Many podcast shows out there choose to bring in one-time or recurring guests to their shows. This practice can be often leveraged to help and grow your podcast. Leveraging your guest’s network is a reliable method of growing your podcast, as described in our previous article in this series.
The excess of social media platforms has introduced us to new trends. Likewise, podcasts have become a popular means of connecting to the audience all around the world. They are usually streamed through social networking apps such as Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube, etc. The ease of their streaming and the freedom of speech that it allows has made podcasts popular over time.
Growing ones podcast can be a complicated task, and we’ve discussed a bunch of strategies around it in our podcast marketing guide. There are countless of ways to grow your podcast, and besides creating a website for it and get organic traffic through search engines (check these resources for more details on podcast SEO or SEO consultancy), you can get the help from your podcast guests to grow it.
Whom you have invited in the podcast’s episode, or what will be the topic of discussion addon to its viewership. Here are some techniques that will help you in growing your podcast’s audience:
Leveraging Your Guests’ Audience
Your podcast guest can be a popular figure in their industry, even if they’re not huge celebrities or influencers; they will have their preexisting audience and social media audience. Since the podcast will be beneficial for you and your guest’s platform, you can both promote it equally.
Request your guest to post either images, snippets, or quotes from the upcoming podcast episode to grab their listeners’ attention and keep them ready to tune in once the episode goes on air. Making the most of your guest’s audience first would be the best move.
If your guests have their own websites, you may even get inbound links to your website, and this would help too with your podcast website SEO.
Networking and Some More Networking
Nothing works better on social media platforms than networking. No matter what sort of content you are hoping to promote, you can directly target the audience if your network is strong. Narrowing down your audience and reaching them directly has never been so easy. Make sure to network with the group that can help your platform grow.
The great thing about podcasting, is that it can be recorded remotely and this means you can invite guests from all around the world, and revolve around their own schedule. You can invite people you’ve never met in person or never even interacted with online, so that’s really a great tool to expand your private network as well.
Marketing Your Podcast with Guests
Beyond the regular podcast marketing tips we wrote about last time, there are some specifics when trying to leverage your podcast guests. Your number of listeners greatly depends on how you have marketed your content. Firstly, start promoting your podcast at least 4 or 5 days before the date of release. There are various ways with which you can get your audience’s attention, such as:
- Put a blurred picture of your guest and ask them to guess who would be the next guest on your podcast.
- Post the picture of your guest with a quote from the recent talk.
- Put promos and snippets from the podcast.
- Keep putting the small reminders for your audience before the episode goes on air.
- Also, request your guest to promote the podcast on their social media accounts.
The better and timely you market your content and podcast, the greater the number of viewers.
Connecting with Your Listeners
Making your presence known on social media is vital to promote your podcast rightly, even if you want to grow your audience through your guests. Spreading the word timely is essential to keep people waiting for your podcast episode to go live. Here is what you can do:
- Create a website for your podcast.
- Increase your network through multiple social media platforms.
- Use hashtags relevant to your content.
- Reply to any comments on your podcast website or social media.
- Keep posting new episodes and featured episodes on your social accounts.
- Reach out to other people in your network who can help you with the marketing efforts.
Creating Additional Content
You should have other options to make your content accessible for your audience, such as blog posts. Create an article or blog post from your podcast episode. You can add direct quotes and narrate the entire discussion and make it more interesting for your audiences. Additional content is always a great help!
Final Thoughts
We live in an age where everyone craves creativity and newness. The more effort you put in, whether it is about the content or the guest’s choice, the more popularity your platform will get. Podcasts have become a popular mode of information sharing over the past few years. Make sure to leverage your guests to market your own podcast, create interesting content, and feature them on your social media accounts or podcast website.
