With social media marketing, you can promote your podcast more effectively online. Amplifying your podcast through social media can help you reach new audiences, strengthen your podcast identity, and see more engagement with your episodes. Here are a few tips for using social media for your podcast!
Develop a Social Media Strategy
Your podcast’s social media marketing strategy should define and outline everything you plan to do on your social media channels, from content creation and community management to paid advertising campaigns. When developing a social media strategy, the three most important steps will be setting goals, getting on the right platforms, and creating a content calendar.
Set Social Media Goals
Perhaps the most important step before you start creating social media content is to identify your social media goals. The goals you set for your social media accounts should be achievable and trackable. A few examples of goals you might set are:
- Boost podcast awareness
- Increase community engagement
- Grow podcast audience
You can track each of these goals through social media analytics. If you want to boost awareness, track your follower growth, number of impressions, and reach. To track community engagement, monitor the comments, replies, shares, and likes you get on your posts. When trying to grow your audience, watch the number of link clicks you get from social media to your podcast website and episodes.
Whatever goals you decide to set, make sure that you keep track of your progress over time. That way, you can see and celebrate your progress, as well as adjust goals and strategies to continue growing.
Choose the Correct Platforms
Once you’ve decided on the goals of your social media marketing strategy, identify which platforms can help you achieve those goals. Each social media network offers distinct advantages based on the content you want to create or the audience you want to reach. For example:
- TikTok allows you to create quick, funny, and unique short-form video content and has the highest engagement rate per post.
- Instagram offers multiple features, including regular video or photo posts, Instagram Stories, and Instagram Reels.
- Twitter allows you to ask your followers questions, create polls, engage in industry-related discussions, follow trending topics, or post quick announcements.
- Facebook offers opportunities to create a group or page that your listeners can follow and interact with.
Whatever platforms you decide to use for podcast promo, make sure you find your target audience and adjust your social media marketing strategy to those platforms and the content that performs best there.
Determine a Social Media Calendar
Once you know which platforms you’ll use, who your target audience is, and what kind of social media content you want to create, it’s time to set up a social media content calendar. Not only does having a calendar help you stay organized so you can keep up with your podcast publishing schedule, but it also allows you to discover the most effective times of day for reaching your audience on social media platform.
When creating your social media calendar, start by outlining how frequently you’ll post (e.g., weekly), which days you’ll post (e.g., Wednesdays), and what times you’ll post (e.g., 1:30pm). After a few months of using this schedule, try shifting the day or the time to see if the results change. If you’re getting better engagement on Thursdays, for example, then you should adjust your posting schedule to Thursdays.
Create Unique Social Content
The best way to promote your podcast on social media is by developing interesting, unique, and engaging content. Need a few social media post ideas to get started? Give one of these a try!
Tease New Episodes
Use the time between recording and publishing an episode to create episode-specific social media content. If you do video podcasting, pull out short clips to tease upcoming episodes on your social media platforms. You can also create supplemental graphics featuring quotes from the segment or share photos of each episode’s guests. This helps build excitement and anticipation for upcoming podcast installments.
Feature Behind-the-Scenes Videos
Use social media to feature never-before-seen content, such as a segment you cut from a previous episode or a special interview with a podcast guest. Exclusive content is a great way to engage your listeners outside of your podcast streaming platforms and keep them coming back to your social media channels looking for more.
Highlight Your Guests
If your podcast hosts guests, be sure to create social media posts that announce their appearance and feature their commentary. Tag the guest in your social media posts so they can engage with your content and share it with their followers. Don’t forget to ask your guest to share the promo leading up to the publish date, as well as the link once the new episode is released. Drawing on the influence of special guests when marketing your podcast can help you reach potential listeners you hadn’t connected with before.
Share Past Episodes
If you notice a topic trending online that relates to a previous podcast episode, don’t be afraid to reshare it! Anything you have to contribute to current discussions on social media can be valuable for marketing your podcast—just make sure to use trending words or hashtags when you post. That way, you can pique the interest of viewers while giving an idea of the episode’s relevance to the trending topic.
Repurpose Content
Does a particular social media post perform well? Repurpose the content to use on your other social media platforms! Of course, you don’t want to post the same video, photo, or text on every account. Find a unique and creative way to use it in a way you haven’t before! Recycling content is also an easy way to get new listeners to discover some of your older podcast episodes.
Engage with Your Listeners
Another way to leverage your podcast on social media is to foster a community of engaged supporters. Community management is when you interact with your listeners, build a relationship with them, and learn more about why they listen to your podcast. One of the best ways to manage your podcast community is by actively replying to any mentions, comments, or messages you receive on social media.
Reply to Comments on Air
Consider hosting a podcast segment where you reply to your audience’s social media comments or questions. Maybe start a hashtag with your podcast’s name or the individual episode’s name so that you can get conversations going. This is a seamless way to promote your podcast using social media accounts while simultaneously encouraging engagement from listeners.
Listen to Your Audience
Try social media listening. This tactic allows you to monitor what your audience is saying about your podcast, what they think about episodes and show formats, and the types of content they wish you would cover. By keeping track of your podcast’s reputation and how the audience views the content you’re putting out, you can make real-time adjustments with both your podcast content and your social media strategy.
Link to Multiple Listening Platforms
Everyone has their preferred podcast listening platform. If your podcast is published on multiple platforms, include all links when posting about an episode on social media. This makes it easier for a wider audience to access your content! Also, you might use a URL shortener when you promote your episodes on social media to save characters and track link analytics. This is a quick and simple way to engage listeners.
Thinking about launching a podcast? Need help promoting an existing podcast? Hurrdat Media offers professional podcasting services, including hosting and production. Contact us today to learn more!