With all the social media options out there, you need a podcast social media strategy to make sure you are using your time and effort most effectively.
In this blog post we are going to outline how to put together that strategy that is sure to grow your podcast’s visibility! 🚀
Really know who your podcast audience is and adapt to their social media habits
This is the first step to take before throwing yourself head first into the world of building your show’s brand on social networks. There are lots of different social networks available today, and they all have their own specific features and characteristics. Some, such as TikTok or Snapchat, target younger users, whereas others, such as LinkedIn or Clubhouse, are aimed specifically at professionals.
It is therefore essential that you analyze your audience first, before putting all your time and energy into your favorite social network. You’ll also need to keep in mind that the more different social networks you choose, the more time you’ll need to spend on creating your digital content. It’s therefore better to choose the ones you’re going to use carefully and based on your audience’s habits. 🎯
For this, we recommend you think of your podcast as a service or a product. You wouldn’t dream of marketing a service or a product without finding out as much as you can about your core target audience. Well, it’s the same thing with podcasts! It’s all about what at Ausha we call the listener persona.
And to help you define yours, we’ve developed a methodology for you to use. The aim here is to put yourself in the place of your target listener – in their shoes in other words – and think about what their typical day might be like. ☕ Think about what their motivations might be, and what kinds of things might prevent them from listening to your podcast, or make them less likely to listen to it. We have seven basic questions for you to ask yourself when defining your listener persona.
> You can also download a free template from Ausha that you can complete directly online.
Learn what specific features each network offers your podcast social media strategy
The second step to build a podcast social media strategy is to decide which platforms will work best to build your brand.
Instagram for your social media
Let’s begin with what has now become an essential platform if you want to build a podcast brand. Instagram has more than 500 million people active on its network each day across the world as a whole. This level of volume and reach makes it highly attractive as a marketing lever for promoting content.💪
The vast majority of podcasters have an Instagram account dedicated to their podcast. This enables them to give their audience a taste of each new episode through the use of snacking content, or to extend their listeners’ listening experience through additional content relating to their podcast.
This online site offers several very useful features you can use to both further promote your brand and interact with your community: stories (which everyone is now familiar with), reels (short videos), Lives, the ‘poll’ feature which enables you to ask your community questions, and the ‘questions’ feature, which allows your followers to ask you all kinds of questions, which you can read and then answer. 😁
A word of caution however: Instagram is a highly visual social network. This means you have to create additional content relating to your podcast episodes. With Ausha, for example, you can generate a video clip using an extract from your podcast. This provides a taste of your new episode for your audience, who are then tempted to listen to it in its entirety. 😉
> If you want to learn more about how to market and promote your podcast on Instagram, I recommend you read the article by Clémentine Roux on the Ausha blog.
Twitter is THE platform for up-to-the-minute breaking news and info. 🔥 It all happens fast here. This kind of promotion is known as ‘real-time marketing’. You have to be reactive, picking up quickly on news and current events relating to the topic of your podcast or the world of podcasting in general.
The site assembles a sizeable community of podcasters together in one place. Being a part of this community is great, given that every podcaster is first and foremost a listener. 🎧 By using Twitter, you’ll have a foot in the door of the podcastosphere and be able to contact lots of people living the same podcast adventure as you.
Finally, this online site is more a place for discussing podcast practice and meeting (virtually to begin with) others who share the same interests as you. It’s important to note too that there are many journalists and web users engaged in politics or with a strong interest in economics and business on Twitter. It’s also popular with techies and gamers. 💻 If you like pop culture and memes, this is the digital platform for you!
Though this social network has been declining in recent years, it nevertheless still has a lot to offer podcasters looking for tips and advice but who don’t know who to turn to for answers to their questions. This is because with the rise of podcasts, Facebook has seen a growth in private mutual help and support groups 🥰, where more experienced podcasters take novice podcasters under their wings, helping them learn ways of podcasting and strategies to grow their numbers of listens.
No matter what your friends may say, Facebook is a great digital tool for getting your podcast known and meeting other podcasters.
As you’re probably well aware, LinkedIn is a social network for professionals. Depending on the audience you’re targeting, it can be useful and worthwhile to have a strong presence on this site. Many podcasters use the medium of the podcast to—in short—market and promote a product or service they sell. For example, if you talk about business related topics in your program, LinkedIn is definitely the place to be! 🤝
It’s important to note, however, that the LinkedIn algorithm favors longer posts. That means you need to create long-form content offering strong added value on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn also offers many features that help you promote your content, such as polls and PDF Carousel posts.
> We’ve written a full article about developing an effective strategy for your podcast on LinkedIn. This article is also available on the Ausha blog.
TikTok
The youngest member of the family! Though TikTok still had very ‘Gen Z’ associations, just a few months ago, the various successive lockdowns and the long evenings spent isolated from the rest of the world have been a game changer in this respect. Perhaps you’ve already heard of this social network but never actually used it… Well, it’s time to fix that. 😁
Because TikTok is still a very young platform, the potential growth it gives you is considerable. You could easily use it to grow your podcast’s discoverability. This is because “new social network” also means fewer people signed up than on Instagram or Twitter. With less content available, your chances of being ranked highly by the algorithm are increased.
