Can Social Media Actually Get New Podcast Listeners?

[00:00:00] One of the great things about podcasting is the repurposing that you can do virtually on autopilot, particularly for social media, but in posting the clips or carousels or other content to social media. What can you realistically expect in terms of podcast growth? Will you get new listeners from all those social media posts?

That’s what we are here to talk about today. This is profits through podcasting where we help health-focused entrepreneurs generate leads and revenue for their businesses through podcasting. I’m your host, Joel Oliver. So as a podcaster, you’ve most likely, at least I hope, uh, you’ve been creating social media content from your episodes, whether that is video clips, audiograms images, infographics, text posts, whatever the case.

I hope you’ve been doing something of that nature with your podcast content. But as you’re doing this, whether it’s you or you have it delegated, you may have wondered, is there any point here? Am I actually getting new listeners for my podcast by [00:01:00] promoting it this way? Now, from what I’ve seen most of the time, it’s not necessarily a big listener getter.

It doesn’t attract a ton of people to come listen to your podcast, but that’s okay. There are absolutely benefits. We just need to have clear and realistic expectations of what this is supposed to do. If we think strictly in terms of new podcast listeners, well, there’s a lot of friction happening. If you expect someone who has never heard of you or seen you before to just be doom scrolling, see your reel, click into your profile, click your link, open the podcast app, subscribe.

That type of thing just isn’t really happening. You know you’re lucky enough if you get their attention for a few seconds, let alone all those other things, okay? However, if they liked your content. Then you’ve at least got a chance that you’ll be shown to them again. That’s a good start. And then if you’re shown to them again, maybe they will start following your social media account.

Now you’ve got them in your ecosystem. And what does that do? [00:02:00] Well, it keeps you top of mind. Hopefully it reinforces your tone, your aesthetic, your branding, your personality. You know, they start to see you as a person that they trust. They start to come to know you, and it builds legitimacy as well. Just by posting consistently shows that you’re active and confident and you know, in, wellness, credibility is everything.

So this is a big deal. Starting to get this attention. Now you are experiencing benefits, particularly some of the main benefits of social media, even if they are not directly turning into podcast Listeners, you are getting some benefits here and that is all perfectly fine. Because maybe eventually they will turn into a podcast listener, but maybe they won’t.

And to me these days, it’s really all the same. So long as they’re following you somewhere, they are watching you somewhere. That’s really the goal. ultimately the goal is to convert them into a paying customer, but this is an important step along the way. However that looks, how it happens can vary.

Maybe they find your podcast first [00:03:00] and then they become a listener. Then they follow you on Instagram. Maybe they don’t find your podcast first. Maybe they find you on Instagram first, and then they listen to your podcast. Maybe they don’t, maybe they never listen to your podcast. it can happen in a variety of ways and it’s all fine.

You know, we are well aware that there are typically a variety of touch points required these days. It’s not like someone just. Listens to one episode and comes and buys from you. That could happen, but it’s not typical. So there’s a, a trust building where they follow you on different platforms. They see you various times, they hear you.

They spend, uh, a number of hours with you before they eventually become, a customer. If that happens, you know, they, they come to know, like, and trust you in a way that works for them. The main thing here is that by podcasting, you’ve created additional social media content. With very little or no extra effort.

And then you’ve got that channel for people to explore should they desire. You’ve got the podcast there if they want to go down that road and subscribe, but it’s not necessary. But like I [00:04:00] said, you have managed to create extra content for social media from simply doing the podcast. So the bottom line.

Here is that you should not judge the success of your social media posts for your podcast, off whether or not you get new podcast listeners, as long as you are capturing attention, that is a win. And if you really wanna win on social media, you’ve gotta have a well thought out strategy.

It’s gotta be more than just posting clips or content from your podcast. You know, the way I look at these podcast based posts is to supplement. Everything else, you can definitely have a quality strategy and take podcast content and use that as the majority of your social posts. You know, it, it can, can virtually inspire everything that you do because you can then create, more honed in optimized social media content from the topics that you talk about on your show.

But it’s like, if you really want to go. All out and do the absolute best on social media. You really need to be sitting down and thinking about that and, and [00:05:00] purpose recording some content for that. The podcast stuff just in most cases is supplementary to everything else that you do on social media, but at the very least, if you’re not doing anything else on social media and you don’t want to, well sure.

Just posting stuff from the podcast is a great start. At least it’s something right. I know plenty of people, they don’t wanna be all out on social media. They barely want to be on there at all. Maybe they enjoy. Doing the podcast perhaps with no video even they just like sitting alone doing that recording letting their thoughts flow and they don’t want to have to sit down and think like, how do I succinctly talk about this for the algorithm?

What’s gonna hook people about stuff? You know, that’s not for everyone and arguably there are are benefits to doing that, but some people just prefer recording their podcast episode and repurposing it into social media content. That’s totally cool. That’s a great thing about podcasting. But essentially.

Think more about bringing people into your circle, staying top of mind for them being visible, building that trust, being [00:06:00] there for them when they’re ready, as opposed to, how can I get my podcast numbers up through social media directly? Because if you only think about that, you’re likely gonna be disappointed.

And then you may even stop because you say. I’m not seeing, an impact here. I’m posting this stuff on social media. It’s not growing my podcast audience. That’s not really a strategy in itself for growing your podcast audience. There are other ways to go about that, but certainly being active on social media in this way and posting content from your podcast serves many other potential benefits.

Just don’t have that expectation that by posting on social media, my podcast should grow. ’cause you’re likely gonna be let down and then you know, just want to give up. But when you’re looking to generate new business leads and income, pure podcast growth is also not necessarily, it shouldn’t be your number one goal either, because we don’t need a huge audience to.

Have a sustainable business that we grow through a combination of podcasting and perhaps social media, perhaps email [00:07:00] list. there are many different ways, of course, that you would go about getting clients, but we don’t need to think that podcast growth is the only method that we could generate, decent leads.

We don’t need a huge audience. So consider everything that I’ve said this episode. When we think about motivation and the reason behind why we do things. We want to see an ROI. We love to see stats, but not everything that you’re going to do is going to have that direct correlation in stats.

It’s not necessarily going to be measurable, and even if you do some experiments, like promote your podcast more heavily in a certain month to see if you can notice a spike in subscribers and downloads, that doesn’t mean that you’re going to see it at all, but it doesn’t mean that it’s not working and it’s not having benefits for you.

Okay? If you want to be talking more about this. Understanding are, are you doing the right thing with your podcast? Is your social media strategy correct? Are you going to get where you’re trying to go in terms of business growth through podcasting? If you wanna be [00:08:00] having these conversations, we do have ongoing consulting for podcast editing and production clients that we work with, and if you’re curious about how we may be able to work together and save you time, get you better results from your podcast, feel free to click the link in the show notes and book your podcast Vitality call with me today. It is a no pressure call. I’m always happy to chat and see if it makes sense to pursue things further. But otherwise, I know you always will get value from a call like that. Thanks for listening and we’ll catch you next time.