Thread by @businessbarista

Everyone wants to start a podcast.

But podcasts aren’t for everyone & they are extremely tough to grow.

Here is the playbook for successfully growing a pod.

6 growth strategies
6 real-world examples

Lets get into it 👇

STRATEGY 1: BUILD TOP OF FUNNEL

Podcasts have horrible discoverability & shareability.

Social/video platforms have exceptional discoverability & shareability.

Spend a lot of your content creation efforts building top of funnel to then drive down to your pod.

EXAMPLE 1: @APompliano

Pomp is a content machine.

He's spent years cultivating loyal social followings through content related/unrelated to his pod.

Twitter: 474.4k followers
YouTube: 146k
Linkedin: 28.8k

This helps him overcome the distribution challenges of podcasts.

STRATEGY 2: THE PODCAST ROADSHOW

Nothing sells a pod better than people hearing your voice.

Market your voice to your audience by appearing on dozens of other shows.

Quality > Quantity

Try to only guest when there’s clear audience overlap with your desired audience.

EXAMPLE 2: @guyraz

The Podfather does things that don’t scale to build his brand & ultimately, grow @HowIBuiltThis downloads.

From appearing on @bizcasualpod to interviewing Tim Ferriss on Tim’s show, Guy gets his voice in the right places.

And what a memorable voice it is.

STRATEGY 3: MAKE NEW BEST FRIENDS

And their names are Apple & Spotify.

While podcasting is a decentralized medium, the lion’s share of listens fall within the walls of these two.

Get on their good side & you can get preferential placement on their heavily trafficked pages.

EXAMPLE 3: @bizcasualpod

Morning Brew’s inaugural podcast was featured on Apple Podcasts “New & Noteworthy” at launch.

It’s hard to know exact numbers, but you can assume tens of thousands of new listeners came through this channel.

STRATEGY 4: O&O PROMOTION

Have an airtight process for marketing through your owned audience.

This could be feed drops with other shows (if you’re part of a podcast network).

Or mentions in website articles or newsletter issues if your brand is predominantly text-first.

EXAMPLE 4: @garyvee

No one is better at internal cross-promotion than Gary.

Once he creates a podcast episode you’ll see it cross-promoted in fifty different ways.

On YouTube.
On social.
Via text message.
Through Email.

The guy has built an ecosystem marketing machine.

STRATEGY 5: GREAT GUEST MARKETING

Leverage influencers as content.

Whether it’s interview-style or a talk show, source guests that create great content and great marketing.

What’s better than a subject matter expert?
A subject matter expert with 150k twitter followers.

EXAMPLE 5: @KevinHartreal

Kevin's new show, "Inside Jokes," has guest marketing built into its DNA.

Every Wednesday, the prolific comic interviews other big comedians to understand how they think.

Episode 1: Jerry Seinfeld.

Expect more big names & big promotion.

STRATEGY 6: CREATE, CREATE, CREATE

Nothing will replace consistent, great content.

The best way to build an audience is creating something people need & never take a day/week off.

EXAMPLE 6: @tferriss

People think Tim is a magician for hitting #1 business podcast in the world and passing 100,000,000 downloads.

But it’s not magic.
It’s persistence.

Tim just recorded episode #496 and has been in the podcast game for nearly 7(!) years.

Hope you've enjoyed the podcast growth playbook!

If you found it helpful & want more threads on media strategy, business, and entrepreneurship, shoot me a follow: bit.ly/3jaqg96