Podcast Marketing: How to promote your podcast on social media

Sharon from the All God's Women podcast asks, "How can use social media to introduce audiences to your podcast and encourage them to subscribe, download, and listen to it?"

TL;DR
Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn can help you find new podcast listeners and provide ways for your existing listeners to share new episodes with their friends.

In this episode, we'll breakdown which podcast marketing strategies work best for social media and tell you what to include in your posts.

#1. Start with one platform

It's tempting to try and promote your podcast everywhere, but doing that will only stress you out and make you feel overwhelmed. Instead, choose the platform that's the most popular with your current listeners and focus on that one.

#2. Create teaser content

Rather than uploading your entire podcast episode to social media, focus on creating teaser content that whets their appetite and encourages them to listen to the full episode in a podcast listening app.

A good teaser post contains a visual element like graphic or audiogram, a hook like a question or statement to get them interested, and a direct link to go listen to the episode.

Check out Buzzsprout's Visual Soundbites to easily make short animated videos using your podcast audio.

#3. Which link should you use?

When promoting your podcast on social media, use a link to that particular episode on your podcast website. That way anyone can listen to it, no matter device their using, and they can look for the episode in their podcast app if they want to listen to it there instead.

Record your podcasting question at Speakpipe.com/Buzzsprout to be featured on a future episode.

Review Podcasting Q&A in Podchaser to let us know what you think of the show.

Keep podcasting!

Transcript

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Gilon : 0:00

In today's episode, you'll learn how to use social media to grow your podcast audience. Welcome to Podcasting Q&A, where you learn the best tips and strategies to launch grow and monetize your show. This week's question comes from Sharon.

Sharon : 0:14

Hi, I'm Sharon host of All God's Women podcast. My question is about social media, specifically, how to use social media in a way that not only introduces audiences to your podcast, but actually encourages them to subscribe, download or listen to it. Also, if we include links with our post what is best sending them to iTunes to our own website that has links to all the various platforms, or should we just tell them it's available wherever they listen to podcast? Thanks.

Gilon : 0:46

Thanks for your question sharing. social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn allow you to find new listeners as well as allow existing listeners to share new episodes with their friends. In this episode, we'll break down which podcast marketing strategies work best for you. Social media as well as what to include in your posts.

Gilon : 1:05

Tip number one, start with one platform. When you begin, it's very tempting to try to promote across every social media platform imaginable. That gets overwhelming very quickly. Instead, you want to figure out what platform is most popular with your listeners, and stick with that. If it's Facebook, create a Facebook group interact with your people there. If it's Twitter, find the hashtag that gets you the most interaction, the most traction, if it's Instagram, promoting the story so that new people can find you use hashtags. And that's what I do. I love Instagram. Instagram allows people to find me when I use hashtags. It allows current listeners to interact. And then people find the podcast just by those hashtags and the interaction and people can share. They can share your stories in their stories. They can share your posts in their stories. It's a really great way to get traction. So the most important thing is that you pick a platform you stick with it and you grow from there.

Gilon : 1:56

You may think that the best strategy is to put your entire episode on a social media platform, but actually you want to create teaser content and teaser content gives them a little soundbite, just a little snippet that wets their appetite to want to go listen to the rest of the episode wherever they listen on Apple podcasts or Spotify or what have you. So we're going to talk about what three things are included in every good social media post, the first thing that you need is a visual element. Right? So people are scrolling, they're reading whatever, if you post a picture that causes them to stop, and the idea is that they stopped, they listen, they read, they engage, and the picture of visual element helps them do that. So this can be a graphic, it could be a headshot of your guest, it could be an audiogram. The second thing that you need is a good hook. Think about what can I say to make someone want to continue listening to go check out the full episode. It could be a crazy stat, it could be a really good quote. It could be a couple bullet points that summarize the high points of the episode, whatever that thing is, put that in the caption to help encourage people to go check out the full episode.

Gilon : 2:54

And finally a link. You want to include a direct link to that specific podcast episode in your posts. If you nail all three of these elements, you'll not only intrigue new listeners, you'll also encourage existing subscribers to share your posts as well. You may be wondering which link should I use? You're going to want to use a link to that specific episode on your podcast website. That way no matter what device the person is listening on, they can hear that episode. No problem. If you use Buzzsprout podcast websites, we include embed player so that they can click the link and listen right there on the podcast website. Or we have links to a dozen different podcast directories so that they can go listen on their preferred podcast listening app.

Gilon : 3:36

Thank you for sending us your questions Sharon. If you have a question that you would like us to answer on a future episode of the show, just go to speakpipe.com/buzzsprout or click the link in the show notes and record a brief audio message. Make sure to subscribe to the Buzzsprout YouTube channel or the Podcasting Q&A podcast in your favorite app to get new episodes in your feet every week. That's it for today. Thanks for listening and as always keep podcasting