172 | How to Use LinkedIn to Grow Your Podcast, with Scott Aaron

Have you been struggling to grow your audience and get podcast listeners from LinkedIn? If you're like me, you've heard everybody talk about how LinkedIn is a great place to grow a podcast audience, but you've gotten lost in what to post, when to post, how to get more reach on the platform, what the algorithm's doing, and ultimately, how to convert your LinkedIn connections into podcast listeners. Well, today, we're gonna fix that. This is Grow the Show, the podcast that grows your podcast. My name is Kevin Schmittlin, I am your podcast growth coach, and today we are talking about how to grow your podcast audience via LinkedIn. Joining us today on the show is Scott Aaron, a LinkedIn strategist who has been helping creators grow on LinkedIn for years, and who excels in getting his LinkedIn connections to tune into his podcast. In this episode, you're gonna learn how to optimize your LinkedIn profile to get more people to click on it. Scott's gonna share what the LinkedIn algorithm is rewarding today, and he might even surprise you with some of the strategies he has to offer and specifically his take on whether you should use automation tools at all. So if you're ready to shake up your LinkedIn strategy and start to see real results in your total audience growth, then stick around to this episode of Grow the Show. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ Scott Aaron, welcome to Grow the Show. So, so excited to have you here today. And let's just jump right into it. Let's take it step by step and let's build a LinkedIn strategy for a hypothetical podcast, right? So it's a podcast that's here in our voice right now. Their show is business or personal development related. So, you know, it's there to provide tips or guidance or actions or whatever it is. They have a LinkedIn account. They haven't really posted or anything. They haven't optimized it. What's the first step that that podcaster should take? So first and foremost, you have to optimize your profile to highlight and showcase the fact that you are a podcaster. So what people fail to recognize is that LinkedIn, it's a search engine. Just like Google or Yahoo, everything is based around SEO optimization or search engine optimization. So you have to think about the core demographic of the people that you're serving. What those individuals will be putting into the search bar at the top that would enable your profile to populate. And people don't realize this. There are people that are on LinkedIn, business professionals, that are seeking podcasters. People use obviously Spotify search. They use iTunes search. They use Google podcast search, Amazon music search. But they also use LinkedIn search because it's a business focused platform. So the first thing that you have to do is to make sure that in your headline, your about section, your experience section that you're really showcasing yourself as a podcaster, as a top podcaster, the focus of your podcast, the description of your podcast, and even creating an experience. So again, a job, but they're called experiences on LinkedIn as a podcast host. And I would say at a deeper level, what I did and what I recommend other people to do, is actually create a company page that's attached to your LinkedIn personal profile that is your podcast. So my podcast is called networking and marketing made simple. I have a company page on LinkedIn that is networking and marketing made simple podcast. And that is attached to my personal LinkedIn profile so I can share content back and forth. I can invite, and this is the key, the bigger of a network of quality connections that you grow on LinkedIn, the more invitations you can send to those connections to follow your company page for your podcast. And you can put, like there's clickable URLs, like so if you've ever spent any time on a company page and you go to that person's company page, it says, you know, visit website or learn more. That's a hyperlink that you could put to take them rate to Spotify, rate to iTunes, to start subscribing, ratings and reviews, and listen to your show. Excellent. So first off, we optimize the profile. It sounds like you're saying put something in your headline on LinkedIn that indicates, you know, what your podcast is about, who you're looking to serve. Is there anything else profile related that we should really get into place before we talk about what to post? Well, I would say making sure you're allowed 200 characters in the headline section of your profile. So something that you can do is you could put podcast host, podcast or marketing podcast host. So you can literally optimize it. The more often that you throw the word podcast into the headline section of your profile, to some people they're like, well, that's kind of repetitive. Why would I do that? Again, it's SEO optimized and you're writing different things so you don't know what someone is going to populate into the search engine that's going to allow you to populate on the first page of your of the search. But in the about section is if it's going to be all about your podcast, a very clear description of who the podcast serves. Now, the four tips that I have for you when you're writing your about or your summary section on LinkedIn is number one, make sure that it's between three to 500 words in length. You want a very, very clear description. It's not just a short one liner. It's not your business positioning statement. It's a clear description. The second thing is make sure that it's written in first person. You want to be the one telling the story, not someone else. Number three, you want to list between 10 to 20 skills that you have that are related to what the listener will learn on the podcast. So it could be marketing tips, business tips, content tips, business growth, sales, lead gen, optimization, whatever you want to write, whatever your podcast is about. And then you want to finish that summary section with a call to action. So you're looking to create that customer journey. So when someone learns about you, what's their