The podcast revolution is upon us. The total number of podcast listeners continues to grow every single year. This means the chances are high that your ideal audience is listening to a podcast right this very second, which is probably why you started podcasting in the first place.
Below we dive into a two-fold approach for sending people from your podcast to your website. First we’ll show you how to optimize and get more listeners to your existing podcast, and then we’ll show you a few tricks to encourage these people to head back to your website.
First, Optimize Your Podcast For Search
Your podcast isn’t doing your business any good if it’s just sitting there on iTunes, not gaining any new listeners. One of the more effective ways to improve the chances of people actually finding your podcast is through proper optimization.
1. Optimize for iTunes
iTunes will crawl your podcast, similar to how Google crawls your website, to determine which keywords to rank it for. This means you’ll want to optimize your podcast title, subtitle, and description fields.
You can even add certain keywords, and name drop guest names, to increase the amount of traffic flowing to your podcast page.
2. Optimize your Metadata
Your episode metadata is automatically created by iTunes, but you can still go in and change the data to tag the information yourself. This will help your podcast rank even higher, as you’re giving each episode more information to work with.
3. Create Catchy Episode Titles
Think of your podcast titles the same way you view blog post titles. Your titles must be catchy and provoke curiosity in the eyes of your listener. Having lackluster titles won’t encourage your readers to listen to your episodes.
Second, Take People From Podcast To Website
Once your podcast is optimized within iTunes, it’s time to encourage those listeners to visit your website. Below we offer a few ways you can get the most out of each episode.
1. Promote Extracts on Social Media
Social media can be a great way to drive traffic back to your website. But, you need to share a steady stream of engaging and relevant content if you want your strategy to be effective.
You can put your podcast audio to good use by finding sharable quotes from your podcast (bonus points if they’re tweetable). Then, load those up into your social media queue using a tool like Buffer.
This will provide intrigue to your podcast episode, and drive more clicks to your website as well.
2. Offer a Free Download to Accompany Your Podcast
You should always create a free download that accompanies each episode. This will give listeners a reason to head back to your website. The free resource should enhance the information that’s already been presented in your podcast.
For instance, if you just had an interview with a startup founder about their new productivity app, you could create a free ebook on your website called 7 Hidden Secrets to Get The Most Out of This App. You could even giveaway a free subscription or coupon to the visitor who leaves the best comment.
3. Create Podcast Show Notes
Show notes fulfill two needs. They can help increase your search engine rankings and they provide value to listeners who prefer reading over listening.
Publish your show notes on your website and offer an outline that extracts all of the hidden gems from each podcast episode. This might seem like a lot of time spent, but this will give the search engines something to rank you for, and beef out your podcast episodes on your website, to the benefit of your listeners.
Sounds like a win-win to me.
Your podcast can be an integral part of your marketing strategy. We hope the tips above will help you get the most from your podcast.
Kevin Wood writes about technology and human potential. You can find him at his virtual homes Wooden Writing and Counter Culturist.