Top Three Podcasting Tips That Nobody Asked For.
How to make the content of your episodes better, without any marketing hacks.
How to Gain More Traction.
If you have any experience with your own podcast, or even if you haven’t started yet, you have probably searched for ways to grow a podcast, market a podcast, etc.
I have too, and one thing I can tell you right away is that all of those articles are going to tell you the same dozen bits of advice about promoting on social media, niche groups, etc. etc. etc.
This article will not help you get new listeners to your show.
This article is going to focus on how to create content that is going to keep listeners around after you get them here.
That comes with creating extraordinary content.
Start With THE Listener.
Here is quick tip number one.
Always speaking to THE listener when you speak on your podcast.
I say THE listener to emphasize that you are talking to one person at any given point in time.
Of course, the point of having a podcast is to give your message the ability to scale and help all sorts of people.
But focus on your language, and always make your episodes for one specific person.
Always be talking to someone, and not to a group of people.
For example,
Avoid phrases like “Hey everyone” or “this is going to help the listeners.”
When people hear phrases like that, they don’t feel like they are being understood, and they won’t resonate with the message.
Instead, try phrases like “Here’s what you should do” or “This point will be extremely important to you as the listener.”
This get’s an individual’s attention while they are listening, and keeps them engaged.
Use this tip in any variation of public speaking as well.
Whether it’s speaking on stage, or in the form of writing.
Learning these subtle shifts in your language will help you keep each individual person’s attention for longer.
Tonality, Tonality, Tonality.
Beating a dead horse here… but you need to use your voice when you are recording your podcast, and have some energy.
You don’t like listening to the very monotone speech that the principal is going to give at high school graduation this year.
Why on earth would we decide to click on that speech?
Using tonality goes well beyond just being “not monotone” though.
Start experimenting with moving your voice up and down while you speak, and do it in your everyday speaking, not just your podcast.
This will help you hone your knife.
Then understand the following.
The microphone dilutes your energy by about 10x as much
What does that mean?
It means even if you are good at speaking with tonality, and keeping people engaged in real world conversations… you have to AMP THAT ENERGY UP during your podcast.
Get excited.
Get mad.
Get concerned.
Make sure you push your emotions so hard through that microphone, that they have to make it through your listeners’ speakers.
The Eavesdrop Effect
I spent a few days flying not too long ago, and one thing I started to notice is that people are pretty quiet on planes.
For the most part, nobody knows each other, so there isn’t a lot of conversation going on.
However, there’s always that one couple, or one group of friends, or maybe just two talkative people that ended up next to each other, that are having a conversation the entire time.
So I listened in on these conversations, whether I tried to or not.
Is that something that you do too?
As humans, we seem to naturally like listening in on what other people are talking about, and learning about what they have going on.
You can use this to your advantage with your podcast. Especially if you are producing interviews, or conversations between yourself and a co-host.
So how does this help?
Really, what’s important to understand is this.
If you start taking a conversation “off-script” or in a direction that you didn’t plan on going… you are probably heading that way for a reason.
That’s how conversations WORK.
Person 1 starts talking, and then a thought pops into Person 2’s head.
Then Person 2 elaborates on that thought, and Person 1 has a thought pop into their head.
The cycle repeats.
What I find is that most podcast hosts don’t like going off script or they feel like they are getting too far off track.
That’s exactly why they can’t keep an interesting conversation going.
So here’s the tip.
Go where your interest leads you.
If you’re interested in a certain rabbit hole, then your listener is too.
So go and explore it.
You’ll know you are doing this right when you reach that state where you totally lose track of time while talking.
The Bottom Line.
Getting listeners to your podcast is hard. After you get them there, you want them to stay there.
Don’t start a new podcast, and then go immediately to the whiteboard for marketing and SEO.
What ends up happening is that you create a bunch of people that feel like they wasted their time by listening to your show.
It’s not because you are a bad podcast host, it’s just because you jumped the gun.
Focus on creating high quality content first, and bringing new listeners in slowly.
This is how you grow a show.
On the other hand, you might just want to put “10k podcast downloads” in your Instagram bio as soon as possible.
In which case… you might as well go and look up some SEO hacks.
