Welcome to Digital Podcaster.In this episode we're going to be discussing things related to your social media and your podcast.Before we dive into the details though, first let me just take a quick moment and introduce myself.I don't do this enough on this podcast.My name is Dylan Schmidt.I'm the host of this podcast, Digital Podcaster, which is turning two years old soon.I'm the founder of Content Clips, which is my video repurposing company.we take long form content from podcasts or other video workshops live events and we repurpose them into engaging clips for social media which is part of what I'll be touching on on some of the best practices in this episode. I'm also the creator of podcast academy where I've trained 100 plus podcasters from around the world on deep diving into launching and growing and monetizing their their podcast also created a lot of other trainings and programs and I've helped podcasters all around the world before starting digital podcaster.My background was in podcast production and I was a consultant.So primarily around the organic inbound marketing realm of things and a good chunk of organic inbound marketing has to do with social media marketing.So I've spent a good amount of time not focusing on how to make the most viral posts. I'm not that guy.There's plenty of other people out there that talk about virality.But my focus has been in the realm of social media marketing how to make a great piece of content that connects with people.But it also connects with the people it was intended to and resonates so well with them that they want to take an action that could be like signing up for a program listening to a podcast or you know whatever the goal of the author of the piece of content wants them to take.That can vary.So you might be wondering why is social media so crucial for my podcast success?The reality is it's not unless you need social media to increase your show's reach.You don't need social media to grow a following.There's plenty of other ways that you can grow a following.It just so happens that social media is free or it costs your time or money if you hire someone to outsource it to.But it will take your time to grow following on social media and convert those into listeners or it will cost your money again if you outsource it.Social media is free and it's where everyone is spending their time.So that's why it makes it worthwhile to either spend your time there talking about your podcast or pay somebody else to spend their time there talking about your podcast.All of these social media platforms are hungry for engagement.All of these social media platforms have potential audiences for your show.And all of these social media platforms have ways for you to transition your attention there on the social media platform to then go to your podcast and become a podcast listener.But we're getting ahead of ourselves.Let's just backtrack for just one moment.So what is a social media post need to have in order to capture attention.And the reason why I'm asking you this is because before we even think about transitioning anyone's attention from social media to your podcast we've got to have their attention right.You can't blindly tell someone where to go when they're not listening to you.You need their attention.They need to be listening to you either in their head or in the video that they're watching and actually like listening to your voice or something.But what is a social media and ask again what is a social media post need to have in order to capture attention.And it's not super deep.It just needs to have some type of compelling visual element to it.Whether that's a text hook on Twitter because Twitter is primarily text or if it's on Instagram which is definitely a visual like could be a color it could be an object it could be a face.like a video on Instagram, it needs to get someone,as they're scrolling, to stop for just a split second and say, in their brain, they go, "Keep watching."That's all it needs to accomplish, right?That needs, once you capture their attention,then think about all the next steps after that,which we'll talk about.So think about how many times someone scrolls on one social media session.It's a ton, right?I am always in kind of a daze when I open up social media.If I open up Instagram for one thing,I end up feel like I take the longest road there. I'm looking at the posts that are right there that pop up on Instagram which Instagram their algorithm is like this is going to get their attention and keep them on the app because they don't want me to just open up the app do one thing and then leave.They want to maximize the amount of time I spend in the app.This makes it more valuable to advertisers who pay money to grab attention on the app. And that is how social media is funded.So you know in one session the Instagram algorithm and this goes for any of the social media platforms you know we're seeing a ton of content and it's built into the scroll right.The scroll we never know what's going to be the next thing.And if you're not capturing attention as a podcaster on social media you're essentially losing the battle because capturing attention is the name of the game.That's what a social media post needs to have in order to have any chance of moving someone from a post to becoming a listener.And if you're asking yourself like this is all great, but what do I do?Like, how do I get my podcast listeners off social media and listening to the full episode? I can already hear voices, virtual voices, podcasts, uh, you know,somewhat out there just going like,yeah, OK, what's next?OK, what's next?But we like can't just breeze by the first things I just said,where like it's not understated.It can't be understated.It's seriously a big deal of thinking like why people are on the platform, how they interact with the platform, and then thinking about how can we not like go against the grain here?How can we just like go with the flow so that we get the best results?And there's three things that I want to highlight.about social media users that you may or may not be familiar with.But this is stuff that I've learned over the past few years and some of this is actually more recent.So number one, I want to highlight about social media users.Number one, the reality is most people will not go from social media to your podcast.Just like if we have a business and we wished that every client who came across our product page,they signed up or bought whatever we were selling.That's not a reality.Thinking that everyone from social media is going to your podcast is just going to let you in for a world of hurt. And you go, well, yeah, but like maybe half,half of people who see about your podcast on social media and then go to your pod, that would be insanely high. It's just not likely. Uh,and so you need two things.You either need more reach so you, you reach a million people, right?I'm just making up an arbitrary number. It doesn't.Again, when I start saying numbers, it's dependent on your platform or what you're trying to accomplish with what you're trying to do with your podcast.But say just for the sake of argument, a million people, you either need a million people that you're going to reach and then hope that, you know, point five of those people convert to podcast listeners, which is a huge number, or you need to dial in