Justin: 00:02

I've put so much work into Twitter. I've been on it since 2008 or something. I just made an episode I was really proud of, and I posted it multiple times on my Twitter account. And I think each tweet got 3 clicks. Thousands of impressions, lots of people saw it, but there could be 0 people that actually went through and listened to the episode.

Jeremy: 00:29

Welcome to Podcast Marketing Trends Explained. I'm Jeremy Enns from Podcast Marketing Academy.

Justin: 00:34

And I'm Justin Jackson from transistor.fm. And together, we're digging into the data behind the podcast marketing trends 2023 report to help you understand what it means for you and your show.

Jeremy: 00:47

Our goal is to help you make better informed decisions about the way you create and market your show so you can spend more time on what actually matters for growth and accelerate your results.

Justin: 00:56

Let's get into it.

Jeremy: 01:01

Justin, you've got something close to around 40,000 followers on Twitter right now. You've you've done pretty well for yourself. Most people looking at this, 40,000 followers is something that you think, okay, if I had that many followers, like, promoting my podcast would just be a piece of cake. I'd be able to move so many people over to the show. All my problems would be solved.

Jeremy: 01:18

And I'm curious based on your perspective as somebody who has a decent sized social audience to be sure and a long history in podcasting, what is your opinion on the overlap between social media and podcasting? Is it worth it to build that audience?

Justin: 01:35

Oh, man. I don't know. I honestly don't know. I've put so much work into Twitter. I've been on it since 2,008 or something.

Justin: 01:45

I just made an episode I was really proud of. I I did this interview with David from Acquired, and I posted it multiple times on my Twitter account. And I think each tweet got 3 clicks. So, like, thousands of impressions, lots of people saw it. But in terms of people actually going to the podcast and becoming a listener, there could be 0 people that actually went through and listened to the episode.

Justin: 02:14

So I don't know. And I honestly, I think a lot of people are feeling this. Social media just feels like a lot of work to build up an audience. And, most folks have a smaller audience on social media. And it's like, is it even worth it to post my podcast and my link and my reels and my clips to all these different platforms.

Justin: 02:39

But on the other hand, where else can we promote our show? Like, if you look on Reddit, people are always like, how do I promote my show? And the number one answer is always like, be active on all the social media platforms. And it's like, is it worth it? I don't know.

Justin: 02:55

I I think we should talk about it because it doesn't feel like anyone has a good answer to this yet.

Jeremy: 03:01

Yeah. I think in that statement that you just made, there's a lot that we can unpack and dig into in this episode here. And I think to first kind of set the scene, like you mentioned, with Reddit, you you go to anywhere where people are asking for podcast growth advice, and this is basically the number one thing. And a lot of times, it's be active on social media. And I think that, for 1, this is a true statement, and it's very generic.

Jeremy: 03:23

It doesn't give you much guidance on, like, what does be active mean? Does that just mean post links of my podcast every single day, you know, 20 times a day? Or you see this a lot of times too going in a Facebook group and just spamming the group with links to your show. Both of these are probably not the best options on how to use social media. But I remember back to the first time when I, produced a song.

Jeremy: 03:44

And so I'd recorded and produced the song I'd written in myself. I was this is something I was really proud of. And I got to the end of this. This is back in, like, 2012, 2013 and Facebook was fairly new on the scene at the time. And I was like, okay.

Jeremy: 03:55

Time to market it. And I was like, okay. Social media, this is what it's for. I just, you know, make my little Facebook page. I post my song, and, Facebook is gonna do the rest for me.

Jeremy: 04:05

And I think, you know, here we're more than 10 years later from that, but I think that this is still the impression that a lot of people who are creatives getting into creating something for the first time think like, oh, social media marketing, it's just post the thing and the platform will take care of the rest of it for me. Is this something that you've kind of experienced yourself?

Justin: 04:23

Yeah. I understand it because podcasting is hard. By the time you've produced the episode, you're tired. You're, like, just glad that you got out that week's episode. And so the idea of then repurposing that content and, you know, going to all the platforms and doing all this work to promote it is exhausting.

Justin: 04:46

And so I I understand why people just, like, auto tweet the episode or auto post on Facebook. Here's a link to my latest episode. You know, that's common. But I also get it because it's it's hard work, podcasting. Yeah.

Justin: 05:01

But I think there are things people can do, and you've kind of articulated the tension, which is, on one hand, social media is maybe not worth it, but it's simultaneously worth it at the same time. And so I think we can figure out a way to use it appropriately, to leverage it, and also to have realistic expectations about what it's gonna do

Jeremy: 05:28

for us. Yeah. I I think that that idea of expectations is we've talked about that back in episode 1 as well. It's probably gonna come up in in basically every episode of this series. But you kinda mentioned that there may be some reasons why, you do want to engage on social media, how that can be beneficial, and also some ways where maybe if you're approaching it a certain way, it may not be beneficial.

Jeremy: 05:46

And I think there's also something that we can talk about here that especially the way things are at right now. We have more people moving away from social media, both in podcasting and business and in kind of every aspect of life. And there are still ways to be successful without social media. So why might you want to be active on social media? So let's maybe put one of the first things on the table is like, okay.

Jeremy: 06:07

Sure. There is some ways that we can use this to grow the podcast potentially. We'll talk more about that in a second, but outside of pure podcast growth, what are some additional reasons why somebody might want to put in the effort to be active and build a following on social media?

Justin: 06:22

For me, listener engagement was way easier. Listener feedback. Especially because for my podcast, most of my listeners were on Twitter for a long time. And so it was just so easy to say, hey. If you wanna respond to this episode, just reach out to me on Twitter or DM me on Twitter or here's a tweet that you can respond to and let's generate some discussion on this episode.

