Podcast Social Media Strategy

Social media promotion is a valuable tool that all podcasters need to have in their marketing toolkit. While it is not as effective at growing your audience as asking your current audience to share your show OR appearing as a guest on other podcasts and mentioning your show, you need to promote your podcast in social media to reach audiences that live there. Social media marketing does not have to be hard either. You can use your podcast episode content to help you generate content to use in your posts, tweets, TikToks, web content like blogs, and much more.

In addition to advice and strategy, Emerald City Productions provides our clients on the Complete and Executive packages with social media design, creation, and scheduling to ease the load on you and/or your team. Feel free to check out our services at https://emeraldcitypro.com/podcast-production-services

How do I promote my podcast on social media?

1. Be consistent

Consistently posting for your audience 2 – 3 times per week shows them that you care about them and that they can trust you. Just like we recommend with podcast episodes, publishing consistently on social media is the key to successful growth and engagement there. Create a schedule for your social media posting and follow it.

2. Repurpose your podcast episode content

It is not a guarantee that your social media followers will be listening to your podcast episodes. So why not use share that content with your social media followers? Each of your episodes will yield at least 10 – 15 minutes worth of content if not much, much more. That results in thousands of words when transcribed. Use this wealth of content to create your social media posts and the media elements that go with them. Here are some quick and easy ideas for repurposing your podcast content.

– Use quotes to create graphics/images for your posts

Images were built for social media! Using quotes from your episode to generate quote-based visuals is the simplest way to accomplish this. Quotes should help your listeners understand the topic of the episode and stimulate their interest. Those quotes will be simple to find if your material is excellent! To quickly make quotation images that you can post on social media, try tools like Canva or WordSwag.

– Use short sound bites to create audiograms

It’s never been simpler to share podcasts on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn! As a podcaster, you produce a ton of audio content, and this audio is really advantageous because it is both content and entertaining information. 

You can’t just upload an audio file to your social networking accounts because MP3s aren’t supported by those services, and let’s face it, that would be extremely dull. However, you may use animation to transform your sounds into a video “audiogram”. Incorporating branded features in this way also allows for social media autoplay. Using a video application like Headliner.app, you can accomplish this on your own. Headliner is software that quickly turns audio into video with graphics, text, animations of waveforms, and more so that you can share it online. Currently we recommend that when using Instagram, you share your audiograms as stories or reels, NOT POSTS.

– Create video

We recommend that you record your podcast on video while also broadcasting live using a tool like Streamyard. Videos should be used to promote your podcast on social media even if you didn’t build a YouTube channel to have a video podcast.  Video can be used by podcasters in a variety of ways. You can clip 60 – 90 second long segments of your episode to share as a Reel or on TikTok and share short behind-the-scenes videos. To advertise episodes or to conduct Q&As after episodes have aired, you can host live streams. 

3. Find your audience and choose your platforms wisely

There are plenty of social media networks to choose from in the modern world. The trick is choosing those that will spread the news about your show the fastest. Will it facilitate communication with your audience? Would a real-time broadcast be helpful? Look into every consideration and decide what suits you and your personality the best. Instead of trying to spread yourself out across all social media platforms and failing to connect with the proper individuals, it is best to concentrate on a few and do them really well. 

4. Study your listeners behavior

See which types of posts your audience responsds to the most and which are performing the best by looking at your analytics on the platform you’re utilizing.

Which ones are receiving comments from your followers? Which ones encourage more website clicks? Test your material and be kind to your audience.

Knowing your audience well will help you decide which hashtag sets to use, what kinds of content to produce, and what kinds of content will result in sales, but before you can test and analyze, you must first commit to consistency.

It’s similar to focusing on the attendees at your party right now rather than waiting for more to show up.

5. Use tools provide by the platforms like hashtags

You have to incorporate podcast hashtags in your posts if you decide to promote your podcast on Instagram, Twitter, or even LinkedIn. Utilizing hashtags will increase the size of your audience and direct people to your material who are interested in that particular hashtag.  Find a few broad hashtags that best reflect the topics covered in your podcast and make one of your own that is branded to your podcast.  This hashtag will help you create your community and it can grow into a potent brand-building tool for your podcast. And start to incorporate it into your weekly CTAs in your episodes.

6. Build your community by engaging

– respond

The phrase “engagement” has become popular, but why is it significant and what does it entail? Being a leader who engages with your audience will help you stand out in an online environment when everyone seems to be shouting.

Has anyone commented? Reply with a comment to continue the dialogue. Does everyone always enjoy your articles or posts? Visit their profile and leave some love there as well. In your direct messages, promote conversation. Algorithms on all social media sites are created to show you stuff and people you are interested in as frequently as possible. The same holds true for your listeners. The platforms will display your material to your listeners if they think you are connected in a genuine way. You must acknowledge your followers.

