Discover actionable strategies for building and engaging a loyal podcast audience, boosting discoverability, and creating meaningful content in this MyCom episode with host Ryan Dunn.
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In this episode
Are you a church communicator or ministry leader looking to boost engagement and effectiveness in your digital outreach? In this episode of MyCom, host Ryan Dunn shares practical strategies and fresh insights for connecting with listeners through podcasting, YouTube, and other broadcast channels. Drawing from years of experience and real-world examples, Ryan explores why podcasts often struggle to build an audience, how to define and serve your specific ministry niche, the power of consistency, and the advantages of expanding to YouTube for discoverability and interaction.
In this episode:
(00:00) How to get people listening to your content?
(01:48) What is a podcast?
(03:09) The value of longevity in podcasting
(04:48) The “who” is integral to the “why”
(07:52) Your “why” is the heart of the podcast
(09:54) Being audience-specific in podcasting
(10:30) The YouTube model of podcasting
(13:34) Case study in podcasting: Brandon Robbins
(16:01) A word from “Igniting Imagination”
(17:08) Logical and scalable path for podcasts
(18:33) The Compass podcast workflow
(29:34) Descriptions are key!
(33:07) Why consistency matters
Whether you’re starting your ministry podcast or looking to enhance your church communications, this episode is packed with practical insights. Listen in and discover new ways to serve and engage your community!
Related episodes:
- Brandon Robbins and YouTube success in parish ministry [106]
- Podcasting 101 (Then-host Dan talks with current host Ryan) [68]
Episode transcript
Ryan Dunn [00:00:00]:
Podcasting is great because it's actually pretty easy to get started, but getting people to listen is quite a different challenge, and it's one that we're addressing on this episode of mycom. Welcome to MICOM Church Communications and Marketing, your resource for connecting with the latest communications tools, building your digital ministry toolkit, and bringing your congregation into the digital age. My name is Reverend Ryan Dunn. I've been at the podcast business for about nine years, which is not long in most professional areas, but it is actually quite long in the podcast space. As get this, Most podcasts have an active cycle of about 174 days. That's according to a study conducted by Pacific Content. Why is that, do you think? If digital content creation is so accessible, why don't more expressions of it last? We're going to dig into questions like that and perhaps offer some solutions through exploring ways different content creators and podcasters have been able to build lasting connections with their audiences on this episode of mycom. If conversations like this are valuable to you, then make sure to hit the subscribe or Follow button on your podcast listening platform.
Ryan Dunn [00:01:27]:
It would also be a big help to us if you left a rating or review, or if you made a comment about what you really appreciate about this particular episode. Apps like Spotify and YouTube allow for comments and that lets us know what kind of content is meaningful or valuable for your communications ministry. As we begin on topic here, I want to note that I'll be throwing around the podcast term throughout this episode, but I want to broaden the definition of podcast for us. Generally, when we hear, quote podcast, we think of a longer piece of audio content that's distributed through a specialized player like Spotify or Overcast. Well, lately the definition of podcast is really broadened. It still includes that audio only third party distributed content, but it also includes a weekly series of YouTube videos or, I don't know, a bi weekly TikTok streamed prayer. Check in really? By our current perspective, a podcast could be any piece of regularly recurring broadcast content. And by broadcast I mean that is a piece of content sent into the public domain with the aim of connecting with the mass audience.
Ryan Dunn [00:02:45]:
Now, mass audience here is relative and we're going to get into that. But the content is meant to deliver information to individuals who are outside of the room room where the content is initially recorded. With that definition, podcasting sounds wonderful because anybody can do it. The bar to entry is extremely low and personally I think just about every ministry should be involved in the podcasting space. However, that means that the highways and streets and lanes leading to public attention are really, really crowded. How do we navigate that? Well, one way is to stick at it for a while. Again, I've been working on podcasts for about nine years. Not a long time in most fields, but as I touched on earlier, long time in podcasting world.
Ryan Dunn [00:03:37]:
Dan Meisner, who is the head of audience development for Pacific Content, did an analysis of the age of over 500,000 podcasts, and he found again, 500,000 podcasts. There's a lot of podcasts out there. Well, he found that the median age of those podcasts is 174 days. That's roughly 25 weeks. It's less than six months. The length is important to note because longevity actually plays into audience growth. Very few podcasters start their podcasts with a big audience. Those who do, they already have name recognition behind them.