next step? Do you want to take them to iTunes, to leave a rating and review and to listen? Do you want to take them to maybe a YouTube channel that you have where you're hosting your podcast as well? It could be just to go to your website where it has all the information about your podcast or your email for inquiries or to connect offline. So as long as you have those four things listed in the about section, that'll be optimized. And then going back to the experience section is making sure that you list any and all experiences that you have in addition to your podcast. Some people are full-time podcasters. Some people are part-time podcasters. Now, I consider myself a full-time podcaster, but that's just a marketing arm of the company that my wife and I run together. So, but I do consider it part of our business. So if there's other things that you have outside of your podcast, whether it's a traditional business, maybe courses, programs, prior experiences, list those as well, LinkedIn likes at least three experiences listed, what you're currently focusing on, and then subfocuses or past focuses underneath that. And then obviously education, any licenses and certifications that you've accrued over the years, honors and awards, any volunteer experience because LinkedIn does like philanthropic activity, and that would completely optimize your profile. Excellent. Okay, cool. So our profile is optimized. We're now ready to begin participating on LinkedIn, right? So like, this is where folks are like, do I DM people? Do I do automations? What do I post? So let's dig into it. First off, let's start with the automation piece because this is advice that flies around, find one of the automation software's do-jore and be DMing people all the time about my podcast. What do you think, yeah, your name? Well, the only thing you're actually legally allowed to automate per the user agreement on LinkedIn is your content. So LinkedIn has their own content scheduler where you can pre-schedule videos, posts, polls, newsletter additions, articles, documents. But when you're opening up a LinkedIn account, just before warrant, when you click that little box where you agree to the user agreement, you're actually agreeing that you will not use any automated software that connects and messages for you. If LinkedIn finds out that you're using any connected software that's doing that on an automated like basis, they don't just restrict your account, they delete your account altogether. So you have to do this by hand that I know to a lot of people like, man, Scott, that sounds time consuming. Well, here's the thing. Relationship marketing is the highest value of any marketing that you can deploy for your business. It's the quality of the relationships that you build that lead to the quantity of people that you're looking to impact. So for me, I have a 20-minute a day methodology. So as long as you're blocking out 20 minutes a day, you'll be able to have wild, wild success on LinkedIn. It's not one of those scroll and troll type of platforms where you end up staying on there for a couple of hours. It's a farming platform. The person that plans the most seeds is the one that's gonna reap the greatest harvest. So don't ever automate the connecting and messaging because people will start reporting your profile and they'll get you kicked off. That people are really clapping back at people that are doing that. But here's the simple system that I always teach. It's two parts. The first part is building a network of quality connections. So the question that then populates is, well, what defines a quality connection? So I usually move that into two containers. The first container is the people that would best be served by the message that you have in your podcast. So I serve coaches, consultants, and service-based business professionals. So when I'm on LinkedIn and I'm building my network, I'm gonna be searching for business coaches, business consultants, and service professionals. IE, financial services, insurance, law, accounting, those types of things. So I made sure that I go on there and I'm connecting with those individuals inviting them into my network because I know just like most social media platforms, any new connection that accepts a connection request from you, LinkedIn will automatically feed them some of your most recent content that you're posting so they can start engaging right away. The second part of the connecting is making sure, and this is the brilliance of LinkedIn, is connecting with other podcasters. So just like you and I, you're coming on my podcast, actually later today as we're recording this, I believe in collaboration over competition. So for me, I use it as a collaborative tool to find other business professionals that are in my sphere where we can collaborate, do a joint venture, be referral partners. So now I have this vibrant network of not only potential listeners, but also clients on the back end of whatever funnel I have attached to my podcast, but also side to that, I have business allies galore of people that would be willing to support me and my podcast, the same way that I would be willing to support theirs. Now, as the network builds, the question that bubbles up is, do I message these people? Absolutely, but what you don't do, number one, you don't automate your messaging. But the second thing is you don't send one of those 18 paragraph long drunk log verbal vomit messages that I think we've all gotten. So my wife and I talk about something called the smell test. If your message stinks before you send it, don't send it. And the other thing is don't send a message that you yourself wouldn't respond to yourself. That's a big thing. I always like to put myself in the passenger side perspective so the person that I'm messaging, I'm messaging me. So what would I respond to? So you have two options when you're messaging people. You can either message people with a specific call to action or a journey of what you want to do with them or just a little nurture message. And I'll give you an example of both. So if I was doing a call to action