Nonprofits are faced with more challenges to accomplish their missions and the growing pressure to do more work, raise more and be more for the causes that improve our world.
We're here to learn with you from some of the best in the industry, bringing the most innovative ideas, inspirational stories, all to create an impact uprising.
So welcome to the good community. We're nonprofit professionals, philanthropist, world changers and rabid fans who are striving to bring a little more goodness into the world.
So let's get started. At Friday, y'all,
y'all let's launch a podcast today. Let's do it.
To y'all. That intro
says so country,
and we are Oklahoma today. Welcome, everybody. So glad you're here.
So you're finding yourself on week three of our podcasting for good series. And you know, we launched this because we've heard a lot of questions since we launched our podcast, we just crossed 250 episodes, which is so much and we've learned so much. But we just feel like it's this untapped potential for nonprofits to step into this space. And we would love for you to launch a podcast and you should go back and start up the series and we can build the case for you. And at a minimum, you should be paying attention to this space and getting involved. Whether it's guesting or just connecting with fellow podcasters. She's just huge reach here. So we've already helped you identify what the goals could be for your podcast and ideated. But now, last week, we built it now it's time to launch it. And that's what today's conversation is all about how to launch a podcast.
Here comes Becky up on her soapbox. I'm like getting a pre emptive prepare yourself. Because here's the thing about launching a podcast, here's the thing about launching anything within your nonprofit organization. The launch is not just the launch, just in the fact that the podcast is not just a podcast, your gala is not just a gala your campaign is not just a campaign. And so I want everybody to kind of picture Google Maps Do you know when you're trying to zoom in and zoom out of Google Maps to find things, this is what we visually want you to do. If you're thinking about launching a podcast or a campaign or a gala, whatever you're doing, we want you to zoom out, just keep zooming zooming out, you need to be looking at your plan, your project, your podcasts, whatever it is. And you need to be looking at two things. You need to be looking at staging. And you need to be looking at syndication. And this is what I mean, there is so much work that that needs and thought and intentionality that needs to go into the pre launch. Because we want momentum. We want voices. We don't want just our podcast to be something that comes in and comes out in the moment that it's dropped. We want it to live in perpetuity. We talk about perpetuity all the time in this business. When we talk about playing gifts, we want your content and this incredible news that you have to live in perpetuity. So think about the podcasts and what it takes to ramp up to a launch date. We've already talked about how to build it. We've talked about goals and the whole thing. And we're going to give you this playbook for launch today. But what we're also saying is that there is a stage that comes after the launch, and it can be a very, very long runway. And if you maximize that runway and syndicate in there, if you take your content, break it apart, put it in different places, because we know that our audience is not consuming all of our information in one place. They're not just on social media, they're not just on email, they're not just in person at our events, or opening our mail, we have to make sure that the content finds the right person in the right place at the right time. And if you can take a step back, understand that there's going to be a runway for staging and that there's also going to be a longer runway for syndication, then congratulations, my friend, you have figured out the secret sauce to making your mission live and breathe beyond your nonprofit beyond you as a staff member, and you give it out into the world into the community. And we are living proof of that. And I'm currently stepping off my soapbox,
I love when you go on that rant, because truly, you could insert podcasts any word into where Becky was talking about the podcast because it really is key. It's a secret sauce. And a lot of times I want to talk about staging for just one more second, as we lead into launch, just like you would have a silent phase. And I'm kind of using that in air quotes with any fundraising effort. So much work. And so many of the key discussions and asks are happening before you go public. The same is true with launching the podcast if you don't have the biggest possible splash, this staging time the silent phase is critical. And so we've prepared kind of a top 10 list today to get you going in that in the first seven or eight are all what happened before the actual podcast launches and so don't miss this but you can really apply it to whatever you're trying to launch in your life. And so let's get started. Where do we go Jay? You're gonna take number one.
Yeah, so your first one is do your research. I spent a lot of time before we even started our launch plan just doing research on competitors some of my favorite podcast because we You're listening to a podcast, you're not really thinking about how it was created, what their flow is like. So start looking through the lens of what do you really like about the shows out there that you love listening to and what makes them unique by looking and listening to those who are thriving in this space, it'll give you some markers to shoot for kind of as your goals. So I created a big spreadsheet and I included shows that were out there, how often they release what makes them unique, because it's also a chance that you can figure out how you could step into this space in a unique way. For us, we wanted to bring three Shows a week, that was something unique for our space. So just kind of get a lay of the land of your market that you're trying to tap into and do your research. And that'll help you create a really robust launch plan.
