Episode 13
13. The Truth About Growing Your Podcast
Here's the truth about growing your podcast that you don't want to hear:
You aren't trying hard enough. You aren't sold on the idea that podcasting is beneficial to your business. Or maybe you just aren't sure what to do to actually grow your podcast.
In this episode Angie breaks down the reasons your podcast isn't growing and why you haven't prioritized the growth of your podcast fully yet, and also what you can start to implement now in order to get your podcast the boost you are looking for.
Tune in if you want an honest take on what it takes to grow your podcast and what you should start implementing today plus the mindset shifts you need to make in order to get your podcast growth strategy in place now.
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Transcript
[00:00:54] And I really just want to drag you through the mud right now because there's no excuse for this shit, but anyway, [00:01:00] this is your wake up call. This is your truth. I'm just telling the truth. This is the truth about why your podcast isn't growing. This is the truth about why you are sitting there talking about how you want your podcast to do X, Y, Z, and this is blah, blah, blah, blah for your business.
[:[00:01:43] And I think the biggest thing that people think that helps grow your podcast is being consistent. People are like, if you're consistent, you have to create content every week. You create content every week and that's how you grow your podcast and you can't grow your podcast if you don't create content [00:02:00] every week.
[:[00:02:26] Every single week and your podcast can still not grow. Ask me how I know. I know because this is what I experience consistently with my clients, with people who come to me for help, with people who are in my group, with people who are in my membership, people are asking me.
[:[00:03:08] They began. Seriously, I know that sounds really depressing because it's depressing for me. That's really depressing for me is that you can be podcasting for years, be really consistent with your content, and your podcast could not grow. Because content alone is not going to make your podcast grow. Again, I will say this again in this episode, like I say in every episode, the place to start with every single thing, diagnosing everything that is going on with your podcast, the place to start is always with your content.
[:[00:04:10] Okay? So you can be creating all the content in the world, and you still cannot be getting results. And so this is the truth. So stop thinking, if I just can be consistent, then I can grow my podcast. Because this is not always the truth. I know it's a hard pill to swallow, but that's the truth of the matter.
[:[00:04:54] And that's okay, because I'm going to help you a little bit with that, if that's you. So if you really feel like you've been trying everything, if you really feel like you've been [00:05:00] giving your all, and it hasn't happened, I'm not talking to you. I don't want to drag you. I want to drag you in love.
[:[00:05:16] With love so the truth is you're not trying. So one of the things that I always ask people when they say, how to grow my podcast is what have you currently been doing? And I will get a couple of different answers.
[:[00:05:46] I asked someone this the other day and their answer was, well, when I have a new episode, What I do is I put it on my stories on Instagram and I [00:06:00] post about it and I was like, okay, well what else and they were like, that's what I do. And so for clarification, I was like, so for that one podcast episode, oh, they email it out to you.
[:[00:06:37] ever. That's it. There's no strategy behind that. There's no strategy for when the podcast episode didn't first come out. It's like, you got two chances to grab everyone who's gonna listen to this. And if they don't listen, then, oh, well, right? And I'm laughing because... I think that that's ludicrous to think that we're going to grow our podcast from posting about it two freaking [00:07:00] times.
[:[00:07:20] That's all about their podcast. And so you think you have to start an Instagram account to grow your podcast. And I am telling you, do not start an Instagram account. Do not start a separate Instagram account. Because we're only one person or a couple of people in our business. And there's just So much extra work and ask yourself this, how many Instagram accounts do you follow that are podcasts that you enjoy following?
[:[00:08:05] I really want this to work for me. You are going to have to put time, effort and energy into this damn thing. That it is not enough to just show up and say, Hey, I created this thing. Look at me. And think that that's going to be the thing that grows you on that platform. It's not enough period.
[:[00:08:48] How do I grow my podcast? But I want to know first, what are you currently doing? What are you doing right now? Do you have, and then I want you to recognize, do you [00:09:00] have a system that is helping you grow? Do you know what you do every single time? Is there a set thing that you do every single time and what's that thing and then how do you track that?
[:[00:09:31] Is it working? Is it not working? That's what I want to know. Now, here's why people don't really try to grow their podcasts. Because most of the time, the issue is that there's a lot of half ass effort in this. There's a lot of half ass effort or, again, you don't have the knowledge, which is fine. But there's a lot of half ass effort and here's why.
