• Appearing as a guest on another podcast is a great way to grow your audience.
• It’s also a highly effective way to promote your products or services.
• But, just emailing a lot of podcasts and saying “interview me” isn’t going to work.
• There are much more personalised and effective approaches.
• There are also services out there that can help you.
• Read on for the full guide…

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Being interviewed on other podcasts is one of the most effective ways to grow your audience and expand your reach.

When you’re chatting about your topic on someone else’s show, 100% of the people you’re reaching are already podcast listeners.

Doing an interview on another podcast in your niche lets you offer the sort of value that’ll win these listeners over to your show. They get to hear your voice, your tone, and your delivery before they’ve even heard your own podcast. 

If they think what you’re saying is useful or engaging, they’re only a couple of clicks away from hitting subscribe on your show.

However, it isn’t just as easy as emailing other podcasts and saying, “Hey, interview me, please!” So, let’s look at how to actually make this strategy work.  

Podcasters being interviewed on other shows is one of the many ways listeners discover new content, according to our 2024 Podcast Discovery Survey.

How to Get Booked as a Guest on a Podcast

First up, have a think about the podcasts you’d like to be interviewed on. What great interview shows in your niche are out there right now? Be sure to listen to a few episodes of any podcast you plan to reach out to. 

When you decide on a specific podcast, give them a thorough proposal on what you can offer their listeners. What unique insights can you bring to the table? What value can you bring? Make this ALL about their audience!

Ultimately, what the podcast owner will want to hear, is:

• What you would like to chat about
• Why it would be useful and interesting to their audience
• The benefits their audience will get from it
• Credibility – a little about you, and why you’re well-positioned to help
• What keywords or search terms might you be targeting in relation to the episode title
• The ways you will share the episode to drive traffic to their show

Reaching Out to Other Podcasts

Next up, instead of reaching out with a text-based email or message, create your proposal in audio or – even better – video form. This personalised approach will be much more likely to resonate with the podcaster. It shows that you’re not simply copying and pasting the same email to hundreds of other shows. If you send someone a personalised video, the chances are, they’ll watch it. 

They’ll also be able to hear your voice right away, and that you’ve got a good level of audio quality. This, combined with the value you promise to offer their audience, makes it difficult for them to ignore, and easy for them to say “yes”. 

Create a Personal Podcast Guest “Media Kit” or One Sheet

Another “extra mile” step beyond the usual copy-and-paste-message approach is to create a media kit-style document for yourself. This is also known as a One Sheet.

You might already have a media kit for your podcast, and this follows the same principles. It should be a well-designed document full of succinct, skimmable info about you as a podcast guest. You might want to include info such as:

• Your bio and the topic you are well-positioned to speak about
• Your podcast and content creation experience
• Podcasts you have been interviewed on before
• Short references or testimonials from podcasters who’ve interviewed you

You could also provide clear links to any booking software you use, and even a little about gear and software, if that’s an area you feel confident and assured in.

So far, these tips for being interviewed on more podcasts have been pretty manual and DIY. There are alternative and more scalable options, too, though. Let’s take a look at those now: 

Services That Help You Get Booked as a Guest on a Podcast

You can put yourself out there as an available podcast interviewee on these useful platforms. A quick heads up that some of our links are affiliates, which means we’d earn a small commission if you decided to sign up through any of them. Our affiliate income helps support all the free content we put out on the site!

PodcastGuests.com 

Podcast Guests links up those who want to find podcast interview guests with those who want to be podcast interview guests.

You can list yourself as an expert guest on their basic package for $20 a month ($15 if paid annually).

They also have a $ 45-a-month premium package. Again, you can save by paying annually.

This allows you to

• Link to 3 websites instead of 1
• Be listed in 2 categories instead of 1
• Have your profile featured above “basic” members
• Be featured on social media on a rotating basis
• And have your profile featured in a rotating newsletter to over 47,000 subscribers.

IndiePod Community

The IndiePod Community is a free place for podcasters to interact with one another. It’s a great place to share experiences or tips and to get or give advice. There are also sections where you can find a podcast guest, or make yourself available as a podcast guest.

In your post, you should include:

• Your name and contact info
• A link to your website, if you have one
• What topics you’re qualified to speak about
• Suggested questions to make the host’s job easier
• A list of any other podcasts you may have been on
• Quick info about how you will promote your appearance

MatchMaker.fm

MatchMaker markets themselves as “like Tinder, but for podcasters”.

You can use it either to find podcast guests, or to put yourself forward to be a guest on other shows. You can connect to MatchMaker.fm via your LinkedIn or Facebook accounts.

It has a free tier, but you can access many more features on the Pro tier, which is advertised as “from $15 a month” (suggesting this may be based on paying annually).

PodMatch

PodMatch is an online platform designed to connect podcast hosts with potential guests, streamlining the process of finding compatible matches for interviews.

It functions like a matchmaking service, using detailed profiles and an algorithm to pair podcast hosts with guests based on their expertise, interests, and preferences.

For $29 a month, you’ll receive three new matches every hour and can start six new message threads every six hours. You can also add a video pitch and collect public reviews, too.

There’s also a Pro tier at $62 a month, offering upgrades on everything in the standard tier and top placement in match results!

Podchaser Pro

Podchaser is often referred to as “the IMDb of podcasting”. They have a range of excellent features for podcast listeners and podcasters alike. 

In our interview with Podchaser founder Cole Raven, he talks in-depth about how you can leverage the platform to grow your show.

The platform enables you to create your own profile and then link that profile to all the shows and episodes you’ve ever been involved in.

Their Podchaser Pro tool is packed with incredibly useful features for podcasters, one of which is focused on podcast guest link-ups. It’ll help you quickly find a list of shows that are a good fit and worth looking into. It’ll make it easier to reach out to those podcasters, too.

