Podcast Press Release & Launch Plan: How to Create Buzz for Your New Show

Writing a podcast press release and planning your launch the right way can be the difference between 50 downloads and 5,000 on day one. Don’t jump into promoting your new podcast without a structured plan.

Think about the actions you need to put in place, the tools you can use, or the way you will convince your first circle to listen to your episodes.

By seriously preparing this launch phase, you have a great deal of power to create some buzz around you.

Using concrete examples, I’ll give you all the tips you need to avoid a total fail when launching your new content. 💪

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How to prepare the launch of a podcast?

> The pre-launch

• Trailer
• Social Media
• Teasing

> The launch

• Press release
• Emailing
• Social Media

> The post-launch

• SEO
• Smartlink
• SmartPlayer
• Cross-promotion

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Most podcasters think about launch day, and forget everything around it. But the real work happens before and after. There are actually 3 distinct phases when it comes to communicating about a new podcast, and skipping even one of them means leaving audience growth on the table.

There are 3:

• The “pre-launch“🛫 : everything you can do to prepare for the arrival of your new podcast and to create excitement within your community
• The “launch“✈️: or game day if you will, is your moment of glory, the time to create a little buzz around you
• And then there is the “post-launch” 🛬 : everything you can do in the days following the launch to prevent the losing the momentum of the buzz you’ve created

1st phase: the pre-launch

This phase is as important (if not more important) than the launch phase. Because if you handle it thoroughly, the impact of your communication on game day will be even greater. 💪

Remember, the objective of this pre-launch stage is first to spark the curiosity of your future audience 🧐 and then to prepare the groundwork for your new show. 🎧

> Make a trailer

To achieve our goals, let’s draw inspiration from movies, that do this wonderfully with a good ol’ trailer. 🎥

When you think about it, there are a lot of similarities between podcasts and movies.

• Both formats are windows to different worlds. 🪟
• The quality of the sound, the sound design, the theme or the way the stories are told are important in both cases. 🪐
• Just like a movie, a podcast has a beginning, a middle and an end. 💑 😢 🥰
• The guests and hosts are a bit like actors. 🕵️‍♀️
• And sometimes there’s even a set or sound effects in the case of a fiction podcast. 🧟‍♀️

So if we use trailers to promote a movie and its world, why not do the same with a new podcast?

> Make your audience want to listen with a trailer

For your podcast trailer to be really effective, you need to think about several things. At Ausha, we’ve analysed hundreds of podcast launches, and the shows that publish a trailer at least 7 days before launch consistently see 30–50% more downloads on day one compared to those that publish cold.

• It should be between 1 and 1.5 minutes long, no more. If it’s longer, you risk saying too much and not leaving enough surprise for your listeners. 😫

• Then, make sure that the atmosphere and the universe of your podcast are present. For example, if you deal with very serious news topics, don’t try to be funny or entertaining in your trailer. That would be too out of sync with the rest of your podcast. The reverse is also true, if your podcast is recorded in a light-hearted and friendly atmosphere, try and have the same energy in your trailer. 🙃

• And above all, a trailer is made so that your future listeners understand in a few seconds who you are and what your new podcast is about. So you have to be brief and clear; say what you’re going to talk about but without giving away too many details; be nice and friendly while being quick in your explanations. 🤔

> Prepare the groundwork for your new show by publishing a trailer

Publishing a trailer before the official launch of your podcast will also allow you to prepare the groundwork for the publication of your future episodes.

Although with Ausha, you can distribute your podcast in a few clicks, platforms sometimes take a few days to create your show on their app. I’m thinking in particular of Apple Podcasts… 🍏

By creating your show in advance, filling in all your metadata and publishing a trailer a few days, or even a few weeks, before the launch of your podcast, you’ll be more confident the day of your official launch.

This way you’ll be sure that everything works perfectly and that your show is accessible everywhere.

> Create your social media accounts in advance

To start building a community

If you create a trailer and do nothing with it except broadcast it on listening platforms, you won’t get many downloads. 😔

To optimize this pre-launch phase, I recommend creating social media accounts dedicated to your podcast and start posting on them before the official launch of your podcast. For Instagram specifically, our Instagram strategy guide for podcasters has ready-to-use templates.

By doing this, you’ll see a small community build around your show.

If you feel like you’re starting from scratch, look around. You most likely already have an Instagram or LinkedIn account. You also have some really cool friends, family, and coworkers, like mine. 🥰

All of this is your first circle. And that first circle makes up your first listeners.

