Every podcaster will say that growing their audience is a difficult thing to do. In fact, podcasts have a number of unique challenges in comparison to other types of content. These challenges include the fact that podcasts are usually audio-only. This means that it can be difficult to grab the attention of a potential audience. In addition, audio is not as essentially shareable as videos, photos, or text. Another thing is that it is hard to discover new podcasts and podcast episodes.
Needless to say, increasing the audience you have for your podcast demands great effort. This is because your listenership’s growth is dependent on your loyal listeners’ word of mouth.
However, if you have guests on your podcast, you will be a step ahead of the others. The reason is that your guests can share your podcast with their audiences, allowing you to reach a wider range of listeners. However, it is important to note that you have to earn it.
Moreover, the best way to make sure that you will have audience growth is to make sure that you are leaving a great impression on people. To help you with that, here are the five most effective ways to impress your podcast audience:
Conduct Extensive Research
Most podcasters do not do much research about their guests before the show happens. But what they don’t know is that doing this is a sure way to impress their guests. Conducting research will not only help them in producing a better podcast, but it will also increase the chance of your guests sharing the episode with their audience. They might even refer you to other guests and do you a favor in the future.
While doing research sounds simple, it can do much in terms of making a good impression.
Here are some of the things that you can do to get to know more about your guests:
Twitter Advanced Search
Dave Gerhardt is the man behind the popular podcasts Seeking Wisdom, Tech in Boston, B2B Marketing Leaders, and Ecommerce Marketing School. He uses Twitter to surface interesting content that his guests have posted and ask about those on his podcast.
Twitter’s advanced search tool makes it a lot easier for users to filter tweets by their number of likes, retweets, and the keywords or phrases used in the tweets.
Personal or Company Blogs
Chances are your guest has their own personal website or writes on a business’s blog. To find these blogs, you can use search operators like Ahrefs in Google. Ahrefs allows you to see all the content that is related to a particular individual. It will even provide you with the level of popularity of each blog post. As a result, you will be able to find out which content has significantly caught the attention of their audience.
Send Your YouTube Podcast Guest A Prep Email
After your guest has already booked a time to do a youtube podcast with you, email them a list of topics or questions that you will ask them when you record. This way, they will be able to prepare good answers. Not only that but it will also show them that you are well-prepared. In addition, you will allow your guests to deliver the best content that they can provide for your podcast. There are many myths about YouTube podcasts buying YouTube views, but this isn’t one of them.
Derek Sivers has an article titled “I’m a Slow Thinker.” He tackles how he asks hosts to give him a copy of questions in advance when someone invites him to guest a podcast.
According to Sivers, people often say that one’s first reaction is the most honest. However, he disagrees. For him, a person’s first reaction is usually outdated. It can be an answer that they have already come up with a long time ago and used rather than thinking. Or it can be an emotional response to something in their past.
Moreover, Sivers found out that his best answers came after he had some time thinking about it and based the answer on experience.
Make A Personalized Scheduling Link
Scheduling a recording session with your guests by exchanging emails is no longer a thing. Rather, you should start using a scheduling tool that lets guests book a time directly on your calendar. This is a tactic that will instantly get you more YouTube views when the video goes live.
However, plenty of people are already using scheduling links. So, it has become so ubiquitous that some people already take offense when they receive a generic booking link.
To prevent such from happening and impress your guest, start a habit of personalizing your scheduling links. There are many tools out on the internet that allows you to generate personalized scheduling links for every guest you will have in just a few clicks. This way, your guest will see that you have spent time preparing things for them.
Create A Guest Page
It would be best if you made the experience of your guest as seamless as possible. See to it that they will never feel confused because if they do, then the blame is on you.
One effective way of taking your guest booking process from a Motel 6 to a five-star experience is to provide them with a guest page. The page should include all the guesting’s important details, such as your contact details and the recording information. This way, your guests will have every piece of information that they need before going live.
One excellent scheduling tool that you can try is SavvyCal. It allows you to automatically send your guests to a guest page after the recording time is booked.
The Takeaway
No one can ever deny how important making a good impression with a podcast guest is. For this reason, you need to do extensive preparation before you go live with them. This is like our list of the top 10 sites to buy YouTube views which contains extensive research on the subject. This way, you will be able to show that you have done your assignment on them. It will impress them, and they might even introduce you to their followers, thus allowing you to reach a new range of potential listeners.