Increase Podcast Downloads: Take Control, Stop Hoping It Will Happen, And Make It Happen

Want your podcast and videocast to be seen, heard, found and rewarded in this noisy digital world, you are not alone. Join the nonprofit community at Podcasters United and podcast industry experts Tom Hazard and Tracy Hazard as they debunk all that outdated and bad advice you've been getting from the podcast gurus and find out what actually works. Today, get ready to feed Feed your brand with smart cut tactics proven to cast your original voice to the world.

Welcome to Feed you'd brand. I'm Tom Hazard, your host, and today I'm playing solo because my partner in better half, Tracy Hazard, is under the weather. And if you've listened to this podcast for, you know, any number of episodes, you'll know we usually do it together and that we live stream it every Wednesday at noon Pacific. And that's, you know, what we enjoy doing and our commitment to all of our followers and our customers that we show up and support you all. And so when one of us isn't able, the other will still show up. And so here I am. And today I want to share with you the top 10 ways to increase your podcast downloads. And the reason I want to talk about this is I meet with an awful lot of podcasters and in the last couple of weeks I have been surprised how many that I have been, you know, reviewing and meeting. I, you know, people can book a call on my calendar or, you know, either for a normal appointment or what I call a power podcast appraisal. And I review the show and share what I believe any of the gaps are between what they're doing and what they need to do to be able to get more out of their podcast. And in recent weeks, there's been pretty much everybody, whether they're, you know, have just started out a few months ago, or I had a show that has 120 episodes publishing consistently weekly and everything in between, and even some with more episodes that say, you know, my downloads, I'm not setting the world on fire. And I don't understand it. And, you know, they want more downloads. Pretty much everybody I meet with, every podcaster, wants more downloads. And as I'm reviewing a lot of these shows and I'm seeing it's really easy for me, of course, being so experienced in podcasting, but also reviewing a lot of shows and seeing what a lot of podcasters are not doing, that really are easy. The things I'm going to share with you today on the top 10 ways to increase your podcast downloads, most of them are completely free and things you can do for yourself right now There are a couple toward the end of the list that would either take a lot more effort or would have some costs associated with them if you were to pay someone to do some of the things for you. Most of these are really simple and things that you probably just aren't aware are holding your show back from getting more downloads. So I've got a list of 10. I'm going to share that with you. And this may come off a little bit like a rant, and I don't mean it to be. All right, I'm not going to take a super deep dive into every one of these, but there is, with just about all of these, there is a podcast episode that we have done and a blog post that we have done for each of these individual one of the top 10 available for you@podcasters united.org okay? That's the home of feed your brand podcast. And if you go to podcasters united.org right in the top menu, you'll see the podcast. And you can select feed your brand and scroll down right below where it says, I'm going to actually go to it right now, right below where we have our play layer and it says recent podcast episodes. And there's a feed of some of our blogs. There's a search bar right there. You can search on anything related to podcasting and get some great results. So don't forget to do that. And of course, the links to any related posts that I mentioned will be in the blog post for this episode on podcastreach united.org okay, so let's get into it. The top 10 ways to increase your podcast downloads. Some of these are going to seem simple, but I got to tell you, I have to explain, I have to share some of the simple ones because I see so many people not doing it. But like I said, there's something here for everybody. So if some of these you're thinking are, oh, I already knew that, Tom. Okay, I appreciate that. Hang in there, because there's something for everybody here. Number one, publish consistently. This sounds simple, but you've got to stay on pace. I don't care if it's daily, twice a week, weekly, bi weekly, monthly. You've got to stay consistent. Obviously, the more frequently you publish, the more downloads you're going to get. There is just some simple math in that, that the more episodes you publish every week, the more subscribers you have, they're going to download each of them. And so, you know, it is a numbers game. And I don't always recommend just, oh, publish more episodes. That's how you're going to increase your downloads. The majority of these tips today have nothing to do with that, but you've got to stay consistent. I have all sorts of people come to me and say, well, I don't know why I'm not getting more download. And they haven't published anything in three months. It's like, well, I don't know how you really expect to get a lot of downloads when you're not continuing to publish new content and you're not showing up on a regular consistent basis for your listeners. Okay, whatever your pace is, keep it consistent. Now the second one, I am going to mention this, and I sort of took it back slightly, but publish more content. What I mean by publish more content is not just increase the number of episodes. You know, a lot of people are doing exclusively guest interview episodes, right? And getting more guests and recording all those sessions can take a lot more time. And you may not have that much time, but you don't have to do that. There are other tactics and we have done several of them in our podcasting journey as well. Let's say you are doing all guest interviews. Well, what about record an additional episode once a week? That's just you. That's a solo cast. You have a topic that you feel is of importance or interest for your audience. Speak that for 15 minutes, 20 minutes, create an episode. You know, if you've been doing this for a while, you could record