Online Promotion
I’m starting a podcast, and I want to make it as successful as I can. You’ve done so well with GeekBrief.TV. How do you do it? What advice can you give about promotion?
It’s funny…several years ago, we were writing a book about online promotion. Our PC crashed and we didn’t have a backup. Shortly after that disaster, a book called “How to Publish and Promote Online” was released. The authors offered much of the same advice we were putting in our book.
Whether you have a blog or a podcast, there are some basic steps you can take to increase visibility and traffic.
Start by becoming involved in whatever community revolves around your topic. Find forums and be a valuable contributor of good insight and information. Help people by answering questions. Use as much restraint as you can by not directly promoting your Web site. Trust that when you’re a respected part of the community, they’ll visit your site. Having your URL and a tag line in your signature is all the promotion you should do unless you want to risk turning off the very people you want to reach. It takes time, but it’s worth it.
Every LITTLE thing you do is magic. You want a snowball effect. If a show you enjoy excepts audio or video comments, provide them! Try a ton of little things here and there rather than expecting a huge surge from one or two marketing efforts.
Keep in mind that on average, people need to see a name seven times before remembering the name.
Having an audience of any size is an honor. If they’re reading, listening or watching, hopefully it means they like what you’re doing. Ask them for help! Ask them to vote at Podcast Alley, leave reviews on iTunes and to tell their friends who might share an interest in your topic. Be accessible. New media isn’t a one-way street. Work to be an asset to people who pay attention to what you do.
I really believe in expecting success. Forget that it seems a little mystical. We put every ounce of our energy into the belief that we would be doing GeekBrief.TV as our full-time job withing a year. We quit our day job five months to the day we started The Brief. There’s a book called The Secret. If I hadn’t experienced what it was like to transition from a day job to being a professional podcaster, I would think The Secret is B.S. I believe it now, though.
People are drawn to passion. If you do something because you love it, there is something magnetic about the passion you share with the people paying attention to what you do.
Study people who are successful doing something like you want to do. I study the success of people like Oprah, Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern because they are at the top of their game. What they do and have done isn’t necessarily applicable to everything I want to do in podcasting, but a ton of it is.
When you have questions, ask people who have succeeded doing what you want to do. Most people enjoy being asked for advice, especially when the question is specific and shows your commitment to understanding how something works. I like to interview people for Geek Brief Radio. I’m not a very good interviewer yet, but it’s a great way to learn from people I admire, and I expect to become a better interviewer with practice. Whenever you interview someone you admire, you then have a new and valuable contact.
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