Ryan Dunn [00:04:17]:
Oprah starts a podcast with a million listeners. The rest of us start podcasts with an audience of our moms, and then we grow from there. And that causes a lot of people to give up because they get six months in and it doesn't seem like very many people are listening. So they drop the podcast. But really, it takes a while to get people to discover you. And I'll bet that if we took an inventory of the podcast that we listen to regularly, we'd find that most of them have been around for over two years. It just takes a while. And because it's a long journey, it's good to articulate and come back to why you want to do this.
Ryan Dunn [00:04:57]:
Most of us start podcasts without someone else asking us to start a podcast. We're driven by some kind of need to share something or to draw attention to something that we care about more so than we are actually responding to requests by the public at large. Sometimes we have a boss who's like, hey, we should have a podcast, and it's just our place in the world to say yes. Yes, we should. We'll get deeper into the why, but I can't really separate the why from the who. And as we're church communicators, you're probably focused on the who in your ministry as well. Because in the end, we want to serve people, so we want to define the audience very specifically. And the more concise we are about the audience, who we're trying to serve, the more likely we are to actually reach somebody.
Ryan Dunn [00:05:47]:
And this isn't about exclusion, but it's going to benefit you to admit that your podcast is just not for everybody. Get specific and then stay specific as a United Methodist. Makes me a little uncomfortable. I love the idea of God's love being for everybody. Love the idea of the open table. Our podcasts are open, they're for all people. But if we're trying to reach all people, we're probably not reaching much of anybody. Even a huge podcast like, say, Joe Rogan.
Ryan Dunn [00:06:19]:
If you conjure a mental image of a Joe Rogan listener, it gets kind of specific. It's probably a straight white guy, maybe flannel wearing. Probably tosses around the term bro, right? So don't sweat about growing a huge audience. Just think about how you garner the attention of your specific audience. Serve them well Our podcast audiences likely start with people around us, and it's important to note this and consider who is listening to our episodes. Then, more than likely we're talking to people who we know. And that demystifies some of the elements of podcast design. For example, we may wonder what the right length is for an episode.
Ryan Dunn [00:07:04]:
We can look at research and see that most podcasts fall into a range of like 30 to 40 minutes. But if our audience is built around the commuters who we sit next to in the pews on Sunday morning, we may realize that they'd appreciate an hour long episode that they take with them in the car a day, a week. Honestly, I build the Compass podcast with my friend Omar in mind. He's an exterminator, listens to podcasts nearly all day every day while he's crawling around underneath houses and driving from one job to the next. He has a lot of time to listen, but he's also engaged in other activities while he's listening. If Omar is representative of my greater audience, well, I'll do well to build my episode content with his circumstances in mind. And that goes to the heart of our first point in crafting a engaging podcast. We're going to stay within the why of our podcast.
Ryan Dunn [00:08:04]:
In other words, we're gonna start with the overall vision of our podcast. And in my case, I want to help spiritual seekers like Omar become aware of God's presence even as they're driving to the job. And we might need to take on just a little shift in our mindset concerning the why of our podcast. And for me, this starts with this nugget of knowledge. Podcast listening is a solitary activity. Relatively few people listen to podcasts alongside other people. I mean, sure, my family likes to listen to story podcasts when we're driving someplace together, but most of the podcasts that I actually listen to, I'm doing so with headphones on by myself while I'm doing something, because again, I'm alone. So when we're speaking into our microphones, from the listener's perspective, speaking just to them, I'm speaking to you singularly, one person.
Ryan Dunn [00:08:58]:
We're not speaking to a mass of people. We're speaking to one person at a time. Our messages then, and the why behind our podcast should speak to the individual. Instead of saying that we're having a sermon podcast so more people can hear the Sunday sermon, we're going to benefit from admitting to ourselves that we're producing a sermon podcast so that Tony, who often has to work on Sunday mornings, can share in the messages that inspire our faith community. And this is semantical, I get that. But adopting this small mind shift keeps us focused on making the listener the chief benefitter of our content and not us, the podcast producers. Being the benefiter of our content, it keeps us focused off the download numbers and focused on the actual value of the podcast for our listener. Being specific and audience focused will definitely help us figure out the best ways then to get the word out and connect with our audience.
