You're listening to Cubicle to CEO episode 237. We're rounding up our nine best tips and guest insights on all things podcasting, from growing your own show to maximizing your results from guesting on other people's podcasts. I'll introduce each soundbite with the name of the guest and the original episode number in case you want to go back and listen to the full conversation. All referenced episodes will also be linked for you in the show notes below for easy access.
Welcome to Cubicle to CEO, the podcast where we ask successful founders and CEOs the business questions you can't google. I'm your host, Ellen Yin. Every Monday go behind the business and a case study style interview with the leading entrepreneur who shares one specific growth strategy they've tested in their own business, exactly how they implemented it, and what the results and revenue were. You'll also hear financially transparent insights from my own journey bootstrapping our media company from a $300 freelance project into millions in revenue.
The first tip is from Hala Taha in Episode 126. If you're feeling stagnant with your downloads on Spotify, or Apple podcasts, try this tip from Hala to accelerate new listener growth on less well known podcast apps instead.
In the beginning, I was trying to push people from LinkedIn, which was my main platform to my podcast, and I would always focus on Apple. And I would always give people my apple link. And I was obsessed with ranking on Apple and reviews on Apple. And that's all I cared about. And then I stepped back and I was like, You know what, like, we're not growing. And if we want to continue doing this, like, I want to pay my team and like, how can we grow. And so I decided that I had this platform to leverage LinkedIn, and that there was all these other players in the market. And we're really creative and scrappy. So the same outreach strategies that we use for our guests, I took my team and I said, Hey, let's find all the podcast players, let's get all the contact information we can find. Let's reach out to these people introduce ourselves, see if there's any cross promotion opportunities. And I'll promote them on my LinkedIn if they promote me in their app, because I want to be visible to all these app users outside of Apple outside of Spotify.
So now, for example, I'm like the number one of the number one podcasters on cast box, I have 180,000 followers and 2 million downloads just on that platform. And that's because they've been sponsoring me for like the sponsor me for like a year straight, because I was like the first podcaster that reached out to them and said, like, hey, like, I want to work with you. And so they were like, your stuff is really good. We'd love to share your stuff because it retains our listeners and you're promoting us. So it was like a win win situation. And so I did that. And I've just replicated that with Stitcher and pod player, FM and pod history public and all these other apps. Whereas now I'm the number one education podcast across all apps.
If you go look at my Apple, I'm not the biggest podcast on Apple, I rank pretty high. But I'm not the biggest podcasts on Apple. I'm the biggest podcast across all apps. And so my success was changing my mindset and realizing that I can change the industry and I don't need to follow the lead of anybody else. I created my own lane and decided that just because I can't break through on Apple doesn't mean I can't be a successful podcaster. After I did that strategy, we literally went from 3000 downloads a month to 50,000 downloads a month to 100,000. And like I said straight up wine. And then I got on the cover podcast magazine and you know, just kept thinking of creative strategies to grow my show.
Tip number two is from yours truly pulled from bonus episode 38, where I talk about strategically gaining followers on Apple podcasts to skyrocket your Apple podcast chart rankings.
You cannot compare the volume and the virality of social media to podcasting as a channel. Because podcasting, all of the numbers are just shrunken right, like even the number of active shows even the number of just people who are producing content, on podcasts or through podcasts is so few and far between if you compare it to number of active social media users on a monthly basis, so the numbers don't it's not apples to apples is what I'm trying to say.
So when you hear 60 new podcast followers, you may be thinking that's actually not that much. But that's only if you're looking at it through the lens of how you would measure like social media followers. So not apples to apples. One new podcast follower is, in my opinion, a lot deeper of a relationship than when you social follower because this is now someone who says yes, I want to consume your long form content and I want you in my ears every week or however frequent the cadence of your show is and it develops a much deeper relationship. And the coolest thing is those 67 new followers jumped us up in the podcast charts by almost 100 spots. And it was so cool to see the direct impact of those new subscribers, those new podcast followers and how that had such a huge impact on the chart rankings.
