Brian Baltosiewich
You?re podcasting! Welcome to the club. Now how do you get people to listen? Let?s say, hypothetically, you?re not a national figure with bottomless pockets and millions of built-in listeners. Start with the local markets you worked in. Send releases to everyone you can think of in the media in those markets. Podcasting is unique enough and it?s early enough that you may be breaking new ground in those markets. That alone is worthy of a feature, and you?ll probably get it, especially if you were a name in that market. At least you?ll get a few lines in the local paper.
Make sure all your friends know what you?re doing, get them to talk about you to their friends. This is grass-roots, and you have to mobilize all of your troops. If your family won?t spread the word, well, then you have bigger problems than I can help you with. Make sure your podcast is available through as many sources as you can find. iTunes, Stitcher, etc. Look up podcast aggregators and get on them. As we talked about before, it would be great if you could just have your own site where listening became this cool exclusive club, but that?s just not the world we live in. Your listeners, once they?re turned on to you, will want you the way they want you and you have to accommodate them or they will find someone else- and quickly.
Finally, say what you will about social networking, but the fact is it works and you can reach a LOT of people FREE. You have to work at it. It could be your full-time job, frankly. To be successful at social networking you must interact with your listeners and be witty and stand out in the crowd. Some of your followers on Twitter, for example, will be following hundreds if not thousands of other accounts. Research things like hashtags and @ messages to rise above the rest. Use them to attract listeners interested in specifically the things you are talking about in your podcast.
You don?t have to get caught up in all the different social networking options, in fact, you won?t be able to. There are just too many. Focus on the most popular- Facebook and Twitter. Use them to drive people to your podcast, don?t just be content with getting followers and ?likers?? you have to drive them to your product.
Above all that, though? be consistent. Be there when you tell listeners you?re going to be there. If you start with a new show every Monday, then you have to have a new show every Monday if it kills you. Miss a day, and listeners will be discouraged, and then they?ll move on to someone else. It?s easy to get caught up in all this. Find a balance between producing your podcast and marketing it. Don?t let one affect the other adversely. This is easier said than done.
The bottom line is, there are no rules, there are no tried and true marketing techniques. You?re on your own and you must become a relentless self-promoter.
Brian Baltosiewich has been a broadcast professional for more than 20 years. His podcast website, www.radioexiles.com features professionally-produced podcasts from radio pro?s who have lost their gigs. Reach out to him at brian@radioexiles.com or through their twitter account @radioexiles and on Facebook at radioexiles.com
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