E74 Leveraging Friends and Family: Boosting Your Podcast's Launch and Growth - podcast episode cover

E74 Leveraging Friends and Family: Boosting Your Podcast's Launch and Growth

Oct 05, 20239 minEp. 74
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Episode description

In today's episode, we'll be diving into a topic that might make you a little uncomfortable - leveraging your friends and family when launching a new podcast.  Feeling hesitant to share your podcast with the people can be hard because you might be fearing judgment or criticism. But telling people about your show can really give you a boost of listeners, and give you the momentum that you won't have if you do a silent launch.  Today I share my experience and explain why involving your loved ones can actually help your podcast thrive. When I started my two podcasts I kept them under wraps, only to find out that hardly anyone was listening. It wasn't until word got out through the interviews I conducted that people started to take notice. 

We'll explore the benefits of involving your family and friends right from the beginning stages of your podcast. They may possess valuable skills that can enhance your show, like graphic design or audio engineering. And by seeking their input, you can create anticipation and simply just let people know what you have coming.  So when you do launch, people are waiting. 

  • Leveraging friends and family when launching a new podcast
  • Using their skills and expertise for feedback and improvement
  • Building anticipation and support
  • Building a supportive network through friends and family
  • Generating initial listeners and reviews
  • Addressing the fear of judgment and the importance of pushing past it


How to connect with me further:
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Transcript

Welcome to Help Me Podcast, a show designed to help you launch and grow your podcast. I am your host, Gino, and twice a week I will release a new episode with different tips and tricks for launching and growing your podcast. From audio engineering to planning intentionally to growth tactics, each episode will be a bite sized tip to help you podcast. Hey. Welcome back to help me. Podcast. Thank you all for tuning in. Today we're going to talk about how you can leverage your friends and

your family when you're launching a new podcast. Sometimes you might not want help from your family, and maybe if you're starting a new podcast, you might feel a little uneasy or unsure about it and maybe you want to hide it from your friends. But in this episode, I want to talk about why, if you can push past that, using your family and friends could help you launch your podcast. I'll share with you my experience and why I believe that this to be true. So at the beginning of 2023, I started two

podcast. One of them was this one called Help Me Podcast, which is obviously to help you guys podcast. And the other one called working towards our purpose. When I first started these podcast, I didn't want to share them with the people that I knew. I didn't want to be judged, certainly didn't tell my family. And I kind of just launched them quietly. And to my surprise, hardly anybody listened. But then the working towards my

purpose podcast. I started interviewing people. So eventually word got out through the people that I was interviewing that the show was existing and I had a podcast. And I actually remember the first time I interviewed somebody and they shared it on social media. It was like very early on, maybe like episode three. And at first you get that sort of like, oh, no, they're sharing it with all the people that I know. Now they're going to know and I'm out there, right, and people can judge me. And

at first it was like, I didn't really want that. But in the back of my head, I knew this is what I needed to be doing all along, because that episode had way more downloads than any of the other ones. And it's no surprise because people knew about it and people who knew me wanted to support me and wanted to listen to what I was doing. And that's kind of what this idea in this episode is about, is simply just telling the people that you like and the people that care about you that you're doing

something. It can definitely be a little overwhelming, and maybe you feel like you can't tell them, and I certainly understand that because I've been there. But if you could push past that, you can actually help your show to launch with a bang, right? You can launch your show and you can actually have people listen and tune into it and leave reviews and give you feedback and all that sort of good thing that's going to

help you grow. So let's talk about even before launching your podcast, if you can entrust a couple of people, maybe they're close friends or maybe they're family members and maybe they have skills like graphic design or audio engineering or journalism or something that could be useful to a podcast. You could imagine how it would be very helpful to get their opinions and feedback on specific things that you're doing for your

show. For example, your cover art, right? You can design your cover art on Canva like we've talked about in previous episodes, and maybe you design two or three of them and you try to figure out which one's the best. If you have a cousin, for example, that is a graphic designer, or maybe they do some work in design, you can show them the covers and be like, hey, can I get your opinion

on them? Now, that doesn't mean that you have to take their advice, but you can hear what they have to say and they could offer you some helpful advice that can make your cover art look a little better or translate your message a little bit better. So, I mean, that can be one reason why you want to leverage your family and friends is that they may have skills that you don't have or maybe you're not as good at. And

this could help your show in many different ways. The second reason why you want to get your family and friends involved right at the beginning is because when you go to launch your show, you'll actually have people waiting to listen to it, right? Like you could tell them, hey, I got this podcast coming out. It's coming out on X Date. Here's the link when it comes out. And now you have, let's just say, 1015 people who are waiting for the episode to drop because they support the

things that you do. Now you have 15 listeners right off the bat. You can possibly have 15 people reviewing your show, and now you have a bunch of good reviews, you got some listens, and that's just a way better way to launch your podcast, is to get some reviews and to give you that momentum of people listening to your show right off the bat. Whereas when I did it, I kind of launched in silence and slowly people started listening to it and it wasn't exactly

the best that it could have been. So let your friends and family know that you got a show coming out and you want them to listen to it, and you'd appreciate if they listen to it. Of course, always be thankful for whatever feedback or whatever listens or whatever reviews they give you, and you'll be well on your way to getting a community of listeners and a community of people that enjoy your

podcast. And just think about how that's a much better way to launch a new podcast into the world than it is to kind of quietly go into the world and just hope that people come after you release it. Having a group of people who are ready and waiting to listen to your show and going to consume the content as soon as it's out there, is a much better way to go about it. And that brings me to my third point building a support

system around your podcast. A lot of times people are podcasting on their own, and if you are podcasting on your own, that's fine, there's nothing wrong with it. But it's also great to have a support system around you to where maybe you have a friend or your sister or brother who knows about your podcast and follows along,

so you kind of feel like you owe them the episode, right? If you're releasing an episode once a week and you don't release an episode a week, you know that that person is listening and they're going to ask you, hey, what happened? Where was the episode this week?

And it kind of just gives you some accountability. So it's always good to have a good support system around you and even somebody to talk to when it gets difficult, because as we know, podcasting is a lot of work and sometimes you need somebody there

to help you get through the tougher situations. This is why it's all a great idea to let people know that you're podcasting and to don't just podcast in silence like I did when I first started launch your podcast and tell all of your friends and family and everybody that you know that you are launching a brand new podcast. And you

would love their input and help and feedback and support. And to recap those three reasons why it's so important, first is because you can leverage your friends and your family's technical and creative skills that they may have that can help you launch your podcast. Second is getting people to listen and to review your show right when you launch it is a great way to get some momentum behind your podcast and to get some

listeners right off the bat. And thirdly, to create a supportive network of people that can help be your support system for your podcast. Even just one of these reasons is enough to tell everybody that you know and to try to push past that fear of being judged and that fear of doing something new because people are around you to help you and to support you. And I think it's always a message we have to remind ourselves is that you

can't do it alone. And when you do things with people and community, it makes the final product better. It helps you to not be so hard on yourself, and it just makes it more fun. So when you go to launch your podcast. Make sure you tell all your friends and family, that's all I got for you today. Thank you everybody for listening and I will see you next time.

We've reached the end of the episode and if you enjoyed this podcast or you got something from it, you might be interested in my weekly newsletter that I send out every Monday morning, full of podcasting tips, tricks and news. So if you like this show, you might like this newsletter. To sign up, just go to the show notes and click the link. Thanks for listening and happy podcasting.

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