12 Podcast Guest Tips: How to Be a Great Podcast Interviewee

Read article called: 12 Podcast Guest Tips: How to Be a Great Podcast Interviewee

Next Steps to Help You Get Booked as a Guest on a Podcast

Now that you’ve got a few irons in the fire, you should start preparing for when you do get booked as a guest on another podcast.

After all, if you do a poor job with your first interview, it could hamper your chances of being invited to any other podcasts as a guest.

You might be thinking “I’m already a podcaster, this part will be easy.” – but being in the guest chair can be quite different in a lot of ways.

With this in mind, we’ve also compiled a handy guide on being a great podcast interviewee. That’ll lead you past all the potential pitfalls and help you do a great job as a podcast guest. Not only can this lead to more subscribers to your own podcast, it can also lead to a lot more guest bookings, too.

And remember, in the IndiePod Community, you’ll find a section where you can list yourself as an available podcast guest for free. On top of that, it’s just a great place to get or give advice, and to interact with other like-minded independent podcasters!

Transcript: Lessons Indie Podcasters Wish They Knew Before Launching

Also Mentioned

• The Podcraft Academy – Let us help you launch and grow your show by giving you the tools to stay consistent.
• Established Podcaster? Tell us all about your show; we’re always looking for future guests and case studies!

Workflow, Content & Longevity Lessons From 14 Top Indie Podcasters | Podcraft Season 20

Read article called: Workflow, Content & Longevity Lessons From 14 Top Indie Podcasters | Podcraft Season 20

Meet Our Indiepod Legends

“Just do something you’d be proud of. There is no other win, there’s no other success that should have a metric as high as you being proud of yourself. I may not have the most followers, I may not have the most listeners or the greatest reach, but I know that the people that do like what I do matter to me and the content that I do and the work that I do matters to me. And I’m proud of the work that I do. So at some point it’ll resonate with the right people. But I get to have fun until it does, and I get to do work that I’m proud of until it does. And I think that as long as I can be proud of the work that I’m doing, then there’s no way it’s going to fail. It just may take a little longer.”

dCarrie – Travel N Sh!t

“I decided to figure out my “why”. Why am I still doing this show? And one reason I came up with was that it’s fun and I like it. And yeah, I have worried about my numbers or my growth or my Patreon income or whatever and been frustrated about those, but I still do it because it’s fun. I have the luxury of having an audience that I can communicate with, and so they’re a big reason why I keep doing it as well. But really I had to look and see why I was doing it. And if I would keep doing it, if I had zero listeners just because it was fun, then I’m doing it for the right reason.”

Mur – I Should Be Writing

“And so now I feel a lot more confident to say, actually, I need another week for that episode. Or actually, let’s push the season back by a week or two if we need to. If we’ve not hit this target point at that date, we’ll just move it back. Allowing yourself to take that decision is really important, and people put themselves under a lot more pressure than they have to.”

Kathi – Wild for Scotland

“A niche is a way for a small marketer, a little guy, to compete with the bigger guys. I’m really, really big on niche marketing. And so my podcast is very much a niche. It’s ocean cruising. There’s a lot of cruisers, and they’re fervent, but many people have never gone on a cruise, so it’s kind of a niche, and you’re almost automatically protected against competition.”

Paul – The Joy of Cruising

“Things aren’t guaranteed to become amazing. If you keep going, it’s not guaranteed. But if you stop, it is guaranteed to not be amazing, right? Like, if you quit, then that guarantees it’s never going to be successful, it’s never going to work out. But if you keep going, at least you have a chance.”

Gabe – Board Game Design Lab

“I feel like the podcasts and shows and things that succeed are the ones who are truly authentic to themselves and not trying to be like everybody else.”

Alana – She Well Read

“Despite the award win, I’m not an expert, but hopefully it does show that I don’t think you need necessarily to be an expert in podcasting. I think what’s probably more important is delivering really good content. So I think if you’re thinking of starting a podcast, but you’ve got some doubts, I think as long as you’re confident in what you want to talk about and who your show’s for, as I spoke about earlier, I think that’s actually more important than knowing what mic to buy and what hosting platform to use.”

Vicki – Bring Your Product Idea to Life

“You just launch, you put it out there. You don’t try and do anything special, because you know within two or three weeks, you’ll know whether or not people are beginning to listen, whether or not they’re finding you. And that’s the time to think, okay, how can I improve on this?”

Paul – Fighting Through

“I would never not do my cocktail of the week because I think people look for that. They want that. So staying consistent with what people expect from your podcast. Not changing things up all the time… being super clear with that idea in your head and giving that each time,”

Susan – Lush Life

“It’s to keep going. Especially when you start looking at the download numbers, it can feel you don’t get the same dopamine hit as social media, where you post something and you see likes and comments. Podcasting, in those early days, you don’t get any feedback. And the download numbers in the beginning are always much lower than we think they’re going to be. And so it’s a little bit of a reality check of like, here’s what the beginning is going to look like. ”

Andrea – The Savvy Social Podcast

“Make the episode good. That’s what you need to start with, is a great why it should exist, and who is it gonna serve? Who is it gonna help? What’s the point of it? Like, there’s a lot of things you can talk about… pick the thing that actually is like, oh, that’s a question that needs answered, or that’s a problem that needs to be solved.”

Daren – The One Percent Better Runner

“I think you need to make sure that the audience know what they’re going to expect, because those are the features that the audience will begin to know your podcast for. Those are the things that if they enjoy them, they will come back for.”

Rob – The Euro Trip

Let’s face it: There are few tasks AI can’t do, and it’s only going to get better. But there’s one thing it’ll never replicate, and that’s living human experience.