Justin: 06:48

And that was very, very helpful to have this place where people are kinda congregating. And then when the conversation started happening, if if someone like, everyone's, like, responding to an episode, you do kinda get this natural, like, promotion engine where other people are seeing us talk about it. And they're, like, curious. Oh, what are they talking about? And then might go check out the episode.

Justin: 07:13

Sharing clips, sharing highlights, sharing quotes. It does give you more exposure and it doesn't always work every post, but I can think of, like, we interviewed this one person and posted a clip on Twitter and it did get a lot of people interested in that episode. It was one of our top episodes. So sometimes it works. Being able to engage with listeners and sometimes have that conversation be amplified, I found really helpful.

Jeremy: 07:41

Yeah. I would say it goes back. I think we talked about this in episode 1 before, this idea of discovery platforms versus nurture platforms. And there's other platforms as well. Like, I think about sales platforms even where that's not gonna be social media, and it's actually not really the podcast either.

Jeremy: 07:53

And I think about that more as like email is a great sales platform. So that's kind of a little outside social media, but it's still this idea of looking to expand your audience beyond just the podcast. And I think for me, having a clear idea of what each platform is for, this is something we can both nerd out a lot on is this idea of jobs to be done. So, like, what job is the platform doing for you and your larger kind of content ecosystem or business? And I really like like, I agree with you a 100% that the big benefit for me of social media is engagement with both my existing audience, but also other creators in the space who might become collaborators at some point.

Jeremy: 08:31

And like I I think of almost every single person who I've ever collaborated with, we first were introduced in some way on social media and we would comment on the same threads, things like that. Eventually, we'd move to the DMs. We'd get on a Zoom call and pretty soon, like, I've had some of my best friends came from Twitter. Yeah. Which can happen through a podcast where, like, somebody listens to you for a long time and then they they still need some way to get in touch with you.

Jeremy: 08:55

And that's where it's, like, either email or social. The one thing that I liked that you mentioned is Twitter was your one real platform. And so people knew where to engage with you. It wasn't that you were on 6 different platforms, splitting your time across all of them. And there was no central hub.

Jeremy: 09:11

And the fact that you had one place it's like, that's where the conversation was happening around everything you were doing. And I think that that is a huge benefit of social media is, like, not promotional and, like, pure engagement oriented.

Justin: 09:22

Totally. Totally. Social media is a natural extender for the podcast relationship. So somebody's listening and they wanna engage with you, well, it's easy for them to reach out on Instagram. Or maybe, like, they listened in their car, and then later they saw a clip from the show on Instagram.

Justin: 09:41

And it's like, oh, yeah. I meant to say something about this episode. So to reply to that post is just already a part of their life. They're already scrolling. And so to have another opportunity to engage with you, it's just a nice relationship extender.

Justin: 09:57

And if your purpose for your podcast is to build relationships with the audience, like real relationships, it's the one place where people can actually talk back to you. It's the one place where people can engage back with you. I think it's also helpful promotionally. Jay Clouse talks about this a lot. Like, he is really dedicated to YouTube this year because it's a discovery platform.

Justin: 10:22

People Yes. Are finding him on YouTube. And then he likes to bring them into his relationship platforms. Podcasting, email, RSS, writing. I think having that sense of, like, okay.

Justin: 10:38

I do need to get reach a wider audience. Then, okay, this is one channel for doing so that might help me reach people that I would normally never be able to reach just because Yeah. They're on YouTube. They're on Twitter, they're on Instagram, they're on all these places. And if something about that clip or my tweet or my post engages them, they might be like, oh, man.

Justin: 11:02

I'm interested in going deeper with this person, going to check out the podcast. You know, that's the next step.

Jeremy: 11:10

Yeah. So there are some some real compelling reasons why you might wanna spend time attention on social media, and we're going to dig into some of the ideas behind how to do that well, which are usually not the ways that we kind of naturally start to use social media in the first place. And so we're going to talk about that in a minute, but before we get to that, I wanna dig into some of the data from the podcast marketing trends report, because this was something I was really curious about was comparing the average show size to how big were their platforms, on, on other platforms or how big were their audiences on other platforms. And so here, if we look at the data, I was surprised and maybe this is because a lot of the audience who submitted responses for this first report was a little bit more in the business side of things. LinkedIn was actually the biggest platform where, the average, follower count on LinkedIn of the respondents of the survey was 1260.

Jeremy: 12:05

And so this was the only one over a1000. And as a reminder to everyone, the average or the median podcast download, per episode was 421. So this is, you know, 3 times that, quote, unquote, audience size. Obviously, it's a little bit hard to compare on LinkedIn. And then as we looked at some of the the other platforms, Instagram, around 800 on x or Twitter was around 750.

Jeremy: 12:29

The average email list was around 700. And then TikTok and YouTube. This was really surprising to me. TikTok, a 179 and YouTube, only 75 subscribers. So some of the more, like, discovery oriented platforms that you think of were actually some of the lowest audiences, which

Justin: 12:46

was fascinating. Lower. All these numbers are honestly lower than I would have thought.

Jeremy: 12:50

Well, I'm curious to hear why would you have expected them to be higher?

Justin: 12:54

I mean, I think because everyone everyone feels like that's where podcast promotion happens. Like, if you're growing your audience and some of the people in this survey we know have big audiences. And so part of me is like, where are they getting their audience if it's not from one of these social platforms? I would have expected to see bigger media numbers. It's surprising that most folks haven't even hit a 1,000.

Justin: 13:22

So maybe there's something hopeful about this too. It's like, wow. You can build a podcast audience, and not everybody has a big social media following. Like, that is maybe a myth.

