232 | Podcast Growth Tips That Actually Work (Listener Q&A)

This is Grow the Show, the podcast that helps you grow your podcast. My name is Kev Michael and I am your podcast growth coach. And today I'm going to answer several questions that you probably have about growing and monetizing a podcast here in 2025. So a couple weeks ago I emailed my email list asking for questions that you have. I've selected a few that I think you, the person who hears my voice right now, probably has as well and I'm going to answer them rapid fire. So if you want to be on the Grow the Show email list, you should check out either my masterclass at growtheshow.com slash masterclass or you can go to 12 days of podcast growth.com. In both of those ways, you're going to get dedicated training on how to grow and monetize your podcast and you'll also be on the email list, which is how these people got the opportunity to ask me questions. So let's dive in. Lance asks, why isn't my podcast growing even when I have high profile guests? Well, that's because high profile guests do virtually nothing to grow your show. And in fact, when you have a high profile guest on your show, they do less to try to grow their episode of your podcast than somebody who doesn't have as high of a profile because that high profile guest has been on a bajillion podcasts. So they're not going to lift a finger to tell their audience that they were on your show. Because if they did that, then every week they would be sending out five messages to their audience saying, hey, go listen to me on this podcast. Now go listen to me on this podcast. Now go listen to me on this podcast. And by the way, odds are you probably ask them questions that they have been asked a million times and that they have already answered a million times. So if you want your guests to share, first of all, you have to make your episode different. Secondly, the best way to get show growth out of having high profile guests is either by making your show a YouTube show and using that high profile guest in the packaging of your episodes. So that's the title and the thumbnail or making short form content with that person's name and likeness. So you take advantage of high profile guests through the algorithms by posting on social media or YouTube and take an advantage of the algorithm who will, if the person is high profile enough, show your stuff to the people who like that person. But other than that, high profile guests don't do anything to grow your show. Just remember this, the guest gets the audience growth, not the host. They came to your podcast to get your audience. They did not come on your podcast to give you their audience. Remember that. Stephanie asks, how can I get over the mindset block of feeling like my simple talking head podcast setup isn't good enough compared to others with fancy sets and lighting? Well, Stephanie, I totally hear you there. What I have discovered after spending tens of thousands of dollars on a fancy lighting setup is that it does nothing. It does almost nothing to grow your show. In fact, if anything, it slows you down because once you have a fancy setup, you suddenly refuse to record any content unless you're in your fancy setup and you don't want to be in your fancy setup unless, you know, you've showered and everything looks perfect. So it actually creates more resistance towards recording, which is a problem. And for a lot of podcasters, it makes them put out less stuff. It makes you create less, which is not good. The fact of the matter is, if you have a unique show, if you are speaking to a specific avatar and your show makes a specific promise where people are like, hey, I listen to Stephanie show because this is what I get out of it. And I don't get that from any other podcast, then it does not matter what your setup looks like. The only time you have to compete on setup is if you're saying the same things that everybody else is saying. So if on your podcast, you are giving chat UBT advice or you are regurgitating things that other people have already said, then yes, the only way you're going to get people to pay attention to you is by WhizBang is by having a fancy setup. That's where people compete. So if you're having the same guests as everyone else and you're just talking about the same things and you're not sharing anything new, any new perspectives or any new angles, then yeah, then you're going to lose to someone who's saying the same thing that you're saying, but in a fancier setup. But the way to make yourself absolutely immune to setup is by making a unique show that is people's favorite show where they're like, I don't even care what it looks like. It's what Stephanie is saying, not how Stephanie looks. James asks, what could be the reason a podcast that publishes five episodes a week for nearly a year is still getting little traction? Well, James, the thing is traction has nothing to do with how long you have been podcasting. And in fact, Joseph asks, what might be the reasons a podcaster who's been producing content for five years doing all the right things and content and promotion is still not seeing the expected growth or audience numbers? So James is like, what the heck? It's been a year. Joseph's like, what the heck? It's been five years. And I joke you not. I've talked to people who have been doing it for 20 years and have no growth. Meanwhile, if you go on the podcast charts right now, you can see people who have been podcasting for a couple of weeks and have tons of growth. And no, they did not pay thousands of thousands of dollars to cheat their way to the top. What they did differently is that they actually did things right. So Joseph, if your show has not grown, you have not been doing the right things in content and promotions. Sorry to tell you that. But if your show has been being published for five years and it hasn't grown, that means you're not doing something right. And it's going to be one of these three things. Number one, you may not have a clear and unique premise. That is the number one problem that I see. I see this with people who are just starting as content creators. I see this in people who are millionaires who have sold multiple companies, who have