#4 Ways Podcasters Can Gain More Listeners Whether you have 10 listeners or 10,000, quality is essential to gain and retain them.
By Nidhi Singh
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media.
Over the last few years, the podcasting culture has risen remarkably in India. With India going digital, the listeners are also growing tremendously. Not only it is easy to get started, but it also gives you the advantage of consuming the information differently. Many entrepreneurs utilize this powerful tool to grow their business potential. However, for a podcaster, to keep the audience engaged takes a lot of hard work. Thus, podcasters should always make sure that their content is more likeable.
Entrepreneur India lists out few key tips to attract more listeners for a podcast and stay relevant.
Focus on Quality and Consistency:
Getting a podcast to "break through the cracks" and gain a following is incredibly tough. There are over 250,000 podcasts in more than 100 languages.
Jesse Kay, Speaker & Podcaster shared few key tips to help gain podcast listeners.
"The most important elements are quality and consistency. Whether you have 10 listeners or 10,000 listeners, quality is essential to gain and retain listeners. In addition, retaining quality guests to join you on your podcast with large followings is a great way to build up listeners. Having someone with hundreds of thousands or millions of followers on your show will both give credibility and increase your audience," shared Kay
Use Social Media Effectively:
When Kay interviewed Gary Vaynerchuk on his show 20under20s, he gained over 10,000 new listeners.
"Lastly, the use of social media is essential for spreading a podcast. I recently began recording my episodes on Facebook live and then distributing the audio on iTunes. This has been essential for gaining a large number of new listeners," he added.
Scaling Quality Content:
Podcast listeners have been increasing at a much higher rate compared to other forms of media, and this is truer in India, given that Indians have been warming up to podcasts only recently. The industry, however, is still at a very nascent stage, both in terms of podcasters and listeners.
Saif Omar, Co-host, The Musafir Stories (India Travel Podcast) emphasized that with any medium, quality plays an important role both in terms of content and production/presentation.
"This is even more important with podcasts given that there is usually no visual media to supplement the content. It is also highly advisable to pick a niche and try and serve a smaller audience well than go after a large listenership with a broad focus - in the long run, this will be difficult to sustain. Consistency is another factor that largely determines the 'stickiness' of your audience i.e. whether your listener tends to stick or come back to your content. Consistency goes a long way in building up a loyal listener base," said Omar.
Promote and Market Your Product:
Producing quality content consistently is only half the battle won though. Omar further added that how effectively you can promote and market your product also goes a long way in increasing listenership.
"Given the digital age that we live in, social media plays an important role in promotion as well as brand building. Actively leveraging social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google Plus, Youtube, Pinterest is highly recommended. Other ways of increasing your reach are supplementing the podcast with blog posts/microblogs or youtube previews, cross-promotion with other brands/podcasts or newsletters. Engaging influencers in your focus area is another means of reaching out to more potential listeners. However, podcasters should pick and choose the medium according to their niche and listener base," concluded Omar.