Do you remember that worksheet John, that Julie,
she was so huge,
holy smokes, and it was like it was almost like a get to know you. In our sector. I like I felt like I was getting to know our colleagues and what their vibe was. Because the thing is, we don't we didn't want to be the same podcast that's already out there. But that research was so grounding for us. And it really, and if you ever, if you've ever had any experience with prospect research, this is your prospect research moment for your podcast.
I love that point. And I think it's it's helped us be really clear about how he wanted to show up, you know, and if we would have skipped that step, it would have just taken longer to land on it. So the second one, and this is number two, you've got to pick a launch date. And right, we've heard guests talk about this on the podcast, too, that there's so much power and just putting it on paper. And so you want to give yourself a little bit of lead time. But then look around is it making sure it's not going to fall on some big holiday week or a big Travel Week in your community or word, you know, you can't have a crystal ball of everything that's going to happen. But you want to pick a launch date that gives you the runway, but most importantly, gives you a deadline because that deadline is going to help you recruit and kind of do all the next steps to get ready for your launch. So that's number two.
Okay, moving into number three. And it's one of my favorites, which is compile a master list of literally everyone in your life who loves you and support you. So this could be in business, this could be family, friends, community, you know, your religious affiliations? Are you in a professional organizations? Is it your donors, and start to build that as an email list. And here's the best part about being so digital right now is you can go grab that, yes, from your email, go find them on LinkedIn, go look through Facebook, go look through all of these connection points that you had to people in your life. And this is the moment where you say, friends, I have a big dream. And I'm wondering if you could support it. And I will tell you that we did this exercise with decades of people who have been in our lives down to my Spanish teacher in high school, hello, singer, Stafford, these people supported us. And they took our information and pushed it into their network. And we could literally watch the ripple as it was unfolding. But long term, you just really need those people in their network and their action to get them to opt in or subscribe to your marketing emails, or you can just one off, email them and say, you know, this is what I need from you. And here's 123 things that you can do. And we're going to go into what are those calls to action, but really compile that master list, because that's going to be the linchpin of giving you a a really solid launch and a lift.
And I think it's important to point out here that, at this launch stage, you're really trying to get anybody that cares to listen and to help you support the launch. But long term, we do know we're building something for an audience and a goal that we talked about. So long term, some of the people that are going to show up for you at the launch are not going to be your perfect avatar and your listener maybe two years later. And that's totally okay, because it's going to give you momentum, and give you the runway to find and connect with the audience that you don't know yet that they're gonna find you. So I think it's really important to think, and that's we can break this down as we go. But it's important to understand that as we kind of move forward to these steps.
Step number four is build out your social media channels. So you may already if you're an organization, and you're launching a limited series, you may already have your social channels that are up and running. So maybe also think of this in a way of how can you start teasing the launch when you're going to be launching the series, but pick where you like to serve the best and where are your listeners, we found that a lot of our people like to hang out on LinkedIn and Instagram. So we spend our most time engaging with listeners in that place. So go where those people are. And I will say we have Twitter, we have Pinterest, we show up everywhere, but we engage more in certain places. So don't limit yourself either. You can use we like utilizing tailwind to get all of our graphics onto Pinterest and we have 8000 views on our Pinterest page. So you you never know where things are living and where people can find you. So show up everywhere but build out that plan of where you're going to show up where your audience is and how you can help consistently, keep your content rolling in those areas.
I got to piggyback on that, because I want to compliment you, John and Julie, for John making beautiful graphics for we're for good in Julie, you socialize them so well. And again, I want to repeat to everybody. Pinterest is not just a cool place to hang out with your hobbies. It's a search engine. And so when we put in our guests names into Google, more times than not, they're a graphic for coming on to our podcast pops up. And I really credit, you know, having the tailwind which is such a cool tool to help you automate these things. But I credit just kind of playing the long game in that putting those graphics out there, because people are going to be looking for your content, if they can find it graphically or through text. It's just a smarter way to leverage your content.