message, whether it be a potential ideal listener or a collaborator, I would say, hey, Kevin, thanks for accepting my connection. Great to be in each other's networks. Now, if this was going to be ideal listener, I would say I noticed that you were in the marketing realm as am I, I actually have a podcast that helps people with marketing tips, this data, the other. Would you be interested in getting the link to listen to some of my most recent episodes? And you just finish with the question. And what's going to happen is they're either going to say, yeah, hell yeah, like I would love to listen, drop your iTunes link or no thanks, I'm good, or nothing at all. So it's one of three things. Now, on the flip side of that, if it's that podcaster, are you familiar with Evan Carmichael? Yeah, yeah, of course. So him and I, we were connections on LinkedIn, we go back and forth, and I just reached out to him today to see if he wanted to do a podcast swap. So I basically just sent him a message. I said, hey, Evan's been a while since we connected. Would love to feature you on my podcast. I know my audience would get a lot of value of what you talk about. And I know I can provide equal advice and education to your audience. Are you up for a podcast interview swap? And again, they're going to say, sure, let's do it. Know I'm not interested? We're nothing at all. Now, so those are the CTAs. A non-CTA, you just don't include the question. You know, hey, Kevin, so great to be connected to. Saul, you're in the marketing industry. As am I, and I actually have a podcast around it, if I could be of any service or assistance in any way, don't hesitate to reach out and great to be connected. That's it. And the same would be for that other podcast that you're connecting with, same thing. You know, I saw you have a podcast as do I, if you're ever open to doing a podcast interview swap, let me know, would love to make it happen. Great to be connected. So I always tell people, do a hybrid of both. So you're going to message people every day, Monday through Friday, as you get new connections, but just really kind of decide, OK, Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays, I'm going to send some call to actions to get on some calls with people. And Tuesday to Thursdays, I'm just going to nurture those new connections and see where things progress from there. So that's my best recommendation for that. So let's talk about what to post, because at this point, we've got our profile optimized, we've got a solid DM strategy to start having conversations, building relationships. But remember, we've got a podcaster who is looking to get people to listen to their show, but they've also got a lot of content that they're generating from the conversations that they're having. So this day and age, first of all, what posts are working right now? What's the posting strategy look like? So I always recommend three posts per week on LinkedIn. So I tell people on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, posting schedule. So people then ask, well, why the two different posting schedules, I believe in something called the book ends. The book ends being Monday and Friday. So hitting people at the beginning of the week and at the end of the week, and then the meat in the middle would be your Wednesday post. Other people that follow some other advice do Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, because they feel Mondays are a bad day to post, because people are getting into the swing of things after falling from the weekend. And Friday, the last thing they want to do is to engage in content, because all they're thinking about is happy hour at 5 o'clock on Friday. I don't necessarily agree. I think business professionals, as a whole, are a different animal and a different breed. So they just see each day as a day. And if something is good, they're going to engage. But whatever people listening or watching this, whatever you want to adopt, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Now, what I would do on either Mondays or Tuesdays, I use a video software automation tool called Opus.Pro. My buddy, Evan Britton, who owns the website celebrity birthdays.com, I mean, he's killing it. He posted about it because one of his buddies is the one that developed the software. And basically, what it does is you can take your podcast video, so I do all my podcasting through video. And then I basically extract the audio. But what I do is I drag the MP4 file, which is the video format of your podcast. I throw it into Opus. And what Opus does, it's completely free. You don't need to do the paid. And what it does is it breaks it down into 10 to 15, 30 to 60 second video clips of your interview. It's completely bubble captioned, gives you some content that you can write with it. You can download those, save them into a Google driver, a Dropbox. And now you can start posting those videos every single week, Monday or Tuesday. Now, I usually theme it out. So if I have a podcast episode that's coming out that week where it came out that day, so depending upon your podcasting schedule, my podcast drop on Mondays and Thursdays. So I would post a video clip of my video podcast on Monday. And in the description, since it's only 30 to 60 seconds, I would say, check out the full interview or listen to the full interview here. And I would drop the hyperlink in the text of the description of the post and in the comments section below in case people miss it in the description. So that's how I would drive people to get more listens from my LinkedIn network. So start with a video. Either your Wednesday post, whether you're following Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday is a poll question. So market research is huge. This is where I get a lot of my podcast content from, because I asked my audience. So whatever your podcast is themed about, ask your audience simplistic pain point questions. So a simple question could be, do you struggle with marketing your business online? Yes, no other comment below. And now what you're doing is you're getting some ammunition, so