How to Grow Your Brand Through Podcasts

Did you know that Team Edgar hosts daily Facebook Lives? Join us daily as we chat about social media, marketing, business, and entrepreneurship. Here’s a recent Edgar Live about using podcasts to grow your brand.

Today, we're talking all about how you can use podcasts to increase your visibility on social media and your brand awareness all across the web.

The Power of Podcasts

Now, if you know the story about MeetEdgar, you know that our creator, Laura Roeder built this tool out of the necessity of needing it for herself. To grow brand awareness about MeetEdgar, she went onto other people's podcasts and told her story. Telling her story was this really great way to get people to know her really intimately, which leads to that trust factor that we're always looking for in that know-like-trust that's so important on social media.So this is our number one tip for getting started in podcasts. Pitch yourself and your story to relevant podcasts that already exist and go on those podcasts. It is not a scary thing. If you've never done it before, remember it is just a conversation that you're having to get your story and to get your brand out there. So do a little bit of research about the types of podcast that exists within your industry and start to reach out to those that provide interviews. Likely they'll be really grateful if you can give a unique spin on what you're going to be talking about, and you can pitch it in a way that you're going to add value to their audience. Check out our podcast Madlib style script if you've never pitched one before. Podcasts are one of the most intimate forms that you can create for content because people get to hear your tone. They get to hear your voice. And since people listen to podcasts as they're going about your day, it's like you're having a real conversation with someone. Often you find your brain talking back to podcast hosts a lot of the time, right? So podcasts are a fantastic way to tie in your personal story, to make sure that you're spending that time talking about yourself and your journey and having a conversation with your followers, and thinking through what they actually might be asking for those follow-up questions so that you can answer them.

Starting Your Own Podcast

Now, if you're going to start your own podcast, there's really no silver bullet for becoming a successful podcast. It's all about making sure that you are testing different messaging and really speaking to your ideal audience persona. Social media can help you grow your podcast and to make sure it's getting in front of the right people is by making sure you're looking at social media as an engagement tool for the content on your podcast. We talk about everything you do on social media being really related to engagement. That's what the algorithms are looking for. That's what your audience is looking for, to engage with real people.So every single day after you start your podcast, please sit down and make sure you're dedicating 10 to 15 minutes with engaging with your audience. Listeners often really love hearing from you afterwards because it feels like they're having that conversation. Use this time to ask questions, respond to questions, and get feedback.Another way to engage your podcast audience on social is that you make sure you tell people, "Screenshot while you're listening to this podcast, or let me know where you're listening from, put it up on your Instagram stories or Facebook stories and tag me." Stories will be gone in 24 hours so you're not asking that much of your audience to be able to put your podcasts on their feed that'll last forever. So ask your audience, "Screenshot it, tag me, send it out." This is a really great engagement-oriented strategy you can take on your podcast, because that tag will go into the algorithm, letting Instagram and Facebook know that people like to interact with this brand and that can extend your reach.So that's one way that the engagement factor can work for you. Not only are you engaging with your audience, but asking your audience on your podcast to engage back with you on social media. We have to think about all marketing strategies and all marketing funnels as working together, right? So how can your podcast support your social media streams, and how can social media support your podcast?As a podcaster, it's so important you start listening to your audience. The feedback that they are going to share with you on social media is gold. Do they start screenshotting certain types of episodes, whether they're interview episodes or your solo jam sessions that you're just putting out there? Ask people to tell you about their favorite parts of the podcast or what resonates with them. Use your podcast and social media for market research. So when you're talking to your audience through your podcasts, make sure you're always mentioning your social media accounts and you're looking at your whole entire marketing strategy to support each and every different aspect of it.Podcasts are great for networking, which essentially is what social media is all about, because the podcasting community is essentially a very friendly, collaborative one. Everyone knows that there's enough space. It's typically said that people listen to about seven different shows on average, and there's over 700,000 podcasts out there because we're also interested in hearing from the people that we resonate with the most, right? So make sure you're looking at this as a way that you can actually start to be on other people's podcasts, and bring them on your own to get your voice in front of their audience and their voice in front of your audience.If you take a collaborative approach to podcasting, you're going to have way more success than if you just look at it in a way that there isn't enough space for everyone's podcast. People listen to multiple podcasts, and if you're doing it right and you're having that conversation that speaks right into your audience and what you're trying to help them achieve, you're going to see success there.

