How to promote a podcast: the channels that compound and the ones that spike
Most advice on how to promote a podcast comes down to posting about it more often, which works about as well as you would expect. A better way to sort the options is by what happens after you stop touching them. Some promotion behaves like a spike, a burst of attention that is over by Thursday. Some behaves like a slope, slower to start and still climbing a year later. If you have four hours a week to spend, you want most of them going into slope.
Spikes, slopes, and where your hours go
A spike is any channel where traffic tracks your effort in real time. Post today, get fifty clicks today, get nothing next Tuesday unless you post again. Social feeds, newsletter swaps and launch pushes all behave this way.
A slope is any channel where the thing you made keeps being found. Consider a page that ranks in Google, a guest appearance sitting in someone else's feed, or a back catalog that answers questions people are still typing. The work is front loaded and the payoff arrives late, which is exactly why most shows skip it.
Spikes earn their place when you have something time sensitive, like a launch or a guest with a following. A show built entirely on spikes has to keep running to stand still.
Here is the honest ranking. Effort is per week once you are set up. Time to results is how long before you see anything worth measuring.
| Channel | Effort | Time to results | Keeps paying after you stop |
|---|---|---|---|
| Search articles from your episodes | Medium up front, low after | 2 to 5 months | Yes, for years |
| Guesting on other podcasts | Medium and steady | 6 to 10 weeks | Yes, the episode stays live |
| Episode titles and metadata | Low, one afternoon | Immediate to 4 weeks | Yes |
| YouTube (full episodes plus clips) | High | 3 to 6 months | Yes, YouTube is a search engine |
| Email to your own list | Low | Immediate | Partly, the list is yours |
| On air listener ask | None, it is one sentence | 2 to 8 weeks | Yes, while you keep saying it |
| Social clips | High and relentless | Immediate | No |
| Cross promo swaps | Low | Immediate | No |
| Paid ads in other podcasts | Low effort, real money | Immediate | No |
How to promote a podcast nobody has heard of yet
Promoting a new show is a different problem from promoting a mature one. You have nothing to mine and nobody to tell, so the first 90 days look nothing like month twelve.
Publish three episodes before you announce anything, so a curious person has something to binge. Spend the first month on the two channels that do not need an audience, which are guesting and titles. Book three appearances on shows in your subject, then go back through your episode titles until each one promises something specific to a stranger. In month two, start the email list even if it holds your first eleven listeners. In month three, start turning the back catalog into text, because by then you finally have a back catalog.
The people typing your topic into Google right now
Every day, people search for things your episodes already answer. Somebody wants to know what a kitchen remodel actually costs, whether they can fire someone on probation, or how to train for a first half marathon. If you have covered it, that person should be able to find you.
They cannot, because your episode is audio and Google cannot listen. The fix is text. Transcribe the episode, then publish a written answer to the specific question, with the quote, a timestamp, and a link to press play. One page like that can bring readers for years, and the person who lands on it already cares about the subject, which is more than any feed can say.
The channel is slow. Nothing much happens for two or three months, then pages start ranking and the line stops depending on you. If you want the mechanics, our podcast SEO guide goes through what Google can and cannot index.
Borrowed audiences beat broadcasting
Guesting on other podcasts is the strongest channel after search, because the audience is already listening to podcasts, already interested in your subject, and already trusting the host who just vouched for you. Three of your hardest problems are solved before you open your mouth.
Pitch shows one or two notches bigger than yours rather than ten. Send a specific episode idea instead of a bio. Say what their listeners get out of it, and keep the whole thing under 150 words. Aim for one appearance a month and treat it as a standing commitment rather than a burst.
Once you are on, mention your show once, clearly, with an instruction someone can follow while driving. "Search the name and hit follow" beats a URL nobody can type.
Clips that make sense with the sound off
Short clips work, but only when the clip stands on its own. A 45 second answer to a clear question travels. A 45 second reaction to something the viewer never heard does not. Put the question in the caption and on the screen, and cut so the answer lands in the first three seconds.
The moments that make good clips are usually the same moments that make good search pages, so pull both out of one pass through the episode. That double use is the only thing that makes clip production worth the hours, since the clips themselves stop working the day you stop posting. More on that trade in growing a podcast without social media.
Your episode titles are doing more work than your artwork
Titles are the only text most podcast apps really index, and the only thing a stranger reads before deciding. "Episode 47 with Sarah" tells nobody anything. "How Sarah doubled her landscaping revenue without hiring" tells the listener and the algorithm the same useful thing.
A workable format is the outcome plus the constraint, with the words someone would actually search sitting at the front. Retitling a whole catalog is an afternoon of work and the cheapest promotion available to you.
The hundred people who show up
A hundred email subscribers who get a note per episode will out-perform ten thousand followers on a platform you do not own. The email needs no design. Two lines on what the episode covers, one line on who should listen, then the play link.
Put the signup in your show notes, say it on air once a month, and send the email the same day the episode drops. The routine is boring, and it survives every algorithm change.
One ask, repeated until it is embarrassing
Pick a single call to action and say it in every episode. Follow in Apple, leave a review, or send this episode to one person who needs it. Rotating between five asks gets you none of them, because listeners are half paying attention and only the repeated thing sticks.
Tie the ask to a moment rather than the credits. Right after the best part of the episode is when someone is most willing to do you a favor.
How to promote a podcast for free, and what to skip
Everything above except paid ads costs nothing but time.
What to skip:
- Submitting to directories beyond Apple, Spotify and YouTube. The long tail of aggregators sends close to zero traffic.
- Services that post your artwork to their own feed and call it promotion.
- Buying followers, plays or reviews, which distorts the only feedback you have.
- Swap deals with shows that have no audience either. Two shows with no listeners promoting to each other is a hug, not a strategy.
- Being on every platform. Pick two and do them properly.
As for where to promote a podcast when you only have a few hours: search first, guesting second, your own list third. Everything else is optional.
Common questions
How long before promotion shows up in my downloads?
Guesting shows up within days of an episode going live. Titles and metadata can move things in a few weeks. Search work takes two to five months before it is visible and then keeps climbing. If someone promises faster than that without buying ads, be suspicious.
Should I promote old episodes or only new ones?
Old ones, mostly. Nobody except your existing listeners cares that an episode is new, and your back catalog is the only asset that grows. A two year old episode answering a common question deserves more attention than the one you published Tuesday.
Do paid podcast ads work for a small show?
They can, though they are a spike and they are not cheap. Spend that money on making the back catalog findable first, and come back to paid once you know which episode converts a stranger into a subscriber.
The part we handle
Disclosure: PodAnswer takes the search half of this off your plate. We transcribe your feed, find the questions people are searching in your subject, and publish the moments that answer them as articles with timestamps and links back to your show. Free listings are open to any show, paid plans start at $149 a month on the pricing page, and you can see the whole thing on our page for podcasters.