When it comes to marketing your show on social media, there are some myths and misconceptions that lead to disappointment and missed expectations. And we don’t want that for you! So we are doing our best summary of how to pick the right social media platforms to market your podcast and how to use them effectively, with the right expectations.
In this episode Tiff and Christine explain the most strategic ways to pick which platforms to post your media on and how to understand marketing your show on each platform.
“Where you are putting your effort is where your numbers are going to come from.”
Tiff Tyler
Topics covered:
- (1:10) The importance of sticking with what you are good at
- (5:00) How to pick the platforms that market your show the best
- (15:40) Tips for managing your energy and time with marketing your show
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Links mentioned:
- Looking for pro support to build your podcast? Find out more ways to work with us!
- Tiff Tyler
- Christine Baird
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Many thanks to our production team
- Worthfull Media for audio editing
- Mosaico Productions for video effects
- Amela Subašić for artwork
Transcription of this episode:
(auto-generated, please forgive typos)
Christine (00:04):
Welcome to Think Like a Producer podcast. I’m your co-host Christine Baird.
Tiff (00:09):
And I’m your co-host Tiff Tyler. Being in the podcast industry, being in the content creation industry. This is what we learned, and this is how you can get out of your own way and get started.
Christine (00:20):
You name it. We’ve probably done it. This podcast is about bringing all the wisdom to you. Tune in weekly, to learn how to think like a producer.
Tiff (00:32):
Don’t have to hit anything cuz we’re already recording. Okay. Welcome to this episode of think like a producer. Well, today we are gonna talk about platform, um, and there are so many different ways that talk about this. We talked about on a previous episode, choosing audio versus video platforms. If you wanna go straight into audio with your podcast or if you wanna add YouTube and video into it. And so you can definitely check out that episode, that’ll be linked up here on our show notes and also on our YouTube description. If you wanna go in and like down that rabbit hole, but today we’re gonna talk about more so on the marketing and social media side of platforms and really just what it means to get all these people on these different areas to go and listen to your podcast and your show. And Christine’s gonna give you a very, very like statistical you numbers and different things for this episode.
Tiff (01:24):
We’re gonna go more so into the marketing side of your platforms and talking more so on. Just getting everybody from all the different places that you live on social media over to your podcast. Now we’ve kind of talked about this before, in a sense of like you, your, every audience is a little bit, right? You have your podcast, but getting people over there, some people might just wanna live on Twitter and not listen to your show. Some people might wanna live on YouTube and just watch and not listen. So choosing these platforms doesn’t necessarily mean that if you, you know, blow up on one of them, that means your podcast is gonna get these amazing numbers. And Christina’s gonna talk about that a little bit later, but first I just wanna emphasize. And what we wanna emphasize is sticking to what you’re good at. You know, for right now, I can talk about YouTube and Twitter, if you’re really good at Twitter.
Tiff (02:11):
And that’s something that you like, you enjoy tweeting, like knowing what’s going on and the latest, the greatest you’re really good at, you know, that one 40 to 200 characters, two 40, how many characters on Twitter now? Who knows it keeps changing. There’s so many, so yeah, you know, if you’re good at that platform, you like it every time they’re updating and changing new things, then we’ll get really good at that platform. If you love YouTube like me and just go down a rabbit hole of watching YouTube videos all the time, seeing how to improve your lighting or you know, how to improve even podcasting, all the stuff that you like, um, then engage with it. Community tab, uh, Instagram shorts, Instagram stories, um, people, you know, on that back, going back to the community tab, you know, are adding photos and different things that basically make YouTube feel like every other social platform combined into one because people can watch your full videos and see all the different ways.
Tiff (02:59):
Photos, short videos, every possible way you can market to people is on YouTube. Obviously I’m super biased cuz I like YouTube. But just if you were kind of like the kind of person that watches YouTube and you get overwhelmed or you don’t like having to do all those different things, you don’t have to be on YouTube or argument here, which is typically I think every episode is that you don’t have to do what everybody else is doing. You can stick to what you love the most. So like I said, if you like Twitter, stick to Twitter, if you like YouTube, stick to YouTube, but understand that where you’re putting your effort is where your downloads and numbers are gonna come from. Right? If you’re on Twitter and only one and third of what you’re talking about is your podcast and expect that a small percentage of those one third people don’t know why I said it like that, but a small percentage of those people are gonna actually go and listen to your show.
