Don’t overlook these helpful tips to grow your podcast
There’s a lot being said among advertisers over short form content lately. It’s undoubtedly the quickest growing segment in social media today, and the most hotly contested. With YouTube Shorts posed for victory in the war, it still gets steep competition from TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram. However, short-form video, let’s be honest, is still fun and games. Until there’s a clear way to monetize it, for marketers it should still be primarily viewed as a funnel to greater content.
Like blogs, vlogs, and podcasts.
Podcasts especially are still growing and capture the largest market share. Due to long commutes, work out schedules, and so forth, they are tapped for entertainment at times when the other media cannot be touched. Which is a lot of time.
Plan your show
Unless you’re a current events show, you should be able to plan your content ahead of time. If you know what show is going to air in one month, then that’s more time you have to prepare the marketing content. Which is of the utmost importance. You want to give yourself time to create and edit the show, as well as all the thumbnails and covers that you’ll need. And you’ll also want to perfect a workflow: Find the easiest to use program for you, develop some templates, and run with it.
Even a news show can benefit from some levels of planning. Having templates for both video and audio, and taking advantage of other quick edit services (like Smartsound Cloud for your audio), can save your time and turn posting your latest project into a practice in easy-riding.
Create an integrated approach
Don’t see your podcast as only being a podcast. Develop content for other media to draw viewers into your content. Finding clever soundbites in your show, or high points during your interview, is pivotal in creating good cross content.
Clips from your show can be used in short-form video. You can also film the recording of your podcast and release it on video format. Likewise you can have a different show on YouTube – one that provides a brief analysis or coverage of the situation you go into more detail in your podcast.
You’ll also want your own webpage to list all of your content and products and tie them all together in one presentation. This way your fans have somewhere to follow and always be up-to-date, but also it provides a venue to sell additional things and place affiliate links (see below).
Create an intro and outro
An intro is a powerful device. Many people press skip when the intro doesn’t hit quite the right way. It needs to be long enough to be engaging and set the mood, but short enough to not make people bored and think, “I didn’t come here to listen to music.” I’ve found that 15-20 seconds is the best range for this.
Introduce your show and yourself. Say in both a general level and a more specific level what your show is about. What is the general idea of the show and what is that episode about.
For the outro, do a brief summary of the outline and let the music ride you out.
Looking for great, customizable and royalty free music for your show? Check out Smartsound Cloud for a huge collection of tracks and sound effects perfect for intros, outros, transitions and more.
Properly segment your shows
Don’t just drag on about this or that. Divide your shows into clear breaking points. The more it resembles a book or an issue in your favorite journal, the better. Each “chapter” or section needs to be focused and on target. Random banter risks disengaging your audience… and losing them.
Use ads when they’re least expected
There was a trend that ads would just be placed in the front of a podcast. This is a bad approach. Not only does it cause people to skip ahead, it often causes people to skip the podcast altogether. Instead, you want to trickle your advertising in throughout the podcast.
Make ads a part of the entertainment
A growing trend in advertising is for the advertiser to let the podcaster or vlogger do the advertisement for them. And even better if you can make it engaging and interesting, and even some how tie them into the show. Remember, the more people who click those ads, the more money you’re getting, so make sure to make that content fun and engaging.
Use the right mics
Don’t cut corners on your microphones. This is perhaps the most important part of recording your show. Invest in a good microphone (or set of microphones depending on how many people you plan on having speak) and it will take you far. For your desk, you’ll most likely want a cardioid or hyper-cardioid, depending on how you want your microphone to be set up in relation to your camera. The first gives a tighter area of pickup, while the second is a bit wider and lets you push the microphone off-side a bit. If you want to have a more live setting, a figure-eight might be better, to sit between you and a guest. If you’re on the road, you might want a microphone you can pin to your lapel, or a “lavalier microphone”, rather than depending on the mic on your mobile.
The type of microphone that you want all depends on the type of show and your environment. For noisier environments, especially those in a home studio, you’ll want to be more considerate. The more purpose-made microphones – that might generally be worse microphones than studio mics – might even be better for you in that situation.