Jeremy: 13:35

Yeah. Now I I think there is some optimism maybe in these numbers. I think also we wanna go back to this idea that we've talked about previously of looking at probably if you're looking to be successful in growing an audience, you're not looking to be average because the average is actually really low and that potentially you know, like, we looked at that 421 downloads an episode. A lot of people aspire to be higher than that. Probably a lot of people aspire to be similarly higher in terms of LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, email, all of these platforms they would like to be higher as well.

Jeremy: 14:04

And probably a lot of the big shows are. The one other kind of counterpoint that I'll also say to this is that it could be that these numbers, these smaller than expected numbers are actually indicative of how podcasters typically approach social media, which from my perspective is a very promotional first approach and not a lot of maybe on platform value delivery first approach. Is this something that you see, with podcasters?

Justin: 14:32

Yeah. I mean, and honestly with myself, because there's it's it's hard sitting down and writing a good tweet. It actually takes a lot of work. There's this new podcast called Never Post, and they call this poster's disease where where all you're thinking about is the next post, and they they're like, this is a disease. Like, oh, that could be a post.

Justin: 14:53

Oh, that could be a good tweet. Oh, that would make a good TikTok. It's kind of like a a sickness. So it's a lot of work, and it also takes a lot of tries. And it's frustrating because you have to stay on platform.

Justin: 15:05

They want like, on Twitter, they want it to be text or images or video. On YouTube, they want it to be video. And what universally, what nobody wants is links. And Right. It's that's difficult.

Justin: 15:21

The other thing that's difficult is I wanna promote my stuff. Like, I put a lot of work into making that podcast episode, and I want more people to hear it. And so when I switch over in my tabs to LinkedIn or Twitter or wherever, I'm kinda like, what do I feel like posting? Well, I'm actually really fired up about this thing I just made. And so I understand the tension, but I do know what works on social media or what works on platforms like YouTube.

Justin: 15:53

All of these platforms have a type of content, native content we use sometimes call it, that works well on that platform. And it changes too. On Twitter, for a while, it was threads. Everyone was making all these threads. On YouTube, it used to be, like, 5 minute videos were killing it.

Justin: 16:11

And now it's, like, 15 minute videos are killing it. On LinkedIn, when they launched their video feature, all of a sudden, LinkedIn wanted all of us to upload video. You're always to have to kind of think about that audience.

Jeremy: 16:25

Yeah.

Justin: 16:25

Like, I think a lot of my stuff doesn't do well on LinkedIn because I'm just cross posting it from other places. And I'm not thinking about okay. LinkedIn, like, these are career people. They're here for work. They're here to, like, maybe get a win at the office.

Justin: 16:41

They're here to get a win in their career. I need to target the content that way. You know? Yep. So, yeah, I think the the reason most people are maybe not doing well when it comes to social media engagement is, a, we've made something else that's really good and we wanna promote it, and these these platforms are, like, not naturally built for that.

Justin: 17:06

And, b, to get good at posting content and getting engagement on a given platform, it just takes a lot of focused time and effort focusing just on that thing, producing things that are valuable to the folks there. You know? Producing something and posting something that is actually just like, oh, wow. Like, I'm gonna share that with a friend or, oh, wow. Like, that was a really good, quote.

Justin: 17:38

I'm gonna keep that for later. That's what creates engagement on these platforms, and it's just a different headspace than promotion.

Jeremy: 17:48

Yeah. And I think that that ties into another question that kind of similar to this, you know, should I be on social media is the next question is often, you know, which platform should I be on? And I think that people want to hear that there's some specific platform where all podcasters are successful. And if you I'm just on that platform, like, that's where my audience is gonna be and that, you know, I'll I'll just do the same posting that I do anywhere else and all of a sudden I'm gonna get better results. And I think that this is, you know, some kind of magical thinking that we would all like to be true.

Jeremy: 18:19

And I think that what you were kind of hinting at a little bit here, with this idea of needing to understand an audience on a platform, whenever people ask me about, you know, which platform should I be on, I think the first question here is, like, where do I actually enjoy, if anywhere, engaging content as a consumer? And I think that what this does for you is, like, you don't have to think about what type of content is going to do well on this platform because you're already, you know, that you're any content you create because you spend so much time consuming content on this platform, you already kind of get the norms of the platform and you know what kind of content does well. You're kind of being influenced by everything else that is going on there and so you it kind of comes across really effortlessly which does not always happen if you are just trying to I don't wanna say like game the system but if you're purely using a platform to promote your own stuff but you're not really contributing to that platform, you're not an active kind of like citizen of the platform, it's really hard to effectively make use of it.

Jeremy: 19:18

And so I think starting with that that question of, like, okay, what content do I like consuming? And, you know, maybe I'm more of a, like a writer or something like that and so I'm gonna be on Twitter or LinkedIn or something like that. If it's more visual, maybe you're on Instagram. It could be, you know, TikTok or or YouTube as well if it's more video oriented. But really starting with that, like, where do I just have fun?

Jeremy: 19:37

And I think for both of us for a long time, that was was Twitter where, like, we built networks and we knew a lot of people. We just like felt like the stuff that we like posting about. There were other people posting about that and I think that that's where you start. That's like the necessary starting point for having success on any social media platform is that it's not a chore. It's like, I actually do wanna spend some time here.

Jeremy: 19:57

And maybe this is like one of those inside jokes on Twitter where, like, everybody complains how much time they spend on Twitter. And like, part of it is that everybody kinda wants to grow their audience, but also like a lot of people just have friends on Twitter and are kinda constantly checking in throughout the day all day every day.