So basically, the thesis is proven true, I think that if you are looking to really jump up in the podcast charts, your primary metric that you have to focus on is getting new podcast follows new listeners, that is the metric at least as of this recording, that seems to have the most impact.
Tip number three is from Frenchie Ferenczi Episode 184. Frenchie walks us through how she uses a private podcast to fuel back end growth and sales for her business.
Alright, so we've gone over two decisions that you made to stay closer to the money already. Now. Number three, you mentioned Okay, now you're trying to get more people top of funnel into strategy, snacks. So you brought on guests. My question to you is, did you require every guest who came on your show to share as a part of their agreement to be on your show? Or did you kind of leave that more open ended?
Oh, good question. When I first started, I asked, I said my only requirement is that you share on social, so I didn't ask her space in their emails. And I said stories are fine, right? I didn't say has to be a grid. So and I said it can be as simple as reach sharing my post with a link. So I tried to make it as low demand as possible. Because I was trying to bring in people with significantly larger audiences than I have, or and had. And I wanted it to be a reasonable demand. And everybody agreed to it. Because I mean, really sharing into your stories is is typically a pretty easy thing to do. Not for everyone, but for the people that I was working with. Yes. You know, I think it's different when you have like, influencers who are getting paid by brands and that sort of thing. But for the people who I was reaching out to reach sharing stories was doable. Right?
No low lift. That's that's a great way to think about it. What kind of momentum Did you see for your list growth and opt ins for strategy snacks from these guests? Like how many guests did you bring on in that new season? How did you? Okay, this is like many questions layered, but what was the growth you saw from that? But I guess the second main question is, how did you select or pitch the guests for them to see the value in coming on your show and sharing?
Yeah, there's a lot of layers that So first, I would say, again, to kind of your point, all about the power of relationships and the power of collaborations. And so I started by leading with some kind of, with with, I think it was two or three people who I knew in one way or another, not necessarily super well, some I knew them better than others. Some I knew, like 10 years ago, like, here we are again. And so those three people were Laura Bell Gray, Sunny and Dara Brustein and they were the first three people I asked. And my strategy there was really wanting to use essentially their names as anchors to then attract more guests. And, you know, I knew that more people who didn't know me quite as well would be more likely to say yes, if they had kind of seen that other people who they whose names they recognize, we're saying, yes.
So I started there. And then from there, I started to put together kind of the dream list of people. And part of that was making sure that it was a representative audience. Part of that was very simply looking at followership knowing that most people were going to share on Instagram, I was actually looking at more Instagram followers, then I never asked anyone how big is your email list or anything like that, because it was relevant in that particular case. And I had nine spots for guests. And the side benefit that was not planned of having a 10 minute show is that it was also a very low time commitment for guests to participate. And they were actually just sending me voice notes of their answer. And so they could do it on their own time. We were not recording to get her it was like, I tried to make it as easy as possible for them to say yes. And so that's kind of how it panned out over the course of it.
And then in terms of the growth that I saw, I think it was like another 50% growth. I mean, each time a guest episode went out, I just saw these, like, you know, ConvertKit like those pops. I love the infographics that they do, it's it was very rewarding. And it really helped to bring in not only more people to my list, but more of you know, quote unquote, the right people, aka my ideal audience. And I think that's just something that I want to get more specific about here. Because I think that we tend to equate, like audience growth, list growth with like, money growth, but if like, at the beginning, when my list was comprised mostly of my family, nobody was buying me or my family, and they were really my target clients. So I think that was the other big piece was that I was seeing people come into my world who are actually also potential clients, or at least we're really getting a lot of that Are you okay with what I was putting out there?
Tip number four is from Doone Roisin episode 172. In this case study, Doone reveals how she landed a $25,000 podcast sponsorship before she even launched her show.
You launched your show your podcast, female startup club, and you landed your first sponsorship deal for $25,000. And this was early on, right? Was this literally right at launch? Or how old was your podcast when you secure this deal?
