Photo by Greyson Joralemon
The publishing and promotion phase is Step 5 of The Pod Paste Production Process. Please go back to the introductory overview here to familiarise yourself with the full process.
Alternatively, you can dive right into this part and figure it out as you go. We don’t mind either way as long as you get something out of this!
Mistakes can often be avoided if you double-check your perceptions
“Carpenters and builders have learned to avoid making mistakes the hard way, thereby ruining valuable and costly material. Cut the wood improperly, and the piece is unusable. The saying measure twice cut once plays in their heads every time they are about to rip into a new sheet of plywood or to position their saw on a 2×4.
It is a constant reminder that they have one shot at getting it right, or it will cost time, money, and even reputation. Measuring twice means making sure that one has thought of all the things that could go wrong before acting or making a decision. That maxim applies to human resource professionals as well.”
— Taken from Dale James Dwyer PhD
You’ve done all the planning and pre-production. You booked those hard to reach guests for interviews. You recorded in an excellent sounding studio space that was well treated and soundproofed. You even had a professional engineer come in to mix, master, and audio sweeten your episode. Now it’s time to send it to the world.
Did you do your due diligence and double or even triple-check that everything is in its right place? When the world hears your podcast, will your audio waves make the biggest splash they can?
Below I’ll share a few tips and tricks that should help you with the last step of the Pod Paste Production process – Publishing and Promotion. The areas we will cover are;
- Publishing The Episode | Listening on Platforms
- Show Notes
- Transcription
- Marketing Asset Creation
- Dedicated Podcast Website
- Email Marketing
- Social Media Marketing
- Advanced Tips, Tricks and Tactics
The order of this list is vital in how you will publish and market. You need to create the final episode first. Then distil the best pieces and sound bytes from that episode. Last, you send it out to the world with your best foot forward.
It requires a similar effort and works when you created the episode. This return on investment in your marketing strategy has been proven time and again to give linear returns. Your listener engagement increases as well as growth.
These best practices have helped us get our podcasts out to the right people (not just the most). The steps have also proven to garner the highest engagement and turn listeners into true fans that tell their friends creating a virtuous cycle.
Publishing The Episode | Listening On Platforms
Yes, I know, not too many people want to listen to their own two hour conversation for the third time. Let alone hear another “umm and ahh” verbal tick from their guest. But this is an extremely important step in the process. While I rarely recommend listening faster than 1.3 – I think it’s ok to do this at 1.5 or 2x to get it done quicker.
Have someone else that isn’t a part of the recording or editing process help you with this. The goals are;
- To listen in context to everything, making sure it flows well and all transitions are sharp
- Pay attention to any glaring issues (audio cuts out randomly, an effect was left on too long, an audio track was moved and overlaps, an edit wasn’t done correctly by your producer, etc.)
- Make sure all platforms play your track correctly. As of the time of this post being published, Apple Podcasts is mainly the only one to blame for this. They tend to be very slow with updates to an episode. Hopefully, by the time you read this, they will have sorted it out.
Show Notes
Many people don’t take advantage of this area. It’s a great way to hook in casual potential listeners and also help with the SEO of your podcast. Most don’t know its full potential and how to unlock it.
The below is taken from the awesome podcast production company, Pacific Content.
Front-load the most important details
Include the hookiest, most important human-readable details at the beginning of your show description
Write for humans
Podcast copy should take into account the humans who will read it:
- Be clear and concise
- Explain your show’s value
- Avoid repetition
Write for search engines
SEO can have a big impact on the performance and discoverability of your show and episodes.
Transcription
I feel many podcasters underutilize the power of the written word. Here are a few reasons why you should transcribe your episodes into copy/words.
Increase accessibility
Not everyone can access audio content, and 5% (466 million) people in the world have disabling hearing loss. Also, not everyone speaks English well, so do them a favour and put it in words they can read.
Improve your discoverability and SEO growth opportunities
With Google Podcasts jumping into the game, podcasts and podcast metadata now can be searched just like regular websites/articles. If you are on Google Podcasts, that means people can click and listen within a google search to your podcast.
