Passive Podcast Promotion Strategies You Can Set Up TODAY! [Ep. 108]

 
 

Click play to learn about passive podcast promotion strategies:

 
 

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Here’s what to expect from this episode:

Does your podcast promotion end at promoting your latest episode? If yes (and you're not alone!), you're likely missing out on opportunities to promote your show as a whole. Because while promoting your latest (and previous) episodes is great, there are people out there who still don't know about your podcast. And I want to help you change that! 

So today's episode is all about passive podcast promotion strategies you can implement TODAY to promote your podcast with minimal effort. Sound good? Tune in to hear how to tweak your mindset to start identifying as the podcaster you are and the 5 places that will let everyone you come in contact with know that you have a podcast! 

And let me know which strategy you chose over on Instagram @podcastingforeducators!

TOPICS COVERED:

  • Embracing your podcaster identity!

  • Making sure your bios are crystal clear

  • Leveraging your Thank You pages

  • Optimizing your email signature (and your email nurture sequence)

  • Revisiting (and reusing) past visibility opportunities

Resources mentioned:

favorite podcasting resources:

  • Sara Whittaker 0:01

    Your Podcast is a powerful tool that serves your audience and your business. But how do you manage it all bring in new listeners, and convert those listeners into customers. That's what this show is all about. Welcome to podcasting for educators. I'm Sara Whitaker, classroom teacher turn podcast manager. And I'm here to help you get the most out of your show, all while making an impact on other educators.

    Sara Whittaker 0:27

    Well, hello, and welcome back to podcasting for educators. I don't know about you, but I love podcast episodes that leave you with some sort of action that you can take right away. And that's what I'm going to do with you today, I want to give you some new ideas on places where you can be promoting your podcast with a very minimal effort. Sound good. I know. I think we all love finding ways that we can automate our business. Whenever we can automate something, it saves us time, and it's one less thing that we have to think about. And when it comes to promoting our podcast, we tend to think of it as promoting specific episodes, usually as they release kind of on a week to week basis, which is important. And I of course, think that you want to be promoting specific episodes as they're released. And also referring back to old episodes, we tend to do this in our weekly newsletters, or Instagram stories on our Instagram feeds in our Facebook groups if you have a Facebook group. And that's great. And that's good and as necessary. But I also want you to think about how you can promote your podcast as a whole. So promoting your whole show, we want to always be thinking about our podcast as part of our business. Just like if you're a TPT seller, you have a TPT store, you also have a podcast, just like you have an online course, you have a podcast, I want the two to weigh out. Similarly in value. And along those same lines, I want you to begin identifying as a podcaster. I think that this is something myself included, that we can all work on. And this might sound silly, but I want you to actually like start practice saying it out loud. So when you think about all of the things that you identify as when somebody asks you, you know, what do you do if you're, if you meet somebody new, and they're asking you specifically about your business and about your life as a whole? What are some of the things that you identify as for me, I'm a mom, I'm an entrepreneur, I'm a service provider, I'm a course creator, and I'm a podcaster, those should all kind of be lumped together. For you, it might sound something like I'm a TPT seller, I'm a literacy specialist, and I'm a podcaster. So I want that to be part of your identity. And when you have that mindset, these other things that I'm going to list off here are going to come a little bit more naturally and are going to seem like no brainers. So I am going to give you five main places that you can be promoting your podcast on autopilot. So it's kind of like a set it and forget it kind of thing. And these are all you'll see that all of these pieces are things that people are probably seeing on an everyday basis. But they might not be places that you've thought to promote your podcast in. So number one is your bios. Now depending on where you spend your time online, you probably have several different bios, the main ones that I think of are first your Facebook bio, on your business page, but also on your personal page, you want to have a link or at the very least your the name of your podcast. And again, here comes that identity piece. If you are speaking about yourself in these in this bio, make sure that podcaster is one of those things that you list yourself as because think about this. And this can actually be a really powerful way to pick up new listeners. If you are in any kind of Facebook groups. I know that there's so many Facebook groups out there for specific niches of educators. So there's lots of teacher groups, and there's lots of school counselor groups and there's lots of homeschooling groups, anytime whether you're on your personal account and your business account. Anytime that you comment in a Facebook group, that comment lives on forever, anytime somebody does a search in that group, they might stumble upon your comment, and you never know who is looking at those comments and guaranteed that if you have comments in a Facebook group, people are clicking on your profile. And if it's not very clear what you do and that you have a podcast that And those people are never going to know that you have a podcast. So do this with the idea in mind that anybody who clicks on your profile is going to immediately know that you are a podcaster. And that your show could benefit them depending on who it is. The other bio, where you want to have your podcasts listed is on your Instagram page. So we all have that space at the top of our Instagram profile, where we can have a bio, it's got a limit of characters, but somehow you need to communicate on there that you have a podcast and what the name of your podcast is make this very, very clear, you could have like an emoji of a mic or have headphones, and put, you know, host of the XY and Z podcast. Again, if your podcast is part of your business, the you absolutely 100% need to have this in your Instagram bio, I see so many podcasters that I stumble upon on Instagram. And I don't know that they have a podcast until I've been following them for a long time, because it's not in their bio. And that is like the first thing that anybody new who comes across your profile is going to look at so make that super, super clear. Now, if you are a TPT seller, these next couple pieces of advice are for you. Number one, along the same lines of of BIOS is in your TPT store on your profile on your main profile, you should have your podcasts listed somewhere. There's a section that you can put under Additional biographical information, that would be a great place to put a little blurb about your podcast, the name of it, a quick like one sentence summary of what you cover in your podcast, and a link to go listen. And while we're kind of talking about places in your TPT store, in the descriptions of your resources, put a sentence about your podcast. Again, this is great real estate to promote your show. I have a client who does this really well, she will take a specific resource. And in that description, she will actually list out a specific episode that relates to that resource where they can learn more about how they can use that resource or how they can get more ideas about whatever the resource helps with through a specific podcast episode. So smart. Okay, now that one was kind of like not in the same category as bios, but I just wanted to cover it while we were talking about TPT stores. Back to just the idea of a bio. Anytime that you use an official bio for any kind of visibility opportunities, maybe when you guest on a podcast or if you're being highlighted in some sort of blog post or news article, I see so many bios of podcasters, who don't include any mention of their show. And again, this is a missed opportunity. So make sure that you are including the fact that you're a podcaster and the name of your show in your official bio. And if you don't have an official bio for yourself, it would be a great time to write one. Okay, so that was my thoughts on bios. Number two, another place where you can promote your podcast is on your thank you pages. If you have a thank you page on any kind of product, whether it's a TPT product, or some other sort of digital products that you have, make sure that you are including a link to go listen to your podcast and again, name of your podcast short description link to go listen, the same goes for any kind of thank you page on an opt in that you have. I know for me when I create any kind of like thorough opt in I have the very last page is a thank you page and a section where people can contact me and I always include the name of my podcast with a link to go listen. The third place where you should be promoting your podcast is your email signature. If you haven't already, create yourself an email signature, you can do this on Canva. But list out some places where people can go to connect with you more. So you might have your Instagram, your Facebook, make sure that your podcast is on there. Use a little mic icon with the name of your podcast. And if your email signature is clickable, make sure that it is a link to go listen, I would probably go ahead and link it to your show notes page on your website. Like your main podcast page on your website. That's what I would probably do. And then from there, people can decide which platform they want to listen on. Think about how many emails you send every single day every single week. Again And this is just really, really great real estate to be promoting your show, you never know who's going to scroll down and see that you have a podcast who had no idea that you had a podcast before that. Alright, number four is that you should be promoting your podcast in any kind of nurture sequence that you have set up in your email provider. And by nurture sequence, I mean, if you use an email provider, like flow desk, or ConvertKit, or MailChimp, or whatever you use, and you have any kind of freebie, or you have any kind of pop up on your website where people can join your email list, you should have a nurture sequence set up, it might be a series of three emails, it might be a series of five or 10 emails, however many emails it is that will get sent to that subscriber over time. Again, a nurture sequence is an automated set of emails. So once you write them, they're done. And they will automatically get sent out. Anytime anybody joins that sequence in your email provider, I recommend that you mention your podcast in at least at least one of these emails in your nurture sequence. And then the fifth place that you could consider promoting your podcast is probably one that you haven't considered before. And that is to think of any past visibility opportunities that you have been a part of. This might be a podcast episode that you did a guest interview for. It might be a guest blog post that you wrote, seven years ago, it might be a Facebook Live that you did for somebody's Facebook group. These are all different kinds of visibility opportunities. But regardless of what it was, you can actually contact the person who was in charge of that opportunity. So if it was a podcast interview that you did two years ago, contact that podcast hosts, if it was a guest blog post that you wrote seven years ago, contact the owner, the creator of that blog, and ask if they can add a link to your podcast on their website or their show notes page, whatever would be applicable to that specific opportunity. Because if you were a guest on somebody's podcast two years ago, and you didn't have a podcast at the time, well, now you have a podcast. And it's very likely, hopefully, that person who hosts that podcast that you are a guest on has a show notes page on their website from that episode. And usually with guest episodes, they'll have a section with information about the guests who would be you. So they might have a link to your Instagram page, they might have a link to your Facebook group, they might have a link to a freebie that you promoted on the episode, we'll just contact that person and say, Hey,

