Podcast Marketing: Getting your guests to promote your episode

Bill from Happy Valley Hustle asks, "How do you get your guests to consistently promote their podcast episodes?"

TL;DR
Having guests on your podcast is one of our favorite marketing strategies. They have a great time sharing their expertise and, if everything goes well, they're eager to share it with their network of friends and followers. Unfortunately, guests are known to drop the ball in this area, so here are 3 tips to help your podcast guests share their episodes more consistently.

1. Communicate early and often

At first, you're going back and forth to schedule the interview, grab headshots for promotional graphics, and get links to their website. Don't drop the ball once the interview is over! Keep them in the loop about when their episode is coming out and reaffirm how much you appreciated them as a guest.

2. Do all the heavy lifting

If you want your guest to promote their episode on your podcast, you need to make things really easy for them. That means creating social media graphics they can share with their followers, writing a blurb for their email newsletter, and providing a direct link where people can listen to the episode. The more work you do for them, the more likely they are to share their episode.

3. Sponsor an Episode of Their Podcast

With this advanced strategy, offer to sponsor an episode of their podcast if they have one. You pay them to promote their guest appearance to their existing audience, talking all about your podcast, and a significant number will check out your podcast episode.

Costs vary depending on the size of their podcast audience, so best practice is to ask them how much it would be to sponsor an episode or two of their podcast and then go from there.

Special thanks to the Creating a Brand podcast for sharing their social media graphic and Visual Soundbite with us for the video version of the show!

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Transcript

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Gilon : 0:00

In today's episode, you'll learn how to get your podcast guests to consistently promote their episodes. Welcome to Podcasting Q&A, where you learn the best tips and strategies to launch grow and monetize your show. This week's question comes from Bill.

Bill : 0:14

Hi, this is Bill Zimmerman from Happy Valley Hustle, the podcast that highlights the innovators who aren't afraid of a little hard work. My question is, how do you get your guests to promote an appearance on your show after it's been released? Thanks.

Gilon : 0:28

Thanks for your question, Bill. Interviewing noteworthy guests that have a significant audience is actually one of our favorite marketing strategies for podcasters. The only thing is, the guest has to promote the episode. So in this episode, we'll go over what you need to do to get more consistent promotion from your guest, as well as cover a more advanced strategy that will virtually guarantee healthy bump in your podcast listeners. Tip number one, do not be afraid to over communicate. Oftentimes when you've got a guest coming on to your podcast. You guys are emailing back and forth. Figure out scheduling to get a headshot for the promotional to just get all the details nailed down and ironed out. Once the episode is recorded, don't drop the ball stay connected. Definitely go back and reaffirm how great the episode was how much you appreciated their time then lending their voice and their expertise, affirm them, and then also keep them up to date. Let them know when the podcast is coming out. Give them a heads up for when you plan to schedule the release of it. And also let them know how you're going to be promoting it. Are you promoting on Facebook Are you promoting on Instagram on tik tok on LinkedIn? What are you doing to push it out there? Make sure that they know what's happening. So that when it's time to promote they know hey, this person valued my voice. It was a really great episode. They told me how much they loved it and how excited they were that it dropped when you make people feel like they're valued, they're much more likely to share the episode to their audiences. Tip number two, do all the heavy lifting for them. Ideally, you want to make it as easy as possible for them to promote the episode. So some things that you can do are creating an audio gram or a social media graphic for Facebook, for Instagram, whatever social media platform you promote on, that's a really easy way to get them to share that episode when you have that created, and it's made right there for them and you give it to them. The second thing that you can do is create a blurb for them to include in their newsletter about the episode, hey, this is an episode about x, y, and z, you send that over to them, they can push that right out to their people via email. The other thing that you can do is provide a direct link where people can listen to the episode, the idea is that it should be as easy as copying and pasting and pushing out to their people. You want to have no reason for them not to share the episode and promote it. So one of the things that I like to do when I reach out to my people, my interview guests and say, Hey, your episodes dropping this day, I've created an audiogram through Buzzsprout, video soundbite or headliner. I've created this graphic from Canva. You can push that out on Facebook, share this with your people, and that's nine times out of 10. They easily share that I've done all the work for them. They don't have to think about anything. They can just insert it, upload it, send it out, however they're going to promote it and it's As easy as pie, they're not to think about it. They don't have to create anything, they just have to share it. Tip number three, offer to sponsor an episode of their podcast. So I don't want you to feel any pressure. But if you have a little bit of budget for marketing, this can be a really great strategy, especially if your guest has a dedicated sizable audience. So what you would do is essentially say, hey, it was so great for you to be on my podcast loved it, it was amazing. Hey, can I sponsor an episode of your podcast where you just shout out that you were on my podcast to your listeners. So let's say Pam has a podcast about cat videos. And she comes on to your podcast about dog videos. When Pam goes back to her podcast about cat videos, she was just shout out to her audience that she was on your podcast about dog videos. And that's a sponsorship. That's how that works. So you might be wondering, hey, how much does it cost to sponsor an episode of a podcast? And the answer is it really just depends. Best practice is to ask the person Hey, how much would it cost to sponsor an episode of your podcast once they Get back with you and let you know what that number is, then you can decide if that's a worthy investment for you. Thanks for sending us your question Bill. If you have a question that you'd like us to answer on a future episode, please go to speak pipe comm slash Buzzsprout or click the link in the show notes and leave us a brief audio message. Podcasting Q&A is available in both video and audio formats. So if you prefer video, definitely subscribe to the Buzzsprout YouTube channel. If audio is while your style, you can definitely find Podcasting Q&A in your favorite podcast app and please leave us a review on pod chaser to let us know how we can make the show even better. That's it for today. Thank you for listening and as always keep podcasting