But how do you activate this first circle? It’s easy! Get them on board! 😉

Ask them to play along by sharing your Instagram account, talking about your project with their own communities, listening to your trailer and sharing it with others.

Thanks to this first circle and word of mouth, your community will grow little by little on social networks.

And the bigger it is at the pre-launch, the easier it will be to launch on game day!  🚀

To tease your future audience

By creating your social media accounts several weeks in advance, you’ll be able to communicate on the preparation of your podcast with behind-the-scenes photos of your recordings for example🎙️, quotes from your first guests, a video clip of your trailer, etc.

The ideas above are just a starting point, the podcasters who build the most engaged communities before launch are usually the ones who treat pre-launch like a mini content series in its own right, not a one-off announcement.

You can also reveal the cover of your podcast or ask for your community’s opinion on the colors that you can’t decide between.

Involving them in the early stages of your show will make them feel valued. They will feel even more involved in your project.

2nd phase: the launch

This is it, game day, the official day of publishing your first episode on Ausha and thus the distribution of your podcast on all podcast directories.

Keep in mind that you may not have a similar impact for some time. It’s always harder to communicate on existing content than on a brand new show. So be sure to make a strong entrance! 💁‍♀️

> Send a press release

We don’t always think about it, but the press release is a great discoverability tool. 🗞️

Maybe some of you don’t think you’re a big enough podcaster to be quoted in the media. This is not true! 🙅‍♀️

Today, media interest in podcasting is stronger than ever: according to Edison Research’s Infinite Dial report, 42% of Americans aged 12+ listen to podcasts monthly, and European figures are growing fast. Journalists covering tech, culture, business, and lifestyle are actively looking for podcast-related stories, and a well-crafted press release gives them an easy hook.

A press release can really accelerate the notoriety of your podcast and can create a real impact from the first moments of your show’s life.

So of course, to achieve this, there are several things you need to pay attention to:

• There are almost as many podcasts as there are different media types. So start by making a list of the media you want to contact. And by the way, when I say media, I don’t necessarily mean traditional media like TV, radio or print. A media can also be a blog, a newsletter, a Youtube channel or an influential Instagram or LinkedIn account. 💻 📱

• The media you list must be, in some way, related to your podcast. Either because they themselves are already talking about the main topic you’re addressing in your show, or because your target audience corresponds to theirs. 🎯

• Follow the 5W rule. To structure your press release, I advise you to rely on 5 little questions: Who, Where, What, When and Why. By answering them implicitly, you will have a really thorough press release. ✏️

• When sending your press release to the media you’ve chosen, include as many communication assets as possible to maximize your chances of being featured and to make life easier for journalists. This can be: the cover of your podcast or episodes in several formats, a photo of you and your guests, your audio player, your unique listening link, etc. 🖼️ (AKA your media kit)

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To learn more about how to write a good press release to promote your podcast, check out our dedicated article on Ausha’s blog.

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> Send an email to your community

Another way to let your community know about the release of your podcast is to send them an email.

Maybe some of you want to create a podcast for a brand or to help them with their training or freelancing activity.

If that’s the case, it’s in your best interest to send an email introducing your new content to your clients, partners or prospects. 💌

If you don’t have an emailing database, you can always do the same process with your social media messaging platforms.

Send your Smartlink or podcast page to the Whatsapp or Messenger group chat of your family or best friends. 📱

Remember, what we’re trying to activate here is your first circle, as this is what will then trigger word-of-mouth.

We all have a lot of group chats all over the place: for once, use the opportunity to communicate your podcast to them!

> Communicate on all your social media

Launch day is not the time to be subtle. Post everywhere, and post more than once. A single Instagram story at 9am won’t cut it; schedule posts across platforms throughout the day to catch different time zones and usage peaks.

Social networks are an essential tool for the discoverability of your podcast.

That’s why we’ve created a Social Media manager directly on Ausha’s platform so that you can manage the promotion of your podcast on social networks all in one place. 🤩

From this Social Media Manager, you can create, schedule, delete or duplicate a post as many times as you want on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or Instagram and you can even follow and analyze the results of your posts to adapt your communication strategy.

So in the blink of an eye 😉 , thanks to the rate of engagement, the number of impressions, the number of reaches or likes, you will know which network works best, which type of publication appeals to your audience, etc.