Justin: 20:12

Yeah. That's such a good point. If posting anywhere is a chore, it's like, oh, I gotta go into LinkedIn and make my posts. That's not gonna be nearly as effective as somebody who's, like, just fired up about being on Twitter all day. And the person who's on Twitter all day is more likely to understand how the platform works, understand the relationships there, and actually just genuinely enjoy being there.

Justin: 20:40

And, honestly, where you do get yourself in trouble is when you start just treating it like a promotional platform. Because Yeah. People can sense that. It's like it it just instantly for most platforms, it feels wrong. It's like, what are you doing?

Justin: 20:57

Like, come on. Like, we're here. We're having a conversation or we're here and these are the kinds of things we post. In some ways, this is, like, sad, but it's also just the truth that to get good at Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, you have to spend a lot of time consuming and creating on those platforms. And you're probably going to need to enjoy it if it's gonna be a long term thing.

Justin: 21:25

If you're forcing yourself to wake up every day and post your clips to whatever platform and it's just a drag, I it's probably just not gonna produce very much results.

Jeremy: 21:37

Yeah. Yeah. I always think of it as, this kind of, like, there's a this dialect. It's almost like a different language, a bit of a different dialect on each platform. And as an outsider, you aren't aware of that dialect, but everybody else can sense an outsider.

Jeremy: 21:48

As soon as you show up, you're like the traveling salesperson coming through to, like, hawk your wares but you're not actually, like, rooted in that place. And it's so clear to everyone else but you don't know as an outsider that it's that clear that you kinda stick out like a sore thumb. And I think that this is something that becomes obvious once you actually embed yourself in one of these platforms and you see other people doing it and you're like, ugh. You shake your head and you're like, man, this person doesn't get it. They're so clueless and this looks so bad on them right now.

Justin: 22:13

Yeah. And you know who actually is a good example of doing social media right is Jack Riesider Yeah. The fellow behind Darknet Diaries.

Jeremy: 22:22

Yep.

Justin: 22:23

Because if you look at his account, he does promote his his episodes. But part of his interactions on Twitter just goes along with the the broader topic that he's focused on, which is, you know, cybersecurity and hacking and all these things. So if that's the audience you're building on Twitter, it's like I'm building an audience that is really excited and interested in these topics. And my podcast is also about that. So on Twitter, I'm gonna talk about these topics as passionately as I do on my podcast.

Justin: 23:02

And then it also just makes a natural fit between hey. If you if you like this, then you're gonna go check this out. And I I think it's almost like if your podcast is about puppies, then you just also have to be all in on puppies on Twitter and TikTok and everything else. Because the you're just trying to be known for one thing, basically. Right?

Justin: 23:26

Yeah. Having that that single topic or that single thing is gonna make this a lot easier. If it's like you know, on Twitter, I mostly talk about business and bootstrapping. My podcast is also about business and bootstrapping. And so there's gonna be tons of interaction between those two mediums.

Jeremy: 23:44

Yeah. I think that the the trick here is to detach a little bit of your identity as, like, podcaster and think of yourself like I am building a brand here, and there's a core idea behind the brand. And so let's say it's that cybersecurity and you're going to say, okay, on the podcast, we're going to cover this aspect or we're gonna explore cybersecurity in a certain way that can only be done through podcasting or is best done through podcasting. And then on Twitter, we're gonna talk about cybersecurity in a very different way. And I think that this is the trick to, like, finding a way to present the same or similar ideas in a way that fits with how people engage with content on a certain platform.

Jeremy: 24:23

And there's an interesting kind of tension here with this idea as well is a lot of people, a lot of podcasters want to move their social media followers over to the podcast. But you could take this alternative approach and say, really, I want to build an audience and I don't really care so much on what platform it is, but I wanna build an audience around this idea. And I'm gonna build a Twitter account about cybersecurity that people follow because they're they care about cybersecurity and they don't need to go to the podcast because I share all the same things. We have the same discussion here, and it almost makes the podcast to some extent obsolete. That's one view that you could take.

Jeremy: 24:56

The other one is you could say, okay. I wanna build this larger brand and I've got all these different media properties and I'm gonna give these people different experiences in a way that almost compels them to go to move to different platforms because you can only get this thing over here which fits with this platform, but you actually get this Yeah. Very different thing over here on the podcast and you get this different thing on my email newsletter and it actually encourages you to move throughout the content ecosystem.

Justin: 25:20

And there's an interplay between these things, like, sometimes you'll say something on the podcast, and you'll be like, that's that would make an amazing tweet, and you'll note it, and then you'll tweet it. And sometimes you'll be tweeting about something and you'll be like, oh my gosh. Like, I this happens all the time. I get into a conversation on Twitter and I'll reach out to the person and say, we gotta bring this to the podcast because this needs a long form conversation. So maybe, yes, seeing these less as a pure promotional channel.

Justin: 25:53

And this is just an ecosystem you play in, and there's an interplay between all of these elements, which is like sometimes it gives to the podcast, sometimes it leads to the podcast, sometimes the podcast leads to it. And there's just this natural interplay where you're trying to almost not actually trying at all. You're effortlessly just engaging with these things for what they are and enjoying it, hopefully. I think that's the the the one key component of this is you have to enjoy it. If you don't enjoy it, it's probably not worth your time.

Justin: 26:29

And Yeah. Again, there's lots of podcasts that do fine without a social media presence.

Jeremy: 26:34

Yeah. Now there is one thing I wanna touch on with like, we we've kind of come out here and been kinda anti promotion of the podcast and talking about, like, create platform, native content, things like that. In my opinion, I think you still should be promoting your podcast on social media. I think your expectations should just be low of how many people will actually follow it in the short term. And, like, one of the things that I think about a lot is the traditional kind of, like, buyer's journey that somebody would go through before like, all of us go through before buying a product.