Ryan Dunn [00:10:03]:
Omar found the Compass podcast. Because I told Omar about the Compass podcast and I said I wouldn't be his friend if he didn't listen. Just kidding. But Omar finds a number of his other podcasts through YouTube, and he's not alone. YouTube has become one of the go to platforms for podcast discovery. In fact, if I were to start today, I would actually consider starting a YouTube channel instead of a traditional podcast. Again, starting a podcast, pretty easy. But getting anyone to listen to the podcast is really tough.
Ryan Dunn [00:10:35]:
In our traditional podcasting model, we build our recording system with our microphone and our computer and whatever else, and then we create our great content. We find a hosting service like Podbean or Libsyn, and then it distributes to podcast platforms like Spotify or Apple of podcasts. And then we get to market in the hopes of building an audience. Now, the glitch here is that podcast apps won't do anything for our small podcasts. It's just there, and it's up to us to drive people to their app to grow our audience. And do you know what the number one recommended way to build an audience in podcasting is? It is paying for tons of advertising. Most of us don't have a budget to do that. We have like, I don't know, $7.25 for our podcasting bud.
Ryan Dunn [00:11:25]:
So we're going to have to rely on number two, which is word of mouth. That's also kind of Challenging because we can only talk to so many people. Well, you can contrast that with a YouTube channel. YouTube is the second largest search engine after Google. People actively search for content on the platform, so videos there surface and recommendations in search results or related video suggestions. Again, podcasts rely more on word of mouth, directory listings or external promotion. Many people browse YouTube casually. I do it all the time.
Ryan Dunn [00:12:02]:
While podcasts often require a very intentional Download subscribe habit, YouTube's algorithm then can expose content to new viewers who might not otherwise be seeking it. There's a discoverability built into the system, and YouTube also has some built in tools for engagement. Comments, live streams, polls and community posts are all there. Podcasts typically lack a native space for interaction. You have to push listeners to external platforms to build some kind of feedback loop. So that might be a social media page or a Facebook group or email or substack or a discord server. Spotify has now started offering comments on episodes, but engagement, from what I've noticed, is a little bit limited. So far, it's not quite there yet.
Ryan Dunn [00:12:52]:
There's also the added benefit of YouTube analytics that are just unavailable in most podcasting scenarios. So YouTube provides things like watch time, click through rates, retention curves. Podcast analytics are pretty limited and generally just less detailed. They're limited to downloads and listens. I believe that if you start with a YouTube channel, it's just going to be easier to grow that into a podcast on all platforms rather than vice versa. Now, the detraction of YouTube is that it's not as portable and it's certainly more production intensive than an audio podcast. But I think there are ways to make your YouTube content just as portable and accessible as a regular podcast. In fact, I Let me tell you about Brandon Robbins, a United Methodist pastor.
Ryan Dunn [00:13:46]:
We've actually had Brandon on the podcast in the past. Brandon began making short, accessible YouTube videos that explained scripture or went into church history, answered theological questions. The goal was to serve his parish and to reach seekers beyond the church walls. Maybe it was kind of all over the place. And actually Brandon wasn't seeing a return on his investment and he was about to give the channel up and try something else. Well, one of his videos, reacting to the chosen TV series, drew strong attention and that significantly expanded his subscriber base. And this moment showed the potential of YouTube's algorithm and visual first discoverability to reach a new audience. And so as the channel started to grow, Brandon improved production quality.
Ryan Dunn [00:14:37]:
I mean, he started pretty simply, probably just with his phone talking into the camera in a bare room. Well, eventually he added better mics, clearer visuals, got into tighter editing, and importantly, he began designing his content so that it didn't solely rely on visuals. There's still an a visual element to it, but it's also suitable for an audio only format. And what Brandon has done is he often repurposes his YouTube videos by stripping the audio and then distributing them as an audio only podcast. And this allowed his audience to engage with his teaching in more contexts, like while they're commuting or exercising or doing their household routines. What I love about this is the efficiency of it, the sense that he could record once and then publish twice, or publish any number of times. It minimizes extra work by reusing the same core content across many platforms. And then of course you have the added bonus of YouTube driving discoverability and growth, and then podcasting driving depth of engagement since audio listeners spend more time, sustained time with that content.