People want to read
Reading is one of the easiest ways to consume content. You can do it without disrupting anyone else. More people are accustomed to reading than listening to a podcast. Work with the current, not against it.
Marketing Asset Creation
Your podcasts once transcribed can serve as a ripe foundation to create multiple pieces of content on different mediums. From one short podcast episode, you can create multiple images, quick text excerpts, videos, and blogs posts/articles.
Using audiograms (podcast video files) to help promote has proven to track well with podcasts we’ve worked with.
Audiograms are videos with static images that have closed caption text and moving waveforms. They are particularly engaging and can stem from the “highlights” of your podcast episode or series. This allows you to take advantage of the organic preferencing of video on social media platforms.
Dedicated Podcast Website
Having a dedicated podcast website is tremendously important. Again this is one of those glossed over “What, another thing? ” type conversations that we regularly have with clients. There is high value in having a dedicated website.
You can create blog posts out of your podcast episode. This helps with Google’s SEO ranking and visibility on the website. Your speech waveform audio now becomes tangible things that search engines can categorise.
Example – Someone is searching for information about training with heart rate monitors. My podcast “Master Of Some – Why I stopped training with heart rate” episode may come up in their search. The person can then just hit play right in their Google search and listen. If they like it, they can click on the website and now have the chance to become super fans.
A few reasons why you should have a website are below;
- Content Ownership. Ensure that you stand out from the crowd and deliver something unique and authentic.
- Content Archive. Having an organised searchable location for all your episodes can lead to gaining and retaining listeners.
- Additional Content. A website is a great place to offer more media and content for your listeners.
- Central Hub. Making one main place for your podcast and brand.
- Increase Discoverability. Google now ranks podcasts as equal to a website.
- Boost Your Brand’s Reputation.
- Monetization Opportunities.
Check out more info from Live365.com – click here to read the full article.
Email Marketing
Your podcast audience mostly lacks a face and name. You can’t easily send a direct message to some listeners like you can with social platforms.
Capturing your real fans by having a dedicated website (above step) and then retargeting them via email is a great way to market to the right people.
Podcasts can also integrate well into an existing email and EDM campaign (electronic direct mail). Transcribing episodes and using the image assets tell a story within your message to your existing fans.
Social Media Marketing
Once you’ve done all of the above, you can direct your focus towards a podcast centric media marketing campaign.
Social media marketing engages existing fans. The fans may not be able to keep up with every episode that you publish. These are subtle but important prompts to nudge them to go over and listen.
I’ve found the best thing is to keep it as easy as possible for them. Don’t assume your fans will take three steps to get to your episode. Don’t assume your listeners will want to search your podcast on their podcast player. Tell them to do it, how to do it and give them a direct link to listen.
Some tools and apps that work great for this are;
- Pod.link
- Linktr.ee
- Linkin.bio (Instagram marketing focused)
- Create a website landing page that does the below (This is our favourite as you have full control over your listener base, can capture email and then re-target back to your listeners)
As discussed earlier, there are other benefits to publishing social media assets like audiograms, videos, quotes, blog/transcription blurbs and images. These micro pieces of media arm your super fans with tools so they can spread your podcast gospel to their world. Ironically enough, word of (digital) mouth has been proven to be one of the most effective ways of growing and promoting your podcast to your target demographic.
Advanced Tips, Tricks and Tactics
A few advanced resources that may help out your own promotion and marketing efforts are below. Creating a full end to end media assault package based all around one long-form piece of content (the podcast episode) is possible and very effective. Although, it’s not for the faint of heart and can be a lot of work with many moving parts.
If you haven’t read the posts that came before this post, please go back to the overview and start from the beginning.
We can help you create, promote and grow your podcast in whatever way you need. Consistency in quality from the content, audio fidelity, and marketing assets are what we strive to assist people with.
Get directly in touch with us here to find out how we can help you with your next project.