Tiff (03:49):
Same thing with YouTube. You know, if you’re posting your full podcast within, you’re also posting vlogs and different things, and you’ve got a multiple types of videos on your YouTube channel, then there’s a good chance that people are gonna watch that channel more so than listen to your podcast. So we’re gonna go through each platform and kick it off to Christine in a second, but keep in mind, you know, wherever you’re putting your focus and your attention, that’s where people are going. So, um, your podcast can be, I don’t think we talked about this yet. Christine, we might have maybe some more so on our membership, but your podcast can be something that you are testing things out on, right? Like you can just pull out your camera and pull out your mic and just start talking about a particular topic. And then if you realize that, oh man, that was actually really good.
Tiff (04:32):
Or my friends really like that. That’s something now I’m gonna throw on my Twitter and see what people are gonna use or something. I’m gonna throw my YouTube channel and see if people really like to watch. So keep in mind, wherever you’re putting your attention is where your audience is probably going to grow. But if you are someone who’s starting off, you’re in the beginning of your podcast, media journey, you don’t need to be on every platform. Like I said a little bit earlier, you could just choose what works best for you. So like I said, Twitter, short videos, photos, you coming up with something witty to say that a bunch of people are gonna retweet and then on YouTube, just a plethora of things that you can come up with. But right now shorts and stories are really, what’s getting a lot of attention from people. So if those are one or both of the platforms that you’re choosing, that’s where I would put my intention in Twitter. You wanna think about what are people gonna retweet and YouTube. You wanna think about that sixties? Second 32nd content that people are gonna watch over and over again on your YouTube stories. But Christine, what are some other platforms we should be thinking about?
Christine (05:31):
Well, to state the obvious Instagram and Facebook, which likely if you’re listening or watching this episode, you are active on those platforms. Especially if you have an existing brand. Now there are a bunch of things we could talk about marketing on Facebook and Instagram, but we’re gonna keep this episode really focused on marketing your podcast on social media platforms. And we’re gonna keep this concise because here is the truth. Podcasts were never really designed to be marketed on social media. You have to consume a podcast on another platform. Besides social media, Facebook did very recently roll out the option to now let people listen podcast right within your Facebook page. So that is like the first step into that world. We’ll see what comes from that. It’s still very early. We don’t really have the data yet to see how that’s gonna pan out. But barring that there has always been a breakdown between people on social media, leaving those platforms to then go listen to your podcast and an entirely different app or a website.
Christine (06:39):
So just to make it clear, the effectiveness of marketing your podcast on social media is pretty limited to just brand awareness. It’s effective because people keep seeing you post about your podcast and being like, oh yeah, they have a podcast. Oh yeah, it looks cool. But likelihood that they’re gonna leave the platform to go listen right now, extremely low. And the numbers show that never have I ever seen any numbers, that there was just like wild conversions from an Instagram post about your podcast and then led people to go download it. All the other episodes we’ve recorded this season about marketing. Your show are telling you how to get people, go listen to your or show and market it. But it doesn’t mean you should skip social media when it comes to marketing your show. I just want you to have expectations that are clear.
Christine (07:27):
I’m not looking to get increased downloads from marketing my show on social media, I’m looking to build brand awareness, build social proof, build up a brand for the show that can open more doors for me to get more opportunities, whether it’s through sponsors or guests or collaborations or just social proof. So with that said, let me just give you a few ideas. Like I just mentioned Facebook very recently within the last couple of months made public the feature to be able to actually sync your RSS feed, which is how any podcast platform will subscribe to your show and let people listen to it. You can now connect the Facebook page for either your brand, your business, or if you have a page just for your podcast, you can connect that now so that people can actually listen to your episodes right there on Facebook. It’s a very new feature.