Jeremy: 27:02

And so we first have to become aware of it. And so there's this awareness phase. Then there's this consideration. Maybe we're looking at other alternatives. And then there's this decision point where it's like, am I you know, I'm getting off the fence at some point.

Jeremy: 27:13

And then you make the purchase and then you kind of assess after the fact, like, was this worth it or do I need to go look for something else? And I think that this plays out with podcasting too. And I think that the awareness phase is often much longer than we think it should be. Even with the free podcast. Here's an example of a show that I've recently started listening to called, How I Write.

Jeremy: 27:32

It's by David Perrell, the founder of, Rite of Passage. And it's about writing and it's a show where he interviews kind of famous writers, people who are well known in the writing, very much in the kind of tech Twitter space, which is David's circle. Most of these I'm I'm sure he met through Twitter to some extent. And I heard about the show 3 months ago, something like that. I've known David well, not known him personally but known of him for multiple years.

Jeremy: 27:56

Been on his newsletter. Saw the promotions come through about the new show and I was like, not for me for whatever reason or it wasn't even a consideration. And then I heard, we're just gonna see how many times we can shout out Jay Klaus here. I heard him mention it in his community, The Lab, and I was like, oh Jay's listening to the show. Interesting.

Jeremy: 28:12

And then I heard somebody else who I respect and admire and like their taste and I was like, oh they're listening to it as well. And then I heard a third person and I was like, oh maybe I should like move this up my queue. I should at least consider this now. And at some point, I finished binging through the previous show that I was on and I was looking for something new and it's like finally now, the time was right. I heard a bunch of like signals, kind of social proof from people that I respected, that I knew had good taste, that aligned with mine and I had space in my calendar where it was kind of like, oh, now is the time to listen to the show.

Jeremy: 28:43

I think it's been like 6 or 9 months since it's been out. I already like David. I already like his content. And it still took that that long to get me in as a listener.

Justin: 28:51

Yeah. And I'm familiar with that show because of the clips he posts on social media. And I haven't actually subscribed yet, but I'm very close. Like, I keep hearing it getting mentioned. And each of these interactions, whether it's seeing a clip on social media or hearing a recommendation, they're nudging me towards becoming a subscriber follower of that show.

Justin: 29:20

I'm close. I'm I'm close to taking out my my, iPhone, opening up Pocket Casts, searching for the show, and then clicking subscribe. And you think about that that moment, that's what it takes. That's what it takes. It takes, like, multiple interactions, multiple touch points, and then all of a sudden someone's doing this high friction activity, which is taking their phone out of their pocket and going, you know what?

Justin: 29:50

I'm going to listen to this in my podcast player. I've also heard of people doing this with long YouTube episodes. So they'll start watching a podcast episode on YouTube, and they'll be like, okay. I'm into this. I'm gonna switch over to my podcast player and listen to the rest as an audio podcast.

Justin: 30:12

So these things are happening, but it the chances of you saying, check out my latest episode and having a link, and then 100 or thousands of people following that and then becoming a listener is just unlikely. And it's one reason to keep mentioning it. Like, that acquired episode that I'm really proud of, where I interviewed David, I keep mentioning it. I'm gonna mention it in my newsletter. I'm gonna mention on Twitter multiple times.

Justin: 30:43

I'm gonna bring it up in LinkedIn comments. I'm gonna keep talking about it because I know it's gonna take multiple impressions, multiple touch points before people end up listening.

Jeremy: 30:56

And I think the other thing like, you mentioned a little bit of your stats before where you you had this post. You've got thousands of impressions. It got, like, 3 clicks. The other thing that you mentioned related to YouTube but also social media is I can think of very few times when I have ever seen a podcast advertised on social media, and I've clicked through and I've listened right then and there because I know that usually I'm mostly on my computer. I don't really spend that much time scrolling social on my phone and so I know, like, oh, this show sounds interesting.

Jeremy: 31:24

I'm gonna make a mental note. Maybe I'm actually gonna pull up my phone right now and I'm gonna subscribe. Maybe I don't download any episodes. So there's no download that comes in from that. There's no trackable link, but I'm like, oh, I've got this in my queue now.

Jeremy: 31:34

I know for whenever time opens up that now it's in my feed. And at some point, maybe, you know, in David's case, I'd heard about the show. I never subscribed. Maybe 3 months later, I actually added it to my queue. And Yeah.

Jeremy: 31:47

Then it was like another 3 months later before it ever registered a download on his device because I didn't download any episodes and it was like, this is here. This is my mental bookmark for me to, like, when I have time, I'm gonna come back to this. It's gotta move up the queue. I gotta clear some other things out of the way. And then later, now I've, like now he's got, like, 15 downloads for me in a week because I'm, like, binging through his episodes.

Jeremy: 32:06

And I think that this is is pretty indicative of how I think a lot of listener behavior is, where there's such a time span that it takes place over.

Justin: 32:13

Yeah. And, I I mean, along with this, I think you do kind of everywhere because there's so much content. The challenge really is you have to make something that's compelling for the audience. And if your podcast episodes aren't compelling yet I know we mentioned this all the time. But if they're not compelling yet, you just don't have a chance.

Justin: 32:39

Like Yeah. Whatever that is, it has to be good when people get there and give you the shot. Still with podcasting, the best form of promotion is word-of-mouth. Yeah. And so I think for most folks, they would be better served, really getting creative, and putting way more energy into thinking how can I increase word-of-mouth as opposed to how can I get more interactions on Twitter?

