Navigating Social Media for Podcasters: How Often Should You Post?

>> Nicholas: Hey, everyone, and welcome to the Headliner podcast. We're your hosts, Nicholas and Elissa, and we're here to keep you in the loop on all the things you can do to promote your show. On, uh, today's episode, we're going to be talking about social media and more specifically, how often you should be posting on social media and what you need to do if you can't. So, Elissa, I might be stating an obvious truth here.

Please tell me if I am. But social media, that's pretty important, isn't it? >> Elissa: Uh, yeah, social media, yeah, definitely. I mean, we're seeing like, I think it's over 75% of podcasts. Um, and that's like an internal study. We, like, polled our podcasters to ask, like, hey, do you know how people are discovering you? And it was like over 70% were saying, yes, I definitely had people come in from social media, um, and more notably YouTube. So kind of like falling in that bubble of social

media and YouTube. M. Um, which probably is an important distinction, but regardless, yes, people are definitely discovering podcasts on social media, which, I. >> Nicholas: Mean, look, uh, it sounds super obvious and I say it in just a little bit, but yeah, it's important

to remember that you put a podcast out. And though the podcast apps do have some discovery tools built into them now, most people are finding you where they're actually looking for content to consume, which is their Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Friendster. Does Friendster still exist? Let's say Friendster, you know, et cetera. And, um, as far as, like, that million dollar question of how often should I post there?

I want to preface this by saying it really is as much as you can stomach, as much as you can physically post and want to post, you should. But we love data here at Headliner, and I do have some little facts and figures courtesy of Buffer. And this is from, uh, an article from March 2024. And they recommend one to two Facebook posts a day, two Instagram stories and one to two posts a day, one to four TikToks per day, three to four tweets. Also, um, blue sky

tweets, whatever they call them. Skeets, I don't know what they call them. And one to three videos per week, depending on if you're doing native content or shorts on YouTube. Now, I want everyone listening to this to just exhale. Elissa, I need you to take a deep breath because it's okay. >> Elissa: It's a lot is twitching. >> Nicholas: Yes. Um, the bad news is that these numbers seem pretty accurate because Hootsuite did an article on it too, and they basically gave us the same exact results.

But again, this is just what's recommended. It's a lot of posting. It's okay if it makes your head hurt. It made my head hurt when I read all of this information. But at the end of the day, there are some things we have to remember. One buffer and hootsuite's articles are more positioned toward enterprises and businesses, not the prosumer, podcaster or the person just starting a

podcast. These are people with tried and true monetization methods, hopefully who can afford to post however many Facebook posts a day. One to two a day. That terrifying number I've probably only posted to Facebook like twice in the past five years. So, um, don't worry about it too much. You know, and more than that, we can kind of look at the why, which is why

I shared this information. Yes, they want you to post to social media often, but there's a reason for that that's more important than the physical numbers they're giving you. It teaches you a lot about social media websites and how these algorithms work in the first place. So when we think about post to social media as often as you can, the reason for that is we want to get picked up by the algorithm and we want people to see our content. These social media sites, they analyze

user behavior. Everything a person likes, shares, comments on and follows it gets tracked so that these websites can recommend similar content. And if you put out more content, you are more likely to run into someone who will like, share, comment, et cetera. Pretty, you know, kind of like speaks for itself there. On top of that, a lot of social media content gets ranked by a number of variables, recency,

relevance and engagement. So, you know, higher ranked content will obviously get surfaced more to specific people, while lower ranked content won't. Once again, if you're posting a lot on social media, you're raising your chances of having something get considered high quality content. Maybe you really hit the nail on the head and you talk about something hyper relevant in one of your clips and that's why that clip will get deemed high quality and more people will see it in another

clip. You might do something that is just especially well timed or lucky and that will go viral instead. Last, we have network effects, which works somewhat similar to. It works somewhat similarly to the other things I mentioned. Basically when somebody likes something on social media, it suggests to that person's friends or

followers that they might like it. You can actually see this in action now on Instagram where when you're just scrolling through an Instagram feed, I don't know if you've seen it. It tells you when someone you know liked a post. They even have like a whole sub feed on Instagram reels now where you just filter for stuff that your friends are watching. So

same basic idea. The higher volume of clips you put out, the more likely you are to appear on that list because there are more opportunities for your content to connect with somebody. So with those variables in mind, we can see why high volume is a recommended strategy. A lot of posts in different styles means more opportunities to find people. It's pretty self explanatory. But what if you can't?