On Season 20 of Podcraft, we wanted to build the content around the hard-won experience of some of the best independent podcasters on the planet. We’re talking well over a century of combined experience, thousands of episodes, and millions of downloads. There’s so much wisdom in the following episodes. And the good news is that you can listen to them freely, at your own convenience, and as many times as you like.

“Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterward.” – Vernon Law

We’ll cover every aspect of podcasting, from workflows and pitfalls to promotion and monetisation. If there’s something to be learned, then our indiepod legends have lived it. And, over the next eight episodes, they’re going to be your mentors!

From Doubt to Determination: Pushing Through the Podcasting Dip #1

What keeps successful podcasters going when others around them are quitting? A lot of it has to do with why they started in the first place.

Full Shownotes: From doubt to determination

How Consistency Leads to Podcasting Success #2

Almost all the benefits of podcasting stem from one thing – and that’s consistency. Meet the podcasters reaping the rewards of playing the long game.

Full Shownotes: How consistency leads to success

Balancing Time, Workflow, & Content. The Nuts & Bolts of Podcasting #3

We bring you real-world examples of how long it actually takes to run a successful podcast, including seasonal and content-stacking formats.

Full Shownotes: Balancing time, workflow & content

Top Promo & Growth Lessons From Successful Indie Podcasters #4

These indie podcasters have grown passionate fanbases around their content. How did they do it? What worked? And what didn’t?

Full Shownotes: Top promo & growth lessons

Email List & Social Media Strategies to Build a Podcast Community #5

How successful indie podcasters use email lists, social media, and podcast interviews to foster connection and build community.

Full Shownotes: Email list & social media strategies

Podcast Income Stream Lessons From 10 Top Indie Creators #6

Whilst there are no shortage of podcast income streams you COULD try, here are some real-world case studies from ten successful indies.

Full Shownotes: Income stream lessons

Lessons Indie Podcasters Wish They Knew Before Launching #7

On the final episode of Season 20, we’ll dig into what our indie pod legends wish they’d known before they started, and ask about some mistakes they see new podcasters make, too.

Full Shownotes: Lessons indies wish they’d known

Want to share your own wisdom on Podcraft? If you’re an established Podcaster, tell us all about your show; we’re always looking for future guests and case studies!

Meet Our Indiepod Legends

Here’s a rundown on all of the amazing Indie Podcasters involved in this series. Each and every one of them has succeeded in their podcasting endeavours in their own way, and we’ve learned so much from them over this season.

“The world’s a big place. Eight billion people is a lot of people. More than likely, you’re not the only one feeling a thing or thinking a certain thing. There’s a lot of other people out there that probably have the same opinion or idea or need or want.”

Gabe – Board Game Design Lab

“I feel like it’s just so easy to compare yourself, especially when you’re trying to push yourself forward. Of course you want to look around and see, like, okay, where is the bar? But also, it’s not about other people running their race at all. If you get too focused on that stuff, I think you end up doing a bunch of stuff that’s not productive. And we definitely did a lot of that.”

Alana & Samra – She Well Read

“I remember getting a rejection and being absolutely sure that not only did they reject my story, but they put my story up on the wall as a guide of what not to buy and never to buy from this author. And even though feeling all of that, I knew it wasn’t reality. I didn’t set out to chronicle my rising career because I didn’t know I would have one, but I just wanted to let people know… look, it sucks. I’m experiencing it too. It’s okay.”

Mur – I Should Be Writing

“I just thought, you know what? I can’t find this podcast. But I still think it would be a really good thing for people to have. So I’m going to start it myself.”

Vicki – Bring Your Product Idea to Life

“A lot of my potential clients would go back and listen to podcast episodes before hiring me for social media. So, I started talking about my strategies and my skills and interviewing other people in the space. It really just started off as a curious way to create content outside of YouTube. And then I completely put all of my energy into my podcast. Now, it’s just my favourite medium.”

Andrea – The Savvy Social Podcast

“Make the episode good. That’s what you need to start with: Why it should exist and who is it going to serve? Who is it going to help? What’s the point of it?”

Daren – The One Percent Better Runner

“Yes, we weren’t the first Eurovision podcast, but we were probably the first Eurovision podcast that reached out to do feature-length interviews with previous artists and contestants. We were the first ones that kind of dove a bit deeper into kind of the journalism and the news side of things as well. And we’ve evolved the podcast more into that direction as we’ve gone on.”

Rob & James – The Euro Trip

“The thing that made it the easiest for me to be consistent is to do themed seasons. Not to put the pressure on myself to produce a new episode every week or every month, but really thinking about a season, making a plan for ten episodes that are all somehow related and then just producing those, and then that way the listeners know that they will get ten episodes and then they’ll have to wait again. I’m setting up the expectation for that to be the case so they’re not disappointed, and it makes it more manageable for me…”

Kathi – Wild for Scotland

“I learned so much in my first two or three episodes from just listening and being self-critical. Sometimes, feedback from different sources, and you suddenly think, oh gosh, I shouldn’t be doing that at the end of the episode, or I shouldn’t be doing that at the beginning, or I should change the way I introduce myself or any number of things that you want to fine-tune. And if you’ve gone ahead before you go live with, and you’ve got twelve episodes in the can, then you’re stuck with whatever mistake you’ve made.”

Paul – Fighting Through

“The goal of the show is for me to creatively express myself. A byproduct of that just so happens to be that I can bring other people along with the content that I am interested in.”

dCarrie – Travel N Sh!t

“I started interviewing bartenders, how they got where they did, and how someone went from working in the back bar or working in a kitchen to becoming a really famous bartender, where they’re winning awards. That journey really interested me, so I just thought, I’m interested in it, someone else might be interested in it. So let’s just go crazy.”

Susan – Lush Life

“But all I know is I have gained traction, and I like to believe that it has a lot to do with the fact that I do editing and I try to make my program tight. So, yes, that is another common mistake that I see new podcasters make – to think that they could just throw things out there without editing.”