Justin: 33:09

How can I get my TikTok to go viral? How can I because you say those things? If you want viral TikToks, then post viral TikToks. But if you're saying, I want viral TikToks so that my podcast gets more downloads, I I think you would be better served optimizing for having people refer the show to other people. And you can't do that unless the product is great.

Justin: 33:37

You can't do that unless the product is awesome. The product here being your episodes, your podcast. And then just remember, this also needs to be true for every social platform you're gonna engage on. So if you're gonna go all in on LinkedIn, it's gotta be awesome for that platform. It's gotta be great because it it follows the same rules, which is if I'm gonna share it to my friends, it better be awesome.

Justin: 34:07

It better be share worthy. And there's a bunch of studies on this, fascinating studies where this actually happens fairly quickly. As soon as someone engages with a piece of media, podcast, YouTube, article, tweet, they've already decided whether it's shareable, like, whether it is worth sharing. And you're creating an impression at the beginning, and then you have to carry that through. And people are making that decision very almost immediately.

Justin: 34:41

It has to be great. It has to be so good that people are like, you know what? I gotta share this right now. I gotta I gotta tell someone about this.

Jeremy: 34:48

Yeah. We get so this opens up something that's really interesting because I've observed this countless times myself where there are certain people who, to your point, I already know I don't even need to read a single word. And I already know I'm gonna share it because I have a level of respect and admiration for that person. And I know that they post stuff that I agree with that is always good, that is refreshing. And there's a double edged sword here, I think.

Jeremy: 35:12

And I think it's a reason to engage on social media, but I think that you have to engage mindfully. And if you're thinking if all you do is promote, that's probably decreasing your on platform reputation. Whereas if you are somebody who contributes valuable posts that are not a 100% promotion, you can do that occasionally but there is they're balanced out by a kind of generosity on the platform. You're building your reputation and so people are subconsciously, their opinion of you is going up. And so when that promotion comes, when something really connects with them, it's almost like you've been making these investments in their account and now it's time that that they're gonna pay that out kind of and they're going to be like, oh this one just really landed with me for some reason and now I'm gonna share Justin's post about this this episode that he's really proud of because he just gives so much good value on here all the time.

Jeremy: 35:56

And social media is not the only way to build your reputation, but it's certainly one way to do it in small doses over time.

Justin: 36:02

Yeah. Who who is it that said, people come for the topic, but they stay for the host?

Jeremy: 36:08

Well, I say that a lot.

Justin: 36:09

That's is that did you coin that term?

Jeremy: 36:13

I might have. I I certainly, I say that quite a bit. I don't I don't know that I borrowed it from anyone. So,

Justin: 36:19

Okay. Okay.

Jeremy: 36:19

I'll take credit.

Justin: 36:20

That's that's funny because I was like, I I don't know who said that, but maybe I heard it from you. Regardless of who originated it, I think there is something about that. Is with podcasting, maybe the topic of your show is cybersecurity and hacking, and people are just looking for shows like that. Or maybe you do a fiction show and people are just, like, searching for other fiction shows like the other ones they like. But often, people will stay for the creator, the person behind the show, and then they'll seek out other things by that person.

Justin: 36:55

And so this can work as if you are trying to play the long game and you're, like, trying to produce a podcast or a series of shows that, you know, you want people to engage with. I can't remember the fellow who's behind, the Missing Crypto Queen podcast, but I've listened to multiple shows. I've sought out multiple shows by this person because I originally came for the topic, but then I stayed for the creator, the person making the show. And now I'm just like, can't wait till they put out a new series. I'm just waiting for them to put out a new series.

Justin: 37:35

It depends on what game you're playing and if it's a long term game. And what you said about reputation, man, I again, it's not what people wanna hear. They they just really what they want is more downloads for the most recent episode. Yeah. But, really, the game you gotta be playing is this long term reputation as a creator.

Justin: 37:56

Yeah. Like, for me, Derek Sivers.

Jeremy: 37:59

Oh, yeah.

Justin: 38:00

He comes out with something. He's interviewed on a podcast. I'm listening. Doesn't matter. I he's built up a reputation.

Justin: 38:08

I will seek that out. If he started a podcast, I I would subscribe for sure because he's built up a reputation with me, and I wanna hear what he has to say.

Jeremy: 38:19

Yep. He was actually I was listening to his episode on, How I Write last night. So there's your, intro episode.

Justin: 38:25

Oh, that might that might get me. That might get me.

Jeremy: 38:28

So let's move on then to talking about because we've said multiple times here that social media is not the only way to grow. I know personally, and I know that you know as well, many podcast creators who are entirely absent from social media and have actually grown huge shows. So let's talk a little bit about this and, like, what are some of the alternatives? Because people I I think you get into podcasting like we mentioned earlier and you're just like, this is the only marketing channel. Like, what else can I do?

Justin: 38:53

One example I think about all the time is Tim Ferris when he launched his podcast. He did 2 things that were interesting at the time. Number 1 is he bought a lot of ads in front of podcasts that had an audience that he thought would work for his show.

Jeremy: 39:11

Yep.

Justin: 39:12

And I remember hearing, like, just ads all the time for his show. And the way he did it was interesting. He would often get the host to read a little bit and say, hey, you know, Tim Ferriss is an interesting author. He reached out, see if we could advertise on the show. And, he's just got a new podcast and here's his pitch for it.

Justin: 39:32

And, I think that worked really well for him. The just lots of folks ended up hearing those ads and acting on it. And the the other thing he did was that's kind of the same ballpark is lots of guesting on other shows, lots of, like, going on other popular podcasts and saying, hey. I'm watching a show and, talking about it. So those two approaches, underrated in a lot of ways.