What if you're like Elissa and I and the mere thought of making one to two Facebook posts a day or four TikToks a day makes you want to burst out in hives? Um, well, we kind of are perfectly poised to help you, I'd say. I think we have a tool or two that might simplify that process. I just spitballing here, Elissa, does anything come to mind for you? >> Elissa: Uh, one or two things, yes. So headliner, um, one of our most famous tools is definitely going to be the automatic

audiograms button. So that is going to allow podcasters to create automatically so you get up, uh, to ten clips. So if you're looking to kind of get the most bang for your buck, really try and maximize and post all of the things that we said that you should at the very beginning. Uh, automatic audiograms going to be kind of the easiest way to do that. So it's going to give you 10 posts per episode that you push out. So that's a lot of content right there.

And then of course we do have the ability for pro account holders to generate the social captions to correspond with those videos. So again, super, super easy way to do that. Um, if you're looking to get the most amount of content though, I would definitely recommend going into Eddy. So this is going to be perfect for really any podcaster. So if you've got audio or video, it's going to work perfectly for both. So it's going to allow you to pull

up to 20 clips. So again, if you have the audio, it'll automatically convert them into audiograms for you. Video, get video clips and be able to caption them, do all the wonderful beautiful things with that as well as get just raw social content. So if you're looking for just more text based, you get the social captions, YouTube descriptions, newsletters, blogs, which again you can kind of chop that up and repurpose it into social content or copy as well.

>> Nicholas: Yeah, and look, you said it right there. Ten pieces of content, or 20, depending on where you go and how you go about getting it and your tier and stuff. That is a lot of the posting you'll be doing already, and you haven't even lifted a finger. You lifted a finger one time you signed up, you know, um, you clicked a

button. And if you need a little more variety, on top of that, a little bit of garnish, you know, you can just go and make a post or two. We have a bunch of templates that make it super easy to make unique, customizable content. And your videos will look great and perform great because we'll help you with keywords and stuff like that, too. On top of that, there are some stuff that, outside of our own tool, you can do to get the most out of whatever capacity you have for posting to social.

A strategy I've shared on a previous episode was, you know, distributing where you post when. So if you're on TikTok, Instagram and Twitter and you have six clips every week, let's say you don't have to post those clips on the same websites on the same day. Clip number one can go to Twitter on Monday, and then Instagram on Wednesday and then TikTok on Friday. It's just creating an active community and an active,

um, schedule of posts. And when you mix things up like that, you might actually be hitting the same potential listener multiple times. I've had this happen to me in the past where I follow someone on Twitter. I see the podcast clip on, let's say, Monday, you know, and then I kind of, um, am like, oh, yeah, maybe I'll check this out later in the week. And then because I'm me and I have the memory of a goldfish, I forget until I see that clip again on, like, Thursday night, and I'm like, oh,

okay, cool. Yeah, right. I should save this to my Apple podcasts. You know, stuff like that happens and you're just being helpful and you haven't. You don't even have to make extra videos in those cases. The other thing is this idea I've kind of been playing with, which is stockpiling posts. You know, social media loves their flashback Fridays and throwback Thursdays. Who's to say one of those Instagram posts you make every week isn't an old clip from an episode from a month or two ago?

That's just a little evergreen, you know, you can literally just do that put that into your little slate of clips. You can even pre schedule it if you want. And again, you haven't had to do anything. There's also something to be said about building your social media schedule around a, a big marketing push or something. Let's say your podcast goes on hiatus. You don't need to post two to three times a week on Instagram if your show's on

hiatus. Probably right. But what you can do while you're working on the next season of your podcast is stockpile a bunch of clips in advance. Go back to those old episodes or go to your new episodes that you're producing during your off season and just make sure you have a couple of clips ready. And then when your next season launches, you can go right out the gate swinging and you can post two to three per day if you want at that point, because you've taken the time to actually make all of your