Paul – The Joy of Cruising

Our recent survey suggested that only 1 in 4 indies monetize their content, despite the majority of them wanting to build some income streams.

So, on this episode of Podcraft, we’re going to dig into the monetization methods and strategies that have actually worked for our IndiePod Legends, as well as the many that haven’t!

Transcription: Podcast Income Stream Lessons

The aim here is to show that while some revenue streams are a good fit for some, they don’t work so well for others. We’ll also answer questions like:

• WHEN should you try to monetize?
• What are some great on-ramps for smaller podcasts?
• Can monetizing your content hamper your creativity?

Workflow, Content & Longevity Lessons From 14 Top Indie Podcasters | Podcraft Season 20

Read article called: Workflow, Content & Longevity Lessons From 14 Top Indie Podcasters | Podcraft Season 20

Meet Our Indiepod Legends

“Download numbers don’t matter when it comes to trying to sell ad space. There’s that podcast industry standard of, like, you have to have 10,000 downloads to even think about getting partnerships. Well, we dispelled that myth pretty quickly, and I think more people are catching on to it.”

Alana & Samra – She Well Read

“I’ve been going all the years on Patreon, and I’ve never cashed the money in. I thought it was going into my bank account, but because it’s only small amounts, I didn’t really keep track of it. And then a couple of weeks ago, Patreon wrote to me saying I’d got $2,000 stacked up in the account, and I thought Christmas had come early.”

Paul – Fighting Through

“It’s very rare that I reach out to someone and say, hi, this is what I do, and I want you to spend money on my podcast. It’s a little bit more organic. It’s more about relationship building.”

Susan – Lush Life

“Be patient. Don’t quit your day job. Wait. Give value until you can’t give any more. Then ask. Because when you do that, the amount of money, the amount of people that want to provide value back to you is so much exponentially greater. And so just be patient.”

Gabe – Board Game Design Lab

“…and she had sent over a package of candles because I’d been spending money with her. So I made her the sponsor, and so she ended up working with me. She gave me a really nice promo code for listeners, so when they buy from her they can get 20% off their candles. And so I feel like that’s probably a direction that I would prefer to go.”

dCarrie – Travel N Sh!t

“I look at it as monetization will come, because I’m building a following. I’m now in the position where my host enables me to carry ads on my podcast, which really just kind of lowers my hosting bill each month. So I don’t get much monetization that way, but it’ll come. Little things are starting to happen.”

Paul – The Joy of Cruising

“It’s not that I wanted to put all my eggs in the Patreon basket, but it’s really that I’ve not found anything better than Patreon. I’m fine to stay with it. In theory, I’d love to have multiple revenue streams along those subscription lines, but it just hasn’t happened.”

Mur – I Should Be Writing

“But so far, brands have come to me and said, hey, we have this product, we’d love to get it in front of new people, can we sponsor your podcast? And so that’s usually how the conversation has gone so far. I’m very mindful of it, though, because I don’t particularly enjoy, like listening to ads, and I especially don’t enjoy the shows that have a ton of ads. I want it to be beneficial for my sponsors, so keep them very, very minimal. And so that has worked well for me in the past. It really just covers the cost of producing the show.”

Andrea – The Mindful Marketing Podcast

“It’s been interesting to be approached by businesses who just want to explore producing new types of content. And it isn’t just about social media. People are starting to realize that social media moves so quickly and algorithms are so volatile and temperamental that investing time and effort into more in depth and high quality content is something they really want to do. And podcasts, I think, are just at the cusp of being that medium that offers that as a marketing message, which is really, really exciting.”

Kathi – Wild for Scotland

Back when we ran our podcast production service, clients regularly sent over audio that was full of distracting background noises. Not the ongoing hum of an AC unit or the gentle ambience of a cafe, but things like door slams, annoying desk tapping, or phones ringing.

Then came the inevitable question, “Can you just edit that out?” followed by a patient explanation from our end that the noise was happening underneath the vocals, so if one was cut out, the other would be, too.

Sure, spectral view tools and earlier iterations of iZotope RX were still exceptionally powerful. But I could never truly strip out a noise from underneath a conversation without it sounding like it was recorded underwater.

And this isn’t just about noise. Reverb has always been notoriously hard to remove from voice recordings. On top of that, if one person sounded very obviously off-mic, it was impossible to bring them “on-mic” in post.

But in 2024, audio software has suddenly evolved to the point where almost anything is possible. Reverb is no longer a huge issue, it can correct poor mic technique, and most background noise – even the intermittent stuff – can be removed without many folks being able to tell it was ever there in the first place.

The beauty of this, too, is that the software often does it automatically. There’s no need to tweak any settings or go through the trial and error of more traditional Noise Reduction tools. Experienced audio pros might consider this lack of control, but remember – most podcasters are not audio pros.

A great real-world example of this sorcery in action was our recent Podcraft episode on Podcasting 2.0 with Sam Sethi. I recorded the conversation outside The Podcast Show event in London, and several fire engines hurried past as we talked. I’m not sure what was going on, but maybe they took the LIT tag a bit too literally…

Anyway, this wasn’t a deal breaker for the audio – the conversation was still audible. It could have been briefly distracting, but this is often the nature of on-location audio in urban areas. In a moment of curiosity rather than expectation, I ran it through Alitu, and was amazed to hear that the software had completely stripped out all the background noise. On top of that, you definitely couldn’t tell we were sharing a mic or even recording outdoors at all!

Sam commented on this in episode 81 of the Podnews Weekly Review and was kind to credit me for my production skills. But in truth, all I did was upload the source file. It’s incredible to hear how far audio software has come. So many recordings that would once have been considered unfixable now have the capability to be transformed into studio-quality conversations.