I think that was around May 2020. Around that kind of time. And the advice at that time that I was reading out in the world on the internet was, you know, don't go out and get sponsors until you have hundreds of 1000s of downloads, and you've proven everything and then go out and find because you'll have that proven track record and things like that. But for me, I wanted to publish 100 episodes in that first year. That was my goal. And at that point being I think it was May, I needed to publish at least three episodes a week to be able to hit that goal.
So I was like, Okay, well, if I'm gonna publish three episodes a week, I'm gonna need an editor because my husband had edited like two episodes. And it was a disaster in terms of me being like, but what about this? And what about this and him being like, Oh, Jesus, like, you need to you need to find someone to help you. And so basically, with that thought process, I was like, Okay, well, if I need to get an editor, then I need to invest money. So like, I need to like kind of launch into this. I'm not going to take that advice. And wait, because who knows how long that takes? I've never built a podcast before I had no clue. I'm gonna go out and get a sponsor straightaway. And so my immediate kind of thing at hand was book amazing guests. Yes, publish great content, yes. But also go out and find sponsors, or distribution partners that can help either put revenue in the door and create this into an online business, or can distribute my content at scale, and help me find new listeners.
I love the rebel in you. Amazing. I really liked that you kind of just stare down that, you know, advice and say, No, I'm gonna do it a different way. And it made sense. In your case, like you said, you actually needed the money to hire an editor. So this sponsor that came to you, was this a sponsor that you pitched and had a previous relationship with? Or was this a cold pitch was this an inbound relationship, give us a little bit of the background there.
Definitely a cold pitch, I did not have any relationship to this company, I'd never worked with them before. I had never, I didn't have a contact, nothing like that. So my approach was, as with everything in business, creating a list work through the list. So I created a list of people who, you know, really suited the audience that I was going after, who kind of would add value to my audience, but also value to me, I was also thinking tech businesses, tech businesses have budget for podcasts, I was looking at other podcasts in the space to see who was advertising at the time to understand who has budget for the podcast advertising.
And so I made a list and I put together a template, explaining my vision, and started sending out to that list and, you know, spreadsheet, classic spreadsheet, name, company website, who's the contact, if there's no contact, contact form, link, that kind of stuff. And funnily enough, this particular deal, I just sent off a quick message on a contact form. I didn't know who it was going to, I didn't know if it was going to be read by anyone. And I just really simply explained my vision, what I was looking for, and I wasn't pitching a certain deal or anything in that message, it was actually just to get on a call the cell was let's get on a call and chat and see what we can do. Because as I mentioned, I was looking for sponsorship, but I was also looking for distribution partners. So if someone could come to me and be like, Yep, great. You can create content, and we'll distribute it to our, you know, email list or our website or whatever it might be and getting backlinks. That was great for me, I was really interested in that. So I had no particular pitch specifically other than let's get on a call.
And I went to bed. I woke up the next day, 10 hours later, I have an email being like, hey, yeah, let's get on a call. And of course, there's a little bit of right place, right time that plays into these things. You have to be you have to work hard, you have to plan you have to have strategy, but also right place right time. For this particular brand. They were looking specifically for partners in exactly the industry that I was doing. They wanted more female founded voices. And so it was just the right time and we were able to get on a call we not about all the details and then eventually we landed on a deal for $25,000 and that is really what gave me the confidence to be like, Okay, this is something there's interest here. This is a signal for me. To pursue this, and I can hire my editor and we can get cracking, go to the races.
Tip number five is another one for me. And bonus episode 20. I explain why adding bonus episodes is an easy way to increase your downloads.
We decided that in addition to our regular Monday interviews with guests, we wanted to add an additional bonus episode that would air on Wednesdays, these episodes are typically shorter, not always, but typically 20 minutes or less. There are bite size behind the business focused episodes with usually just me where I'm sharing in real time what's going on in our business, and different strategies that we're implementing different things I'm learning as a leader. Think of it as a founders journal or or a diary of you know what it's like to walk in the shoes of an entrepreneur.