And so all of that is pushing to a call to action, right? Any kind of social posts is around that. And that's what number five is all about. It's building out a landing page. And we've talked about this on the podcast before. But just as a quick refresher, the difference of a landing page and your website is that it has a one really clear call to action, there's no distractions, it's really just asking for one thing. And that one thing we want to ask for on this landing page is an email address. Because of all the things we love about podcasting, a lot of times you don't know exactly who's listening. And so by creating a place where people come and opt in, that do want to engage more with your content that are your key avatars, they have a direct place to go where they can subscribe for more information. This is like gold to you. And so from the beginning, if you can define what is that website address for us, it's we're for good calm slash Hello. We've been saying that since the very first episode. It's where people come it's where people subscribe to our podcast every day of the week. And that's how we have a two way conversation with people moving forward. And so it's really key that you get this and stand that up and get clear on what that is from before you ever press record, because you want to connect with people that you're talking to.
Okay, so we're moving into number six. And it's one of our favorite topics. We've probably mentioned it every single episode of podcasting, but you got to batch a good handful of episodes before you actually launch. And let me tell you, this is just going to save your life and your sanity. But what we mean by batching is record several episodes all at once. If you just kind of knock them out. This is what we do we do for a day. Usually on Thursdays, we get all the shownotes completed on that day, we get all the outros and intros done, anything that you can do to sort of focus your efforts is going to save you time in the long run. So what we did was we batch several episodes. And then when we launched on launch day, we had a trailer, which was like a minute long. And then we had three episodes that they could listen to Yes, we had an initial episode, but anybody who wants to come and consume your content, and they actually really like it, they might actually listen to a couple of them. And this is going to help you with rankings. This is going to help get more traffic, it's also going to help you chart so that's a really easy hack, drop, a couple of them just don't think oh, it's launch day, I need to drop my one episode. And then I'll launch the next one the week after.
And batch recording really helps you match the content that could go well together. So we really like getting ahead so that we can pair two episodes in a week that might really complement each other or hit two different topics. So it just gives you a lot of freedom to be able to control your content and release things. Becky mentioned a trailer that step number seven, I will step into our confessional that oh my gosh, trailer Dory, our first trailer that we recorded is probably 52 minutes and 30 seconds long. And we saved you all from having to listen to us talk about ourselves for that long trip. And I will say in that trailer, we were sharing more about ourselves sharing our dreams. And you can get to that in later episodes don't feel like you have to spill all your dreams in this trailer. This will help you with your initial listens rankings and downloads, and it will live at the top of your podcast landing page on these pages. So this is a way even now people are finding us. And that's the first thing that they're hearing. So this is just a way to introduce yourself share more about the podcast and you can socialize it on all of your networks. But make sure you spend time getting that ready and uploaded into your feed.
And you know, ranking is there not everything. And we'll do a little bit about rankings here as we wrap up. But just a note, you don't want to release your trailer too far in advance because you want the window to be reasonable where people can remember they hear it and that they can circle back to help you you know and show up for your launch. So I would say a couple weeks is a really good time frame to shoot for before the launch day. Hey, friends, we've got to pause the podcast for a minute we have some really exciting news to share.
Yeah, we're partnering up with our friends at virtuous to co host this year's free responsive nonprofit summit on April 20 and 21st. And we want to see you there.
So come and join us 1000s of like minded forward thinking nonprofit leaders for two days at fresh insights, helpful workshops, and genuine conversations as we gather virtually from wherever you find yourself.
We're curating some amazing panels to help you build better systems and strategies to help you grow your impact. You may even recognize some of our past podcast guests and favorite thought leaders to
Okay, so can we count you in to join us at the responsive nonprofit Summit? Is it virtuous.org/good and register for free? Hey, friends, after meeting some of the most visionary leaders and world changers in the nonprofit sector today, we realize they all have one thing in common, they invest in themselves and their teams so they can stay relevant to what's working now to succeed and scale their missions. You know, us we believe education for all, and that's when we created we're for good pro Pro is reimagining nonprofit professional development, giving you access to incredible live coaching events with some of the best thought leaders like Shauna Palmer and Lynn Wester and more. Imagine being able to work through your challenges in real time. That's the power of pro. Every week, we host a new workshop, giving you the playbook and tools to take immediate action, build your confidence and grow your impact. Be the Pro and get started today with a 14 day free trial head over to weird for good pro.com/free. Okay, let's get back to this amazing conversation. So we're finally here we're at Step eight, we're actually talking about launching it. You want to have teased on social media for a couple of days really get into it launches on Wednesday at lunches tomorrow at lunches, and for hours or whatever those buildups would look like. But keep in mind, Omni channel, LinkedIn has really allowed you to do this really strongly. If you're just posting from an organization's page, this is whether you're launching a podcast or not, you're missing the power of people. And so the strategy is now on LinkedIn is not just the page posting, but also the individuals on your team posting personally, because it's going to be seen by so many more people. The same is true, obviously, on Facebook and all the channels. So reminding you that on launch date, you've teased it for a couple days. And then you're going to launch with those two or three episodes. And you're going to have a really specific call to action, which is what number nine is all about. And Becky's gonna pick that one.
