips or special
special episodes or anything you really want them
to be. You can place these in both
(13:39):
physical and digital spaces. You know, this is
kinda one of the scenarios in which you
see a random QR sticker on a telephone
pole in your park when you're, you know,
taking your your daily walk, and you're like,
okay. What is this?
And now all of a sudden, hey. You
are a potential listener. You are listening to
this podcast. So I think that's a really
cool one.
(14:00):
AR experience,
I have less experience with this, to be
completely honest, but you can do episode highlights,
to create an augmented reality
to fit your podcast theme. That sounds really
cool. Todd, have you ever done anything like
this?
No. But I I've done the QR thing,
but I've done it in a way that
(14:20):
is fully transparent. It's like when I'm doing
live
video,
I will have a QR code that will
link to my subscribe page.
Mhmm. And,
people that are watching the show for the
first time, of course, here's the trick. If
you're watching the show on your phone, the
QR code is worthless because
you really how do you
(14:41):
how do you scan a QR code
from your your phone? So they have to
be watching you on a laptop or a
big screen for that to really work. So
you need to make sure you put that
QR code
in a place where if the actual mobile
user is gonna be able to get to
us. I always have the additional link there,
form to link to. But, that's what I've
(15:03):
kinda done with QR codes. But I do
always kinda wonder if they're ever gonna do
something to
get around that, like, you know, using a
QR code while you're already on your phone.
I have no idea how that would work.
It'd be nice if the you saw a
QR code in a video on your phone,
and you could just click on the QR
code and it would pick it up. Right.
(15:23):
But,
yeah, I don't know if I've gotten that
far yet. But again, you know, there's lots
of ways to market your show. One of
the fun things that you can do and
especially if you,
have some friends that are are influencers
is you can partner with a,
well, maybe a big influencer or even a
micro influencer,
collaborate
(15:44):
with them and,
have them help grow your show,
with their engaged audiences. Invite them to be
guests, share episodes, or simply recommend your podcast
to their followers.
That's that's always a bonus. You know, if
you know someone that has a great,
great presence, maybe they don't have a podcast
or maybe say, hey. I've got a podcast.
(16:06):
I'd like to have you listen to it.
And, you know, maybe make them a fan.
So that so it requires a little more
work. And maybe sometimes you have to write
a check too. But at the same time,
micro influencers
probably the cost to get a promotion is
is pretty low.
At the same time, you can engage in
Reddit and topic specific forums. I've always thought
(16:27):
this has been a very underutilized,
niche. And I'm not talking about going into
a podcast
or Reddit. I'm talking about going into your
specific
content topic forums
and, even on discord.
And it can be powerful for podcast promotion
if you're active in those groups.
And you can share insights and value without
(16:48):
spamming to build report and casually mention your
podcast
as as a resource.
And this might be another way to even
get guests for your show if you if
you do interviews.
Yeah. Finding the guests on there would be
really great. Another way
to market your podcast is with podcast specific
advertising
platforms. So Spotify
(17:09):
ad studio and overcast ads do this, dynamic
ad insertion, which Blueberry offers, and, you know,
we we've been doing
advertisements on and off for many, many years
with Blueberry.
One thing to think about on the over
cast ads is it's pretty effective,
for a relatively low
low cost. I know Marco's,
(17:31):
done that for years with his app, and
people have seen pretty good success. So don't,
don't listen. There's a few apps that additionally
that do that as well. I think
fountain is one where you can advertise. There's
a couple of them that allow it. Just
look into it. Go to the, podcast app's
website to see if they they offer that.
Of course, you can host special episodes
(17:52):
with listener involvement.
Listener co created episodes where you allow listeners
to submit questions, topics, or even short audio
clips.
Letting your audience be part of the creation
can increase excitement, incentivize them to share the
episode,
make them a producer,
Make them, you know, when they submit content
like that, you can always give,
(18:12):
give credit to always, and
it really allows people to become a big
part of the team and more likely to
share
the show.
And, of course, you have a monthly or
themed or guest takeover.
You can invite fans or guest host to
take over your podcast for an episode. Interesting
fresh perspectives
that appeal to new listeners while keeping your
(18:33):
current audience engaged. Now the only thing I
think about the guest takeover pieces, you need
to have someone that you can trust.
Use yeah. Usually, when I do guest takeovers,
it's someone that I have worked with or
podcasts that I'm familiar with and I'm friends
and they're willing to fill in for me
for an episode.
They still follow the same format, but they,
(18:56):
again, they give their own their own spin
on things.
And lastly,
we wanna talk about how you can leverage
your analytics to optimize
content and outreach.
So
this is
topic based targeting, going back to kinda what
we were talking about with geotargeting.
Yes. You can do geotargeting, but also if
(19:17):
you have
any demographic information
about your listeners,
you know, we provide an audience survey for
all podcasters to use to try and
gather that audience demographic information,
and then we integrate it into the stats
so that you can really see everything altogether.
(19:39):
But you can tailor future marketing efforts to
emphasize
specific topics that you know that they would
be interested in and appeal to new listeners
with similar with similar interests.
And alongside that,
time sensitive push notifications is really cool.
So you can do this
to your followers whenever a new episode goes
(20:00):
live,
timed around your high engagement periods
that you see within your analytics. You know,
we we tell you
how many people are listening within the first
couple days and, you know, what that drop
off is, how long they are listening to
your episodes. So all of this can be,
really useful for
optimizing your content to your audience. Now one
(20:22):
thing to remember too is people that are
subscribed
via certain podcast apps, they will actually do
a push notification
for you as well.
Apple Podcasts, if they are actually followed your
show, if you they follow it or subscribed,
they will get a push notification. If you
allow the Apple Podcasts app to do,
if the listener has allowed the the podcast
(20:44):
app to send notifications, they'll actually receive it
on their end saying, hey. There's a new
episode of exec show,
and they'll get that notification. But,
a lot of folks have even went to
the point where they are now
using a service where you can actually collect
their, mobile number and you can do an
SMS push through a third party service
(21:06):
that does require a subscription.
Some of those are are very inexpensive to
use,
when you have a low number of subscribers.
When the numbers get up higher, it can
be a bit costly,
but it is another way for you to
send a push notification to current subscribers to
say, hey. There's a new episode out. Make
sure you, you go listen.
So these strategies combine
(21:28):
creativity and activity and, of course, our platform
specific advantage is to reach a broader audience
while keeping listeners engaged and eager to share
your content. I hope you found one of
these of about 20 tips here,
maybe even 22, 23 tips,
useful.
Take 1 and try it.
Definitely check out the show notes because the
(21:48):
show notes will have
a broader breakdown of all of this for
you to review.
Yeah. If you try any of these out
and loved it or even if you hated
it, let us know, and we'll be happy
to go over it with you. Thanks for
listening to Podcast Insider.
Thanks for joining us. Come back next week.
And in the meantime,
head to podcast insider.com
(22:10):
for more information.
To subscribe, share, and read our show notes.
Check out the latest suite of services and
learn how Blueberry
can help you leverage your podcast. Visit blueberry.com.
That's blueberry without the e's because we can't
afford the e's.
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