all that and really not need to edit anything out. Just, you know, trim the beginning and end and add your intro and outro and publish. But I want you to look at what we've done on feed your brand in the last, I would say quarter at least, you know, three, four months, every week. Now we have a next up podcast where we're sharing on Monday what we're going to be talking about in our livestream on Wednesday. And then that comes out as a full, longer podcast episode a few weeks later. So the next step is a short one. It's really short. It's like three minutes. It's enough to get some social clips out of it, but it puts out another podcast every week and then those are downloads too. So you will get more downloads if you publish more content. And you also have the opportunity if you're raising awareness of anything of yours that you're, you know, an event or any programs, courses, books, whatever you might have. If you're in business, you can actually have a little promotion or ad within those short episodes too. At the end, I would recommend deliver the message and serve first. And then you can. You can have actually more impressions of awareness of whatever it is you want your audience to know about on a regular basis. So there's a lot of value in, you know, publish more content, solo casts or a preview episode. We're doing that, and we have some other podcasters that productize doing that to great success. And we also are finding that shows that have been exclusively interviews and then put solo cast episodes out periodically, either, you know, alternate or every third or fourth, do some solo casts. Those solo casts are actually getting a lot more listens than some of the interview episodes. So that can increase downloads, too. Changing up your kind of content with an additional episode here and there or even, you know, consistently doubling up can help increase downloads. All right, so here's one that really surprised me. I was reminded of last week, several shows that I was looking at were only syndicated, meaning their podcast episodes were only available on four or five different apps. So this is number three. Syndicate to more listening apps. There's a ton of them out there, folks. Really a lot. There's dozens and dozens. Now, some of them, you may say, are really obscure and not many people use them maybe, but there are a lot that are. We recommend every show beyond at least 20 listening apps, all the major ones you've heard of, and then some smaller ones maybe you have. So you have opportunities to make your show available on more platforms, and you want to be found by the largest number of listeners possible. Syndicate tomorrow Listening apps. And a little sub tip to this is you go to something like Amazon. You know, your show hopefully is on Amazon Music. That's one of the apps that we syndicate shows to that are hosted on Potatoes. If you're an author, or even if you're not, you can still have an author identity and page on Amazon. Because podcast hosts are authors. You're the author of the podcast. If you're also an author of a book on your author page, you can get more exposure for your podcast there on Amazon. And those are directories people look up so you can raise awareness of your show that way, too. And another thing I just learned from one of our podcasters is you can actually get an IMDb listing for you as a podcaster. That is something that qualifies on IMDb. Some people may already have one for one reason or another. You don't have to be a famous Hollywood actor or director or producer or anything. IMDb is another place you can have a listing for your show. So I'm just this. Syndicate your show on More listening apps and getting raising awareness of your show as many different places as possible is going to get you more downloads. And these are things that they only take a little bit of time to do. Once. Once you do it, you're there. Once you registered on that listening app, all your episodes will push there. So this is a small amount of time you can spend to make sure you're getting the widest exposure possible. Okay. This is a very, very important one. Number four, optimize your podcast. Now, we've taken deep dives into some of these things and other feature brand episodes. So I'm not going to take a deep dive into that. You can search it up on podcasters, you know.org on the feed your brand page. I told you there's a search bar there. So you can find these episodes. But here are the important parts. Optimize your podcast. I get so many podcasters, they come to me, they don't know why they're not being found. They have literally a one sentence description for their show. They often don't have their name in the author field of their podcast listing. They often have cover art that has their own picture on it, their face, their torso shot. Well, here's just a tidbit for each of those Description. You get 4000 characters for your description in the podcast ecosystem. Not every podcast hosting platform gives you that much space. They all should. But they don't certainly apologize. We do because it's critical. It's for the bots, it's for the podcast listening app, search engines. If you're not using all those characters, you're missing out and you're not being found and you're not getting more downloads for the author field. A lot of people have a podcast that their company is, you know, it's for their company or they're like an employee at a company. And so often I see the company name in the author field. This is your listing in all the listening apps. Okay. I see the company name in the author field. I'll see networks names in the author field. I'll see producers, production companies names in the author field. As a podcast host, either current or future host, your name should be in that author field. Now, if you're an employee of a company and they absolutely require and they're not going to let your name be there. Okay, I understand that, but you might want to let the company know people are getting to know you. You're the host of the show, you're talking at events, you're sharing things on social. People might remember Your podcast name, they might remember your name. And if they search on your name and it's not in the author field, your show's a ghost. I actually did an appraisal with the CEO of a very large medical services.