Justin: 40:00

And I've seen other people replicate that strategy, some very big shows. It turns out that getting more podcast listeners, you need to go to where the podcast listeners are already. And that might mean advertising or guesting on the shows they're already listening to.

Jeremy: 40:19

Yeah. I think that this is one thing that you hear again and again is, like, podcast guesting and cross promotions collaborations with other podcasters. This you look at like big network shows like this is they do spend money on advertising. But if you look at the ROI on that, so many people that I've talked to, it just doesn't make sense. Even when you have advertisers already in place, the economics just don't really work out that well especially if you're doing like a CPM model.

Jeremy: 40:45

We could have a whole other discussion if you're doing higher ticket sponsorship type stuff but that's kind of a another point. That is actually to me really encouraging that a lot of times people are like well I can't grow because I don't have the budget and it's like actually even the people who do have a budget aren't spending it on advertising. They're looking at how do we bring in more people to make the shows better and also probably outsourcing some of that connection and and outreach to people for collaborations and things like that. So I think that's something that, you know, collaborations are free. They're accessible to everyone.

Jeremy: 41:13

And I think that that going back that idea before of using social media to network, I think this is a huge hidden benefit there is saying, I'm not gonna promote my show at all. I'm going to make friends with other podcasters in my space and adjacent spaces, and then we're gonna do the actual promotion on each other's shows.

Justin: 41:30

Yeah. Yeah. And there is a like, if if you're looking for, cold outreach opportunities, there's ways of doing that. Like, there's products that do that. One simple way is just to look up your show in Apple Podcasts and scroll to the bottom Yep.

Justin: 41:45

And see what similar shows they're recommending. But the approach you're recommending is actually better, which is just become friends with the kinds of people that are talking about the things you're talking about on the show. And then this will just come up organically. It's like, hey, why don't we just be a guest on each other's show? Or Yeah.

Justin: 42:04

Why don't we, like, try promoting each other's show? You know, maybe we'll do a pre roll for the next 6 weeks and just see what happens. Yeah. So I I think that's a great approach. And it comes back to, yeah, relationship building, finding your your group of people, building a network.

Justin: 42:23

There's lots of opportunities there.

Jeremy: 42:25

Yeah. I actually just talked with, a podcaster. He has a a pretty big show yesterday. And so he's getting around 17 to 25,000 downloads an episode. I think he said at this point, he's been doing the show 6 years, and it took him 4 years to get a big break when interestingly, he was stuck at around I think he was, like, 5,000 downloads, 4000 downloads an episode.

Jeremy: 42:43

And a show that he didn't actually know the host, they just gave him a shout out. It was a bigger show in his space. They gave him a shout out on the show. He was totally surprised and it doubled his audience overnight. And that kinda got him up to the next level.

Jeremy: 42:54

And he had this goal to get, a 1,000,000 impressions for his show in 1 month. And so he had this goal, going in. And so this was all cross promotion, ad impression, that type thing, all unpaid. And so they're tracking this through, dynamic ad insertion to see the impressions. But he had this goal.

Jeremy: 43:11

He knew like a year in advance. Okay. This month, next year, I'm gonna get a million impressions of my show on other shows. And so what he did was he started just building up favors throughout the year. And so he brought other people on as guests to his show.

Jeremy: 43:24

He ran ads for other people's shows every single episode in the post role, in everything. He was like, I was kinda indiscriminate. I was like, okay. If your show is even vaguely aligned with mine, I'll put it in the post role at least. And if it's even really aligned, I'll put it in Emmett role as well.

Jeremy: 43:38

And he did feed drops. He did all this stuff kind of building up favors and kind of telling people like, okay. I would love to do this. I have this goal of getting a 1,000,000 impressions for my show in this month. And he actually he did it, and he hit the, like, number 15, ranked show in all of the US in his category, in the the main it's in the history category.

Jeremy: 43:57

And, I thought, like, this is this is a fascinating intentional approach to marketing as a whole and also, like, some long term planning of like, okay, I have this goal and I'm gonna work for it for like 9 to 12 months to to build up to that. And he showed me his actual chart and he he brought in something like 2,000 new followers in just Apple Podcasts. And so that's not listens. That's followers in just Apple Podcasts. And so you can think about Spotify, the other platforms as well in that one month.

Jeremy: 44:24

I think it it really paid off for him. You can imagine that that type of exposure would. But, again, he's been doing the show 6 years. He spends a ton of time scripting, writing, doing all the research and I think that at that that's the point at which that type of exposure actually will pay off for you. And so, like, paying your dues upfront, building a compelling show where it's good enough to like, this point where this other show randomly without a cross promotion, they just shouted them out to all of their tens of thousands of listeners, and it's, like, that's when when that starts to happen, you know my show is good enough to really start ramping up the exposure.

Justin: 44:59

Yeah. You gotta pay your dues. That's the thing. It takes a long time sometimes. I think to summarize a lot of our thoughts here, something that just came to mind is something I call slot machine marketing versus snowball marketing.

Justin: 45:12

And so slot machine marketing to me is just like posting on Facebook, posting on Instagram, posting on Twitter. It's like you're just, you know, hoping that the next poll is gonna get you a jackpot. Whereas snowball marketing is, like, where you roll a little snowball down a hill, and it picks up more and more momentum and more and more snow, and it grows over time. The thing with slot machine marketing is you never know. Like, you could pull that lever and you could get a post that got a 1000000 views Yeah.

Justin: 45:47

And no new listeners. Yep. Whereas having a snowball that gains momentum is like, today, I'm just gonna go out there, and I'm gonna be helpful on all the platforms. I'm going to not be thinking about promoting at all. I'm just gonna be there adding value.

