Increasing Listeners: 5 Techniques For A Successful Podcast

We’ve seen how to launch a podcast in just a few steps, but it will be an empty investment if no one listens to us. Even if we can’t think of starting immediately with an audience of thousands and thousands of people, we can use these five techniques to increase ratings!

Cross-Platform

We want our podcast to reach as many people as possible, so we’ll want to be featured on all major audio streaming platforms that offer a specific section dedicated to podcasts. At the moment, the three main ones which we cannot miss are our Spreaker, Spotify, and iTunes. We may meet people who don’t know podcasts and don’t know what they are but would still be interested in following us. 

To avoid losing these precious listeners, we also opened a Youtube channel and transformed each of our podcasts into a video, with the cover we have chosen as the only image. Youtube is the best platform in these cases because it’s compatible with everything, it’s widely known, and the associated app is installed on all smartphones. If we tell one of our potential listeners that we are on Youtube, even though they don’t know what a podcast is and don’t know platforms like Spreaker, they will know how to follow us.

Directories To Increase Plays

By subscribing and uploading the podcast to Spotify, Spreaker, Youtube, and iTunes, we will automatically be subscribed to the directories of these maxi platforms. Therefore we will appear in their internal search engines and be shown in Google search results. But if we want to go big and increase ratings, there are other platforms to consider. 

1. Soundcloud, with its almost 7 million users, is the most used platform by emerging musicians. The free version has a maximum upload time of 3 hours, so if our podcast lasts an average of 30 minutes, we can upload six episodes. With the PRO version, however, it will be possible to upload an infinite number of hours, and we can monetize each uploaded track.
2. Freerumble is an audio-based social network. We can upload our podcasts here and share them with a small number of people chosen by the whole community or us. Inside there are several sections, including one dedicated to channels.
3. Audiocast is a directory dedicated to Italian podcasts. It contains over 1500 podcasts and is widely used by industry enthusiasts to discover new podcasts. If we want to increase ratings, this is undoubtedly one of the best ways. To add our podcast, enter the link of our channel (from another platform), and you’re done!

Interviews And Collaborations With Influencers

Nothing allows us to increase ratings like an external guest. If we get influential personalities from our sector to intervene in our podcast, they will talk about us and be present as interviewees in our podcast to their entire community. It agrees that the more famous the person we are going to interview is, the more new users will flock to listen to that episode of the podcast, and if we have managed to win them over, they will also become our listeners.

However, interviews work with everyone, even if we decide to interview our neighbor. That’s because once you do, she’ll be the first to go around, even to friends and family, and recommend them to listen to our show. Furthermore, bringing people into the podcast to interact with will help us seem more “human” and allow our audience to connect more with us; therefore, they will be more likely to become part of our fixed audience.

Create A Reference Site

If we have used the above mentioned techniques, we will have noticed a problem: our fragmented audience. Among those who follow us on Spreaker or Soundcloud, those on Spotify, those on iTunes, and those on Youtube, to the question that a potential listener might ask us: “where do I listen to you” we will give far too many answers. 

For this reason, it is good to invest in a website and, if we don’t already have one, create it as a work of art to incorporate audio and video tracks. We choose to incorporate the audio platform that is most convenient for us. Still, we always insert the Youtube video on each page dedicated to the single episode of our podcast. This will allow those unfamiliar with other platforms to listen to us quickly. Moreover, the Youtube video can easily be shared and viewed more than the audio track.

Dedicated Applications

One might wonder what use an app dedicated to our podcast can have. The answer is straightforward: 70% of online traffic is made from smartphones, and with the advance of technology, the percentage is growing more and more (just a couple of years ago, it was at least 5% less). Having a dedicated app is, therefore, an arrow in our bow that will make us stand out from the crowd, giving us the possibility of existing on the smartphone of our listeners at any time, with a simple click. Having a personalized app is a significant investment. Still, it allows us to insert the advertisements we monetize as we like or to have better statistics than those provided by the various platforms on which we are present.

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