Helping Listeners Find Your Podcast 📍
Helping Listeners Find Your Podcast 📍
Discoverability tips and tricks for podcasters
Hello Besties!
A couple of months ago, I had the pleasure of moderating a panel entitled “Fact vs. Fiction: How Do You Effectively Boost Discoverability?” at Podcast Movement. It was a dream scenario — the chance to ask savvy industry pros how to stand out in an increasingly competitive field. James Carbary, Ray Chao, and James Cridland offered some excellent practical advice for podcasters, which I’m currently implementing. Today I want to share these learnings with you.
Panelists:
James Carbary, founder of Sweet Fish Media, a podcast agency for B2B brands
James Cridland, editor and publisher of Podnews
Tips for smaller podcasts trying to stand out among the big players:
James Carbary: Go more niche and more focused. Getting more specific and granular is a great way to gain traction and stand out from the bigger players. Can you be ESPN with Sports Talk Radio? Probably not. Can you be ESPN at covering the minor league team in your town? Probably.
Ray Chao: Focus on first principles and focus on quality. Marketing tactics are secondary after you figure out what your show is and why people should be listening to it every week. How can you become an essential part of someone’s crowded media diet? Spend 75-85 percent of your time making a differentiated, best-in-case show that you’re proud of and that listeners will want to tell their friends about — this applies to podcasts of all sizes.
James Cridland: I think Ray is absolutely right. Be clear what your show is about and what your proposition is, and make that clear in your press release. (A more substantial premise than, say, “a TikTok star talking to her friends about life” is ideal.) By the way, anyone can send a press release, not just the majors. It’s surprising how few press releases I get from independent podcasters. Focus on getting your podcast name right — you don’t need to include the word “podcast” in your title (that actually makes it harder to find)! And finally, make sure you’re on all the podcast players and directories, not just Apple and Spotify.
➡️ Read James Cridland’s recent Podcast Bestie Q&A for more tips on naming your podcast.
What’s press release worthy?
James Cridland has three categories:
Brand new show
New season
Newsworthy episode or hook (i.e., something that makes it into a news story like it’s your 100th episode or you are doing this particular episode from the Sahara Desert, or underwater, or naked)
Send a photo with your press release — preferably something engaging that has a human being in it.
➡️ Read Jame Cridland’s guide to “How to send the best press release in the world.”
Creative ways to approach podcast discoverability through marketing:
James Carbary: The amount of podcasts (2.5 million?) relative to the number of YouTube channels (51 million) or the number of blogs (over 600 million) is considerably smaller. When you look at it through that lens, it’s a lot easier to stand out in podcasting than many other channels. That’s the upside of podcast discoverability.
But that doesn’t change the reality that podcast discoverability is still really hard, and there are other channels where discoverability is easier. So you’ve got to figure out how to get good at these other channels that are easier from a discoverability standpoint. I’ve seen people win with SEO. How can you create written content that ranks on Google when people are searching topics surrounding your show? (Finding the blog article, then subsequently your podcast.) We’ve won big on LinkedIn — the organic reach you can get from creating content about your show on LinkedIn is another way to go.
I agree with Ray; you have to spend an inordinate amount of time on the front end making the show so good someone listening will want to tell a friend about it. There’s not enough time spent in show development thinking about the hook. At Sweetfish, our team likes to look at massive shows, and we dissect the episode format, what segments they have that we could riff on, etc. So I’d say be thoughtful about show development and get really good at least one other channel with better discoverability.
Ray Chao: At Vox, we spend a lot of time thinking about: who is that person who’s going to tune in and be excited about the show and how we reach that person. Think about your target audience: What other shows are they listening to? What else is in their media diet? What kinds of messages are going to resonate with them? Then you can devise the right marketing tactics to target that audience and do more intentional, deeper marketing collaborations vs. a spray-and-pray approach.
James Cridland: Start with the very basics of what is the description of your podcast. I’m always surprised by many people who will spend a lot of time launching a new show, and then in the description field, they will just write a sentence. Get a good paragraph in there. Most podcast apps will search through the description, title, and episode title, so make sure that you have relevant information in those fields that indicates what your show is about and why someone should listen. Don’t title your episode something like “Episode 44” — how will that help people find you?
➡️ Read the Podnews article “How people find your podcast in apps - who indexes what?”
How can the listening platforms help with podcast discoverability?
James Cridland: The platforms can help by holding people’s hands into a new and unfamiliar show. The good podcast listening platforms have editorial teams dedicated to choosing the shows they want to promote. Apple Podcasts does a great job with that.
Another way listening platforms can help would be making search better. For example, Apple Podcasts doesn’t search podcast episode descriptions — it could be a better search if they included that info. Listening platforms could also improve search by including transcripts.
Trailers aren’t being used enough by podcast platforms, either. Why aren’t they using the Netflix or broadcast TV model of automatically serving up a suggested trailer after you’ve finished a similar show?
Besides Apple Podcasts, other listening platforms are trying interesting things that may help discoverability. Pocket Casts is doing bespoke editorial stuff for individual countries outside the U.S. Fountain is displaying podcast clips listeners have clipped up as recommendations to others on the platform.
Awareness is a primary goal for many brands that use podcasting as a marketing tool. How do you ensure your clients are getting discovered by their target audience?
James Carbary: First and foremost, you have to ensure the show is good. You can do all the marketing tactics in the world, but if the show sucks, nobody will want to listen.
Sweetfish has recently started experimenting with Mowpod’s programmatic advertising via banner ads based on SEO targeting. That’s helpful for shows who want to climb the charts and also helps with visibility.
