Podcast promotion tips (Laravel Podcast case study)

Other than that, there's lots here in the audio version that will be helpful. If you are trying to get more listeners for your show. And lots of takeaways, tips, et cetera. So enjoy this episode with Matt. Justin Jackson here from Transistor, and I'm with my friend Matt Stauffer. How's it going, Matt?

And then the social followings that you folks have, you have, you have a lot of audience building going on other places. Yeah. So yeah, we're going to see if we can give you some marketing ideas, promotion tips to grow the show basically to get more people who are interested, passionate about Laravel listening to the Laravel podcast. Yeah.

The only thing that I've added since the beginning. Is every single one we record on Riverside, we put the video up on YouTube, so we both have a YouTube version and a podcast version beyond that. Nothing, not a single thing. It's a tweet that says, hey, the latest podcast is out and that's it. And it kind of feels like man, there's just so much more stuff going on that we have not taken advantage of. So yeah, people love the podcast and.

It'd be great if it grows, but like, I'm happy with the listener count, but I'm like, I want to give them more exposure to it. Like as a person with young kids, like I don't always get to work through my podcast, but when my favorite podcast people put up little snippets or whatever, I'm like, I'd love that because maybe I'm 10 podcast episodes behind. I'm going to listen to that snippet or whatever. Right. So I'm just like trying to get people more to more to do with it. You know,

Um, most of it happened in this period here and this kind of followed the story of us building transistor. It makes sense that this would be kind of the most popular, uh, place. But if we go down here, you can break down episodes by first 30 days, all time, et cetera. But let's look at first 30 days. And we'll just sort it by, um, you know, the first, the most popular Taylor Otwell, most popular in the first 30 days with 10, 000 downloads. That's wild, man.

And there was a few reasons for this that I think, um, we'll get into, uh, one, uh, Taylor does have a big audience and he tweeted it, uh, two, it ended up getting into Reddit as a discussion. Like it was noteworthy to.

It to be posted there and, um, this particular one, like this would have actually been an amazing episode for you folks to have as your, as your first episode in the season, because It this was the story about how he created the framework and it changed his life and there's just a lot of interest in that and it kind of drove a lot of a lot of folks, uh, by the way, you can click through on, um, on each of these and you can see kind of the.

I like looking at this cumulative chart so you can kind of see the growth over those first days. And I mean, you can see in this case, it got posted, it got shared a lot during that time. Uh, we're also going to show you, this is actually also interesting. Look how many folks listened on desktop browser and mobile browser.

And then, um, uh, I think we did a follow up episode with Taylor and that's like, it's still in our top, whatever. So, um, and Jason again and Jason again. Yeah. So the, the, the trend there is like, what's one way to grow a show is to leverage a high profile guest, a high profile topic with that guest to kind of set the stage, bring more people in. Yeah. If you look at our, after that Taylor Otwell episode, we had a spike and we actually did have a sustained number of people listening.

So that episode was in April. So there's the big April month, but look at it. It went down, but it was still, we were down here and then we had quite a few of those folks stick around.

So I didn't have that like fricking PHP and a cheap laptop changed my life is I would, I would watch, I don't even know who's talking about it. And I want to watch that right where I had the things that were all the same things. It would be something like. More about the story of Laravel with Taylor and it just doesn't catch people the same way So yes, the marketing man, the marketing really does something

And so Taylor Otwell, and then if you look at the episodes that show up Taylor Otwell, the business of Laravel 2022, that's Taylor and I Taylor Otwell. Here's Taylor on stage, um, instantly, as soon as you can see, if people recognize the Taylor Otwell, Otwell face, there's a better chance of them saying, okay, this is the, it, it almost immediately communicates. Oh, Taylor's a guest on this episode, like this one here. Is this just them, you know, doing a biography on him or something?

Uh, this is like, okay, he's a guest and, um, an episode artwork is now shows up in Apple podcasts and Spotify. And this is something I would do like if people want to know, like what podcast is Taylor out? Well, on what podcasts. Is Matt Stopper on? And also, the other thing to search is Laravel. And let's just see what shows up, right? All

And people is now a supported, um, tag within podcast RSS feeds. So if we go to the build your SAS podcast and we go to people, um, we could, and I searched for Taylor. There he is. So. Taylor Otwell, this metadata is in the RSS feed and we can also then filter by the episodes he's on. Love that. Uh, this just, it also gives you another, um, for search engine optimization on Google. It gives you another place for people to find, you know, episodes with Taylor Otwell.

And, um, more and more of the independent podcast apps are supporting these people tags. So, uh, for example, if they're using a search engine like, um, listen notes, um, they, they would be able to find people just using these tags here. Awesome. So a little bit of a heavy lift because you're gonna have to go back through all of your episodes and add these folks.