Yeah, I mean, number nine is remember that little list of your Spanish teacher and everyone who loves you in the world, you're going back out to them now that they're warmed, you're reaching out and you're asking to activate them. So you want to ask them to do a couple of different things. And these are just suggestions from us. One, you want to ask them to listen, to ask them to subscribe, so they don't have to keep coming back and getting a one off on your episodes, we want them to download automatically. And that's also going to help you chart and number three, leave a podcast rating and review that takes probably less than a minute for someone to do that. It helps with charting, it helps more people find you. And they'll just get automatic access to new episodes. If they're subscribing we want social proof. And here's the other thing. When you are socializing launch day, just like John and Julia have talked about, ask for feedback, ask for people to give you their fit, you know, find ways to interact with your community, say, you know, Tell us below what you liked about it, you know, tell us, you know why you think this is going to help in this particular topic, you know, and once you have some social content, you can actually use that in the runway that we're talking about in syndication. Here's what people are saying, you know, use their name, use their image, you know, their social handle. And all of a sudden, again, you kind of build this FOMO with your audience, people are like, What's going on over there? And how do I be a part of that, and oh, they're getting such great traction. So there are ways to leverage this list. And I would just say, don't be afraid to ask. And just one little hack. It's a story of what I did when we launched, I spent probably two months you remember this, John, like, probably three, three nights a week when we were working, I would spend an hour and I would individually email people on the list. And I would say, this is what we're doing. This is our dream. I see you have a unique connection in this way, whatever it is. And I say, Here's three quick ways you can help us you can subscribe, you can share it with a friend, you can pitch us guest you can, you know, share this if you're a nonprofit board member with your nonprofit. And so I would say that I got four or five responses out of that the people actually transacted and to me that's 40 or 50%. And I think that's fantastic. And I think that's what helped us scale and begin to sort of rise in our first couple of months. So just one little quick hack.
Yeah, and I think it all plays back to it's like the people that maybe are listening in the beginning may not be the same people that are going to be listening in a couple years if you're an ongoing podcast, and that's okay because you're trying to find the people that you really engage with and connect with deeply. So spreading that message Why'd in the beginning is only going to benefit you if you're wanting to play the long game here. So our last number 10. This is kind of optional. If your goal is to chart if you care about being on the nonprofit charts. And probably I'd say the biggest point to do that is just the social proof that it allows, you know, because we put this kind of effort and strategy behind it, we can always say that we launched with a number one nonprofit podcast on Apple, which is a really great point for some of the goals that we have as a company. But so if that's important to you, let me just give you some framework. There's no clear cut path to charting. And so you have to get okay with the fact that you really don't know what the algorithm is to base it. However, we know from enough watching people launch podcasts and advising and helping people that it's some combination of getting new subscribers, getting downloads, and getting activity around your podcast listenership people really listening through an episode in a short period of time. And so this is why it's really important in your research phase to understand what days of the week are people launching podcast, if everybody that's your kind of quote, competitor is launching on Monday, probably don't want to launch on a Monday, you probably want to launch on a Thursday because there's a good gap of time, and you can really swell at that time of the week. But again, this isn't an end all be all important thing. But it's just important to note as just one of the tools in your tool belt, why all our calls to action are focused in that time around the launch, because you can really have a big surge, and kind of hit some of your other ancillary goals.
Okay, so you've made it through the top 10. And we really want to talk about how do you maintain momentum. So this is like your Jerry Springer final thoughts. These are your final tips. This is staying your launch momentum. Here's something providing value is absolutely critical, and essential to long term success. So make sure that your conversations are meaningful, make sure that they're incredibly human, make sure that people can connect and then make sure at the very end that they're actionable. Here's another tip, spend time making your show notes. Incredible. I gotta give a shout out to Julie. Because our show notes we keep hearing over and over that there's some of the industry's best. And it's because we take a lot of time to make sure that we pull content that is relevant out because we want it to be searchable. And Julie does that in the midst of producing. I don't know how you do it all. Julie like you're the multitasking queen. But please make some time to actually do that.