If you’d like to read more on mics, check out our blogs on the subject.
Treat your room
If you’re a beginner, I wouldn’t worry too much about treating your room. There are some minor things that you can do to improve your situation, but this quickly becomes an impractical money pit, especially if you busy yourself consulting the more enthusiastic circles online. Start small. Think of your desk positioning. Where is your microphone pointing and where are you speaking towards? Those two things are where you should be considering most in containing the reverb.
But you also don’t need professional sound padding on the wall behind you, for example. A curtain, some soft furniture like a sofa, can all help tremendously. Same with where you are speaking towards. Buying a twenty dollar little foam container for your microphone can even help in that regards. But whether you need this or not also depends on the type of microphone you have.
We’ve some tips for you to treat your room on a budget on this blog.
Monetize your content
Don’t lose any chance to get that money rolling. Of course, you’re unlikely to make money directly from your podcast from the start. It’s even more likely that you’ll have to sink some money first, and there’s no guarantee on return. If anything, you’ll need to be a bit more creative in this department. But always remember the second bit of advice on this blog: Follow an integrated approach. It might be that the blog itself doesn’t make money, but the things that go alongside your blog do.
Some ideas:
- Affiliate marketing – A good way to start out. Find some websites that are related to your content. Typically you don’t even need to reach out to them to make a deal. You’ll get money per link to their webpage. Don’t be too annoying in your content about this, but be sure to mention the links once or twice.
- Beg for money – There are some great income generating venues that allow generous people and eager new fans with access capital to send it your way, known as crowdfunding. Buymeacoffee and Patreon come to mind here. Be sure to set up a page (and this might even work as your primary webpage). With Patreon you can even come up with different tiers of benefits, whether this means adding some time to chat on Discord or giving out some occasional free merch.
- Merchandising – It’s super easy to create t-shirts, stickers, and so on these days on sites like TeePublic. There’s really no reason not to. Slap your logo, or some funny phrases/memes from your show on there. Also some parallel content that doesn’t necessarily have your logo on it that other people (non-fans) can wear and enjoy. This can also be used in the crowdfunding bit.
- Sponsors – After you’ve been going a little while, people will start offering you sponsorships. These will be small at first – sometimes you’ll just get the product. They’ll be bigger the more quality content you put behind your sponsorships, and be sure to make it clear how to reach you. Be sure to focus on those products that are relevant to your content, and never pay to sponsor someone (there are a lot of scammers that offer “discounts” for you to sponsor their product).
- Offer services – Offer related services. This is where your webpage comes in. Make sure you have advertisements to the other professions you’re interested in.
- Books – After doing a podcast for a year, you should have plenty of knowledge to write something substantial on a subject. So don’t waste your time, do it! You don’t even need a publisher, Amazon will publish it for you for free (well, a 30% cut, but it’s nothing upfront and better than most publishing companies). You can then advertise it on your podcast and webpage.
Use stock music
Make sure your podcast doesn’t sound dull and silent. For all your intros, outros, and transitions, as well as any downer moments, add some audio! But do worry about royalties. When you’re using sound effects or music, you usually have to pay the creators of that – someone had to make it after all.
How can you be sure that you’re using royalty free content? Use a service that focuses on just that. Smartsound Cloud is then for you. All its music and sound effects are 100% royalty free, so you don’t have to worry about getting kicked off of your podcast service or YouTube.
Smartsound Cloud is pretty fun to use too. You can take a track, change the length and watch it work its magic as it “rewrites” itself to the length. While no AI were used, as our own composers and arrangers actually wrote all sorts of variations to account for length changes. That’s all handled behind the scenes and with an algorithm though. On top of that, you’ve got the ability to change the mix and variation, so if you don’t quite like the instrumentation or arrangement, check out a different version or make some adjustments.
Sum up
If you’re about to begin your podcasting journey, or just started, good luck! It’s going to be hard before it gets good, so stick in there. And keep in mind all these tips that can help you move along easily and grow your audience (and money). Happy podcasting!
