What are the best social media channels to promote a video podcast?

I want to open the discussion: what are the best social media channels to share a podcast, and also, what format do you guys share to get more exposure? Is there any particular tool you used to create social media content based on your video podcast?

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There are a few things in a search for “social media” where tools sometimes get mentioned, but it’s good to try to coral people’s ideas here in one topic. :slight_smile:

At one point (circa 3 years ago) I was generating audiograms to publish to Instagram for the Movers Mindset podcast. That’s an audio-only podcast so not exactly what you’re asking about in your second question. We did some of them by hand (probably using Apple’s iMovie) and we did some with… ugh, actually I can’t remember. It took an audio clip (mp3) and laid transcription on top of a static image.

They used to have play-counts ~10x the number of likes we were getting at the time. Of course, that’s apples-n-oranges; views are automatically started (unless one disables autoplay) and likes require user action. I never got the impression they were hugely better for us. …mostly because I’ve never had a clear model for what any social media was actually supposed to do for me/my-shows. [another discussion altogether]

Social media came up in our most-recent Oct 29 Campfire too. We were discussing more like what to do with social media, than how to make the social media assets for posting.

All of which reminds me that I wanted to post a topic about some of my thinking around ‘what to do with social media’ or ‘whats the point’…

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

ɕ

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Great Craig…!! Based on the Oct 29 Campfire I see a lot of pain around the “algorithm”. Do you think that’s why some podcasters jump into creating content on social media and then stop doing it? I see a lot of value in “spreading the voice” with social media. I think that’s one of the main proposes. Still, I wonder if the podcaster community see it in the same way :confused:

On the other hand, I see great examples of podcasters that have created very nice&quality content on social media and helped them to get noticed - Is very interesting topic to be honest.

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I think the “pain around the algorithm” is just the symptom. It’s a real symptom, but podcast creators don’t want to be “doing” social media. The solution isn’t to help podcasters better do social media.

The solution is for social media (the platforms themselves, the tech companies running said platforms) to realize the value creators (eg podcast creators) are adding, and to reward that in some way. Instead, we have the current situation.

I try to simply take the moral high road: I do my best to create content (for me that’s audio podcasts), and I choose the simplest methods I can to contribute that to social platforms (eg, https://instagram.com/craigconst/, or @craig@moversmindset.com on ActivityPub [aka Mastodon], to mention just two).

The question could be different: Who is your smallest viable audience and where do they hang out? Is it in a bricks and mortar place, a social media channel, using specific hashtags? Do they read, listen or watch? Do they digest long form or clips? What action do you want them to take? Read more, buy something, comment, share? What?

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I would recommend YouTube as a method of promoting podcasts. There are three approaches I consider:

A) Comments. Comment with your YouTube channel profile and when appropriate plug your channel. This can get icky (IMHO) if you’re plugging your Car Review podcast on every cooking channel because there’s no relevance. But if you follow channels that overlap with yours OR if you see channels cover topics that overlap with yours, leave a comment and mention that. Other creators absolutely notice when you do this

B) Ads. You can run pre-roll ads before certain channel topics with a few exceptions. For example you can’t run all ads against certain kids content. Yes people can opt out of ads by paying a monthly fee to youtube, but most people done. So you have at least 3 seconds to get eyes and attention.

C) Cross channel collabs and promotions. Reach out to other creators and offer them cross promotions or ask if they can mention your show/ channel. This has worked surprisingly well for me. (About 1 in 10 requests. Even some big channels)

My kids show gets zero traction on other social media. A film show I work on does pretty well socializing with/ engaging with the audience on FB/ Twitter, but it doesn’t really grow the audience.

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Thank you so much for your input! Very insightful.
It is very interesting to see that probably social media content can be one of the fastest ways to get known easily. However, it is still very difficult to actually do it.

I was watching this guy who says that behind his success, there were thousands of tests in different ways: titles, thumbnails, video length, catchphrases, etc… and after testing those (with some minimum budget on ads) he went all in with the better one. Obviously, this requires a lot of efforts in creating those combinations. But still, it is worth it in order to get better results on promoting a podcast.

what do you think?