People go, you know, I want to, I just want to hear a bunch of episodes with Taylor. So how do I find those? And um, yeah, this is where I think you could got it. Adding Taylor Otwell as the author will help you out quite a bit. Let's go over here. This is interesting. Um, so this is Spotify's. Uh, survey, but so I think these are, these are the options they gave people, but top methods for new podcast discovery, hearing about it on a podcast they already listened to.

So in your ecosystem, I think a simple email you could write is to write all your buddies and just say, Hey, Aaron Francis, Hey, Caleb, Hey, Colborne, Hey, all these people. And just say, could you do, we're trying to. Let people know that the level podcast is back. Could you mention it in your next episode and you folks have so much goodwill You've got lots in the in your in your bank your social bank. I think you could call in some favors and Having people mention it.

I think you would get a lot more People listening just that way Recommendations from friends and family. This is just like a built in thing which is In your episode to be deliberate about giving people a prompt, which is just to say, Hey, it's Matt. We want more people to find out about the show. If you have friends that would like the show, it would mean the world to us. If you could share the show, just Laravel podcast dot com. Um, if you end up like messaging somebody, let me know.

I'm on whatever and it gives them this feedback loop and people are excited about doing it. The second prompt or trigger that we've very helpful is let's say that you do that at the beginning of the episode. So you just say, Hey, before we get started, just want to remind you folks, the show gets people find out about the show from word of mouth. If you share it with a friend, that'd be great. If you do that, let me know. And I'll thank you at the end of the episode.

Then at the end of the episode, you say, thanks to the folks this week who shared the podcast. On Twitter or whatever, and you read out the names people love, love, love having their names read out at the end of an episode. That's awesome. Um, this has also been our Patreon strategy. We have these 15 supporters that have, even though our podcast is now infrequent, very few people. Uh, you know, very few new episodes. These folks just love having their name shouted out at the end of the episode.

And I've heard from some of these folks that have been around for a long time. They tell me like people recognize me at conferences, like I got DMs from people. So people really like this format of just, we'd like to take a moment to thank people who have shared the show or reviewed the show. And it creates this nice feedback loop where it's like someone's listening going. Oh, I'm going to do that now because.

So two reminders, one at the beginning, one at the end, you could automate this if you wanted. We have dynamic ad insertion. So you could create an ad called Matt's pre roll and it could just be, uh, Hey, please share this with a friend. And you just upload audio where you say that and it will automatically. Insert that audio at the beginning of every episode you've ever done.

Um, it's also nice having these, uh, eventually, I think this will be helpful for both of you because for example, you just, you're an author, right? You just updated your book. Um, this is dynamic ads are a great way to promote a book launch. And Tim Ferriss, for example, uh, he, he had someone manually download all of his episodes, add a little thing like, Hey, my new book's out and then re upload them. You can do this dynamically, uh, with your account and you can mix season in and out.

So once people are tired of hearing, Hey, please share this with a friend. You can just switch it up to something else. And you can also do mid rolls. So you didn't want to do At the beginning you could say you could do it right in the middle of an episode Okay, let's go back to Spotify's thing browsing Spotify. So that's people searching on Spotify Browsing social media and then reading articles blogs newsletters and then rankings and charts So you can see how it breaks down.

And there's other research that's similar to this. So the Edison research, they put out a study every year. It's almost always consistently been, how do you discover new shows? Searching the internet, social media posts, recommendations from friends and family. So here on that would be the second thing we'd want to search is Laravel podcast your number one. So you love to hear it It's that's perfect.

Yet. The next thing to look is Taylor Otwell podcast and So this is where we We're going to do some things to start. Oh, you got one here. So that's good, right? Okay.

Every once in a while drop somebody who's kind of hot right now into the mix, right? Like Get like an Aaron Francis or somebody that has some vibe going moment and that can also be helpful When I'm like doing optimization of all this stuff, I'm like, what is showing up first? And here's, this is the top result right now. And I think that's interesting to me. I would almost, if I was you, I would be trying to unthrown this.

So either on the Titan blog or somewhere else have Taylor Otwell podcast interviews and try to try to unseat this. This, uh, here, and I've done this quite a bit, you, uh, top podcasts for Bootstrappers. Um, look at that. This, this is like one way to be able to list a bunch of episodes and then drive traffic to love that, because people just think about yourself. Like if you just, you live in Switzerland.

And you're just getting into Laravel and you have a 30 minute commute and you're like, okay, I want to like, what am I going to search? Laravel podcast, Taylor Otwell podcast, Matt Stauffer podcast, if they read your book, like you've giving folks that, um, and that would be interesting. Matt Stauffer podcast.

