I'm deleting my podcast

I’m deleting my podcast.

It’s time to change the way we’re podcasting and even marketing our shows.

I’ve talked to over 2,000 podcasters since I started working in the industry in 2015. It’s insane how many podcasters have the exact same problem. Everyone is struggling to build an audience and get listeners.

Why hasn’t this changed?

We could blame the market. “Podcast listeners are just fickle and never support each other.” We could blame some platform. “Well Spotify and Apple just don’t care about the real podcasters.” We could blame the social platforms. “All of these social media platforms tanked our reach, the algorithms hate my content.”

None of it matters.

Podcasters need a way to get discovered. That’s it.

I believe newsletters are the answer.

Getting Discovered

I love YouTube. What makes YouTube so great is the recommendations. You could go on there just to watch one video and get lost in content. After every video you watch, there are ten more that fit perfectly with the content that you want to watch. It’s amazing!

Podcasts don’t have that discovery system yet.

Yea, there might be a few podcast platforms out there that have recommendations and engagement options. But until Apple and Spotify take it serious, it won’t be a norm in the podcast world.

Newsletters change all of that. It’s much easier to get someone subscribed to a newsletter versus a podcast. Again, podcasting doesn’t even have a clear way to track the actual subscribes you have. It’s essentially a guessing game. This makes discovery even more valuable.

Increased Engagement

I love the engagement factor of newsletters. Getting people to respond to polls, surveys, and sometimes just share their opinion directly means a lot. The best engagement is literally just talking to your subscribers. With every episode that’s released you could speak to hundreds of your listeners and dig deep on topics.

Imagine a world where you could directly talk to your listeners. I’ve been doing call to actions on my shows for years but it doesn’t compare to sending links directly where someone is consuming the content. Podcasting in a newsletter makes it easier to use links. If I were to add five links to my show notes of an episode, it would be overwhelming for my listeners. But newsletters are expected to have several links, it’s normal! This doesn’t mean you should try to oversell to your audience. The focus should be on engagement over everything else.

Bring on the Profits

Using a newsletter with your podcast makes profitability a lot easier to reach. Think of it this way, each time you release an episode, you get to promote your newsletter instead of just your podcast. Now, when your show goes live, it’s a lot easier to get people paying attention.

You don’t need to go to the extreme like me and delete your RSS feed. But I’d prefer to focus on growing a subscriber base where I can watch the numbers climb. RSS feeds just aren’t giving me the data I need.

I’m excited to create on this newsletter. Tuesday will be all about your education and tips for a better podcast. Fridays I’ll be sharing episodes of my podcast with insights on profitability and behind the scenes of my other shows. Thanks for tuning in this week. Share your feedback by replying to this email!