Christine (08:14):
There’s still a lot of, you know, many things remain to be seen about whether will take off whether people will love it, whether it’ll work well, but it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try it, obviously a new product like that. It’s really easy to integrate you pretty much just connect your RSS feed to the spot in Facebook, uh, where, and I’ll link in the notes, the kind of page where you can go through Facebook to know how to do that. So that would literally be the most effective way to you market your podcast on Facebook right now, because it’s a brand new feature. They’re highlighting it, they’re promoting it. It lets people listen in app. That’s pretty great. There’s obviously all kinds of content you can share on Facebook about your podcast. But like Tiff said, just like with YouTuber, Twitter, the only thing that makes sense to spend your time doing as far as promotions on Facebook for your podcast is the kind of content that Facebook is currently promoting.
Christine (09:05):
So whatever the algorithm likes right now is the only thing you should really create from your podcast to then promote on Facebook and, and also connect your actual podcast RSSV to your Facebook page so people can listen. That’s all I would do on Facebook right now. The nice thing about Facebook is you can include a link straight to your podcast, where to listen to it, like let’s say you don’t wanna get involved with Facebook’s in app new feature. And you just wanna drive people to your show notes age for people to listen right on your website, which is very smarts. And it brings them off of the platform you don’t own onto the platform you do own. You know how we feel about that? We’ve talked about it before. The nice thing is with Facebook post, you can just include the link right there and people can click it.
Christine (09:50):
So that’s the main thing, whatever content you are sharing, whatever Facebook is promoting, whether it’s their stories or their lives or their posts or their videos, whatever the flavor of the day is, you know how this goes. Um, make sure to link directly to either the episode on Facebook, if you wanna play around with that tool or the episode on your show notes page, okay. Instagram also owned by the same company as Facebook now called meta is pretty hot right now, still for most people and brands that podcast, the big downside of, uh, Instagram is you can’t link in your posts. You can link in your stories now for everyone, which is really cool. They’ve taken off the restriction that you had to have, I think 10,000 followers to do that. So stories you can link directly out to your podcast on your show, note page, or if you’re promoting it on a certain app.
Christine (10:42):
So that’s used that of course. And the only thing that Instagram’s really pushing right now is reals. This is December, 2021. So we all know how these social media platforms work. It changes all the time, but as of December, 2021, it’s about Instagram reels. And they’ve announced publicly this year, that Instagram is now a video first platform. So the content that they’re gonna be featuring, promoting and favoring will be video content. Now I have seen all kinds of content made over the years for Instagram and various levels of success. But I’m gonna say the same thing I said about Facebook they’re is no point in wasting your time making like little quote cards and um, long form videos and, uh, audio wave form things like all of that is gonna take second place to reels right now because reels is what Instagram’s promoting. So if you’re looking to just build brand awareness, reach as many new people as possible, you should really just be making reels and stories cuz people can click directly through the story to get to the episode to listen.
Christine (11:47):
However, if you’re trying to just build up like some kind of social proof on your Instagram page, and you just wanna be able to see a nice grid that shows thumbnails of your podcast, then that might make a lot of sense. I’m not saying don’t post the videos and clips from your show. If you want your feed to nicely. When someone lands on your Instagram page, we kind of know Instagrams become almost like a landing page age for everyone’s brand. You know, you meet someone new that hear someone hears about you. They’re like, oh, whether who, where are they on Instagram? It’s a way they can just quickly glance and get kind of a highlight reel of your brand. So having posts on your feed, isn’t bad for that. Like that is still really helpful. It builds your social proof. It helps people get the picture in a quick glance.
Christine (12:31):
The likelihood they’re actually gonna go through and watch those clips pretty low one because the algorithm’s not promoting them right now. And two, because you know how it goes on social media, quick scroll everything about like the real, which was taken from TikTok. So the same thing would apply to TikTok is like a very quick feed. That’s just like going, going, going. So that’s like the current moment on Instagram, but that’s gonna change in six months or sooner. So take it with a grain of salt. Yes. It’s valuable to have posts from your podcast in your feed so that people can understand quickly when they find your page. Oh cool. They have a podcast and it looks nice, but do not count on those host to convert listeners. Like that’s just not how it works. The reels will be much more of a tool to get out to new audiences.