    Sara Whittaker 12:56

    could you add a link to my podcast in that section on that show notes page. Again, this might not apply to all of you who are listening. But just take a moment and think if there are any kind of those opportunities that you could circle back to and really leverage as a way to get new eyes on your show. Okay, so as a recap here, the five main things that I just went over as places where you could be promoting your podcast that you may never have thought of before, would be any bios that you have online, Facebook, Instagram TPT, your thank you pages on any digital products or opt ins, your email signature, your nurture sequences, and any kind of backlinks to visibility opportunities that you have had in the past before you started your show. The best part about all of these things is that you can set it and forget it, you can add the link to your show on all of these places one time, and then it's always going to be there for people to find in the future. Now, I told you that I wanted to give you a action steps to take today that you could go and implement right away. And don't worry, it's not to go and implement all of these things. Because I know that that would take you a very long time. Obviously updating things like your opt ins or your TPT resources. That's going to take time. So today, I want you to just choose one place, one of these places that I listed off that you aren't already doing. Choose one of these places and make sure that it is optimized for your podcast that anybody who stumbles upon any of these places, is going to know very clearly and very quickly that you have a podcast. And then as time goes on as you get more time in your schedule here and there. You can slowly update all of these things over time. I hope that this was really helpful for you and gave you some new ideas to try. And with that, I will see you in the next episode. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode to keep this conversation going connect with me on Instagram at podcasting for educators. I'm always looking for an excuse to talk about podcasting. If you're looking for support and launching, managing or growing your podcast, check out my online course the podcasting for educators prep school at podcasting for educators.com/prep school. I'll see you here next time.

More about Podcasting for Educators:

Podcasting for Educators is the podcast for TpT authors and other online educators. It's a show that will help you get your podcast in front of those who need it most - teachers, counselors, literacy specialists, SLPs, parents, and more! Each week, Sara Whittaker and her guests will share top tips and actionable strategies that you will need in order to launch, manage, and grow your podcast. You’ll learn how to leverage your show to build long-lasting relationships with your audience and promote your TpT resources, courses, and memberships, all while providing valuable and accessible content!

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Sara Whittaker