3rd phase: The post-launch

Thanks to the 2 previous steps, you’ve informed your first circle of the release of your podcast.

Now, the goal is to expand your audience by distributing your podcast to listeners you don’t know. 🤝

The post-launch phase has one job: stop the drop. After a launch spike, most podcasts see downloads fall by 40–60% within two weeks unless you actively work to sustain them. The tactics below, SEO, Smartlink, SmartPlayer, cross-promotion, are specifically designed to keep your momentum going past day one.

> Optimize the natural referencing of your podcast

By working carefully on your SEO (or natural referencing) you will boost the visibility of your podcast. 🚀

And once it’s well positioned in the search engine results, you will see that your downloads will increase rapidly.

How does it work? 🧐

Let me explain.

If we take the example of a podcast whose subject is: How to write the script of your podcast?

This subject responds to specific SEO queries that users type into search engines.

This means that this podcast episode can answer their questions instead of an article or video they may have found online as well.

You should know that Google is investing more and more in the podcast format by displaying episodes in position 0, meaning: at the very top of the search results page. This is called a snippet.

To be highlighted by Google, you need to be known and recognized as an expert by them. And that usually involves natural referencing.

> How to optimize the SEO of your podcast?

There are 3 things you can work on (and if you want to go deep on any of them, our complete podcast SEO guide covers every technique in detail):

• Keywords 🗝️: natural referencing is kind of the survival of the fittest in terms of keywords. So your titles, your descriptions and even your images must be well optimized with keywords that match the subject of your episode.

• The theme of your episodes 🎙️: just like for a blog post or a Youtube video, the most viewed or most read content corresponds to the greatest number of requests from Internet users. So research the questions, keywords or phrases that your potential audience types in and turn them into podcast topics.

• Blog posts ✏️: I advise you to write blog posts dedicated to your episodes on a website. One per episode is ideal. It will allow you to rank well on the queries that correspond to your episodes. Google will understand that you are an expert in your field and will rank you higher in its results.

You can also create your own blog or website that talks only about your podcast and integrate your audio player. This way, people can listen to your episode directly on your website. And BAM, it becomes a new distribution channel!

Ausha also allows you to display a web page dedicated to your podcast.

And this web page is completely SEO optimized to help you to rank higher on search engines.

For that, you don’t have to do anything, it’s activated by default when you upload your podcast on Ausha. 💻

> Simplify your podcast listening

With the Smartlink

If you ask people around you which platform they usually listen to their podcast on, you’ll probably get all kinds of answers: Spotify, Deezer, Apple Podcasts, etc. So it’s not always clear which URL to share with your community. 🤔

With Ausha, you can generate a Smartlink, a single link that redirects to all the platforms that broadcast your podcast. It’s super convenient!

With the SmartPlayer

I mentioned it earlier in this article, Ausha’s SmartPlayer also helps to simplify access to your podcast for users who find themselves on your blog posts. ⏯️

Thanks to an iframe that you can copy and paste from your Ausha manager onto your website. 🚀

For some podcasters, the Smartplayer is also part of the communication assets they send to their guests when their episodes are released so that they can share it on their own channels to benefit their community.

It looks like this 👇

> Cross-promotion

One last thing that can help boost your podcast in the early months of your show’s life is cross-promotion. 🤜 🤛

What is cross-promotion? 🤔

It’s simply the fact of communicating about your podcast … in someone else’s podcast. To make cross-promotion work, you need to approach it like an interview, our complete podcast interview guide covers how to pitch yourself and prepare for guest spots.

It can be for example by broadcasting an audio ad at the beginning or end of a partner show; by being interviewed by the host of a show you like or by slipping one of your episodes into the RSS feed of a partner podcast that’s taking a break.

Cross-promotion allows you to reach out to a qualified audience that is already listening to podcasts.

To find the right cross-promotion partners, you need a structured approach, not just cold outreach. Here’s what works based on experience from thousands of podcasters on Ausha’s platform:

• Join Facebook groups of podcasters and become known within these communities.

• Or take a look at the Rephonic website which allows you to see, in the form of a map, the podcasts that have a similar theme to yours.

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Now you have all the keys to communicate about your new podcast and quickly reach 3,000 monthly downloads. Once your launch is done, your next challenge is getting your first 1,000 podcast subscribers, our dedicated guide walks you through it step by step. All you have to do is take the leap with Ausha! 💜