Ryan Dunn [00:15:51]:
Plus, having both platforms reaffir reinforces a sense of authority and presence and credibility in digital ministry circles. Let's take a quick break here for a word from this episode. Sponsor the Igniting Imagination Podcast hi, I'm.
Lisa Greenwood [00:16:09]:
Lisa Greenwood, President of Wesleyan Impact Partners and host of the podcast Igniting Imagination. In a season when the church is being called to lead with courage, creativity and deep faith, Igniting Imagination is a space to reflect on what God is doing in the midst of real leadership challenges. Each episode features thoughtful conversations with pastors, theologians and innovators from across the Christian landscape exploring spiritual practice, generosity, justice, and what it means to lead faithfully. Today at Wesleyan Impact Partners, we come alongside churches and leaders to help congregations thrive and communities flourish. This podcast is one way we support that work. If you're looking for insights that spark your imagination and re energize you, you we invite you to listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on our YouTube channel. Find all our [email protected] Again, if someone.
Ryan Dunn [00:17:08]:
Were to launch a podcast today, Brandon Robbins model demonstrates a logical and scalable path. So you use YouTube's discoverability to grow an audience. You repurpose the same content into an audio podcast to deepen engagement, and then you leverage all the channels for maximum impact with minimal duplication effort. Now this isn't to say that if you're already established as an audio only podcast that you need to scrap what you're doing, but instead consider how you might live into having your podcast present on YouTube, even if it's just audio only. And I think it would be helpful here to look at one of the Compass podcasts. In my other podcast that I produce, one of our most downloaded or listen to episodes. I don't like to put a lot of emphasis again on download numbers because I think we need to view them very subjectively, understanding that therefore our own internal comparison, it is just self defeating to try to compare them externally. In this case, though, the download numbers represent the fact that we made the right decisions about delivering valuable content for our listener.
Ryan Dunn [00:18:20]:
So here's our episode to follow. It's called Simple Life Rhythms for Balance and Peace. It was an interview with Sister Joan Chittister, who's an author from a Benedictine monastic community. Now, people listening to this podcast might be familiar with Sister Joan Shittister, but I doubt that a lot of our Compass audience knew who she was prior to this episode. I'm pretty sure that Omar, my exterminating listening buddy, was not familiar with the work of Sister Joan. So even if we have the boost of some name recognition to our podcast, like a semi famous guest will still want to make a promise of value. And in this case, I approached Sister Joan because she had just released a book translating daily Benedictine practices for modern life in the midst of the pandemic. This was a number of years ago, so at the time we were really feeling wearied, maybe a little bit bored by the social distancing.
Ryan Dunn [00:19:17]:
And it felt like there would be a lot of value to our listener to suggest some spiritual practices that might awaken something in the midst of daily life. In this case, I made zero assumptions about utilizing Sister Jones platform to build my platform or to build the audience for my podcast. Instead, we made sure to focus on offering value to our listener. And it just so happened that Sister Joan really, really offers value in that department. And that might help us clarify on what it looks like to start with the why or the vision of our podcast. Start with your why for what you're doing and build your episode with the understanding that your audience has expectations and this episode needs to meet those expectations. The next step was to kind of prime and prepare myself. I'll tell you, the first thing I did was read her book.
Ryan Dunn [00:20:10]:
And most publishers will make a copy of a book available for members of the media or willing to give publicity to their authors, including you. They'll do so without asking questions about listenership. So it's not like you need to cross some threshold of download numbers before you can get can get publicity copies of a book. For Compass, a majority of our interviews are with authors. I've seldomly been asked for download numbers and Actually, when I have been, it's mostly just because this is a person who is in demand. It's not because the publisher is wary of giving me a free book. So I've gotten a number of free books, despite the fact that maybe I couldn't get the author to line up a schedule for an interview. Besides reading the book, I took a few more steps to familiarize myself with Sister Joan Chittister.
Ryan Dunn [00:21:02]:
I commonly Google a guest name and podcast the Word podcast to see if the guest has made appearances on other podcasts. There are a couple benefits to this. One is that I get an idea of what intrigues other people about this particular person. But also, and this is kind of big, it offers me a feeling of familiarity with the interviewee. I begin to feel a sense of rapport with that person. I say that's big because I want the listener to feel at ease and engaged with our content. And it's tough when it feels like there's just this barrier between the interviewer and the interviewee or when they're uncomfortable with each other. So for my part, I want to feel comfortable, and I feel like I begin to ease into that comfort a little bit by listening to them in conversation with other people.