And tons of episodes, hundreds of episodes published. And he's very well known. He's the author. His name was not in the title of the. Of the show, which it shouldn't be anyway. It wasn't in the author field and it was nowhere in the description. So he was a ghost. And one other little tip about the author field. If you're a co host like me and you're married to your coast, or you're your siblings and you have the same last name, we have some twin brothers with a couple of shows on potatoes. They have the same last name. And even you could have siblings that are, you know, maybe the same last name, and they're still man, woman, doesn't matter. But when you have more than one host and you share a last name, you still have to spell out the first name and last name. Look at feed your brand. It says with Tracy Hazard and Tom Hazard. Or maybe it says Tom Hazard and Tracy Hazard, I don't remember. But it doesn't say Tom and Tracy Hazard. Why we used to do that with our first podcast, because people could search up Tracy's name, Tracy Hazard, and they'd find her. They search up Tom Hazard, then find me at all. Why I wasn't Tom Hazard in the database of information that people are searching in the podcast apps. I was Tom and. Or just Tom and the zillion Toms in podcasting. So optimize your podcast number four. Okay, number five, this is really critical. So number four, you can do all those things yourself. You can also get support. Actually, I should have mentioned we have that power podcast appraisal, if you're interested in that, that's free. You go to politize.com/forward/appraisal and sign up for one of those, and then we'll review that stuff. So for number four and number five, these are things you can do yourself. Okay? All these things are things you can do yourself. Just a little effort and get a huge return. Okay? It's engaging podcast titles. What do I mean by that? What's in it for the listener? Why should they trade their time and come and listen to your show? Why should they click and why should they want to listen to this episode? If your title is not engaging and building anticipation for them to click to listen, you need to redo that episode. Title. I can't tell you how many. Seriously, so many shows every week I see them that have a title that is the guest's name only. And that's it. It's like, well, great. People search on your guest name, they're going to find your show. But how many people are searching on that guest name? Or this is the other thing you don't want to do. No episode numbers up front in the titles. We actually recommend you don't have episode numbers in your title at all. There are some shows that feel it's important and it may be they like referring to other episodes by episode number when they talk in their podcast. If you're going to do that, episode number should go at the end of the title in parentheses. That's the only exception to that. But don't put it up front because it completely messes up the searchability of that great engaging phrase of words that is your title. So engaging titles don't phone it in, don't keep them super simple, and certainly don't put your show name at the beginning and then something. I mean, I see a lot of shows do that too, like feed your brand EP this and then they say something. Everyone that shows up in the list of your episode says the same thing at the beginning and then it means nothing to anybody. Plus it's not helping you research. So engaging episode titles that will get more people to find your episodes on their own, listen to them and be really, you know, increase your downloads, obviously, is the point today. All right, number six, this is only going to apply to those shows that do interview guests periodically or all the time. Make your guests want to share your show or the episode therein of your show. You know, in reality we cannot force our guests to share it, but if we do a good job of creating some materials, making it easy for them, gift wrapping it for them in a nice bow. Create some graphics about the guest and your show so when they share it, they're sharing your show. Something that makes them look really good strokes their ego. We call this ego bait. There's a whole episode on Ego Bay to feed your brain. You can go check out if you want to learn a lot more about that. But you've got to make it easy for them. Even suggest potential social