Help! My Podcast Needs a Miracle (and a Strategy)

It's the question I see the most when I go to places like Reddit.

I need advice.

How to grow from 7 downloads a day to 100 per episode welcome to youo Podcast Consultant.

Small lessons with Big Value.

With more than a decade of experience and millions of downloads, this hall of fame podcaster is a featured speaker, author and mentor to thousands.

Now he wants to work with you.

He's your podcast consultant, Dave Jackson.

So the post on Reddit says, I've been podcasting for three years now and my goal is to hit 100 to 150 downloads per episode.

I would love more, but I'm trying to be realistic about my next steps.

But I feel I'm missing a real strategy.

And then they list a bunch of marketing things.

Here are my current download numbers and these don't matter for the record.

Seven per day, 47 a week, 189 per month.

That doesn't we look at how many downloads per episode.

That's how you gauge things, he says.

And here's what I'm currently doing.

I occasionally Instagram, I do a monthly newsletter, a podcast link in my email signature.

He says what I'm not doing well is consistent social media posting, guesting on other podcasts, SEO optimization, and promo swaps.

I know my numbers aren't significant, but I'm committed to growing this thing.

And so the thing I always love when I hear one phrase, I need help growing my podcast.

When I have a client, the next thing I always hear is my content is fine.

And I always find it odd that the phrase I need help growing my audience is and I mean always followed by my content is fine.

They think it's a promotion problem.

And then I will go and I will listen to their show and I don't know, it takes them nine minutes to get to the topic.

The episode starts with episode.

And then the episode number in some really bad cases will start with the name of the show.

Then the phrase episode blank.

That's just a giant.

A giant waste of space.

The title of your episode is huge, and only your ego cares what number it is.

Now what you want to do is ask your audience to share it with a friend.

And if it was good, they should.

It needs to be remarkable.

And let's think about the word remarkable.

It means people want to remark about your show, and to do that you need to save them time, you need to save them money.

And really, it's not that you need to do all of these, but you want to do at least two.

Save them time, save them Money.

You want to be like a breaking story.

You know, hey, we're first.

That one's hard to do.

But then it's all about, how do you make them feel?

Are you making them laugh?

Are you making them cry?

Are you making them think?

Are you making them groan?

And people, like, groan.

I'm like, yeah, there are people that will listen to your show because they think you're awful, but.

Or if it's just, you know, whatever, you make them groan.

And then are you educating them or are you entertaining them?

And if you do all of those right, it's an amazing show.

You can't do all of them.

That'd be ridiculous.

But it's that.

Do you have a website where each episode is a post with keywords and it's SEO focused?

Does your website make it easy to follow the show?

Are you saying idiot things like, find me wherever you find your podcasts?

It's horrible.

Search is horrible.

Put a page on your website where people can follow the show.

Do you have an email list?

Well, he said he did, but he was only putting it out monthly.

Well, that's almost worthless.

And it doesn't mean you have to do daily either.

But it also doesn't mean you have to write War and Peace.

Just reach out and touch your audience with an email.

It's not that hard.

I do it.

If you want a checklist you can use on your episodes, just go to podcastconsultant.com growth.

And everything I just mentioned, I have in a cute little PDF for you.

Again, that's podcastconsultant.com growth.

And I know most people, when I say it's your content, they think I'm a horrible person.

I'm not saying your show is the worst show ever, but we all, myself included, we are blind to our own weaknesses.

And you need not want.

You need a group of friends or listeners who will tell you what you're doing right and what needs some tweaking.

I'm actually doing a thing in October where I'm inviting my audience to come and help me shape the show.

And I realize not all of that is going to be positive, but I also realize that it makes no sense to promote something that is not resonating with your audience.

And I'm asking my audience to help me make better content.

Because it's not the marketing, it's the content.

Your content is your marketing strategy.

And realize, again, I'm not a horrible person.

If you're getting 100 downloads per episode, that's a hallway of classrooms Remember, I'm an old teacher and if you had 20 people in a class, it was a pretty full class.

That is five classrooms of people that have chose to download your stuff.

And they could be playing video games or watching Netflix or Hulu.

They could be listening to the radio, reading a Kindle, walking in a park.

Whatever it is, they are taking time to download your show.

And in some cases a hundred downloads might be amazing.

I mean, case in point.

If I did a show called the Pygmy Pony show and I had a hundred downloads, I would be amazed because how many people are into Pygmy ponies, right?

But if I did a show called hey We're All Fat, I would expect more downloads as the potential audience is so big I couldn't resist that one.

As always with all podcast questions, it does kind of depend on what your topic is, what the audience is, things like that.

But I'm here to tell you it's probably your content.

Remarkable content or remarkable episodes.

They have two things.

They have content and they have delivery.

And if you've been doing it for three years, I'm going to assume your delivery is not bad.

Now again, there are lots of people starting off their show with things that aren't on topic.

They're not.

It's just chit chat.

I don't mind chitchat, I just want it at the end.

A great example of this is Pod News Weekly Review.

And at the end they go, james, what have you been up to?

Well, I've been working on my garage and blah blah blah.

What have you been doing, Sam?

Well, my daughter did this and blah blah blah.

So you get to know them.

It's just not something you want to start off the show with.

I know I sound again, I'm not saying your show is awful.

I'm saying you need some feedback.

And I'm asking for feedback in October.

You'll hear about that at the end of the show here.

And I'm just here to let you know that no amount of great marketing will overcome meh content.

If you need help with that, you can find me over@schoolofpodcasting.com use the coupon code listnr when you sign up for either a monthly, a quarterly or yearly subscription.

And of course that comes with a 30 day money back guarantee.

And unless limited coaching and part of that coaching can be me listening to your show and going, did you know you did this?

This is really good.

I loved how you did this.

But there's this one thing here.

Yeah, I can do that.

Schoolofpodcasting.com I'm Dave Jackson.

I help podcasters.

It's what I've been doing for two decades.

And I can't wait to see what we're going to do together because I want to be your podcast consultant.