How to Successfully Promote Podcasts & Attract New Visitors

One thing I’ve noticed about most of my favorite podcasts is that could use some help with podcast promotion. It’s not at all surprising as their time and efforts go into recording, Foley work, sound-scaping, writing, music soundtracks, etc, etc. It’s my hope that with this post I can reach out to the web developers of my favorite programs to pass on these free tips for better ways to promote podcasts.

I have a creative job that allows me the opportunity to listen to many podcasts daily as I code and develop away. It’s my hope that I can raise awareness of some of my favorites and help them get even more subscribers insuring that they will not only put more money in their pockets, but continue to grow so I always have something new to listen to. Not very altruistic I know, but it’s in the best interests of podcast fans everywhere that this media continues to grow and thrive.

Social Media to Promote Podcasts

A podcast that I recently came across that’s quickly becoming a top favorite of mine is the No Sleep Podcast. It’s a brilliant collection of stories born from an ongoing Reddit thread that just keeps going.

How to Effectively Use Twitter to Promote Podcasts

Twitter is a great way to promote and grow your podcast. If you have a loyal Twitter following you already have a captive audience. It’s in your best interest to take advantage of this social network to promote new podcasts and events.

All you need to do is look at the following 2 tweets to see which one is more compelling.

NoSleep Podcast S7E22 – https://t.co/LPbl6QUlEm

— Nate Balcom (@lukeslytalker) October 22, 2016

The tweet above is how current posts look when tweeted.

Fan of horror? Attack the Block? Aliens? Check out the @NoSleepPodcast "Down in the Library Basement" S7E22 – https://t.co/LPbl6RbX2W pic.twitter.com/ecT60rlye4

— Nate Balcom (@lukeslytalker) October 20, 2016

Here’s a link to that same post with a little more finesse. Immediately you see more information about what the podcast is about. It’s compelling you and contains imagery. It stands out in a feed and begs you to click on it. It’s important to customize your tweets to compel not only likes and re-tweets, but to entice new listeners. Statistically, more people click on tweets with images than those without. If you’re already posting an image with your new posts including it in your tweets is quick and easy way to compel new followers.

Social Media Meta Data

The following meta data is specific to each social network. By adding the following code inside the head tag of your post you can control what social posts look like. You can assign any image and description you want to engage your audience.

Open Graph data
Open Graph data is the markup language Facebook uses for controlling how default posts look. Add this code to your page to tell Facebook how you want posts to your website or blog to look.

<meta property="og:title" content="TITLE FOR FACEBOOK" />
<meta property="og:type" content="article" />
<meta property="og:url" content="LINK TO YOUR SITE" />
<meta property="og:image" content="http://EXAMPLE.com/EXAMPLE.jpg" />
<meta property="og:description" content="FACEBOOK POST DESCRITPION HERE" />
<meta property="og:site_name" content="WEBSITE TITLE HERE" />
<meta property="article:section" content="Organization" />

Schema.org markup for Google+
This bit of code adds a title, description and image for pasts that go to Google+. Include the information you want showing up on people’s Google+ posts here. See an example of what my Google+ posts look like for my homepage here.

<meta itemprop="name" content="Put what you want your Google+ title to be">
<meta itemprop="description" content="This section will show up as a description in your post. Be specific with what your page is about here.">
<meta itemprop="image" content="http://example.com/example.jpg">

Twitter Card Data
Including Twitter card data in your page allows you to control how tweets from your page look. This way you have more control of how to engage your viewers.

<meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image">
<meta name="twitter:site" content="@YOURTWITTERUSERNAME">
<meta name="twitter:title" content="TWITTER TITLE.">
<meta name="twitter:description" content="TWITTER DESCRIPTION THAT SHOWS UP IN POSTS">
<meta name="twitter:creator" content="@YOURTWITTERUSERNAME">

Twitter Card post example

Better Blogging Tips – https://t.co/toKHHasmLU

— Nate Balcom (@lukeslytalker) October 22, 2016

SEO Meta Tags Every Website Should Have

The following meta data is important for any website interested in being indexed in the search engines. It’s not specific to to podcasts, but if you have a site that needs traffic here are a few must have meta tags.

Description Meta Tag
A meta description is important because it tells your viewers/ search engines what your post is about. Keep your description between 150-160 characters as most search engines only display that many characters in a search engine results page.

<meta name="description" content="Keep your description between 150-160 characters.
" />

1 2	<meta name="description" content="Keep your description between 150-160 characters. " />

Meta descriptions can be any length, but search engines generally truncate snippets longer than 160 characters. It is best to keep meta descriptions between 150 and 160 characters.

–Moz.com

Author Meta Tag
An author tag tells your viewers/ search engines who created a post. It helps build authority and build your name as a brand by stating this is who I am and this is what I know about. Author tags are important for the long game. Once you have a wealth of niche content you become an authority. Your content has more clout when you say you’re proud of it.

<meta name="author" content="YOUR NAME HERE">

1	<meta name="author" content="YOUR NAME HERE">

Robots Meta Tag
The following meta data tells the search engines bots to index your content then follow all linked content and index that as well. A robots meta tag insures the bots will come back and index your site when you post new content.

<meta name="robots" content="index,follow">

1	<meta name="robots" content="index,follow">

WordPress Plug-ins to Promote Your Podcast

I can’t vouch for the following plug-ins myself as I don’t have a podcast, but as a blogger/ WordPress developer and SEO guy I can tell you why these are important to consider from a marketers perspective. Each one of these WordPress plug-ins received 5 stars from the developer community. If you have something different you prefer or currently use keep it up. I’m just going to throw in my 2 cents as to why plug-ins like this are important.

Seriously Simple Podcasting
I chose this podcast management system as it was touted as easy to use and rated above all other podcast management systems. It includes support for multiple podcasts as well as video podcasts. It offer stats so you can get critical post data to know how well a specific podcast performed

Seriously Simple Podcasting

Featured Podcast Widget
A featured post widget is as important for a blogs as it is for a podcast. It helps to promote content that is already being received well, needs more viewers or is an older podcast that would benefit from more listens.

Featured Podcast Widget

Podcast Review Widget
A review widget is important for gaining new viewers. People like to read reviews to determine if your content is something that is of interest to them. In fact, Google includes reviews in search engine results pages for this very reason.

Podcast Review Widget

Happy Podcast Promotions

I hope this post helps get more eyes on your site and more importantly ears on your podcast. I thought a good way to end this post would be to list my top 10 favorite podcasts on the web today. If this post helps please tell everyone you know and share it on all of your social networks.