How to Pitch Yourself as a Podcast Guest

The smart approach to pitching yourself is to make sure that you research their audience ahead of time. Make sure when you're pitching, you're truly saying, "This is the value I can offer your audience." Don't just pitch them for pitching's sake. Podcasters are usually protective over what goes into their listeners' ears because they want to make sure they're retaining them. So do the research to know what their audience is all about, who their audience is, and then pitch yourself in that regard.You want to make sure that it's easy for people to find you and for people to know where you are. You have to use social media to showcase your expertise and by sharing when you are guests on other podcasts. If you're featured on other people's podcasts and you go into that, it's more likely that if you're featured on a really great podcast, it will up-level their trust in you.

Promoting Your Podcast

If you do have guests on your podcast, make it easy for your guests to share the episode wit their community. For example, you can create a swipe file of different graphics and send them to your guests. A swipe file can just be a photo, the headshot of your guest or a Canva graphic with the title of the podcast episode.This makes it so easy for your guests to promote their episode of your podcast We forget how busy we all are and the ability for you to make sure that other people are sharing your content goes into social media optimization and just make sure your content is getting in front of more people.There's also a lot of different directories that you can start to list your podcast on including iTunes and Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google, TuneIn Radio, and Podchaser. So go ahead and get your podcasts onto multiple platforms. It's the same thing as being on multiple social media platforms. For example, you might know your followers are going to engage with you mostly on Facebook but you still have some people who have found you on Twitter or LinkedIn. It's the same thing with podcasts. You might know that your audience is listening mostly on Spotify, but you want to have that presence of people on Apple podcasts as well.So distribute your podcast out to multiple directories to make sure it's getting its biggest reach. Speaking of reach, SEO is something that you all know about if you're in a blog or if you're in the content creation space. How do you get SEO to work for your podcast? Well, you get your podcasts transcribed. Use your show notes too! If you use MeetEdgar as a social media automation tool, your show notes can help Edgar write your status updates for you. If you place a link from Apple Podcasts or something that has really great show notes in it, our suggested variations tool will actually write your status updates based on the content that's in your show notes. So that's one reason you should have really great show notes, is because Edgar will write your status updates for you!

Give Edgar's suggested variations tool a try for yourself (no log-in required!)

If you have your podcasts transcribed and you put these in your show notes, those are the keywords that sites like Google are going to index and look for in order to make sure your podcasts are showing up in searches. Remember, Google's algorithm wants to make sure it's serving up the most relevant information. If you're not transcribing your podcast to make sure that you're getting your keywords into your show notes, if you feel like that's not worth it, think about the possibilities of transcribing your podcast to use it as other social media status updates.If you get your podcast transcribed, is it easy to get some pull-quotes and just put them on a background like in Canva or share them as a text-only post. These things are so important to do to make sure that you're not just sending your content out once and it disappears into the void of the internet. So get that transcript done so that you can not only get your pull-quotes, but you can get that SEO reach.We also recommend doing this because remember, podcasts are some of the best evergreen content. Evergreen content is content that you can send out more than once. You need evergreen content because you're always gaining new followers who are going to want to see that great information you have and there's a small percentage of people actually see the status updates you're putting out on social media. Evergreen content allows you to continuously drive traffic to your site, you continue to nurture your community.Those who might have seen that podcast two months ago, but weren't ready to engage with it, it pops up on their feed again with a title that solves a problem that they're currently having. Think about how powerful that is to then get your follower to click on it. So podcasts in an evergreen fashion are so great for social media. So make sure you are cross-promoting it and make sure that you are getting these content episodes out more than once.

