Growing Your Podcast With Cross Promotion, Social Media, In-App Promos, And Communities With Arielle Nissenblatt

Podcasters are always looking for ways to grow their audience. While it can be tempting to go all-in on a single marketing tool, that’s rarely the best podcast marketing strategy. Combining different platforms and methods is the key to sustained growth, but where do you even start? On this episode of the Q’d Up Podcast on Podcasting, John Luckenbaugh and Matthew Stevens sit down with podcasting veteran Arielle Nissenblatt to discuss all the different ways to grow your podcast.

Arielle is both in front of and behind the scenes in the podcast community, giving her a ton of experience and insight on what works and what doesn’t. She’s a co-founder of Podcast Taxonomy, founder of the Earbuds Collective, co-creator of the Outlier PodFest, community manager at Squadcast, and the host of several podcasts. Arielle shares her insight on podcast marketing through cross promotion, social media, in-app promos, and communities so you can grow your podcast quickly and effectively.

Show highlights:

Introduction

Podcast news: iHeart remains the king in April (0:56)

Podtrac reports that iHeart remained the biggest podcast publisher in April. Matt and John take a closer look at the report to see where the top publishers rank and why the total numbers might be a little deceiving.

Introducing Arielle Nissenblatt (7:43)

Arielle joins John and Matt to discuss how podcasters can improve their discoverability and increase their reach.

Podcast cross promotion marketing (8:07)

Arielle believes promo swaps are one of the best ways to improve your podcast discoverability. She details how to pull it off, including how to network properly and what podcasts you should target.

Podcast social media marketing (13:03)

Social media is a great piece of the podcast marketing puzzle but it shouldn’t be all you’re doing. As Arielle points out, social media is best when used to further engage with your audience and build up a community . . . not so much for discoverability.

In-app promotion (14:34)

According to Arielle, reaching out to third-party podcast applications to be one of the featured shows can be a great way to boost your podcast’s discoverability. While there are both free and paid options available (depending on the application), she details what’s essential to have when doing in-app promotions.

The importance of creating a podcast community (21:41)

Building your listeners into a community isn’t easy and it isn’t for every show but there can be serious benefits on your audience engagement. Arielle explains what’s needed to get started and how a formal community might not be right for every podcast.

Moderating your podcast community (27:09)

If you’re focusing on your podcast community and building it up, moderating is essential. As Arielle and Matt discuss, there’s nothing worse than a community that is full of cliques and promo after promo. Arielle gives her insight as a community manager about the fine line that’s needed by a good moderator.

Podcast Taxonomy (30:16)

As a founding member, Arielle explains what the Podcast Taxonomy is and the importance of defining roles within the medium as podcasting continues to grow.

Squadcast (36:49)

John and Arielle talk about the streaming program Squadcast and what makes it such a special platform.

Recap (46:15)

With such a value-packed episode, Matt and John recap what was discussed and how it impacts independent podcasters.

Links:

Q’d Up – Website

Q’d Up – Instagram

John – Email

John – LinkedIn

Podcast Taxonomy

Arielle Nissenblatt – Twitter

Arielle Nissenblatt – Instagram