Each day, more artists and business people grow their audience through social networking. Facebook is among the greatest of social networks, despite all the cute cat pictures, so I wanted to look into how to use it in Podcasting.
Before we jump in, remember to check out our main article on how to promote your podcast here. But, if you’re looking Facebook-specific, right now, then let’s get started!
Boost Your Listeners
It goes without saying that you can boost your listeners by boosting your signal across social networks. Getting people to read, like, and share you content will boost your signal.
Facebook can be a wonderful way to reach your target audience. One starts by activating your “warm” market. A “warm” market consists of friends and family. Next, connect with other social networks, like Twitter and a blog. Finally, produce engaging content to share with them. This starts the conversation, their own sharing, and the building of trust.
By boosting your signal, you’re boosting your audience.
Love it or hate it, Facebook is the king of social networking. Besides the unending number of cat photos, Facebook is also a great tool for promotion. It’s essential for boosting your signal.
First, decide how to organize your Facebook presence. Either keep your professional and personal life separate or combine them. The choice depends on your goals, the time you invest, your budget, and the size of your following.
Keep Personal and Professional Separate
There are clear benefits to keeping your personal profile separate from your professional one:
- Set permissions on each status update. This grants access to just a few people, all your friends, or the entire world. Even if you keep personal and professional together, you can still enjoy this option.
- Privacy. You can write highly personal content and control who sees it all the time. Setting the permissions incorrectly could damage your professional image.
- You won’t turn your friends and family off with endless self-promotion.
- As importantly, you won’t turn fans off with conflicting political and religious views.
- A personal profile caps at 5000 friends. A professional page allows unlimited followers.
The Benefits of a Professional Page
Define your niche with a professional page. Use it to reach targeted viewers and maximize your reach.
A page offers the professional many more options than a personal profile does.
- Immediate feedback.You will be notified for each new page view and each new page like.
- Analytics. Each post or status update will show you the number of people it reached. This way, you can track what types of content attract the most views and interaction. Interaction means clicks, likes, and comments.
- Unlimited number of fans.
- Post promotion. You have the option to boost a post (for a price) to maximize your reach.
- Link with other social networking applications, like WordPress, Twitter, and Instagram. (to name a few)
Similar to blogging, make it a point to reply to every comment. This is a social discussion. Be a part of that discussion and build a relationship with your followers.
Or…Do It All Under Your Personal Profile
Of course your other option is to do everything under your personal profile. You’ve already seen the reasons not to do this, but it could be easier, especially at the beginning. Here’s why:
- Everything is in one place. When you also have a professional page, it can double your work and time spent on Facebook. That takes time away from your podcasting.
- Event invitations make more sense. Although you can create an Event on a professional page, you are unable to invite your “likes.” You still have to go to your personal profile and invite friends.
- Many authors and artists abandon their professional page because it’s too time consuming. Plus, they don’t get the results to justify the time.
- Build those first 5000 before expanding to a page. You will be spending more time producing podcasts and less time on social networks.
Facebook Events
I have found Facebook Events to be one of the greatest marketing tools on the Internet. Of course, you must have the followers and/or friends to invite. This takes time to build.
Facebook Events work really well when promoting a specific event like a blog tour or a new release. You can invite a few friends or everyone. It’s a great way to judge who’s interested and who isn’t. Then you can tailor your events and posts to those and avoid troubling those who aren’t.
Use Events in either a personal profile or a professional page. In either case, you must invite people through your personal profile. If you pay Facebook for extra marketing tools, you can invite fans of your page.
Greatest Benefit of Facebook
The greatest benefit of Facebook for promotion is the immediate feedback, or lack thereof. A simple “like” of your post tells you it’s interesting enough to engage someone. You’re not just shouting into the darkness. That alone is quite validating, especially when you’re starting out. This allows you to produce more of the content people like, wasting far less time on content they don’t!
Couple that with the ease of sharing content, and your Facebook posts have the potential to reach hundreds or thousands of users. If engaged, those users turn into listeners.
All while posting funny cat pictures.
Other Ways to Promote Your Podcast
Our 30 Days of Audience Growth course will give you loads more ideas on how to consolidate and expand your listener-base.
It’s just one of the courses available inside Podcraft Academy.
In there, you’ll also have access to our live Q&A sessions, community forum, a plethora of downloadable checklists, ebooks, and much more.
If you run a podcast, or want to start one, then we’d love to work with you!