Experimenting With Your Social Media

While we love using organic social media, we also know that the pay-to-play space is a powerful tool. So if you haven't gone in and done any Facebook advertising with your podcast episodes, it's a great way to get new eyes onto your content.Ads aren't just for sales. When you can advertise a piece of content like a podcast episode, you're building what we call that top-of-funnel brand awareness. Top-of-funnel brand awareness is just letting people know you exist. It's telling them your story and letting people know that there are products and services and stories out there to help resonate with their pain points, and you're bringing people into your sphere.Don't think that using Facebook or Instagram just to get people to buy from you. You're promoting to bring people into your sphere and turn them into listeners.There are a lot of different ways that you can also mix up the social media posts you're putting out there for podcasts. Instead of just sharing like the podcast link, up-cycling it into something like Wavve. Wavve is an app that allows you to drop a short snippet, an MP3 file, and you have a graphic over it. This is another way of upcycling your podcast so people can listen to a two-minute snippet, get a taste for all of the great content and value you're offering on there, and then get to be brought in to being a leader in listening to your podcast.

Getting Guests for Your Podcasts

If you can get a bigger influencer onto your podcast, someone that I like to call your anchor client, that one person who you really want, who can say, "Hey, look who I've worked within the past," that one person that you're going to dream big about. If you can land one big guest, it's more likely other people will then start coming to you.So dream big when you're thinking about the influencers or people that you want to bring on, and look for people especially those who have just launched something. That is one of the best ways to reach out to some big-name people. Because if they've launched something, it's likely they are in the press circuit and they're looking to get in front of as many people as possible and talk about their project.Look at how your podcasts can offer those bigger influencers a lot of value and then you can reach out and present your podcasts as something that's going to help them. Always approach cold-calling people and collaborating people by leading with how this opportunity will help them.

Involve Your Community

There's no better way to start a conversation with your followers than actually reminding them that you have a voice to talk back to as well. So when you're utilizing social media to promote your podcast, consider doing stuff like starting a Facebook group for your podcast.One of the ways that we like to explain the differences between pages and groups on Facebook is your Facebook page is like your storefront or the front side of your house, your front porch. And it's just there to display who you are and it's there to display great information. But your group is almost like you are inviting people into your backyard. People know that a group aspect is a lot more, they are creating the content there. They're having those conversations. So a podcast is right for a group on Facebook because it's already a conversational medium.Some questions you can pop into your group to do this market research and to really make sure you're on the right track with the topics of your podcasts are things like saying, "We're officially starting this podcast. What guests do you love to hear from? Who do you want to hear from?" Ask your followers. Remember, if they feel like they're helping you build this piece of content, they're much more likely to want to engage with it.Ask them the ideal length. If you're making a 30-minute podcast and your audience is actually into long-form, hour-and-a-half-long episodes, you're losing a huge opportunity to connect with them more. Or vice versa, maybe people just have a 30-minute commute and they are getting annoyed with the fact that your podcast is an hour-long. Ask about the length of content too. You don't have to guess these things. People are willing to help you out if you ask those questions.Make sure if you are just starting a podcast that you think about ways to get the people excited beforehand. One of the things that social media is so great for is building an audience that you have traction with before your content actually goes out. This is called the prelaunch phase. So if you're getting ready to launch a podcast, look at your content calendar and walk it back a couple of weeks to make sure you're telling people that you're starting a podcast and to tease it up a bit. Give them some behind-the-scenes shots. So if you got some podcast-streaming microphone, if you got a new microphone or something, or if you set up a new section of your house to record your podcast in, start taking pictures of that so you're ramping people up so they're really excited when you launch. Remember those prelaunch strategies being so important. If you don't have a community who's excited and ready to buy, and you just launched something blind, you're not going to get that really great traffic spike really soon, which can be so motivating to make sure you're consistently showing up.Are podcasts part of your marketing strategy? Let us know if you use podcasts in the comments below!

If you want to book more guest spots on podcasts, download our podcast pitch!