posts. So you know, these are just like some little things that help. The other thing you can do is just remember that social media is a social experience. It isn't just posting stuff. We had that analogy, that amazing analogy about, um, giving people a rock a couple of weeks ago. I'm not letting it go. I really do love that rock analogy. >> Elissa: The rock, yes. >> Nicholas: But it really does mean something. Go comment on other people's posts. Share your insight there. Build some

social credibility for yourself. Make these potential listeners recognize you from more than just your podcast clips and people will come to you. They will look at your profile if you give a high quality

comment because they'll be like, hey, what is this person talking about? What do they know? And just check out your profile. Oh, okay, let me go watch these 30 clips this person posted in a week because they took the time to do that and things will go great. Besides that, I don't know. Elissa, uh, any other tips we can recommend our listeners on? Just getting the most out of social media? It's a daunting task. I think that's important to remember. Like, it's a lot.

>> Elissa: It is. And it is, I mean people, it's a lot of people's full time jobs like trying to just manage social content. It really is a lot. Um, tools like Headliner definitely have tried to make it a little bit easier, especially for those that are doing a podcast and believe it or not. >> Nicholas: Well, let's pat ourselves on the back. We, we've succeeded to some extent. Come on. We don't just try.

>> Elissa: Uh, but anyways, helping those podcasters and creators that, you know, it's not their full time job to A, be a creator or B, to manage their social content. Um, a lot of podcasters and creators, they kind of, you know, get a little bit drained. Social media can be a lot. Especially when you're like, hey, make X amount of posts per day. It's like, oh, not even per week. That's a lot. Um, like I said, it made my eye twitch. I'm a marketer, I manage our social content. I

don't post that much per day. Um, but we are pretty active. We do engage with people. I do kind of check stuff and our numbers are trending in the positive. And I do use Headliner for a lot of things. Um, AI, that's another thing. You know, if you don't want to use Headliner, you don't have to by any means, definitely recommend you do. But you know, there's AI, Chat, GPT, chatgpt, um, all sorts of tools out there that are designed to really just help give you your time back. I would

definitely recommend looking into it. If you're like going to go in, I'm going to make all of these posts, you start feeling burnt out. You don't have to do it all by yourself. There's plenty of things out there that can help you. >> Nicholas: Yeah, no, exactly. I think that's the real takeaway from this conversation is it's important to post on social media if you want to promote your podcast. But look, we're all realists here. I hope, um, it's a lot

of work. It isn't the funnest part of the job when you're making a, uh, podcast, I think for the average podcaster, they're more psyched about like recording the podcast itself and that's cool. So while you do have to post on social media, you can do these things that will make it easier for you. It's about giving you more time to focus on what you want to do. If you use a tool like the ones that we offer or some hypothetical other place, you know, um, offers,

that's fine. You get that time back and you can either use it to make a couple of higher effort posts to share every week, or you can use it to go research your podcast for the next episode, you know, or edit, uh, do another pass at editing. It's about giving you time to do what you think is most important. You don't have to be like 100% on the money with these social guidelines. There's something to be said about not posting that much to your Instagram.

Posting only Maybe two or three times a week instead of whatever stat they gave us. I think it was like once a day, right? Um, yeah. One to two posts a day instead of that post. Two to three times a week. That's awesome. What do you want to use that time for, though? Do you want to use it on your show directly? Do you want to foster the community that you've built on social already

by replying to comments or running polls in your stories, et cetera? You know, that's. At the end of the day, that's. You give. You get what you give. And what we're here to do is to, like, give you more time to get what you want. So, yeah, that's my whole spiel. That's my TED Talk. Thanks for listening. Um, any other things we can recommend to our listeners? Have fun. We haven't said that in a while. Just have fun, guys. >> Elissa: I was going to say, take a deep breath. It's okay.

>> Nicholas: It's okay. You can put the brown bag you've been breathing into for the past 20 minutes down. The scary podcast host that's telling you to post all day, all night on social media is done. I promise. But, um. Okay, well, I guess on that note, we'll just. We'll end it here. I think we've said our piece. Thank you to everyone for listening, and we'll catch you on a future episode of the podcast. Bye. Bye.