media posts. Give them swipe copy about, you know what to just a copy and paste into their social platform. If you make it easy for them and you put a little effort into it, not only will you incentivize them and make them want to share it, you also will make them feel guilty if they don't. Because you put all this time in and they, they haven't done anything about it. No. Make them want to share it. That they will, and that will help you get more exposure and get more listeners. Okay. All right. Here's one that I've been recommending to a lot of shows recently that seems pretty simple and obvious to me, but what I've learned is to most podcasters, it's not obvious to them. Wherever your podcast is hosted, and especially a potatoes, we have a player. Okay? You can make as many as you want on potatoes. Customize the colors. There's four different fonts you can choose from, but this is an embed code that can go on a web page, any web page, any website. And the latest episode automatically populates at the very top. And then there's the list of all the episodes in the entire history of the show below. And you can scroll through it. When there's more than 12, you scroll. Every platform has a player like this. Some are better than others, some are more basic, but that player can be put in as many websites as you want. There is no restriction. You may say, well, I don't even have a website. Well, even more to my point, if you don't have your own website, which by the way, as a podcaster, you absolutely should, but let's say you don't, who do you know that would be willing to put a player of your podcast episodes on their website? Let's talk about some potential suggestions for who might want to do it. If you're in business in any way in your podcast is related to business, you can have partner or affiliate websites. People you do business with that are complementary to you, not competitors. Maybe you use them and we have partners that we do business with in book publishing, in YouTube, you know, training, and in many different areas. Go and put ask those people. Make an ask. It doesn't hurt if you don't ask. It's a definite no. Most often if you ask, they'll be like, well, wait a sec, so I can put this player on my website of your podcast. It'll update on its own. I don't have to maintain it. And when people find it and listen to it, they'll be spending more time on my website. That's a pretty easy yes. Okay, so there are lots of sites. So non profit websites, if you have non profits you support or you're associated with, they'd be very happy most of the time to have a media page or a, you know, a Press page or even just even a create a podcast page with partner podcasts on it and have a bunch of players on it. Local city or chamber of commerce websites, if you are, you know, in your town, you're a podcaster and you know, if there's any kind of synergy, you know, they might be willing to put it up. College websites, we have a lot of podcasts that provide educational content. There's an awful lot of colleges and universities that are trying to provide value for the students and for anybody who traffics their website. Surprised how many of them would be willing to have a player and put on their website. So trade associations, if you're in business, you know, there are trade associations that you know are also trying to keep people engaged on their website and putting a player there. People can play the episodes there, they spend more time on that website. Event sites, this may be closely related to trade associations. Let's say you go to a conference every year in your industry you travel to, it's an in person event. They're trying to raise awareness of the event. You could do even offer a little cross promotion, mention the event in your podcast if they put the player on their event website. Pretty easy exchange. So just realize that people don't just listen in listening apps on their phone. A lot of people do. But there's an awful lot of people that listen over the Internet and, or through websites through players like this. So get your player on as many additional websites to your own as you can. Think about what sites might be a good fit. Doesn't cost them anything but five minutes to add an embed code. It really, if you know what you're doing on a website, doesn't take long or they give it to their IT person and they do it.