So, does that mean we can finally drop the ‘silk purse sow’s ear’ metaphor? Is “you can’t fix it in the post” obsolete advice? Is striving to record good, clean source material just an unnecessary barrier to content creation?

You can probably make convincing arguments about the above, but before folks throw out their foam tiles, shock mounts, and general audio standards, here’s a countercase.

Why You Should Still Record Good Clean Source Material (When Possible)

If software can probably fix it, why worry about it in the first place?

Good Enough Audio, or Great Audio?

Whilst modern audio software can remove, repair, and rebuild bad audio, it can also enhance, polish, and optimise good audio. Taking some care to feed in the best source material possible can help your show become one of the best-sounding in your niche.

Check out this case study from Lindsay’s piece on What Podcasts Do for Your Brain:

Study participants listened to two-to-three-minute interviews from NPR’s Science Friday with altered sound quality. Co-author Eryn Newman said, “As soon as we reduced the audio quality, all of a sudden, the scientists and their research lost credibility.” Newman and Schwarz found that as soon as material required extra effort on the part of the participants, they trusted it less. Respondents rated clear information as more reliable. 

Software Isn’t Foolproof

Audio software can do increasingly amazing things, but don’t rely on it to fix everything. Just because you have a smoke alarm in your house doesn’t mean you’ll rely on it to tell you if the toast is burning (though, if you do, at least you know you can probably edit the noise out of your recordings!).

Recording Clean Source Material Isn’t Difficult

…says the guy who recorded a podcast interview on the set of Backdraft. But this isn’t about perfectionism, and you definitely have a lot more grace when recording in the great unpredictable outdoors.

Good practices are as simple as choosing a room with a decent amount of soft furnishings, getting close enough to your mic, and logging out of Slack or Discord. Don’t be that podcaster recording in their bathroom, six feet away from their Omnidirection-set Blue Yeti. Software might make it sound a little better, but that’s nothing to be proud of.

The Danger of Slipping Standards

If you no longer care about the quality of your source material, what message does that send to the part of your brain that insists, “I take podcasting seriously”? What other corners might you then start to cut in the planning and content side of things? One day you’re dropping a crisp packet in the street; the next day, you’re fly-tipping a mattress. Beware the slippery slope, is all I’m saying.

Summary: Software as a Safety Net

It’s brilliant that audio software can fix so many issues for us now. It makes podcasting so much more accessible. There’s no getting around it that you’ll make mistakes with your audio in the early days. Ten years ago, some of these mistakes would’ve warranted complete re-records, but not now.

Even more experienced creators aren’t immune to the odd suboptimal recording. Sometimes, I’m not as diligent as I could be. Other times, I’m at the mercy of an outdoor environment and all the sounds that come along with it. It’s great to know that, with one click, I can fix it in post. I’ll never rely on it to do my job for me, but I’m glad to know it has my back.

If you’d like to check out Alitu, which was the software used in this case study, you can sign up for a free trial and begin using it right away. Of course, other great podcast editing tools are available, too, so check out our roundup if you’d like to do some shopping around.

But many do. And if you want Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, or any other platform to be part of your podcasting strategy, then it makes sense to be as smart about it as possible. On this episode, we’ll find out more about our Indiepod Legends’ experience with social media, what they’ve learned over the years, and any tips or advice they have for us.

We’re also going to learn about running an email list. A few of our podcasters are having brilliant results with email, and this is a great opportunity to get some tactics and takeaways for our own email strategies.

Finally, many podcasters run interview shows, and this is another big overlap between content creation and podcast growth. On this episode, you’ll learn about running an impactful interview podcast, as well as how you can still present yourself as a thought leader on your topic, even though your focus is usually on an expert guest.

Transcript: Email List & Social Media Strategies to Build a Podcast Community

Meet Our Indiepod Legends

“Funny enough, my email list is my largest community. So I have more people on my email list than any of my social channels combined. And so my email list is a huge part of my marketing. It serves as a reminder for when new episodes come out. I have a weekly newsletter that I send out every Tuesday. I usually share some things that I’m thinking about, some strategies, some tips, and then I always have a little call out for the podcast in those emails, so it really serves as a great reminder to folks.”

Andrea – The Savvy Social Podcast

“I always ask guests for pictures of what they’re selling so I can include those in the email as well because I think that’s actually just also quite nice. I’ve always linked to the website, but if I can actually put a visual in, I think that might encourage more people to click through if they can get a sense of what products look like. Because I guess my goal with those emails isn’t just for people to listen to the episode. Obviously I want them to listen to the episode, but I also really want them to go and take a look at who I’ve spoken to and find out more about the business.”

Vicki – Bring Your Product Idea to Life

“So let’s say I have a guest who has a huge following on Instagram. I can do a post on Instagram talking about my upcoming episode with this guest, and if the guest is agreeable, I can select them as a collaborator. So what that means is – in addition to the post going out to my followers, which is not huge – it’ll go out to their followers. So it looks like the two of you put out the post together.”

Paul – The Joy of Cruising

“If they are promoting a book, which they usually are, they’re gonna want to talk about the book. But since I’m trying to encourage new writers with my show, I like to talk about their process and what problems they come up against while writing, to let the listeners know that there are people having the same problems they are, but they manage to get published.”

Mur – I Should Be Writing

“But now, whenever we do an interview with an artist or a guest, or maybe we’re an event, we will make sure that we are also filming that as well. It might be as simple as just using the video from Zoom, which sometimes isn’t great, but sometimes can be pretty decent. That means that we can put that content on a different platform, and again, it helps us reach a new audience as well.”

Rob – The Euro Trip

“Instagram is by far my most favorite platform to use to promote the podcast. And because it has that combination of visual and audio with reels and stories, I think for us at the moment, that’s the most impactful one as well. A lot of our listeners find us through Instagram, which I know through comments and emails, so it definitely does its job.”