Justin: 46:06

People say that all the time. But adding value, being a positive person, and that over time, reputation, word-of-mouth, the virtuous cycle of that will gain more and more momentum and hopefully get bigger over time. And I think that's where more folks need to dedicate their energy is forget the slot machine, just focus on the snowball. And if you do this every day, if you just wake up and you're just pushing the snowball a little bit more, and times it can feel like you're pushing the snowball up the hill. It's like, man, when's this thing gonna actually start rolling on its own?

Justin: 46:47

You just every day, you're pushing it a little bit more, a little bit more. And if you keep doing that, eventually, you will see the rewards of that investment. It just takes time.

Jeremy: 46:57

That's a perfect analogy. I love it that, you know, the slot machine, we all know the odds are stacked against you. And with the snowball, you know, that actually the laws of physics are in your favor, that you keep pushing it. You get it to that edge and it starts rolling like it is going to start rolling faster. So I think that's a a perfect analogy to lead people with.

Jeremy: 47:13

If we are thinking about some of the takeaways here, we've talked about, you know, the podcast and building audiences on other platforms. What would you say would be your top takeaways for somebody who's listening to this and how can they kind of tomorrow start, actually, you know, making better use of other platforms? Or maybe, you know, leaving those other platforms behind and looking at other ways to grow their show?

Justin: 47:32

Yeah. I I think for most folks, you need to start by really evaluating your content. Is this remarkable? Is this compelling? Is there something here that would make folks wanna share it?

Justin: 47:47

Focus on that first. The next thing I would do is just be trying to figure out how you can cultivate word-of-mouth, referrals, people telling other people about the show and encouraging that. Like, I think it would be better for you to leverage your listeners' social audiences than trying to build your own. And so even again, if you have 5 listeners and they're all fans, what you're doing is just so good for them. If they all have social media accounts, you could do one episode.

Justin: 48:19

You could say, hey, everybody. We're trying to grow the show. Could you just take a moment and post it on your preferred social network with, like, one thing you liked about this episode, one thing you think people should think about or talk about? I would really appreciate it. And then just mention me and I'll, you know, I'll give a free hat to who to to one person that does that.

Justin: 48:40

I think doing those kinds of experiments will, lead to better results for most folks.

Jeremy: 48:46

Yeah. I would say for mine, I think it's being clear on what you're using each platform for. And so if you're thinking, well, this is my discovery platform as maybe my brand discovery platform. If that's the goal, need to create content that has a chance of spreading on this platform, and that's not gonna be promotional content. Or you could say, this is my platform for building relationships.

Jeremy: 49:05

And I think to your point about the you know, creating remarkable content takes time, probably years. And some people have already built up that muscle through other projects and platforms and creative work in, you know, decades past and now they're just applying it to the podcast and the podcast is immediately great. Other people, they're starting from scratch. This is one of their first creative projects and it's gonna take a couple years or 3 years, 5 years, however long it is to get to that point where like this is something special. But what I like to think about with social media is saying like, okay, maybe the show is where it needs to be and maybe it's not, but I can cultivate a community and a network of people here so that when the show is at that point, I've already developed that goodwill and that reputation of maybe I don't have the reputation of being a great podcast host or having a great show.

Jeremy: 49:49

I have the reputation of being somebody who is worthy of help and who has given me a lot throughout the years and who now I'm really excited to do that when things click into place. And so I would say that keeping those two things in mind as well as this idea that like it just everything takes longer than you think. And a lot of times with podcasting, we just don't have the data to see like this post had this result. I think you have to kind of just let go and trust in the process that if you show up kind of generously day after day and give value to people, like, eventually that will pay off over time.

Justin: 50:20

Mhmm. Yeah. And we haven't talked a lot about YouTube, but I would say if you're the kind of person that likes making video, I think you should be on YouTube. I think you should be posting some clips or full length episodes. I would also just give yourself the freedom to experiment too.

Justin: 50:37

I think it's fine to start, you know hey. I'm curious about TikTok. Why don't you just start posting? And if you like it, keep going. If you're interested in it, go try it.

Justin: 50:48

I think it's worth trying for sure.

Jeremy: 50:50

Yes. That kind of through line of experimentation for everything podcasting and elsewhere is kind of always the the bedrock of all kind of eventually successful marketing. It all kind of starts from this experimental, like, we don't know if this is gonna work, but we're gonna give it a try, and, we'll see what happens.

Justin: 51:04

Totally.

Jeremy: 51:04

Yeah. Alright. So I think, the YouTube discussion will save that for another episode. We can probably spend many hours talking about that, but, hopefully, folks have found this helpful, in terms of social media. And we would love to know I would love to know what is your relationship with social media as a podcaster.

Jeremy: 51:19

As you're thinking about some of the things we talked about here, which camp have you fallen into? Have you kind of been in the just like pure promotional phase? And I I like I said, I have certainly been there. I think you mentioned that you've been there as well. And and also maybe I would actually be curious to know for for people listening to this, who are your favorite people to follow on social media and what do they do?

Jeremy: 51:36

Like, why do you like following them and is that just promoting their other stuff or is there something else that they're doing? And, I'm always looking for new people to follow as well. So so hit us up with your recommendations.

Justin: 51:46

And as always, we have a feedback link in the show description. You can leave us a voicemail on there. You can record us a video or give us some just write out some text. We would love to get your responses. If you've had the inclination to talk back to us while we've been talking, click that link that says feedback in the show notes and, leave us a message.

Jeremy: 52:07

Perfect. Well, Justin, a pleasure as always. And, we'll talk to you again in the next episode.