I’m asked about the best options for getting guests to share their episodes several times per week. I think one of the reasons it’s so common is that people think a well-known guest is a “magic bullet” for getting more listeners to your podcast.
It’s not.
Well-known guests become well-known because they do a lot of media, not the other way around. And because they’re doing so much media, it’s easy for your podcast to get lost in a bunch of similar episodes and interviews done by others.
People who have big audiences get them by putting out lots of content, doing lots of promotion around this content, and otherwise spreading their messages in whatever ways they can. Your interview with one of these people is likely to be one of many, part of a continuous marketing and promotion plan designed to leverage your audience for them, not the other way around.
The good news is that a guest sharing the episode you did together is still an effective method of reaching new listeners and can easily double the number of downloads that episode gets. But for this to happen, you have to have a few things in order.
The trick? It’s really a combination of three things that build upon each other:
- Make guests on your podcast feel like they’re part of something great.
- Make your guests sound great.
- Make it easy for guests to share the episode.
Let’s take a look at each of these ...
1. Make guests on your podcast feel like they’re part of something great.
Making guests feel like they’re part of something great starts with you and your podcast itself, not just specific episodes.
- Does your podcast offer a boost to a guest’s credibility and reputation?
- Do you edit episodes and make the guests you interview sound great?
- Are you doing proper pre-interview research on your guests?
- Are you working to improve your hosting and interviewing skills, so you can hold up your end of an episode?
- Are you excited about the guests you have and do you want to be interviewing them?
These are just a few of the things you need to have in order if you want to create episodes that guests will be willing to share with others, but the bottom line is that it takes effort for you to create a podcast people will want to share with others and that effort should extend beyond a specific episode – it should be done for every episode.
2. Make your guests sound great.
There’s a reason the Big Podcast Instagram account has so many memes about editing ...
Making yourself and your podcast sound great means making your guests sound great. And the best ways to do this are making sure everything is recorded properly, everything is edited before it’s released, and you do the necessary research needed before you record, so you can take advantage of the time you have with guests.
RELATED:
- How to Properly Educate Podcast Guests About Recording Remote Interviews
- How to Get a Better Quality “Remote” Podcast Interview
3. Make it easy for guests to share the episode.
Below are two static images and an audiogram video I received from Pat Cheung of PodInbox, after being a guest on his podcast, Podcast Growth Hacks. Because most of the people you interview are likely already on social media, creating graphics like these is one of the best things you can do to make it easy to share an episode in this way.
The Big Concept
Your audience is limited to the people who already know about you. If you can leverage the audiences of the people whom you interview, you’ll expand your audience. You know that.
But everybody knows this. So you need to do a little more than the other podcast hosts media outlets who are working with the same guests you are, if you want what you’ve done to stand out and be memorable.
Making custom promotional graphics is one way to do this. And it will work to encourage the guests you interview to share what they’ve done with you, provided you’ve created an episode with them that’s worth sharing.
This Goes Beyond Just Your Podcast
This strategy isn’t just limited to podcasts. Here are some customized promotional graphics I sent to speakers and attendees of a live event I hosted. Everybody who was there received five or six different promo graphic options from me to make it easy for them to share on different social media outlets.
The result was this event got a lot of attention via social media and word-of-mouth and sold out.
Here are a couple of similar graphics I made to promote my book, 101 Podcast Episode Templates – Powerful, Done-for-You Episode Templates to Grow Your Podcast Audience, using reviews from podcasters who had read it.
Want more on the topic of getting more attention for your podcast? I give several methods to encourage guests to share podcast guest appearances in my book, Big Podcast – Grow Your Podcast Audience, Build Listener Loyalty, and Get Everybody Talking About Your Show.