So you have a section right here, so this is great, but you might want to just if you're focused on Laravel podcast, put that number one, um, and you could even, uh, you could even have a hot episodes section for episodes you really want to feature. This is, oh yeah. So you do have a, uh, a Twitter profile, um, I would put the, your pinned tweet should be a video clip highlight. So build your sass. I think we did this. Yeah. So this is our pin tweet.

And this is just, you'll see, you know, if you like, listen to bootstrapping podcasts, then find us on all these places. And here's a video that, um, describes what the podcast is about. And I think you folks would have Your video would be even better if it has your faces on it So then people are seeing and then that trailer that little like here's one clip Then you're gonna put it everywhere. You're gonna put it as your when you come here. It'll be the feature video here.

It'll also Because it's short enough. You could create a 60 second version that you can put on Instagram Reels, Tik Tok, Shorts. So I started this little demo show just to test some of this stuff out and, um, and this is very, very small, uh, but it's interesting to see the numbers that some of these things do. So here's. Uh, YouTube short. So here's the original full length YouTube video, which is only six minutes and 19 seconds long, but it got 411 views.

The short that talks about the same thing is about 3000. And then we continue on, uh, here on Instagram, the short didn't do as well, but this short here about Google podcasts being shut down did about 2000. And then over here on TikTok, it's so fascinating, um, that the Joe Rogan one did well here as well. And the Google podcast one also did well. And here on Twitter, this clip also did, um, fairly well compared to other clips we've done. Now, this is quite a bit of work to.

Have to do this all the time. So depending on who you have on your team and how much time you have But it seems like an easy win is just to have here's one clip that really pulls in the viewer and listener and We're going to use that clip as the trailer for our pinned tweet, a reel on Instagram, a TikTok thing, a short, and then you get that exposure in one spot, right? So then at least if someone's searching, I would be interested to Laravel on TikTok, what shows up, you know?

Uh, this is also, I've, I've had success in finding people that are already posting about Laravel. It's a little bit more work, but again, if you have a VA or somebody, just have them reach out to some of these people and say, Hey, we're just looking for someone to tell people about the Laravel podcast. Again, if you've got so much goodwill in the community, there might be someone that's willing to just do it for you.

Just post, you just send them the clip and you can say, you can say something about it if you want or not. But some of these folks might be willing to share again, maybe just create an account that says Laravel podcast, one, one post just to get things started and then you can leave it for a while and see how it performs. Um, but there, there, there's some debate in podcasting, whether it. Things like this drive traffic to the podcast and anecdotally.

I think it's true like people view clips of Joe Rogan or Theo Vaughn or any of those but eventually those a lot of those folks do end up You know listening to the audio podcast All right. How are we doing? Is this, uh,

And yet I want people to actually get access to it. And so I do want to put money into it and at least time into it. So I think you've given me some really like helpful. Here's some entry level stuff. There's some easy wins. I'm not going to be that person who's going to put up six new video snippets from every single episode that are being spaced out in 16 social media sites.

But some of the things you said here, I'm like, I could do that, especially given the fact that I've helped the IVA help, like those are manageable things. The

Um, and you could even, you know, just say, Hey, like we're just doing this as a gift to the community. If this show has been useful to you and you want us to help spread the word, then, um, You can do that by here's the link, just go in and just create some clips and then, uh, feel free to share them. Just use this hashtag so we can find it later. And again, that becomes another opportunity right before you record. You just quickly look at the hashtag.

Oh, thanks to Damien for sharing on TikTok. Thanks to whoever for sharing on Instagram. We appreciate it. And you create this nice cycle. The podcast, the folks hosting the show, especially if you have fans that want to help out, um, that you can leverage that there's people that are like, I want to be a part of this, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And we all, I've also seen folks, um, take those fans that have been like, especially excited about it and just go at the end, they just thank them.

Uh, and thanks to Tony for, uh, doing our TikTok reels and, you know, so they're kind of in charge of it. It gives them some, some practical recognition, which they often will like. So I, yeah, I think that could work for you, this show, especially. I appreciate

But like ads to get more people to listen to the podcast. That doesn't defeat the purpose of being a service to the community, but it's, I'm so wary of being the ad guy, the pitch guy, the schmooze guy that I hadn't even thought about this before. I'm like, yeah, if, if the whole point is for people to get the value that is being created here, then doing this work and pulling a little bit of that relational capital in and saying, yeah, I'm a convert this to more people listening to the thing.

That works with my values.

And it's just a great way to say, hey, here's a quick way to find out about the podcast. I would create the video version, publish that everywhere and then export the audio. And then make that the audio version.