– connect with guests and share

Create a plan now that has steps for how to leverage the influence of your guests. Request their social media handles when you book the interview. Follow them and promote that they are going to be on your podcast. Create social media graphics and posts that they can share on their social media once the episode is released. Thank them and continue to engage and support them on social media.

– contests/challenges/giveaways

If things are starting to move a little slowly in terms of growth, giveaways and competitions are a terrific method to boost engagement and draw in new viewers. Everyone gets excited about the chance to win, and the thought of receiving anything for merely liking and following is an easy ask. Additionally, it allows you the chance to connect with the winner and feature them. Each giveaway can be customized to your unique community by changing the prize, the way you want your audience to participate, and even the duration. Shorter time frames contribute to maintaining the excitement and anticipation surrounding the gift.

7. Promote your old episodes

Sometimes it can feel like your old podcast episodes are just sitting out there on the interwebs doing nothing. Well, you can get them to do some work for you and here is how to do that. You are going to build audience loyalty by relaunching or replaying old episodes. While many new listeners will go back and listen to all of your old episodes (I tend to see old episodes get 10 – 20% of new episode downloads each month), many new listeners will miss your best episodes because they discovered you at a later date. During the year, you can help your new listeners discover your best or most downloaded episodes by reissuing old episodes on your RSS feed in the form of replays, summer series, etc. As an added benefit, this can also give you a break from content creation from time to time. But don’t stop there. Promoting old episodes to your followers on social media can really help your downloads. 

1. Choose a batch of episodes, a series, or even just one episode that got a lot of downloads when it was first released.

2. Pick a date and brand it in some way (a title, a series name, etc).

3. Relaunch those episodes. This doesn’t mean republish the episodes in your RSS feed, it means promoting them again. 

Send an email to your list and create some social media posts and graphics. Maybe even create a landing page for the series with a downloadable PDF (lead magnet) to use as an opt-in for your email list. And if you had guests on these episodes make sure to tell them you are promoting them again so that they can help in sharing. And don’t forget to check all the old links, pages, resources, etc. Your best and most downloaded episodes can be a powerful growth tool. Republish and promote them routinely. If you already have a podcast, go right now and identify your top 5 episodes in total downloads. Make a plan to promote or replay them.

(Feel free to rearrange the questions below….and they don’t have to be used linearly back to back like this. You can weave them throughout the article. We just want to wrap FAQ schema around them.)

More FAQ’s About Podcast Social Media Strategy

Which social media is best for podcasts?

The best social media for your podcast is whichever platform your ideal listeners are most likely to hang out in and engage with you. We currently prefer micro content options like TikTok, Instagram reels, your instagram story, and others where we can share clips from actual podcast episodes. Do not hesitate to be creative and share your podcast content in channels that double as great search engines like Pinterest and YouTube. Search engine marketing can be a great place to use podcast episode content.

What is the best way to promote a podcast?

Promote your podcast by engaging with your ideal audience. On social media, that means asking questions, answering comments, responding to DMs and more. You as the podcast host need to show up in your content. This is why we like to repurpose episode content into social posts.

Should my podcast have a Facebook page?

If your audience is active on Facebook, you should have a page to provide them with content and a place to interact with you.

How do you grow a podcast on Instagram?

Currently, the best way to grow on Instagram is through reels. This may not always be the casebut this is the way Instagrams algorithms are currently growing audiences most rapidly.

How do I get my podcasts noticed?

Podcasts get noticed when the audience of the podcast is telling other people how much they a particular podcast and recommending it to them. Podcasts rarely go viral. They grow organically.

How do I drive traffic to my podcast through social media?

Whenever possible, share links directly to your episodes in social media whether the link goes to your site or a podcast app like Apple Podcasts.

Do you have to have social media for a podcast?

No you don’t though it is helpful. Many podcasts grow their audience more quickly by borrowing audiences from other podcasts by apprearing as a guest and directing other listeners back to your podcast. You can also encourage your current audience to share your podcast through their own social networks.

How can I promote my podcast without social media?

Borrowing listeners is the most effective strategy to advertise your podcast. In order to get some of those listeners back to your podcast episodes, you need figure out how to appear as a guest expert on other shows that are similar to yours. By demonstrating how to join various communities and connect with other podcasters, we aid in the promotion of your podcast. You also receive our tried-and-true press kit and podcast pitch templates. Additionally, you will discover effective ways to employ them.

Where does podcasting fit into a digital marketing strategy?

Podcasts are a huge kind of referral marketing because the majority of listeners view the broadcaster as a friend and trust the advice they offer. Because of this, practically every business ought to have a podcast. Your marketing strategy’s most effective instrument may be your weekly podcast episode. Podcasts attract a very devoted, amiable audience that many companies view as their main clientele. 93% of people who listen to podcasts consume all or almost all of each episode (source: Edison Research). The relationship between the podcast listener and the host is at the heart of most effective podcast marketing techniques.

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