Try Googling “top podcasts about [whatever your show is about]” — so for us, it’s “top podcasts about B2B marketing” — and find the articles that rank in the results, then go to those blog writers and ask how can we get our show on this list. Maybe you offer to feature them or their blog in a particular episode; there are creative ways to go about doing this.
Another thing that helped our show tremendously was how we named the show: B2B Growth: Your Daily B2B Marketing Podcast. Having keywords in the title helped the show rank highly on Google and podcast players. As more and more podcasts enter the ecosystem, obviously, that gets tougher. But show naming is a tangible, low-hanging fruit. Avoid keyword stuffing, but try including your keyword in a thoughtful tagline; it’s been effective for us.
➡️ Read James Carbary’s book Content-Based Networking: How to Instantly Connect with Anyone You Want to Know.
How do you leverage your network to cross-pollinate and grow shows? And how can indie podcasters take advantage of this form of marketing?
Ray Chao: We’re using two main strategies at Vox on the cross-pollination front outside of what’s obvious: running cross-promotions and audio advertising across your network. First is organic, editorial collaborations, like guest swaps on two business shows or an episode collaboration between the two podcasts, that help listeners of one show discover another. Lately, we've been trying to do more unexpected editorial collaborations. I’ll give you two examples.
Example #1: We have a business show called Decoder with Nilay Patel and a music criticism podcast from Vulture called Switched On Pop. They did a collaboration episode about the business of pop music. It was an incredible episode. If you were to look at a Venn diagram of those two podcasts and their listener base, the listener demographics and audience profiles are actually quite similar, but there wasn’t a lot of pre-existing overlap because the topics are so different. So that was really fun editorial collaboration and a successful marketing tactic.
Example #2: We have a food podcast called Gastropod and a history podcast called Now & Then, and they did a collaboration episode together about the history of Halloween candy. Again, it came about organically, and both shows wanted to do it absent the marketing value, but that delivered a lot of marketing value, as well.
The second thing we’ve been trying to do is leverage non-audio platforms. Like at Vox, we have huge web, video, and social audiences. We’ve spent a lot of time and energy thinking about how to use those platforms to build awareness and create a moment for the show. It’s not necessarily going to translate to a download immediately, but that can translate in the medium and long term to a bigger audience and greater podcast discoverability.
If you have a podcast, organically build relationships with other podcasts you love and respect. And in time, look for interesting, creative ways to work together.
Critical marketing tactics that are being ignored:
James Cridland: Promote outside of podcasts. (In this case, you’re gonna want to say it’s a podcast.) It always surprises me how few podcasts advertise on public transportation like trains or buses, which is exactly where people listen to podcasts.
Use smart QR Codes. People understand how to use them now, (no) thanks to the pandemic. The most important thing is just getting people to listen to your show; make it easy for them.
➡️ Podnews has a whole “podcast ads in the wild” series, featuring posters, postcards, and even an airplane dragging a podcast ad through the sky.
Ray Chao: People don’t spend enough time talking about what happens after the launch. When we launch new podcasts, we spend a lot of energy on show piloting, making a good show, thinking about the launch planning, sending James a press release, etc. Then it’s like three months, six months, a year, six years down the line — you’ve built a loyal audience, and you’re feeling good about the show, but what are you doing on a consistent basis to continue to market the show? Every year there are millions and millions of new podcast listeners (as evidenced by the Edison charts); those are new potential listeners to your podcast. So if you’re not marketing your show on an ongoing basis, those listeners are going to the other shows they’re seeing promoted.
So how can you make a moment around an older podcast? Much of that comes down to the content and the creative execution of the show. For example, The Vergecast is one of Vox’s older shows that’s been around for more than ten years, but all sorts of tech events happen every year. Just because the show is old doesn’t mean the content is stale; in fact, it’s incredibly relevant and fresh. So if the show covers a new Apple event or a trending story like Elon Musk is trying to buy Twitter, we try to package that up in a way that signals to listeners that the content is fresh and relevant and attracts new listeners to The Vergecast.
James Carbary: Income School teaches this SEO methodology that uses Google auto-suggest to find topics that people are searching for related to your podcast. They call this Google alphabet soup. You just run down the alphabet, and the exercise gives a great jumping-off point to understand what your listeners are searching for and create content in service of that. We’re in the B2B space where this tactic is especially relevant.
This panel was sponsored by Quill, Inc. Thank you so much to Fatima Zaidi for this awesome opportunity! 🙏
General Assignment Reporter (full-time) at WYPR | Baltimore, MD
Reporter/Producer (full-time) at The Ohio Newsroom | Anywhere in Ohio
Podcast Project Coordinator at ABF Creative | NYC/NJ or Oakland, CA + Remote Hybrid
Producer, Podcast Docuseries (full-time contract) at Angeleno Audio | Remote or LA, CA Hybrid
Researcher, Podcast Docuseries (full-time contract) at Angeleno Audio | Remote or LA, CA Hybrid
UpFront Producer (full-time) at KPFA | Remote
Military and Veteran Affairs Reporter (full-time contract) at KPBS | San Diego, CA
Spring 2023 Audio/Podcasting Internship (part-time) at Proximity Media | Remote
Host/Reporter (full-time) at KDLG Public Radio | Dillingham, AK
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So… ROLL CALL! 🗣
What’s been the best podcast discoverability hack for your show? And what’s your favorite tip from this panel that you’re eager to implement?
Follow me @courtneykocak on Twitter and Instagram. For more, check out my website courtneykocak.com.