Podcasting: Why you can’t count on organic growth

“If you build it, they will come,” only works in novels. Nobody can count on that happening in real life.

There are a bijillion podcasts (it actually depends on who you ask, but most sources report there being over 2 million podcasts). Even if you have a spot-on title and keyword-packed episode descriptions, there is still a lot of clutter to distract potential listeners as they search for podcasts in your field. The clutter is so dense that producers can really no longer count on listeners finding their podcasts with a fair amount of marketing. Listeners need to be guided to our podcasts. We can’t just build a great podcast and hope people will come and listen to it.

There are several ways to bring people to our podcasts without shelling out a lot of money–although, to be honest, paid advertising is probably the most expedient way to build an audience. However, most podcasters start with a budget of 75 cents (which all goes towards production), so we’ll focus on some cheap alternatives for audience growth. Let’s start by debunking a couple myths about podcast marketing:

Myth: Ratings and reviews help our shows get noticed.

Like most myths, there is some partial truth to this. Ratings and reviews may help sell our podcasts to potential listeners. BUT, ratings and reviews don’t actually push our podcasts up the all-important Apple Podcasts charts. (Incidentally, Apple Podcasts is like the Facebook of the podcasting realm–it’s by far the most widely used platform.) Here’s an example: a look at the “Bestsellers” in the Christianity section. It features the “best ranked” podcasts labeled Christianity. Conventional thinking suggests these are the podcasts with the highest review ratings or the most positive comments. But that’s actually not the case. Your podcast may have more reviews and ratings (and episodes!) than several of these podcasts:

At time of writing:

• You’re Not Crazy: 2 episodes and 13 reviews (and look at it’s listing!)
• Sellout: 3 episodes and 65 reviews
• The Boom Clap: 23 episode and 139 reviews

The number of ratings and reviews on this list vary in range from a dozen-ish to a dozen thousand-ish. Obviously, there’s something else driving Apple’s rankings, and they’re not disclosing what it is. We can only conjecture a few ideas of what drives this ranking system: total number of subscribers over the past week, total number of episode listens across a timespan, total number of “next episode” listens across a defined timespan, all these factors combined, and some extra factors that we’re unaware of.

It truly seems that Apple Podcasts does not prioritize what people are talking about as it forms it’s rankings, instead it prioritizes what people are actually listening to. So in order to get more people listening to our podcasts through Apple Podcasts, we need to get more people listening to our podcasts. Easy, right?

The takeaway with this revelation about Apple’s ratings system is that we don’t really need to prioritize ratings and reviews. If we’re going to ask our audience to do something that helps our show grow, there are more effective actions than dropping a rating or review. We need to get our audience talking about podcasts in other ways.

Next myth: Social media drives listenership.

Again, partially true. Audience engagement drives listenership, and social media can be a great way for engaging with your audience. So can a good email list. But no one discovers an email list without a good content platform, and no one discovers your podcast on social media without good audience engagement. Therefore, if you’re posting your episodes to Facebook as a way of marketing your podcast, then there’s a good chance no one is finding your posts. If you’re somehow using your episodes to start conversations with people on Facebook, then it might gain some traction.

What does work: Get people talking about your podcast.

Despite Apple’s devaluing of ratings and reviews, word of mouth is still the key factor in growing an audience. The best way to grow an audience is to get people talking about your podcast. The first step to get people talking about your podcast is to make sure you’re offering valuable content. In the religious world, that means that we should be seeking to answer questions people are actually asking about their faith, our world, and the Divine. If we approach every episode as an opportunity to lead someone towards transformation, then we’ll be guided towards offering valuable content. And valuable content gets people talking.

Most of us have a practice of adding a call to action into our episodes. For many, that call to action is to subscribe or offer a review. We probably want to change what our call to action is, emphasizing something that readily leads towards audience growth. So a valuable call to action might be: “If this episode was valuable to you, post ‘Hey, I just learned ________ while listening to the ________ podcast.” (Feel free to fill in the blanks for your audience member.) 

Other effective calls to action would be: join a Facebook Group, join an email list (both ways of building audience interaction), or to listen to the next episode (again, Apple prioritizes actual listens). A good practice is to be concise and clear on your call to action, however. So it’s best to just choose one call to action and stick with it.

The audience-growth hack: Be a guest.

Probably the most expedient way to grow an audience, however, is to get featured as a guest on another podcast. This exposes you to an audience who is already engaged in podcasts, is interested in your topic, and will likely want to hear more from you.

Here’s a simple formula for offering yourself to other podcasts: 

• Start by trolling Apple for podcasts related to yours (or hit up your friends, who are likely doing similar podcasts).
• Reach out to the producer or host explaining why you love their podcast and what value you can offer their listener.
• Show your own review of their podcast.
• Offer to share an episode featuring you across your platforms (including your podcast’s RSS feed).
• And be clear what you would like to speak with them about.

Really, appearing on another podcast is getting someone else to talk about your podcast–which is really the way of growing an audience. Just be aware that when you’re on someone else’s podcast, you are there to offer their audience value regarding the theme of that podcast. This will not simply be an opportunity to talk about why people should listen to your podcast.

Podcasting offers a great way to inspire community. And it seems that the real way to build a podcast audience is to nurture a community around your podcast or podcast topic. If you want to see this in action, join the Pastoring in the Digital Parish Facebook Group, where we attempt to build community around the Pastoring in the Digital Parish podcast.

Listeners need to be guided to our podcasts. Building community around our podcasts does that.