And the thought process behind this was really quite simple and very obvious, right? When you think about it, if you're wanting to increase the downloads of your podcast, then naturally, the more episodes you air each week, or each month, the more downloads you'll have. So instead of airing four episodes a month on average, if a month has four Mondays, sometimes five, right? But typically for if you now are airing eight episodes in that same time window, then it's not unreasonable to assume that your downloads would essentially double in that time period. If the same listener who's listening to your Monday episode also tunes into your Wednesday episode, that instead of contributing one download that week, they're actually downloading your episodes twice that week, right.
So naturally, the effect would be that your overall monthly downloads would double now, is this always the case? No, not every single person who listens to our Monday episodes tunes into our Wednesday episodes. And what's most surprising is sometimes our Wednesday episodes actually eclipsed the download numbers of our Monday episodes. So sometimes, these bonus episodes are actually receiving more downloads than our weekly Monday episodes.
So that was the most interesting trend that I've noticed throughout, you know, these first five months of the year running this experiment of doing two episodes a week. It's not always the case. But there have been several instances where our bonus episodes actually do receive more downloads than our Monday guest interviews. And I think maybe it's just the format is a little bit more digestible, a little bit more easy for people to tune into, let's say a 15-20 minute snippet than a full one hour case study interview that is typical of our Monday episodes. So while I don't think that implementing bonus episodes alone necessarily doubled our download numbers, automatically, I do think they have contributed significantly to our increase in monthly downloads overall.
Tip number six is from Les Alford episode 194. Les breaks down how she uses a series model for listener retention and growth.
You feel like there's three key things that helped you get from 70,000 downloads a month to 350,000 downloads a month. The first you mentioned was implementing a series model to increase the amount of people returning week after week to listen. So walk us through what a series model is. Can you give us an example of how you're implementing that on your show?
Yeah, so I implemented the series model in the summer of 2021, when all the growth happened, and that is like the big turning point for my show. Before then, I was doing episodes about random things like every Tuesday or every other Tuesday, the topic would be either whatever pitches I got, or just whatever idea popped into my head. And so you could be listening week to week and one week we talk about nutrition. And then the next week we talk about relationships. And then the next week we talk about menstrual cycles, and it would just be like all over the place.
And in the summer of 2021 I was like okay, what if we make this a little bit easier for people to follow? So whatever they're listening to this week, how can the conversation next week connect directly to it so that they want to come back and want to continue the conversation because of the topics are going all over the place? It's really easy for someone to say, actually, I'm not that interested this week and then kind of forget about the show and not really come back. So I started creating a series model where I would take a central theme or idea and I would have episodes revolve around that theme for about four to six episodes.
So the very first series we did this it was like with a little bit more of a kind of like woowoo spiritual I think the first one was raising your vibration and so we talked about like manifestation and astrology and things related to that. And so it was like one week we talk about human design. The next week we talked to a manifestation coach. The next week we talked to somebody who manifested a partner. So it was like all of these things were different, different perspectives, but There was a really common thread so that if someone was interested, they were likely to listen to that entire series. And when we implemented that, almost overnight downloads increased astronomically. That was our first month where we crossed the 100,000 downloads mark, and we've never gotten below six figure downloads ever since. And it's continued to climb.
Okay, I'm so fascinated, I actually, if you're watching this on YouTube, I broke out my pen in the middle of talking because I was like, I have so many thoughts popping in my head right now I have to jot these down.
First of all, brilliant because basically, you're like leaning into the pattern behaviors that we have as human that that binge, you know, content consumption behavior that we've become accustomed to, due to the nature of content these days with like streaming services, you know, Netflix will drop all of bridgerton in one day, and then I stay up until 5am. Shit, right. So I think it's so brilliant that you're, I mean, though, you're not dropping the episodes all at once. It's almost like you're treating your podcasts like a TV show where right there's that continuation of a plotline where you want to come back over and over, but it's like doing that within continue continual show. So like you said, it's not a season based show. So there's no starting stop necessarily, but it's like many seasons within the broader show. Okay, I love this app play.
Tip number seven is from Kelly Mosser episode 164. Kelly explains how you can maximize your podcast guesting opportunities by planning an intentional podcast tour.