your messaging to a smaller number.But the likelihood that those targeted people that come across that message would be a much better fit and then would be more likely to take action.So instead of a million people coming across your podcast on social media and point five percent of them converting I'm making up a number that you would then need say if a thousand people come across your podcast on social media you'd get 50percent of them or something like that right.Now the second one is obviously going to be easier. It's much easier to go for a more specific group of people than it is to just go for the fences and reach a million people.That also leads with its own problems like being exhausting and trying to maintain that and finding what appeals to the most number of people.So for the most part I suggest number two going for a smaller number of people but it's more focus and appeals more to them.So number one reality is like most people just won't go from social media to your podcast.But we'll talk about ways to also combat that which we kind of just did but we'll talk more about that. Number two is most people don't even know you have a podcast. We've all seen podcast clips on Instagram or TikTok. Believe it or not, a lot of people that are viewing those podcast clips don't know the name of the podcast that they're seeing a clip from or where and how to listen to the full episode. Even then it's a podcast like there's a good chance 99% or more of people that are coming across your podcast clips on social media have no idea who you are, what your name is,what the heck you're talking about.And if you're not making that explicit that this is the name of the podcast,blah, blah, blah, you're leaving it to chance that they will piece together everything themselves.Number three, people need to be reminded that you have a podcast.Even if you tell them once or twice a week that, Hey, go listen to the newest episode if you're not making it incredibly easy for them by providing a link to listen chances are again you're losing out on moving your audience to your podcast. So my goal in saying all this isn't trying to discourage you from using social media it's the opposite I'm just trying to inform you of user behavior so that you can work with the algorithm instead of against it. I see I see so many people get this wrong,and it leads to burnout.All of this leads to burnout because when you're doing stuff and you're not getting results,chances are you're not gonna keep doing it, right?Anyone in their right mind would not just continue on for years doing the thing, but not seeing any change, right?And I see so many podcasters get into it and think like, "Anything could happen."I'm starting this podcast, anything could happen."It could be picked up."I could grow this audience,it's like, I'm gonna be discovered.You know, I've always been a think like,I've been owed this, luck's on my side, whatever it is.And I'm not saying that nothing, like anything can happen,but I don't wanna rely on luck in you being successful.I want to, you know, there's some quote about,"Luck will find you when you're taking action"and you're prepared," right?And I'm trying to prepare you so that you are in the best spot possible so that if you do happen to get lucky,you're already gonna be miles ahead because you'll know what you're doing and you'll know why you're doing it.So, I wanna end this quick episode on a high note and I'm gonna just share three proactive things you can do for your podcast on social media to get more listens.I feel like I've said a lot about what you shouldn't do,how, I just, I don't know,it feels like a little bit of a downer.So let's keep it back up for a minute here and just talk about three things you can do,literally starting now to get more listeners for your podcast from social media.So number one is have a plan.Know exactly how you're going to move people from your podcast to social media.Don't leave anything to chance.And if I ask you how many followers from your Instagram listen to this week's episode, you should know because you have the data of when, where, and how they could have possibly listened.What gets measured gets results, right?know how people are listening to your podcast from the platform that you're posting about it on.Number two is make it obvious that you have a podcast.So if you're serious about growing your podcast I recommend having your podcast name be mentioned at some point in the episode clip.You can play around with that whether it's at the beginning middle or end but it could also be in the caption or at the end of the clip somewhere mentioning that you have a podcast make it painfully obvious and give instruction to listen to the full episode.People are in a trance on social media again goes back earlier to we see so much content.So think of people are in a trance and you need to kind of snap them out of that and snapping them out of that is like reminding them of what they're watching as a podcast.It's just a little section of it on social media.Make it obvious.Number three a b l always be linking.So whether that's in your profile, it's pinned to the top of your Instagram page or Instagram highlights, whatever, or in your IG stories that you're posting regularly about your podcast.Always add a link directly to the episode that you're driving people towards.Don't leave anything to chance and to always be linking is how you'll accomplish that always be a link.Let's do a quick recap on what we spoke about in this episode.Just so it's crystal clear.First we talked about the importance of social media.If you have another means of getting traffic to your episodes and there are others social media isn't the other one.And I've talked about some of these in the past and I'm going to continue to talk about them in the future.It's not all on social media but it all is traffic.Traffic is essential.That's how people will find your podcast.So traffic to your podcast is essential and social media has attention because that's where everyone's spending their time and it's free.all it costs is your time or it costs money.If someone else is using their time to put their energy into it.Second, the algorithm and user behavior.So we talked about it's never enough to just assume that people are going to listen as people's attention is being diverted all over the place.You know, they talk about attention spans, but really it's overwhelming logging,like not logging in.That sounds really old.It's overwhelming hopping on opening up Instagram, for example, and it's just all the notifications all these things going on.But that's the cost of free promotion on these apps.You have to understand what your audience likes or your future audience likes and get in front of that and then drive traffic directly to your podcast with social media.And then third last but not least we talked about three proactive steps that you can take for your podcast on social media which is having a plan that you can track make it obvious to everyone that comes across your page that you have a podcast and a B.L.always be linking. Don't leave anything to chance because it's the only way to ensure that people are actually landing on your podcast page and going directly to where you want them to go. I hope you found this episode helpful. If you did, let me know. I'll catch you in the next one.