Christine (13:22):
Like Instagram’s way more likely to show your reels to people who don’t follow you. Stories let you link directly to the episode off the platform. It’s the same concept we’ve been talking about the whole episode. But again, we’ll say it one more time. Only use the platforms you are good at. You enjoy and you can focus on, understand the algorithm and play to it. If you try and do what you’ve seen everyone else do for the last three years, you will burn out. You’ll not do a good job. You’ll waste your time and you’ll be real disappointed with your reach and your metrics. And I think I’ll, I’ll wrap it there. The same advice we just gave for, uh, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. You can apply to Pinterest. You can apply to TikTok. You can apply to Snapchat, Twitch. What are the other ones?
Christine (14:07):
Anyway, whatever hot new social media platform is out there. You can apply these same principles. We’re just kinda giving you the top four that are most popular. If you know your audience is way younger, then you should be all over TikTok and like learn and become amazing. Like it’s your native tongue at TikTok and then create podcast content that looks really good on TikTok. Do it like that’s smart. If your audience is not on TikTok, because they’re a different demographic, you don’t don’t need to waste your time right now over there, just promoting your podcast. Maybe you decide to be on TikTok for another reason, another part of your brand. But I think the pitfall and maybe to, if you can weigh in here, cause I’m interested in your thoughts is that people who have established brands and they have a podcast and they’re like, the podcast is the way I’m gonna promote my brand.
Christine (14:55):
They’re like, I just need to blast it everywhere. No, like that is a total waste of time and resources. Um, there is a certain level of value simply, like I said, for social proof for the quick Lance, the new person finding you being like, oh cool, they have a podcast outside of that. This can be like a real big money pit time pit energy pit. So I don’t know if you have any other thoughts, Tim. I really got a little, I got a little feeling about that because I’ve had my own journey with social media this year and kind of going under the hood and deciding what I personally wanna do with it as a promotional tool. But those are my takes about the effectiveness of consciously picking platforms to promote your podcast. Did you have other thoughts? I feel like I started to tee something up and then I got lost in my
Tiff (15:42):
. I know thoughts, but am I, when I jumping in here, I guess, uh, what I was thinking about as you were talking is just so I filmed an event, uh, about a month ago. That was a graduation for people who were actually in like a social media program. And it was really cool. All women, no offense to guys, but all women and a very interesting environment. There was a guest speaker there. And one thing he said, I thought that was, it was a guy, a guest speaker, but one thing that he said that I thought was really interesting is that he was talking about your move when you’re posting, I’ll make this really quick. But when we, as Christine and I are talking, you know, you could either be really encouraged right now about all the possibilities or you could be really overwhelmed by everything you could possibly do.
Tiff (16:23):
And not really sure about when to post and you could be someone that’s kind of consistent for three days and all of a sudden you fall off. Right? And one thing he said was capitalize on wherever your energy is right now. So we talked about whatever platform you really like to consume on capitalize on that. If today you’re feeling like you are in a content making mood, then make four or five pieces of content that can last you for the rest of the week, instead of just one and hopping in on the comments, right. Maybe spend just the first 30 minutes or an hour when you post something new on the comments, but then really take that energy and make more posts for the future. And if today you are just not feeling it and you’re not in the mood, don’t force yourself to put out something because you see other people posting.
Tiff (17:08):
So, you know, our show is definitely about, you know, emotional intelligence in addition to the podcast intelligence and things that we give out to everyone. So I thought that was really cool. And that’s something I wanna take in, even for what we’re doing here. I think like a producer, knowing that every day’s gonna be a little bit different, but capitalize on how I’m feeling right now and what is bringing me the most joy at this current moment. So I think that’s a cool way to wrap up this episode. So if you wanna get more into details about analytics and how to tell the demographics of your show and all the great things that are inside of Christine’s brain, my brain too, but mostly Christine, uh, you can check out our membership. The link is in the show notes. It’s just more in depth, uh, lessons and tutorials for people who are a, a little bit further along in their podcast journey. That’s it. Thank you so much for listening and watching and we’ll see you on the next episode of think like producer.
Christine (18:01):
Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Think Like a Producer. This has been a Worthfull Media production. Massive thanks to our team who makes the show possible. Worthfull Media for audio editing, Jorge and Veronica from Mosaico Productions for video effects and Amela Subasic for our amazing artwork and graphics.
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