Podcasting Q&A

3 Tips to Kick-Start Your Podcast

October 11, 2021 Buzzsprout
Podcasting Q&A
3 Tips to Kick-Start Your Podcast
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

What should you do if you've been podcasting for a little while, and you realize that your audience just isn't growing anymore? No matter what you do, or how good the episodes are, you're not getting more listeners and more downloads for your podcast.

In this episode, we're gonna talk about three things that you can do to break out of that plateau and keep growing your podcast.

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Travis:

So what should you do if you've been podcasting for a little while, and you realize that your audience just isn't growing anymore, maybe when you first launched it, you had a burst of excitement, your listeners are excited, you were excited, you're starting to get more and more downloads with every episode. And then you just kind of hit this plateau, where it seems like no matter what you do, or how good the episodes are, you're not getting more listeners and more downloads for your podcast. So in this video, we're gonna talk about three things that you can do to break out of that plateau and keep growing your podcast. And the first thing that you should do is actually look at your statistics, every single podcast host will give you some kind of podcast stats, we Buzzsprout, we have a lot of things you can look at. And what you're looking for, are specific episodes that are disproportionately more popular than the others. And so if you're looking at all your stats, and you see that most episodes get about 5060 downloads per episode, and then you had one that for some reason got like 150, that should be an indicator to you that this is really what people are interested in listening to. And it will probably surprise you. I know it typically does for me, it's not the episodes I expect to do well the ones that have poured my heart and soul into it's the ones where I had that really interesting guest that shared that story, or talked about something that nobody really talked about before. And my listeners really grabbed on to that and said, Yes, this is fantastic. This is great. And they're telling me with their downloads, do more of that. And so if you haven't done that recently, go back through your podcast, let's see if there any episodes that really jump outs that are disproportionately more popular than the others. And that could be an indication of what your listeners are actually wanting from your show. The second thing you can do is ask your listeners to fill out a survey, you can create really easy surveys with Google Forms or Survey Monkey for free, put a link in your show notes and say, Hey, if you've been enjoying this podcast, I'm trying to make sure that I can make it as good as I possibly can. If you fill out the survey, letting me know what you like about the show and what you don't like about the show. I'll do my best to incorporate your feedback in the future. And even if only a certain percentage of your listeners actually fill out that survey, that is invaluable information. Because typically as a podcast, you're trying to read the tea leaves and figure out what do people like not like you're trying to make educated guesses based on what you can see, but there is no substitution for simply going directly to your listeners and saying What do you like about the show? What are your favorite episodes? And what are the things that you wish that I would do differently or the way I wish that I would not do at all, in order to make this podcast even better for you. So create a very simple survey using Google Forms or Survey Monkey, send it out to your listeners, and then use those responses to help you figure out how you can break through that plateau. And the third thing you can do to break out of that plateau to kickstart your podcast is to spend more time marketing your podcast that might sound like Well, of course, Travis, if I had all the time in the world, I were just marking my podcast all the time. But what I have seen coaching, working with podcasters and even running, I think I'm up to 10 shows by now what I have noticed is that it's easy as the creative as the person putting the podcast together to gravitate towards the things you naturally like to do. And so if you enjoy interviewing people, if you enjoy editing your podcast, if you enjoy tweaking, with your episode, artwork, that is where you will spend most of your time because it's fun, and you enjoy doing that. And there's nothing wrong with that. But just recognize that until you're able to spend at least as much time marketing your show, as you do producing it, you're probably going to stay stuck at that plateau. And that's simply because podcasts, once you have a listener, they're they're like they're committed, they're downloading your episode, they're listening to you for 30 minutes a week. But it takes a lot for someone to commit to that as a subscriber, as someone who's following your podcast on a weekly basis. And so unless you're getting the word out there, and letting people know, I have this really incredible thing that you will love, they're not going to know about it. And so if you're not spending as much time marketing your show, as you are producing it, then you're missing an opportunity. And so just go through and ask yourself of those three things where what is something you could do right now, in order to help break out of that plateau? Is it going back and looking through your episodes to see which ones are outperforming the others? Is it creating a simple survey that you can send to your listeners and promote in your upcoming episodes so they know to go and fill it out? Or is it just doubling down on your marketing content to make sure that you're actually putting in the work to promote this really incredible thing that you've made so that more people can listen to it. Pick one of those things right now to implement to break out of that plateau and to kickstart your podcast. Thanks for listening to Podcasting Q&A. If you have a question you'd like us to answer on a future episode, you can just go to speakpipe.com/Buzzsprout or click the link in the show notes to leave us a brief audio message. Podcasting Q&A is available both as a video and an audio podcast. So if you enjoy watching videos, make sure you subscribe to the Buzzsprout YouTube channel to get more content every single week. Or you can subscribe to Podcasting Q&A and your favorite podcast listening app. tip for today. Thanks for listening and as always keep podcasting

Intro
Look at your stats
Survey your audience
More marketing