What is the difference between a strategic podcast tour versus someone just guesting on people's podcast randomly whenever they're invited or get accepted for a show?
Oh, my gosh, that is the most important question because I have to admit, the latter. What you just described is what I did first, and I was feeling like, there is something here. I know there's an opportunity here, but I'm not seeing the return. And I couldn't figure out why. But it's because I was very kind of haphazardly guesting when I was invited or you know, kind of softly pitching myself without an intention without a strategy around it. I had no KPIs. I had, you know, every episode I went on, I talked about a different topic. There was no kind of synergy to what I was doing. And as my strategy and operations background will mandate, if I'm going to do something, there's got to be an ROI attached to it.
So I really sat down, I said, What am I doing wrong? There's got to be something more here that I'm missing. And I realized, I started to think about so the masterclass model has been something that has been really successful for me in my business. If I'm launching a new program, a new offer master classes are always an amazing homerun for me. And I started to think about okay, what remember the first masterclass? I did, it wasn't that great there. There was so much finessing that needed to be done. The 20th masterclass webinar, whatever it is that you deliver is always better than the first and I realized that I wasn't treating my podcast guesting as a masterclass, there was no refined anything about it. And I was starting from zero every single time I did it.
So I decided to experiment. Ellen, you and I talked about experimenting yesterday and our mutual love for experimentation. And I said, What if I created a little bit more strategy around this kind of like, the model that comes to mind is an author who's launching a book, you go on a book tour, that's very strategic, with, you know, KPIs and number of people that you want to connect with. And at the end of the day, you can measure the success of that tour. The funny thing is a lot of entrepreneurs think of publicity, visibility exposure, as a reward for your success, rather than as a tool to create more success.
So a lot of what I hear from entrepreneurs is, I don't know if I'm ready for the podcast tour yet, because I don't think I've created the level of success that I feel I need to have created in order to be a worthy guest on a show. I encourage you to think like an author, that's the same thing as an author saying, I can't go on the book tour because I haven't sold any books yet. And that's just not quite the right way to go about it. There's such an opportunity here. So when I sat down and said, Okay, I'm really going to think like an author or think like, I'm going on tour to promote a new movie, essentially. That's the mindset shift for me.
And I really dialed in on what's the most powerful, but also the most logical messaging for me to be sharing based on what I'm launching in my business right now based on what I'm really excited about telling people about. And, you know, what are the KPIs around that? How do I know if this is successful? Because there's no there's no worse feeling than getting so excited to either you know, teach in someone's mastermind or guest on a podcast. And then at the end of the day, be like, Well, that was fun, but there I'm not really seeing the return that I was excited to see.
I especially love and really want all of you to hold dear to what Kelly just said about it's not a reward visibility is not a reward is actually the engine, it's the fuel. It's the catalyst for you to get your work out there and serve more people. And so you don't have to wait until you are qualified or ready or whatever imaginary, you know, status you've imposed on yourself that you have to reach before you can get yourself out there. I love that message. So thank you for encouraging our listeners in that way.
Tip number eight is pulled from bonus episode 36. This is a really cool tip I picked up from Podcast Movement last year about leveraging and pitching exclusive content on your podcast for outside press coverage.
The second takeaway that I want to share with you all this one was so interesting, I had never heard this before. But it makes total sense, especially given you know, the, the background or the experience that we've had pitching to press. And it's this idea that if you get an exclusive, so maybe an exclusive interview with a guest, or maybe a guest who shares exclusive information, or data or insights on your show that they've never shared anywhere else, if this guest is a notable guest, this is a perfect opportunity for you to actually pitch this exclusive interview to the media.
So you can pull out maybe a juicy quote, or tidbit and actually pitch a journalist and say, Hey, we've got an interview airing in, you know, four weeks with so and so on this topic. And in our interview exclusive, they shared some really juicy insights. And I wanted you to have the first opportunity to cover this right. And the way that I think about it is it's similar to how TV shows or movies will preview their works their you know, their new episodes or new season or their new film to critics and members of the press before the public gets to see it. Because when the press gets to preview these shows and these movies, they get that first look where they're able to essentially have their write up or have their coverage of the new show airing or the new film that came out they have that story or the article already written so that when the actual movie gets released, or the show gets aired, they can drop their article the same day and be the first on the internet to report on whatever that new content is.