Kathi – Wild for Scotland

“The newsletter is my bread and butter. It’s this slow burn, and it allows me to pivot from the podcast and do what I also love doing, which is writing. So my blogs end up allowing me to kind of flex that writing muscle and skill that I have, and that keeps the stickiness, because not everyone’s gonna listen to that episode. They might just read the blog post about it. So I try to meet everyone where they are.”

Daren – The One Percent Better Runner

“I think just speaking in your own voice is really important. And also I think it’s important you’re not always asking your email list to do stuff or buy stuff. Also, I prefer to keep mine free. Again, that’s more content I would have to create. I feel that I know some of them personally as well. I don’t mind giving all my information for free because I love that they’re on my email list.”

Susan – Lush Life

“I was already active. I was already commenting and trying to help people, asking questions and trying to get them to help me on different games and projects and things I was working on. So I was already a known person, not very well known, but known enough where people are like, oh, this is not just some, some completely random dude.”

Gabe – Board Game Design Lab

Transcription: Top Promo & Growth Lessons

Obviously, social media can play a big part in this, and we’re going to hear about what platforms and strategies have worked well for some of our creators (as well as which ones haven’t!). But social media is only one aspect of podcast marketing, and you don’t even need to use it at all if you don’t want to.

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is the ultimate low-hanging fruit of podcast growth because it lets your listeners find and come to you in their own time and on their own terms.

Creating special or unique content alongside your usual episodes is another growth strategy that’s yielded great results for some of our podcasters, and we’re going to hear some tips for replicating that, too.

Another recurring strategy in this episode is collaboration. Being on or working with other podcasts is a proven way to build your audience. As Andrea puts it, “People who listen to podcasts listen to podcasts”. Some useful tools for finding other podcasters to link up with are Podchaser, Rephonic, and Tink Media. And here are some tips on how to get booked as a guest on a podcast.

Workflow, Content & Longevity Lessons From 14 Top Indie Podcasters | Podcraft Season 20

Read article called: Workflow, Content & Longevity Lessons From 14 Top Indie Podcasters | Podcraft Season 20

Meet Our Indiepod Legends

“A lot of the people who might be interested in this topic, they have no clue what Spotify is or what Apple Podcasts is. So I just give them a regular URL, and it takes them to a player on my website.”

Paul – The Joy of Cruising

“When the person you’re interviewing shares your content, it’s huge. That is really big. That’s when I get the waves of people listening when they do. I totally see a difference between when someone doesn’t do it and when someone does do it.”

Susan – Lush Life

“The other week I did an episode where I made a plea to my audience to say make sure you do subscribe, because it helps me. And within about ten days, suddenly I was number one in the Apple ranking for my keywords. I’ve been number one before, but normally I’m sort of two, three, four, and suddenly I was number one. And I don’t know if it was coincidence or whether it was genuinely because maybe just a handful of listeners had subscribed and that tipped the balance to promote me higher than everybody else. So that surprised me.”

Paul – Fighting Through

“And the TikToks that sent us over the edge, or quote unquote, made us go viral were the ones where we were being like, okay, this is who we are, and this is what we’re about. And these are the type of people we’re looking for. Kind of like the, like, get to know me type videos by using trending sounds and audio.”

Alana & Samra – She Well Read

“I tried to make every title easy to find. I know a lot of shows, they try to be clever, you know, they try to be funny, they try to do these creative things with their titles, but then nobody knows what the heck the show is even about. And it’s impossible to search, impossible to find later. And so I wanted to make sure that every episode I did was specific in nature. That way it was evergreen. Anytime someone is working on something that relates to that topic for the next decades upon decades, they can go back and listen to that and they’ll still find value.”

Gabe – Board Game Design Lab

“Back in the heyday when we were all just making stuff because nobody had made that kind of stuff before, we were doing tons of cross promotion. We’d throw trailers at each other and have each other on each other’s shows.”

Mur – I Should Be Writing

“I’m trying to do more blogs because I find that’s just another way for people to find the content, if the podcast links to the blog and the blog post links to the podcast episode. This year, my goal is to think hard about what I’m doing and rather than doing, perhaps, more promotion, to do a better job of it.”

Vicki – Bring Your Product Idea to Life

“Being on other podcasts, I think is one of the best ways I’ve seen to grow my show. Again, it’s really hard to track this, but my theory is that people who listen to podcasts listen to podcasts, and if they listen to one, they listen to multiples. And so that has been a really great way for me to grow my show.”

Andrea – The Savvy Social Podcast

“Social media definitely helps, but you need to understand how social media works. Treating your social media content as separate content and not just as a promotional tool. So a lot of people, they go, oh, I’ll promote it on my social media, or make a social media account for their podcast, and all they do is promote the episodes, and they just go, here’s the album art, go listen to the episode everyone – link in bio. That may have worked back in 2015, 2016, but now it’s so hard.”

Daren – The One Percent Better Runner

“Gradually, we have made a real concerted effort to improve our social content. So, you know, we might ask questions like who was your favorite Eurovision winner? Or what’s the one song that you think should have performed better in the contest? And that is still engaging an audience. It’s getting our brand name out there, but it’s not necessarily intrinsically linked to the podcast. But equally, if we do get some really good stories from prompter questions like that, then we can discuss them on the episode and that then almost becomes content that we can take onto the podcast.”

Rob & James – The Euro Trip

“Once you kind of start settling into a routine, it gets very scary to do something different because you don’t want to put anyone off or surprise your accustomed listeners by doing something that they’re not used to or they didn’t expect. But I actually think we can challenge our listeners a bit more, and we should be confident in our own vision enough and bold enough in our skills to challenge our listeners and produce something that we think maybe just goes a little beyond what they had expected.”

Kathi – Wild for Scotland

It’s all well and good to say, “Go out there and create lots of episodes,” when you might be intimidated by the idea of creating just one.