Ryan Dunn [00:21:52]:
Once I've familiarized with the content a little bit, I try to discern a landing point for the episode. And that's just an expectation that I set on behalf of the listener, like, what do I hope they've received or heard by the end of this episode? And it's really no different than preparing a sermon in this regard. What do we want our congregation thinking about as they head to brunch on Sunday or after they've listened to our episode? In my example episode, I expected the listener was going to see a way that they could apply some Benedictine inspired rhythm to their daily life. And it's important to me to communicate this expectation to all the people involved in the recording of the podcast. We might sometimes feel a little bit intimidated or afraid of stepping on a guest's toes, and it's tempting to just say, well, we can talk about whatever you want to talk about. But I found that the conversation goes way, way better when I supply for us a goal for that conversation. In the Joan Chittister case, I was able to suggest, well, our listeners are curious about faith, but they're not really involved in a community of faith. So they're going to really benefit from hearing how you've applied these special practices, these spiritual practices from your community in your daily life and setting a landing point Then frees the guest up a little bit.
Ryan Dunn [00:23:17]:
I found it frees them from having to communicate the ideas, and it invites them to tell more stories, which really makes for the best experience. Often it. It couches the conversation and an idea that the interview subject has arrived at a particular place or at a particular idea, and we want to hear the story of how they got there. So we want to identify our landing point for all participants and then look for a story to share. From there, I make an outline of specific questions I'm likely to ask, and I compile this stuff into an episode dossier. And I'll put the guest bio in there, too. Uh, that's a doc I'll keep in front of me during the interview. If it's an author, I might put some intriguing book quotes in there.
Ryan Dunn [00:24:04]:
I'll sometimes cruise through social media feeds too, if it's applicable. It's just something that helps open that rapport between interviewer and interviewee. And again, I have that goal. I want the audience to feel like they're listening to an episode with old friends. All that is priming ourselves for the recording. But we can also prime the audience for the recording. We can ask ahead of time, do they have questions about this topic, or have they engaged with this topic in the past? Of course, in order to do this, you have to know where your audience is and how to engage with the audience, and that can be tough. Again, because podcasting is a broadcast media, not necessarily a social media, our podcasts don't offer direct way to receive feedback from listeners.
Ryan Dunn [00:24:51]:
I can only offer how I've done it in the past, and you can kind of translate that to your context. And for me, I've utilized Facebook groups or Reddit. I occasionally implicitly or explicitly ask priming questions. In the Joan Chittister example, I was pretty blatant. I said, I'm going to interview Sister Joan Chittister about applying monastic practices to daily life. What would you ask? I don't think that was the best question, but it did get some responses, and I was able to bring those into the interview. And in other cases, we've asked clearer questions. And it's really cool when we drop in a line like, well, one of our listeners asked about blank.
Ryan Dunn [00:25:34]:
Can you respond to that now? Whether the person listening is the same person who asked the question, it's kind of irrelevant. It still engages the whole audience because they feel heard and. And cared for. That's the preparatory process. There's actually quite a bit more, especially in terms of prepping the Guests. A few things that I do recommend regarding the recording process. Bad quality can disrupt great content, and in fact, the Joan Shitister episode is a good example of this. We were having a ton of technical difficulties in that recording.
Ryan Dunn [00:26:10]:
Joan is fairly tech savvy, but we're. She had a bad WI fi connection, and she was just using the internal mic and camera on her laptop, which isn't the best quality. So after we lost several minutes due to a glitchy feed, I actually suggested that we reschedule, which was iffy because I wasn't sure that she'd say okay. Instead, Sister Joan got one of her sisters to move the WI fi relay into the room with her, and then she borrowed a pair of earbuds with a mic. And that isn't the perfect setup, because those mics can be a little bit tinny. But I think it got the audio to the point where it wasn't a distraction for the listener. And I guess that's really the point of good audio. Like, we just don't want to allow it to be jarring or a distraction.
