Top 5 Ways to Promote Your Podcast
Gone are the days when you can just shove your podcast into every directory on the planet and be done with it. There are so many podcasts available now that it's hard to stand out in the crowd. To make matters even worse for a newcomer, podcasting is old enough now that the original shows are pretty entrenched in their respective directories. So how do you get noticed?
- Only promote in your niche. The strength of podcasting is that it is "narrowcasting' - attractive to relatively small groups of people. Therefore, promote where your audience is and don't waste your time on generic lists and directories
- Topical forums. If you haven't ventured into the word of forums yet - you had better get to it. There are forums on just about any topic on the planet and assuming that you can find one in your niche, you'll find lots of like-minded people there
- Cross-promote. Find other podcasts that are in your topic area and offer to swap promos with them. I've had a lot of success in the past by simply creating and sending a promo to other podcasters. They generally play it and sooner or later a promo from them usually pops into my inbox
- Link, link, link. Most of us have a website outside of our show blogs. Use your other sites to link to your show. Talk about your show and refer to it just like you would any other Internet resource. The more incoming links that your show blog has, the better it will show up in Google search engine results (SERPS) pages.
- Interview and be interviewed. Offer yourself up as interview fodder on other podcasts. Submit a list of topics that you're comfortable talking about and send 'em on out. Many podcasters are very receptive to having guests on the show and this can also set the stage for a reciprocal interview down the road.