So, this time around, we’re going to explore the nuts and bolts of timeframes, workflows, and content creation. Here, you’ll get real-world examples of how long it actually takes to run a successful podcast, and how it can exist alongside other channels, such as blogging, social media, and video.

Transcription: Balancing Time, Workflow, & Content

Meet Our Indiepod Legends

“I try to be ahead as much as possible ahead of schedule, especially having a toddler and she’s in daycare now. The toddler colds, they get me down and out. And there’s been a few episodes where I just powered through, but most of the time, if I’m not feeling well, I don’t wanna record episode. And so I make sure that I’m ahead enough of schedule to allow for that flexibility, and that helps keep me going.”

Andrea – The Savvy Social Podcast

“I could never interview a lot of people in one day. In fact, even two in a week is a little just taxing for me with everything that I do. And I really do a lot of research on the person beforehand, and my brain can only handle, I think, one, at least one a week.”

Susan – Lush Life

“Obviously, you want to aim for the stars, but you do really have to rein it in sometimes. And we definitely have. I’m sure we’ve had grand ideas and had to bring them back down to earth a little bit because we know it’s just not achievable with what else we’ve got going on.”

James – The Euro Trip

“A lot of my episodes are solo, but I also have a lot of really great guest episodes. And I find that the guest episodes are actually easier because it’s so much easier to have a conversation with somebody than it is to talk to myself for an hour. And I also find that I would prefer to offer another voice or even just alternative views on a topic for my audience.”

dCarrie – Travel N Sh!t

“But now, because I bring in feedback from listeners, it’s become more of a magazine and there’s stuff coming from all over the place that I’ve got to feed in, and that all takes time to curate and put into order.”

Paul – Fighting Through

“It’s way easier to start something and do a whole bunch of other things. Why when you make a t-shirt, does it cost $150 for one t-shirt, and then it’s $25 if you order 50 t-shirts? Because they set up the whole printing press. It’s someone’s time and resources. So you might as well do one thing that you have your brain set on in that time and then try to knock out, if you can, multiple episodes, versus the other way, which I used to do, trying to do everything all at the same time.”

Daren – The One Percent Better Runner

“I’ve gone through phases of this is what I put out. And if I worried too much more about it, it probably wouldn’t come out at all. So this is what you get.”

Mur – I Should Be Writing

“So now the blog and the podcast kind of are more linked together in the way that if I do a podcast episode that would make a good blog post, I’d also do a blog version of that episode.”

Vicki – Bring Your Product Idea to Life

“A studio session is usually like an hour planning. We meet once a week so that’s four weeks in a month. Everything we do outside of our meetings. I’d factor in another 10 hours for that. Editing, it takes me, depending on how long the episode is, I’d say like two-ish hours to edit. So, I’d say like maybe 20 hours for an episode.”

Alana – She Well Read

“But all I know is I have gained traction, and I like to believe that it has a lot to do with the fact that I do editing and I try to make my program tight. So, yes, that is another common mistake that I see new podcasters make – to think that they could just throw things out there without editing.”

Paul – The Joy of Cruising

“The thing that made it the easiest for me to be consistent is to do themed seasons. Not to put the pressure on myself to produce a new episode every week or every month, but really thinking about a season, making a plan for ten episodes that are all somehow related and then just producing those, and then that way the listeners know that they will get ten episodes and then they’ll have to wait again. I’m setting up the expectation for that to be the case so they’re not disappointed, and it makes it more manageable for me…”

Kathi – Wild for Scotland

How Consistency Leads to Podcasting Success

Read article called: How Consistency Leads to Podcasting Success

On this episode of Podcraft, we’re going to look at the benefits of this published body of work, which includes the ability for new listeners to binge your content, as well as providing you with a tonne of repurposing options, too.

Following up on our previous episode, From Doubt to Determination, we’ll also continue to explore the barriers and challenges our Indiepod Legends have faced, as well as how they’ve overcome them. It’s another value-packed programme filled with lessons, takeaways, and motivating anecdotes!

Transcription: How Consistency Leads to Podcasting Success

Meet Our Indiepod Legends

“The amount of people who go through our archive and listen to old episodes is incredible to see. And in the months where no new content is coming out, it’s quite nice to see that the downloads are staying pretty consistent… which is amazing because it means that all those episodes are still there, are still being listened to… they still reach new audiences.”

Kathi – Wild for Scotland

“It’s kind of cool now, though… where people who listen to your show then start a podcast, and then they want to invite you on for an interview, and it’s like, oh, it’s coming full circle. That’s been fun, to see people go out and be successful and do really well, and for them to send me a message or an email or something and say, hey, really appreciate your show or your content. It helped me get to where I am now. And it’s just cool. Now that I’ve done this for a while, I’ve been able to see people’s trajectory.”

Gabe – Board Game Design Lab

“I usually only have 50 shows in the RSS feed. So, I automatically always have the last one drop off when a new one comes up. And when I started my Patreon almost ten years ago, I decided to make my entire archive as one of the rewards. So it’s like it’s lowest tier. You don’t have to give me much, but you can get the entire backlog.”

Mur – I Should Be Writing

“I guess the thing that I’m trying to figure out is if you were coming to my podcast as a new listener, and you went, oh my gosh, there’s hundreds of episodes. Which ones would be a good starting point, and how would you know that? So that’s something I’m thinking through at the moment.”

Vicki – Bring Your Product Idea to Life

“I feel like it’s just so easy to compare yourself, especially when you’re trying to push yourself forward. Of course you want to look around and see, like, okay, where is the bar? But also, it’s not about other people running their race at all. If you get too focused on that stuff, I think you end up doing a bunch of stuff that’s not productive. And we definitely did a lot of that.”