Ryan Dunn [00:26:59]:
To mitigate that, I insist on headphones and a mic of some kind for our interviewees. Without headphones, you can run into feedback or echo problems there. There is some technology that's kind of mitigated that these days, but it's still present. And internal mics on computers are just super unreliable. If a person moves too far in one direction, it might drop the feed. They're also very tinny. But really, for podcasting purposes, I want some kind of external mic, and that's a vast improvement over a machine's internal mic. One thing I've gotten in the habit of doing is recording several seconds of room noise.
Ryan Dunn [00:27:37]:
And then I use free editing software called Audacity. It has a denoising effect. So I can record several seconds of room noise. I can use that as a sample of background noise and then put it over the whole thing, and it's going to cut out the buzz of a ceiling fan or wind through the window, that kind of thing. In terms of recording the actual episode, I like to record the meat first. What I mean is the interview or the actual content of the episode is the first thing that we record. I'm not recording chronologically or sequentially. And this is a way that, well, the interviewee doesn't have to be subjected to, like, marketing banter that we have to run through.
Ryan Dunn [00:28:17]:
And it also provides the hosts with an opportunity to set the table a little bit better when it comes to opening an episode. And what's cool is that we can make suggestions then as to what the listener might want to listen for. I often record the lead in last, and that way I can make sure that our listener knows there's a reason to listen right away. Really. I try to show value of the episode in like the first 15 seconds. Sometimes I'll even edit the interview before recording the lead in. And that allows me to approach the whole thing from a fresher perspective. And with that, let's talk a little bit about editing.
Ryan Dunn [00:28:54]:
I used to run a fine tooth comb over the whole episode. Nobody took a big breath. There were no pregnant pauses in our episodes. Now I've actually gotten to the point where I see how little I can touch the tracks in editing. So I might remove a segment where the, say, the guest dog started barking. In Sister Jones example, I removed a segment because her feed was garbled. But at this point, really I'm simply looking to remove anything that's going to disrupt the user's ability to to follow the content. And then once we've recorded, once we've processed, once we've made our edits, it's time for the exciting part, which is hitting the publish button.
Ryan Dunn [00:29:34]:
Sharing your work is very important. In ministry, we talk about the fact that no one comes just because we build something. No one comes just because we offer a program. In the same way, no one is going to listen to a well crafted episode unless they're invited to listen to a well crafted episode. And we can start the invitation process even before we hit publish. Because description is key. A podcast description is the key factor for someone hitting play on a new podcast. On a scale of 1 to 10, a survey was done with 10 being the most important factor for playing a new podcast.
Ryan Dunn [00:30:17]:
Podcast listeners gave 7.8 to a podcast description. Less important factors included episode titles, frequency ratings and reviews. Artwork name familiarity with the guest got about four and a half in ratings and the host got about three and a half in ratings. I want my episode description to promise value to the listener and I want to include searchable keywords related to that episode. Oh, and also it needs to be brief, so that's a lot to put in there. And honestly, writing an episode description might be the toughest part of the whole process. Here's the episode description for Joan Shitister's episode. One of the marks of monastic communities is that they establish a rhythm of life that calls attention to the holy Sister.
Ryan Dunn [00:31:09]:
Joan Chittister, who is herself Parna of a Benedictine monastic community, has translated a number of these practices into everyday life for us. You may have heard of Sister Joan. She's a well known activist and has made a couple of appearances alongside Oprah Winfrey. She's also authored 60 books and has won numerous awards. We're talking with her about her recent release, the monastic heart 50 simple practices for a Contemplative and Fulfilling Life. I'll sometimes include specific questions I've asked within the description, especially if I think it's a question that the listener is asking. Podcast listeners now have many ways that they find new content. Actually, here's a breakdown illustrating how listeners find new podcasts.
Ryan Dunn [00:31:55]:
52.6% of listeners find new podcasts by searching a podcast directory of that number. Of that 52.6%, 31% of those listeners find new podcasts on YouTube followed by Spotify at 24% and Apple Podcasts at. Any guesses? 12%. It's less than I thought. It's just tough to search Apple podcasts, I guess. 22.1% of podcast listeners ask a friend for podcast recommendations and 14 and a half percent get suggestions from their favorite podcast host. Just 5 and a half percent search Google and 3 and a half percent follow podcast guests that they heard on another show. So I used to think that, well, oh, if I could just get big enough names, then the audience would follow.