However—and just like with Instagram—TikTok is primarily a visual site, so you’ll need to create additional content to go with your podcast. I suspect you’re going to get lost in the vortex of TikTok when looking for inspiration… Good luck! 😉
Make great social media posts
Now that you know who your target audience is and which social media platforms you want to use, now the next step in creating a podcast social media strategy is to learn what your should post. Below we offer some tried and true strategies about making posts that effectively grow your brand.
Share an extract of your latest episode
What better way could there be to make your audience want to listen to your podcast than by giving them a taste of your latest new episode? In the marketing world, this is known as ‘teasing’, and just like trailers in the world of cinema, it serves to attract your future podcasters and make them want to listen to your new content in full. 🚀
A survey carried out by Médiamétrie in 2020 revealed that for posts hosted on Twitter, videos generate around ten times more engagement than simple images. 🤝 At Ausha, we recommend you share a video extract from your latest new podcast by publishing a clip with an image in the background (the cover image for your latest episode, for example) as well as audio waveforms, titles, and even a transcription so that the video can be understood without earphones. With Ausha, you can even download your video clip in different formats—i.e. square, portrait and landscape—so it can be adapted for use with all your social networks.
One way you can provide a taste of your episode is by sharing a quote from one of your guests. With an attention grabbing phrase or one that reveals the topic of your episode, you’ll definitely make your audience eager to listen to the entire podcast. 💪
Post images to accompany your audio content
Podcasts have the magical quality of enabling you to whisper in your listeners’ ears. But there is another side to this: You sometimes want to be able to put a face to a voice. Personally, I sometimes find it frustrating when I can’t see the people I’m listening to, especially when I’ve really enjoyed the contribution they’ve made. And when that’s the case, I make a point of going to the social network pages of the podcast in question to find out what the guests look like. 👀
A photo of you recording your episode, of your set-up, of your guests, of the topic of the episode… You could even make videos to go with an episode you’ve just published on the listening platforms: interviews with your guests, a video extract accompanied by images of the podcast being recorded… The possibilities are endless. 😁
By supplementing your audio content with visual content, you’ll inspire even more interest in your audience. This snacking content can be consumed by your listeners both as a taster of your podcast and as additional content. Which brings us to our third point.
Offer your podcast audience additional content
Podcasts often have a lot of things behind them that you don’t see. The story you’ve decided to tell via your microphone might just be the tip of the iceberg visible above the water. 🧊 Some podcasters create a podcast with the aim of providing digital lessons or instructions for their listeners; others because they want to sell the book they’ve written; and others to accompany a blog they have on the same topic.
No matter what the case is, social networks are ideal places to share all the content relating to your podcast. 🛰️
Use automation and planning
The many discussions I’ve had with podcasters, be they independent or professional, have made me aware of just how time-consuming developing a complete social media marketing plan for a podcast can be. ⏰
Creating the visuals, signing in to the various platforms, writing the messages, returning to the Ausha platform to get the smartlink (a unique listening link) for your episode: All this takes a lot of time. And on top of the time it takes, I’d say it also takes a lot of energy. 🥱
That’s why automation and planning is the last key step to creating a podcast social media strategy that helps build and grow your brand.
Properly planning the various messages you post on all your social networks can save you precious time. It’s best, for example, to automate your digital marketing and promotion so that it goes out as soon as you publish a new episode on any of the platforms. Your community will then be informed about the release of your new content almost instantly, and your number of listens will start to grow automatically. 🚀
Ausha lets you connect your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram accounts to your main management interface. You can also use other social media tools such as Hootsuite, Buffer and Sprout Social, if you like.
3 final tips for a successful podcast social media strategy
We’ve given you the big items to consider when putting together your social media strategy, but before we part ways, let us give you three tips that we have been able to learn alongside the podcasts hosted on our platform.
Tip 1: Be patient with your podcast social media strategy
Creating an effective marketing and promotion strategy on social networks can be a long and tiring process. But don’t be discouraged! Each platform’s algorithms need to first be able to recognize you and understand what recurring topic you talk about so that they can push you towards the right audience. It can take some time for this to happen. So be patient at first, it can take a while to build a brand’s presence.
Tip 2: Test your podcast social media strategy
There is something that holds true across many different kinds of strategies: test, test and test again! Apply the A/B testing principle: try one piece of content out then try the same again with another social media platform. If some posts and publications don’t work as well as you’d hoped, no problem. You simply move on to something else and test again! This is the best way to figure out what works.
Tip 3: Read up on new social media features
Social networks are regularly introducing new features; watch out for them and don’t be reluctant to learn how to use them and try them out. New features may change some of your strategies or ways of doing things. Keeping up with changes allows you to keep your brand in front of as many people as possible.
No matter what your podcast social media strategy initially is, you should always be ready to make changes based on new things you learn! And of course, the most important step is just to start!
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