And I all just add one thing there is that I didn't know what we wanted our to look like. But I looked at a lot of my favorite podcasts and what their show notes looked like. So look around at the shows that you listen to, you can click on the link in this episode description and look at the ones for this exact episode. But it's just a combination of an outline of the episode powerful quotes, all the graphics, ways to connect all in one place. So just look at other examples out there and find what would work best for you. Yeah, and
feel free to like copy and steal all of our show notes out there for you. We want it to be as democratic and simple as possible. And if you have questions as the unicorn because Julie knows all in that vein, I got y'all. And so just a couple of other things. Find ways to continue the conversation in social spaces. Why do we need to do that? Because podcasting is really a one way medium, but by taking questions and discussion into the social space, and ensures that the voices of the community are lifted, and that we're listening and delivering on what they're thinking what they want to see. And the last thing is and I would say this is probably one of the most important tips we could probably give you is leverage your guests network, each episode for listenership expansion, your guests is going to have their own connections, they're going to be on social love on them, well give them assets given those marketing graphics, give them little quotes, anything that they can use, and let them share it, you will watch the trickle effect of your episode again. And it will go on and on. And the episode is no longer just an episode. It's something that's living and breathing for a long time.
Okay, we've kind of alluded to this as we're kind of rounding out this conversation. But your email lists and your social channels really become this holy grail for growing your reach week after week or month after month, whatever your download schedule is. So really put a lot of effort into building out emails that add value to people's lives and their weeks. And it points to them to download the conversation for more. And we've just seen how that snowballs over time. But same way if you're kind of eating this up if this has been helpful to you. I want to remind you, we've curated a bunch of resources, our favorite things that we use our favorite hacks all at WWE podcast, for good calm, you can head there and you're going to join our email list. So just forewarning you on that, but here's what's going to happen. We're in the background building a boot camp, that's going to take you even further. I mean, we've given a lot of our favorite hacks here. But we're going to give you frameworks and tools and templates you can launch a podcast so much quicker and so much more confidently. And that's all going to happen at WWE podcast for good calm so definitely go check that out. But okay, we have to bring the unicorn on for her last final pro tip. You know, we've asked Julie, the producer extraordinare to give us a pro tip each week of these conversations. So what have you got for us?
Okay, I have two for this week. Becky kind of Becky alluded to this one earlier. So I think our brains were on the same wavelength. But we talked all tactics, this episode, my first pro tip is to really focus on quality, the quality of the content you're creating will always be more important than quantity in the situation. So this is your strongest asset, create innovative, inspiring content that challengers encourages and informs and just don't get lost in all the logistics, spending all your time trying to keep up with all those social media channels, and lose track of the quality of content that you're trying to create. So just bring us home with that first pro tip. But my second one is we've mentioned a lot Buzzsprout or megaphone or just a lot of different RSS platforms. And this is something I didn't know before we started launching ours. But it takes a little bit of time to get added into Apple and Spotify and all the different directories of podcasts. So don't think you can get all this set up the night before, because there's a little bit of a delay of getting everything in the places that it needs to be. So about a month out from when you want to launch really make sure you're finding the right platform where you want to host all of your audio again, we use Buzzsprout. But just really take the time to make sure you're researching platforms and getting in all the right places. It takes a little bit of time. So those are my two pro tips for today.
Great pro trips. I love those, Julie and I will just congratulate you, everybody. You have launched your podcast if you have walked through all of this, but I have to throw the caution tape up there to remember, you have a long runway now. You've got to syndicate, you've got to take your podcast episode and socialize it, put it wherever you can. And that's where the real work begins. But that's also where the engagement comes in. The fundraising comes in the volunteerism, your mission is going to grow and live and breathe. And so that's the secret sauce. And if you've hung in there for all of these podcast episodes, and you're like I just don't think I'm ready. But I think maybe I could go on a podcast and start to get more comfortable with that. Stay tuned because we're going to be talking about how to pitch yourself to a podcast next week.
Thanks for being here. Friends are written for you. Thanks for joining us. Today's episode was brought to you by our good friends at auth zero without zero your nonprofit can do more with a login box. Greet prospects and rabid fans of your mission with authenticity simply make it easier for your team to manage data. There's so much at AUC zero login experience can do is it auth zero.org For more info
if you enjoyed this episode, we know you'll love being part of the we are for good community. It's like our own social network where you can find like minded friends ask questions, share resources and find inspiration anytime. Sign up today at we are for good.com backslash hello