Ryan Dunn [00:32:45]:
Well, that actually doesn't happen very often. And this underscores the idea that we'll grow our audiences when we're really focused on delivering something meaningful for our listener as opposed to, you know, focusing on growing an audience. Oh, and lastly, just 1.7% of podcast listeners ask for suggestions on social media. Now, consistency is crucial. A half hearted posting schedule kind of leads to a half hearted audience. This doesn't necessarily mean that you need to commit to weekly releases. Instead, I translate that to mean that you should be predictable in your releases. So be upfront in saying that we, we release a new episode on the first Monday of each month.
Ryan Dunn [00:33:30]:
Just don't give the listener a reason to believe that you've just dropped it. Right. Because it happens a lot in the podcast world. Podcasts just disappear. I'm advocating for just being consistent and upfront about your schedule. Then what can you do to get podcasts in front of people, especially the people who will make up your engaged audience? Well, I wish I had the magic answer to this question. The first thing that we need to admit is that no one does this for you unless you pay them. So some of the podcast hosting services, they make it sound like they're promoting your podcast, I don't believe that they really are.
Ryan Dunn [00:34:08]:
They're posting it to Apple Podcasts, they're posting it to Spotify, and then it's listed with the other 2 million podcasts on those services. If people are going to find your podcast episode, it's going to take an effort on your part. And that means sharing links wherever you can on social media and in newsletters. It could mean creating clips and sharing to give some ideas. I'll share the publicity journey of our example episode. Firstly, I built a page for the episode, and I build a page for each episode of the podcast that I do. And I do this for a few reasons. One, it makes the content a little bit more searchable, especially if we're including transcripts of our episodes in the text of the page.
Ryan Dunn [00:34:52]:
It's just a lot more searchable text for those web trawlers. And then two, I build a page for each episode because I want to give listeners a place to go no matter what podcast they listen through. So it may seem easy to grab a link of our podcast from Apple Podcasts, and then we share that all over social media. But if our listener is a heavy user of overcast and thinks that Apple is evil, then we're making it difficult for them to engage with us. A webpage serves as a collection point where I can collect links to many of the listening platforms and share them there. And then third, I like to offer extra resources for the listener that could be relevant links and that kind of thing. A webpage allows me to do that. So I built a page for the Joan Chittister episode.
Ryan Dunn [00:35:44]:
On that page, I included listening links, my episode description, the transcript, a video based on the episode. And most often what I do now is I record video during the interview, and that's what I post. But in this episode, due to Joan's wi fi issues, the video wasn't usable. So instead I loaded up a still image into a video editor, I added the audio, and then I used a waveform generation effect to generate some movement on the screen during the video. Now, that doesn't garner a ton of views, but it does get the content into the search engine. It gets it onto YouTube. And honestly, in a lot of cases, I doubt that anyone's really watching while they're consuming this kind of content. Anyway, as I've gotten more comfortable with video, I've actually started to edit everything as a video first, and then I'm just taking the audio from the video and uploading that to podcast platforms.
Ryan Dunn [00:36:40]:
Kind of like what I talked about with Brandon Robbins. All right, after I've built that web page, I shared the link to that page wherever I could on social medias through newsletters. Originally I shared a video clip I made and then later on I just shared a link to the episode page. And the note here is that this is not just a one time post and forget about it. It's good to return to these episodes both to see how we can mine these episodes for more content and to see how we provide more points of invitation for people to collect value from what we've produced. In church recruiting, they often say that someone needs to hear an invitation three times before they respond. Well, we might want to consider that as well. And that takes us back to where we started.
Ryan Dunn [00:37:25]:
It takes a while. Again, very, very few podcasts take off right away, so focus on creating good content over creating an audience. And for me, it pays a lot to remember that I'm talking to one person at a time and my job is to invite that person to engage with the valuable content that we're producing in our podcasts. Okay, thanks for taking this journey with us on my comm. Church Communications and Marketing MICOM is a production of United Methodist Communications, comes out monthly, generally on the final Monday of the month. I want to thank Renee McNeil and Andrew Schleicher for production and marketing support. My name is Ryan Dunn. I'll talk to you soon.
Ryan Dunn [00:38:08]:
PE.