So the same could be applied to your podcast, right? Your podcast is just another media channel. It's just another form of content. And so if you have an exclusive, something really juicy that, you know, a lot of people would be interested in. Don't be afraid to pitch, an exclusive nugget or a first look preview to the press. And just make sure that you're finding press platforms or you know specific newspapers, specific magazines, specific online blogs that are relevant to the actual topic at hand. You want to make sure that their readership or viewership would actually care about you know what it is that you are sharing, but this is such a great way to get extra eyeballs and again, new listeners to your podcast by borrowing other existing audiences.
In Tip number nine, final one comes from Kim Rittberg in Episode 215. Kim shares how you can repurpose podcast content to land more speaking engagements, and specifically, what type of podcast content is most effective for this strategy.
I just want to clarify one last detail about how you're utilizing podcasts to pitch for speaking gigs. And that was surrounding the format. So you mentioned earlier that whenever you record a solo episode, you also try to record a video component to it so you can easily use it for future pitches. I'm curious based on your since you mentioned you like data. If you've reviewed your own data from all of the pitches you've sent out recently using the strategy. Have you found there to be a higher response rate or a higher booking rate when you utilize solo episodes versus interview style episodes in your pitch? And also, have you noticed a higher booking or response rate if you use content from your own podcast versus when you guest on someone else's?
Great question. When you're having a guest on your show you're shining the light on them. So you want to shine the light on yourself. So if you're going to share your podcast episode again, use Ellen always use a timecode tell them where to listen. If your episode short and you get right to the point at the beginning and you feel like you shine and it's a really good example of your personality use that. Again, because speaking events are in person I would pair that with a video or ideally take that podcast episode that did perform, you can see that on your own analytics, you can see that the topic performed film your own YouTube video, keep it short, one minute, two minute, three minutes, they're not going to watch longer than that be well lit make it look like a nice video.
It doesn't have to be listed. It could be an unlisted video, what I have done is I've taken the high performing podcasts, I've turned them into short videos. If I don't already have a video, I would use the podcast, but you can then link the video. So someone can get your body language, your stance, your whole personality, I mean a podcast to be honest, they know you can talk and they know you can captivate so I think that that's important, but it is helpful for them to really see you on video. So yeah, and I, I think that if you're a guest on a big podcast, that's well known sure if you shine on that podcast, but again, I would clip the podcast, make sure you're jumping to the timecode make sure you're saying something similar to what you would say in that speech. And then when you're down the road, and you have a really tight, meaty speaker sizzle reel, I would then start using that.
And if you're targeting your pitches, like let's say one speaking event is for women entrepreneurs, another speaking event is for male coaches or something like that. I think that's helpful. Instead of you making all these different assets that are like slightly different. You could say, Here's my speaker reel. And here's a podcast episode where I was advising male coaches how to raise their revenue through this one tip. And so you're customizing it, but you're also sharing your sizzle reel, which shows your confidence and your poise and your cadence and your relatability. So I think you can use those together.
And again, like confidence and persistence, you have to believe you want to be on that stage. And you have to really just stay on top and be positive and in every communication like keep it light, like thanks so much. I have this additional piece of information I wanted to share with you. I think I'm a really great fit for this. Here's why. And here's another podcast I did with Person X who's really well known in your field. So share things that build you up. Light should be shined on you. So if you're interviewing someone else, that's not a great example for speech for speech because the spotlight is not on you.
Thanks for tuning into today's podcast roundup. If you enjoyed this episode, we have a few other roundups that we've published on this show I think you will equally love and enjoy, find useful, so we're going to drop them all for you below in the show notes or if you're watching this on YouTube in the video description box. Also let us know Are you a podcaster? Or are you someone who's solely guests on other people's podcasts? Or both DM us at Cubicle to CEO and tell us which tip are you going to use from today's roundup?
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