Ep. 19 - Promoting Our Podcast on Social Networks (Metasode)
...and also walking down the memory lane of our first exposure to email
Listen to Metacast: Apple, Spotify, YouTube
In this episode, we shared how we promote our podcast on social networks, what worked and what didn’t so far. Obviously, we have a limited sample, but we found some success on LinkedIn and Reddit and pretty much no success on Twitter and Instagram.
It was a hot day in Vancouver and we started the episode by talking about air conditioning, more specifically, about ads by one reputable AC servicing company in South Florida. So we spent the first few minutes discussing some creative (though sometimes chauvinistic and obscene) ads we got exposed to.
Air Around the Clock (“your wife is hot”)
Beacon Plumbing (“stop freakin’ call Beacon”)
Shaeffers Deck Sealant (“if you’re like me, you find it very hard to keep your deck dry”).
I owe an apology to the Kiwis because I said the last ad was Australian. Sorry, it was from New Zealand.
In the latter part of the episode, we discussed our first exposure to emails. Arnab shared the story behind his first email address randomarxii@hotmail.com (send him an email!) and I shared what stood behind my ib@223-223.ru (I no longer have access to it, so send an email to hello@metacastpodcast.com instead).
Good ol’ days.
In any case, this episode was full of cool insights about podcasting too. Check out the takeaways below. And subscribe to our newsletter if you haven’t already.
Key takeaways
Videos on LinkedIn posts didn’t work for us three times. We tried creating short video clips with captions and post them on LinkedIn but it feels like LinkedIn deprioritizes videos in the feed. The engagement was very low and we are not doing any more videos there.
Spend your time on social networks wisely. I’m giving up on Instagram for now because I’m not getting the engagement I expect but I spend way too much to produce the videos for reels.
Reddit FTW. We had great success with one of our posts on Reddit where we got 150k+ views, 154 upvotes, 100% upvote rate, and hundreds of listens as a result.
YouTube is important for audio too. It’s the only distribution channel that’s truly cross-platform and anyone on iOS, Android or web can share with their friends. We create our YouTube videos using simple audiograms in Descript (it’s very easy). Check out how those look.
Your guests don’t need to be popular on social media for your episode to get attention. If your guest has a large following, they can share your episode to their network and it’s great. But if your guest is well known but not “out there,” people may still seek them out and find your episode on Google long after it’s published (case in point — our interview with Justin Frankel, the creator of Winamp and Reaper). If your guest doesn’t do many appearances on podcasts, people may still seek them out and cherish your interview.
Airpods FTW. Wait, what? WTF? Didn’t I say to never use Airpods? Hear me out... You can use Airpods as headphones during the recording (to hear what others are saying) but still use a proper mic for your own voice. Recording tools like SquadCast allow you to use Airpods only partially (for hearing) in conjunction with a proper mic. I use Airpods mostly because I don’t want to be tethered to the computer with a cable from my Audio-Technica studio headset. Airpods also look better on pictures.
Don’t mute yourself during the recording and ask your guests not to mute. If they do, you miss out on laughs and other reactions that are good to hear in a conversation. If a person is muted, they’ll be dead silent on the recording even if they ROFL’ed during the episode.
People laugh all the time during conversations, not only when something funny is said. There was a study on this (a fairly creepy one) where they found out that people laugh a lot during conversations but only a fraction of those laughs was related to jokes. Laughing is natural, keep it in the episode!
Show notes
Podcasts
Metacast Ep. 18 - Podcast Analytics with Podder Co-founders Christian Sorensen and Antoine Mazurier
Metacast Ep. 14 - The Creator of Winamp and Reaper, Justin Frankel
Metacast Ep. 17 - From Teacher to a Software Engineer at Amazon (Bonus Primesode)
Books
The Mom Test: How to talk to customers & learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you by Rob Fitzpatrick
The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries
Power Of Moments by Chip Hall
Articles
Software
Other
Post-production
This episode was produced by Mike Semashko
Get in touch
We’d love to hear from you!
Email: hello@metacastpodcast.com (both of us get it)
Arnab’s Twitter: @or9ob
You can also leave comments on this substack post. Don’t forget to subscribe if you haven’t already!
Bye for now.