[:[00:10:17] You're not getting any positive feedback. You're not getting any validation. And so , you don't want to put more effort into something that's not quote unquote working for you in your business. You have to put your attention to the things that are quote unquote working like the social media post that gets likes right away because that seems like it's working because it's validated quicker for us, right?
[:[00:11:02] Like they record an episode and then you talk about it two times. That is backburner shit. That is side chick, side piece. That ain't even side piece. That is like long lost ex that like every once in a while when you don't have anything to do, you throw some crumbs to. That's what that is.
[:[00:11:43] Like, I love it. I talk about it, but I also love it. Because I love that I've met so many people and made so many connections and you can get that quick feedback. But it's like, we have gotten so ruined. It's like the invention of fast food. And we all started eating this fast food [00:12:00] and cause we got to get it instantly.
[:[00:12:24] So we know that's good. Yes. Let's do that. People are responding to people. It's working. We think it's working and it could be working. Right. That's fine. This is not an anti social media. What I'm saying is that's why we found it easy to abandon fundamental foundational things in our business. Nobody wants to do evergreen content anymore.
[:[00:13:13] Nobody is cheering me on. Nobody is. No one. So, like, it feels like it's not worth it. It's not as fun. I don't get that instant validation. And so the social media has, like, ruined us. In a way, because we have forgotten about foundational things that help us build our business and keep us and sustain us, even when we're going through moments where we can't or don't feel like showing up online so much.
[:[00:14:02] Nothing. It's like gone. You have to continuously show up. You have to continuously water the grass continuously. And this, a podcast is something that's a foundational piece element to your marketing, to your business. It lives on and on and on and on and on. Matter of fact, it picks up steam. You get more and more and more people to see it the longer that it lives.
[:[00:14:52] But you know what? I'm on a podcast, so nobody's gonna say shit to me.
[:[00:15:18] You don't see the value and I'm, I'm, I'm saying what we've seen recently happen in the marketing space and the online space is that it's gotten harder to be seen on social media. It's gotten, you have to create eight times more content. You have to always be on, you have to be there all the time, blah, blah, blah.
[:[00:16:01] Versus the constant hamster wheel of social media, but I get it. It's that easy fast food. It's that quick fix Sticking something in the microwave and getting it out in two minutes. It's done and I love it I love it also But what I'm saying is this is why we don't put full effort is because we don't see that return The second reason why we don't we're not really growing our podcast is because we've never had a strategy Never had a strategy there.
[:[00:16:47] It's not even the side piece It's the long lost ex who we throw a crumb to every now and again, right? I got an ex who, I don't throw no crumbs, I'm not even gonna go there, because I don't even throw crumbs, but he be [00:17:00] trying to get me to throw crumbs, I don't throw no crumbs, but, , we don't have a strategy, we're just throwing shit up against the wall, and then saying, Andy, I don't know why my, why it's not working, well like, What are you doing?
[:[00:17:36] It's like, it's time to put your big girl panties on and say, okay. What can I do to help grow this? What am I currently doing? What do I need to be doing?
[:[00:18:06] So it's the back burner. It's the side chick. It's the below side chick. I want you to tell me in life, what we really can have, what can we really have and achieve in life without being consistent, without putting in effort? And the answer is nothing. We have nothing. We have nothing. If you want to build muscles, you know what you have to do?
[:[00:18:51] Because you're not. It's the consistency, it's the strategy, it's the understanding what's going on and what we're doing. Okay. So if you've [00:19:00] had enough dragging, let's talk about some of the growth strategies that you need to pay attention to.
[:[00:19:29] One of my friends was doing a training in my group, she does ss e o, she's the ss e o specialist. And one of the things she talked about was how in her podcast 50 percent of her listens a month come from older episodes and I was like, hell yeah, I love that statistic.
[:[00:20:06] And yeah, you can repurpose them, but like they're gone. Bye. Bye They are gone. Bye. Bye. This shit can sit here I had a client at a client who came to me and she was redoing her podcast Meaning she had an existing podcast and she was like, I want to revamp my podcast, but I'm not sure if I want to continue on with my old podcast or start brand new.
[:[00:20:51] Like if that ain't content working for you, why you ain't doing nothing? I don't know what else is. It's like, and that's the power of like search engine [00:21:00] optimization. It's the power of like creating on this platform. And I love that so much. So search engine optimization, you need to position yourself in the place that people would be searching for you.