All right, so number eight, share your own show and episodes and tag others. And this last part and tag others is really the point of emphasis. I see all too often people share the show. They've got a guest. When they make that social post, they don't tag the guest, they don't tag them. Why wouldn't, why wouldn't you do that? Because it'll make them aware of it. They'll see that you tag them and they usually re share it. And this is not just for guests. I mean, I know it's probably obvious and most of you that have guests will share your show and information about the guests and hopefully you tag them. But I actually see it happen a lot where they don't. But beyond that, what about any company you mentioned in your Episode. Any company, any person, any celebrity, any sports figure, depending on what you're talking about, there's probably a lot of people you're talking about. Mention them in social posts, tag them so they're aware and they often will not only like it, but share it. And if they have a large following, going to share it with a very large following and give you an example. So we had a podcast called Weekend Crafting Adventures Potatoes. And it was craft projects people will do, home DIY craft projects, you know, sharing with people what they can do. And then one of them was where these drink cozies that you'd use out camping, keep your drink cool and things like that. And when they tested it out and took photos of it, one of the drinks that was used in a, in one of these drink cozies was a vodka by Tito's, Tito's Vodka, this company. So the host of the show took a photo of the drink cozy with the Tito's Vodka. I don't know if it was a can or bottle or what it was that was in it and it was like a mixed drink of some kind. And then shared that on Instagram, Tito and tagged Tito's Vodka. The company, they saw it and re shared it and the thing got literally hundreds of thousands of views and likes, like overnight. Now, not all those people are going to be podcast listeners, but for those people look at it and you know, they see, oh, Titus Vodka, I love Tito's Vodka. Oh, and who's this person that was using it? Oh, she has a podcast. Some of those hundreds of thousands of people are going to go listen to the show and you're going to get downloads from it. So tag others, tag different companies you mentioned and then make sure also tagging not just for social shares, but in your own episode descriptions. When you have companies, you're mentioning other people, celebrities tag them or you can't tag in a podcast description. I'm sorry, link their names, their mentions out to their website. Okay. Like the Tito's Vodka website can link to them or a guest website, you can link to them, have those links because you know, you're tagging them, you're. You're giving them value and a link back from your show back to their website. And that can get you more exposure as well, more downloads. So, all right, number nine, this is going to be one that maybe is surprising, but it's. I'm going to share it because there is some value in certain circumstances and it's gotten very, very inexpensive. Now, these next couple are either not free or are going to take you some effort if you're to do it yourself. And you could do it for free because you spend some time. Number one is put out a press release about your show, maybe when you launch it. Or let's say you have a show that's out, but you have a big episode and you got a huge guest. Put out a press release. There are some places you can put out a press release for about $250 is, you know, if you find the right organization and you write it yourself, you may want to get some help or from AI or something to write that press release and study some others. But you write a press release about your podcast featuring that person with the website address for your website, where people could go to it and all that. Put out a press release and you'll be surprised how many different publications, whether they're older, conventional print publications or just online publications and websites, will pick it up and reference and add a link from their sites to yours. That can also raise awareness and get you more exposure. Now it's maybe something you can't afford to do for every episode. And you know, truth be told, I probably wouldn't do it for every episode myself, but once in a while, yeah, makes a lot of sense. You can get more exposure and get more downloads. Okay, number 10, if you've listened to feed your brand at all, you're going to know this one. And you know our done for you. Podcast customers are very well aware of this because they get this with every episode. Create a landing page for every episode of your podcast. Okay, this is for SEO and I'm not talking about a short summary show notes post that won't set the world on fire. For SEO, you need a long form blog post that really unlocks at least 90% of what was said in the episode. That's what we do for every one of our own episodes. Go look at any feed your brand episode blog post on podcastersunited.org and you'll see what I'm talking about. This unlocks it because here's the thing. Your podcast episodes and your show and your episodes, even if you've optimized them in every way, as I suggested earlier in some of the first tips, they're only searchable by what's in their titles and descriptions. What you say within the recording is not searchable. Google isn't listening to the MP3 file. Okay. Apple isn't listening to the MP3 file and then associating it with more searches. They should, but they don't so create a episode landing page for every episode that is based on what was said. It's not just I don't recommend just putting up a transcript. But again, you can go to school on us. Look what we do and it will work for you. We still get people coming to our website, learning about our company and our podcast every day from episode landing pages we created six, seven, eight years ago. And our customers do too. That is going to help you be organically found by more of