Tracy Hazzard gives practical, step-by-step advice for finding and connecting with fellow podcasters: search Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube (also Google Podcasts) by your main category or keywords; inspect shows that rank ahead of yours to see if they are active and accepting guests; review guest lists for additional contacts; and use hashtag searches on social media (e.g., #podcast + your category) to find podcasters who are active on Instagram, Twitter, etc. She recommends doing this research regularly (about once a month) and expects it to take roughly 30–60 minutes.
Questions this video answers
Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube (and Google Podcasts as an additional check).
About once a month.
Roughly 30 minutes to one hour.
Chapters
The simple answer is I go into the app, I go into my listening app, I check Spotify, Apple, and for now, I still check Google Podcasts. But I'm going to say you want to check YouTube as your second, as your third. So Apple, Spotify and YouTube, check those three. Go in there and type your main category. Type I need help with like, you know. Or podcast about. Like that. You know, if you're typing into YouTube, you want to say podcasts about something. If you're typing into the. The Apple podcast or Spotify, you obviously don't have to type podcasts about. You just pick the main topic area and then see who beats you out. See what shows are coming in front of yours, then go click on them, check them, check the host, make sure they're still. They may be beating you just because they have a bigger library than you do, but they're not currently posting. So you want to make sure they're currently posting, they're currently taking guests, and then they're beating you on the list so they're coming in front of you. The other thing is that you can do hashtag podcast, hashtag your system in social media. So you can always check and make sure you do hashtag podcast, and then hashtag whatever your keyword category is. And so that way you can be able to also see who's posting about it in social media, especially if you were looking to grow your social media audience as well. So you can sort of see who's doing a good job of posting in Instagram, who's doing a good job of posting in Twitter, who's also a podcaster. That can help you as well there, especially if you need more social media reach. So I hope that helps. It's not an easy system. It requires research, and I have subbed this out to my assistants before. But the problem with subbing it out to assistants is that they don't understand what you're looking for in the future, and you have to take a lot of time to prep them up. I find it easier to do it myself, do it once a month, just kind of go in there, type that into the search engine, check Apple, check Spotify, check YouTube, and then just click on a couple of shows. It's good research for you to see who's doing what. Sometimes I even use it as great research for future topics. So if I find a podcaster that's beating me and doing a better job, I also see what are they talking about recently, and then I jot them down and I add them to my topic list for things I want to cover. So it's just great research. You shouldn't take you more than an hour a month to do this, and I'd be surprised if it took you 30 minutes. So, because you know what you're looking for, you can do this so much faster than an assistant cat, and you're going to know it's your industry. You know who's. But you know, when you see that, you go, oh, that's great. Another opportunity is also to check their guests on their guest list, because a lot of them also have podcast shows and they list that.