[:[00:21:30] It's what will carry you through times when you might want to have a fucking mental breakdown. You might want to have a time where you go off and have a baby and like you're at home or you're going through a time something's happened in your life and you want to step away for a second. Like if you don't have these foundational pieces, if you don't have this evergreen content, you're fucked.
[:[00:22:11] So hopefully with this episode that I'm creating right now, people are searching for how to grow a podcast. And then here I am to drag them. Here I am to give them the real real. Hopefully that's what pops up, right? Hopefully I'll be able to get myself the skills, the knowledge where when someone searches on Google, I can be there.
[:[00:22:53] You need to put them in your description of your podcast. You need to put them in your titles.. So you can [00:23:00] maximize that. I'm not going to go deep into teaching SEO. There's a training in my membership on SEO where you can really dig in and learn more about podcast SEO.
[:[00:23:34] The, the long term shit that nobody wants to do anymore because we have been so conditioned to get a quick, easy response from podcasting. I mean from shit, not from podcasting, from social media. The second growth strategy is podcast guesting and swapping. So, let's meet people Where they already are, they're already listening to this person's podcast.
[:[00:24:22] So it's like, Hey, come and listen to my podcast. It's perfect. And then podcast swapping. Is like when you would get with someone who has a similar, you know, topic or adjacent topic to what you're doing and we can swap episodes. I can highlight you on my podcast. They can highlight me on their podcast. And so we're both leveraging the power of each other's audiences.
[:[00:25:08] You publish mine on your podcast. Like let's tap into other people's audiences. Have them highlight each other. Another thing you can do is you can actually sponsor podcast episodes on podcasts that you think have a relevant audience to you. Because again, we're meeting them in the podcast app.
[:[00:25:45] I put it last for a reason because it can be the hard, longer game to get. Not longer game, but it can be harder to get people off of social media onto a podcast. It's not really like a natural progression, right? So it's great to build a [00:26:00] big audience around your podcast on social media and you should, and you should leverage those people to share your podcast or to come to your podcast, to give you reviews, give you shares, things like that.
[:[00:26:28] And that you can do more if this is something you really want to do. So you have to decide, is this what I really want to do? Is this, do I see enough benefit in this? Is this what I really want to go all in on? And then you have to have a strategy. So all those things that I said, so what is the strategy?
[:[00:27:03] We can grow from there, but if we never put a strategy in place and we never actually go back and see if this strategy is working or measure like the results, then we never know what's really happening. And so that's what needs to happen. Even if your strategy is, I'm just going to email my list every time.
[:[00:27:40] around your podcast. So maybe what you need to do is tweak your, your email, but we don't know that. And so then we tweak it, we tweak it, and then we can see what the results yield after that. So then we can say, Oh, this is working better. So let's move from this to this, because we already know what was happening previously.
[:[00:28:21] You're just doing shit. What's the point of just doing shit if it's not even working? If your email, if no one from your email is clicking over to your podcast, why the fuck are you still sending emails? Like, does that seem logical? We have so much shit to do in our business. We are pulled so many different directions.
[:[00:28:56] It's not as quickly as social media. It's just not. [00:29:00] You need a couple months to see like, is this, uh, is this strategy being effective? Is this working for me? Is this better or worse than what I was doing before? So I want you to really examine, is this something that you want to do? Are you really all in it?
[:[00:29:53] And you know what they spend their time doing? They don't spend their time running around putting out all the little fires that seem like they're the most [00:30:00] important things. They spend their time doing the things now that save them time later. In this analogy, if you didn't catch it, the little fires everywhere are doing things on social media.
[:[00:30:32] Of your, okay, I got to step away from my business. Okay. I couldn't create. Okay. I feel like shit. I don't know. And I couldn't create, I couldn't keep up, but you know what? I consistently have this thing growing in the background because I have a system. I know what I'm doing. I'm tracking it. And this is going to be some foundational pieces to my business and to my marketing that is going to save me a shit ton of time later and going to be working for me in the background while I am doing [00:31:00] absolutely the fuck nothing.
[:[00:31:29] On Instagram at Angie M. Jordan, hit me up, come and chat with me in my DMs. I would love to talk to you to see how I can help you. And I will talk to you in the next episode. Thank you so much for being here.
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