your ideal listeners and get you more downloads. Takes effort. It's the long game, it's not the sprint, it's the marathon. But it will do it. Now if you, you know, that's it'll take time to do that and maybe you can just do one a month or two a month, whatever. Just start making progress on it because it will pay off long term. If you do or if you want to get some support, it can be done for you. There is a little cost to it if you'd rather spend some money to save time and accelerate the process. Okay, so that's number 10. Now I'm gonna throw in one more sort of thing to think about here, which is another paid opportunity, but very inexpensive compared to like some other forms of marketing your podcast. But there are some low cost ways. One in particular we have a podcast called Promo Cast that puts out ads for your podcast and raises awareness with new potential listeners every month. And when they see the ads and click them, they go to your podcast, usually on your website or if you don't have a website, wherever you want them to go. But Promo Cast is inexpensive way. It's not throwing away thousands of dollars a month on, you know, or even a year really on like Facebook ads or something. Which unless you're a real serious corporation doing that kind of social media marketing, I wouldn't recommend it for an individual podcast unless you can afford a dedicated marketing person who knows what they're doing. But Promo Cast is done for raises awareness of your show. Very inexpensive. So there's information about that on podotest.com if you're interested as well. But anyway, that's just one other thing I wanted to mention in how to increase downloads. If you want something passive that you don't have to do, that works very well. But here's the thing about all of these top 10 and the little bonus 11 there ways to increase podcast downloads. You it doesn't matter what the number is. I see shows all over the map who you're getting. Not even 100 downloads. Downloads a month or even or an episode or a month. And I've seen both to getting five or six hundred a month to a few thousand a month, to 60,000amonth to a couple hundred thousand a month. There's an entire huge range. Really does not matter what your number is right now. What matters is look at your own podcast. Think about this list of top 10, which I'll run through one more time just to recap it. But think which ones are you already do you have covered which ones are untapped. You don't have to do it all at once. Do one this month, one the next month. Whatever you can do, but layer them in. What is important other than you know about the number is not what the number is. What's important about the number is that it grows month over month. These tactics will help it grow month over month. All right, so let's go through them one more time. Publish consistently. Stay on pace. Number two, publish more content. Consider that solo cast in addition to the interview episodes or maybe the next up or coming what's coming soon on the podcast type of thing that's been working actually pretty well for us. Syndicate to more listening apps. Get your show out there everywhere. No reason not to be. Optimize your podcast. Remember those four things I broke down or three things I broke down in that? And there's the opportunity. If you want to take a deeper dive in that, you can get a power podcast appraisal. The link for that is in the description of this episode and on the blog post@podcasters united.org create engaging episode titles. Remember we talked about that. There's so many people making mistakes with that and you're really just committing unforced errors here. Keeping yourself from being heard and not getting more downloads. Make guests want to share your show. Number six, when we talked about ego bait, take a deep dive in that one. Number seven, get your show player on as many websites as you can. I'm really a big fan of this one. No reason not to do that.

8.

Share your own episodes yourself and tag others. We talked about all the different ways you can tag and what makes sense there. So please do that. Press release for your show. Number nine. Number ten, Create a landing page for every episode of your podcast for SEO. We call them verbal SEO blog posts the way we do them them and then 11 promo cast. You can check that out. Just go to the hosting page on Pod Ties if you're interested to learn more about how you can actively proactively advertise your show and get more listeners that way because it can be done. All right, that was a lot. I packed in an episode. Tracy told me I should do like the top three or top five. I had so many in my mind, I decided to do top 10. In reality, if you break it down, some of these have two or three things each. There's really more like 15 or 16 in there. I hope you got value out of this. This is the point, right? My point of message today because I see so many podcasts that are just unaware and they're wondering, what else can I do? Trying to give you all a roadmap for what you can do to get more downloads. What can you do today? What can you do tomorrow? What can you work on over time? Layer them in, do what you can. Obviously the full list and everything and the links to the things that I talked about are always on the feed your brand podcast page on podcasters united.org you find the latest episode there in a search bar to look through all of our past content. I hope you'll do that and also come back next week when hopefully Tracy will be better from her illness and back with me for another engaging episode of Feed your Brand.

Heard something valuable today but didn't get a chance to write it down. No worries, we've got you covered. We partnered up with podcasters united.org where podcast hosts like you can get free resources, free masterclasses, the largest podcast tip library assembled, and free promotion opportunities. While you're there, don't forget to follow us on YouTube and on social unitedwipod so you can get feed you'd brand live. Until next time, keep podcasting.