Samra – She Well Read

“So, what we do now is episodes where I was interviewed on another podcast. We’ll take those and put them in my feed. And that has worked really well because it’s not often that my listeners get to hear me being interviewed. So it’s another way to repurpose content, but it’s not really my own podcast.”

Andrea – The Savvy Social Podcast

“For the most part, it was kind of trial and error, particularly editing, which was trial and error. Just the act of podcasting and the act of editing and marketing was somewhat of a challenge, only in that I was marketing something I wasn’t used to, which is marketing a podcast versus marketing books.”

Paul – The Joy of Cruising

“I wish I would have known what the reason was for it to be alive, the podcast, the content, and then how it can serve people. I wish I would have really refined my Why.”

Daren – The One Percent Better Runner

“And really, it just organically grew. I think the first year I did like 40 some. I did it every week, and it was like 46 weeks out of the 52 weeks that I had a podcast episode up. So I was just embraced completely.”

Susan – Lush Life

“And I feel like that kind of interaction with my listeners is always so meaningful to me because it goes right back to how you can find out anything by asking the right questions of people. And that for me, is really what the joy of the podcast is”

dCarrie – Travel N Sh!t

In truth, we can gauge success in many ways, but ultimately, there’s no certificate and a great degree of subjectivity. One thing we can all agree on, though, is that the best way to get to a position where you or your audience consider your podcast a success is to create quality content, consistently, over a prolonged period of time.

If there’s one single answer to the “How do I make podcasting work for me?” question, that’s it. It’s an answer that sounds way too simple and obvious. And yet, actually doing it is much harder than choosing the right mic, the best software, and getting listed in all the major listening platforms.

Starting a podcast is relatively easy. Riding the wave of early enthusiasm to publish your first couple of episodes is easy, too. But to keep doing it for upwards of 300 episodes, or for over ten years? That takes something extra.

In this season of Podcraft, we’re speaking to some of the best indie podcasters in the game. We want to really dig into how they’ve kept on going, the ways they’ve navigated each challenge or roadblock, and the many lessons they’ve learned along the way.

Listening to this series won’t automatically pop a few hundred episodes in your own back catalogue, but it’ll certainly arm you with enough knowledge and motivation to get there under your own steam.

In our opening episode, our Indiepod Legends share their insights into why they started out in the first place, and in many cases, it’s because they made the podcast they wanted to listen to.

We’re also going to talk about the thing that defeats many fledgling podcasters—quitting. You’ll learn that many of our panel members have either wrestled with thoughts of giving up or taken long breaks to regroup and get back on track. Consistency over several years or hundreds of episodes isn’t a straightforward, linear journey. If you do it for long enough, you’ll hit many snags. But, as you’ll learn in this episode, your podcast doesn’t need to fall at the very first hurdle.

Transcription: From Doubt to Determination

Meet Our Indiepod Legends

“I just thought, you know what? I can’t find this podcast. But I still think it would be a really good thing for people to have. So I’m going to start it myself.”

Vicki – Bring Your Product Idea to Life

“I thought of a way that I could still convey my passion for travel in Scotland without actually having to travel, and also provide something that would be useful for people, even if they’re not travelling.”

Kathi – Wild for Scotland

“The goal of the show is for me to creatively express myself. A byproduct of that just so happens to be that I can bring other people along with the content that I am interested in.”

dCarrie – Travel N Sh!t

“The world’s a big place. Eight billion people is a lot of people. More than likely, you’re not the only one feeling a thing or thinking a certain thing. There’s a lot of other people out there that probably have the same opinion or idea or need or want.”

Gabe – Board Game Design Lab

“I had just gotten into podcasts and podcasting and was like, what is this? This is so cool. And so when Samra was talking to me about the book club, and I initially asked her, what if we made a podcast out of it? I don’t think I knew what we were doing then, what it would turn into and what it is now. To see the evolution in front of our eyes over the past five years, it’s really crazy.”

Alana – She Well Read

“I’m only the third person in the world who’s read some of this stuff… introducing people to material that’s never seen the light of day.”

Paul – Fighting Through

“I started interviewing bartenders, how they got where they did, and how someone went from working in the back bar or working in a kitchen to becoming a really famous bartender, where they’re winning awards. That journey really interested me, so I just thought, I’m interested in it, someone else might be interested in it. So let’s just go crazy.”

Susan – Lush Life

“And it was more like, how do I create these stories that are so impactful? I always go back to the driveway moment where you get into your driveway and you can’t wait for the episode to end.”

Daren – The One Percent Better Runner

“A lot of my potential clients would go back and listen to podcast episodes before hiring me for social media. So, I started talking about my strategies and my skills and interviewing other people in the space. It really just started off as a curious way to create content outside of YouTube. And then I completely put all of my energy into my podcast. Now, it’s just my favourite medium.”

Andrea – The Savvy Social Podcast

“Yes, we weren’t the first Eurovision podcast, but we were probably the first Eurovision podcast that reached out to do feature-length interviews with previous artists and contestants. We were the first ones that kind of dove a bit deeper into kind of the journalism and the news side of things as well. And we’ve evolved the podcast more into that direction as we’ve gone on.”

Rob – The Euro Trip

“I remember getting a rejection and being absolutely sure that not only did they reject my story, but they put my story up on the wall as a guide of what not to buy and never to buy from this author. And even though feeling all of that, I knew it wasn’t reality. I didn’t set out to chronicle my rising career because I didn’t know I would have one, but I just wanted to let people know… look, it sucks. I’m experiencing it too. It’s okay.”

Mur – I Should Be Writing

Next Indiepod Legends Episode…

How Consistency Leads to Podcasting Success

Read article called: How Consistency Leads to Podcasting Success

Almost all the benefits of podcasting stem from one thing – and that’s consistency. Meet the podcasters reaping the rewards of playing the long game.