now you're figuring out, okay, my network is struggling with marketing tips. I'm going to double down on some of these upcoming episodes and then start pushing people to listen to those. So get that market research, get the feedback from the people that you've invited into your network, which will further the future content that you're going to create for your podcast. Now, just like you alluded to as far as content for days, on Fridays is when you want to do either a LinkedIn article long form post or in my opinion, the best thing to do is have a LinkedIn newsletter. So you can have a themed LinkedIn newsletter that's tied to your podcast. So mine is called LinkedIn Tips and Updates, and it's completely themed to my podcast episodes. So every Friday, I release a new newsletter that's a written out version, and you can use a transcription tool like pod squeeze or otter.ai, and it'll transcribe your audio version of your podcast into written form. And then you can pump it into chat GPT and you can say shortness content into a LinkedIn article, it'll reformat it, you download it, edit it, and you throw it in there. Now, the beautiful thing about a LinkedIn newsletter is you can include hyperlinks. So at the end of the newsletter, if you want to listen to the full episode, click here, but here's the other beautiful thing about newsletters. LinkedIn, when you start a LinkedIn newsletter, they automatically invite every connection that you have to subscribe. So I have close to 8,000 subscribers might link to newsletter. So I have an 8,000 person audience every time I release that newsletter that I'm getting visibility with everything that I'm doing. The second thing that LinkedIn does that I think is just absolutely brilliant. Outside of inviting every new connection, every time your newsletter edition drops, LinkedIn emails, every single subscriber, your newsletter, including the hyperlink. So now, people are one click away from just going to iTunes or Spotify and listen to your podcast. And that's how you can theme everything out and keep it very simplistic, showcase your skill set, showcase your expertise, and get more people listening to your show. Incredible. I noticed that every post that you mentioned had some sort of media attached to it, right? One of them had a video, one of them had the poll, one of them had the newsletter. Did techs post do anything or do we always want to have some sort of media attached? So the Friday post, I would say, there's always going to be text above your video. So when you upload your video, it's going to say say something about this video. And that's where you would put, you know, maybe six or seven lines describing what that is, that's where you're called to actions going to go, your hashtags, and then they would watch and listen to the video. Same thing with your poll, you can put a little description of what the poll's about. And then on Friday, when you schedule your or post your newsletter edition, again, there's a space above it that says, what's this about? And you're going to give a little description. So there's always a descriptor that goes above your post. So it's not just a naked post that's going out there. There's always a little bit of a prelude to what people are going to either read, vote, or listen to. Excellent. Scott, this was probably one of the most action packs 25 minutes that I hadn't been showing a long time. I get it in quick. I get it in quick. Yeah, it's really, really impressive. If folks want to dive deeper with you, if they want to learn more about how they can grow their LinkedIn and learn other ways to grow, I know you're an expert in many different forms of marketing, what should they do? Well, you can find me on LinkedIn. That would be a great place. You can find me on family. Also, my podcast, which is doing extremely well. I'm just so proud of it. I'm about five years in now approaching 750,000 downloads lifetime. So the big mission this year is getting to a million downloads, which we're definitely on pace for. It's a great place. My wife and I do a lot of husband, wife, episodes together. We talk about marketing tips, but for people that are looking to leverage LinkedIn for their podcast, I do two episodes a week, either a solo episode or with my wife. And then I always interview a guest. Obviously, you're going to be on the show. You can find all the major platforms and it's called networking and marketing made simple. Or my website, scottairn.net, that's got everything that I'm doing and everything that I'm working on. So we'd love to connect. Excellent. Scott, thank you so much for joining us, trapping so much value. Just so grateful for you, man. Thanks. Thanks, Cap. Grateful for you. Appreciate the opportunity. My pleasure. That is going to do it for this episode of Grow the Show. Now, I have a quick favor to ask you. If you've ever gotten any value from this podcast and you haven't already, please leave us a five-star rating. And if you're feeling generous, a review in the app that you're using to hear my voice right now. It just takes a couple seconds, but it really goes a long way in helping us to share even more valuable growth and monetization tactics here on the show because it helps us land bigger guests. And it helps show the world that what we're doing here is actually valuable. So once again, if you've ever gotten any value from the show and you haven't already, please just take a moment. Leave us a five-star rating. Maybe a brief review on what type of value you've gotten and I will be eternally grateful. This episode was produced by me with post-production by podcast boutique. And if you want your show to be post-produced with quality, really freaking fast. And if you want to save yourself and your team tons of time working on your podcast, you should chat with podcast boutique. Just head to podcastboutique.com or click the link in the show notes and set up time with them because I spent no time editing this episode and neither should you. All right, that's going to do it. For a girl to show, my name is Kevin Schmittlin. I'll see you next time.