been content creators in other mediums for a long time. This is the epidemic. You have a podcast, but it is not immediately clear to the potential listener who it's for specifically and what they're going to get out of it specifically. Number two is that you might not be retaining people. So I do occasionally see it that you have a clear, unique premise. But when people click on your show, it's just not good. You're not able to hold people's attention. Your show meanders. You might be talking about the weather. You don't cut to the chase. You may have earned someone's attention, but you didn't keep it because you just bored people. They stopped listening. They weren't getting something that was relevant to them. They weren't getting something that was unique. The show just wasn't good enough to keep them around. Or number three, and another really, really common one is you aren't successfully using one of the only three ways to grow your audience. There are only three ways to grow your audience. Way number one is algorithmically. So you as a podcaster have to learn and get good at an algorithm. Just one, either the Instagram algorithm, the YouTube algorithm, the TikTok algorithm, the Facebook algorithm, the LinkedIn algorithm, maybe there's a couple that I'm forgetting, but you pick one of those and get really good at growing your audience on that platform every single day. Algorithms are really good at taking your content and showing it to the right person. So I recommend everybody pick one algorithm and be like, for the next year, I'm going to get really good at growing my audience on this algorithm. Now you may notice none of the things that I mentioned are Apple podcasts Spotify or any of the podcast listening apps. That is true. And that is because they don't have algorithms. And this is why you are all struggling so much to grow your shows is because you are putting content out there and it's not being shown to anybody because there's no algorithm that's there to show your content to anyone. So if you put a podcast on Spotify, that's like putting your phone number in the phone book. Your phone number has been in the phone book your whole life has anybody called you randomly. No, those are directories. They are not discovery engines. So you have to take advantage of one of the discovery engines. That's number one. Number two is you can grow your audience collaboratively. That's when you find people who have already built the audience that you want and you get them to tell their audience to go consume your stuff. The most common way to do that is podcast guesting podcast, guesting is a little overcrowded right now. It's a little, you know, overdone because now people can just send AI pitches all over the place. So podcasts hosts have, you know, close their eyes and close their ears to pitches because they're just completely overwhelmed with crappy AI pitches. So it's a little tough right now. But if you want to do that, what I recommend you do is instead of sending 50 email pitches, find a creator of a podcast on social media and DM them and start a conversation and start a relationship with them. Start commenting on their stuff, you know, start sharing their stuff, become a valued member of their audience, have some interactions with them. And then at a certain point say, hey, you know, do you take podcast guest nominations? Is there any way I could shamelessly nominate myself? You know, do you do collaborations? Whatever it might be. You get someone who's already done the work to build an audience to give you some of theirs. Note, once again, that is not inviting them on your show because the guest gets the audience not the host. The third way to grow your audience is literally just hand-to-hand combat direct. You are DMing people every single day. Listen to my podcast. Listen to my podcast. I include that for completeness. I don't generally recommend it. But if you are like, I'm not a social media person, I don't want to do YouTube. I don't know who to collaborate with. Then your only remaining option is to DM your podcast to everybody who you come across. If you don't want to do that, then your show's just not going to grow because you have to pick one of those three things. There is no other option. And if your show is not growing right now, it's because you're not successfully doing one of those three things. Full stop. I say stop listening to episodes of Grow the Show until you start doing one of those things. And if you are trying to do one of those things right now, it's just not working yet. And that just means you haven't learned how to do it yet. And so that is the challenge for you to solve. Okay. So next Ernie asks, how do we promote ourselves without seeing pushy or overbearing? So I do this one next because I just mentioned the hand-to-hand combat piece. Here's the thing. If you want people to consume your stuff, you have to promote it. Nobody else is going to promote it for you. So you have to promote yourself. The way that you do that is instead of thinking of it as promoting yourself, you are promoting your show. You aren't promoting yourself. You are promoting your show. You are not your podcast. If your show is good, and if you can convey what people will get out of it, then it becomes way easier to promote your show because you aren't promoting yourself. You just happen to be the host. You are talking about what they can get out of their show. So for me, when I go to a conference, I don't say I can help you grow your podcast. Do you want me to help you grow your podcast? You should talk to me. I can help you grow your podcast. Can you imagine if somebody did that to you? Yes, you can because if you're on LinkedIn, people DM you that all the time and you decline and block them quicker than you can't even think. But if I instead said my podcast grows other people's podcasts. So people listen to my podcast when they want to grow. And over the past several years, several thousand people have been able to grow their show based on my show's episodes. They'll be like, oh my gosh, what's it called? Where can I get the link? I didn't say anything about me. And I didn't say you should listen to my podcast. I simply spoke about the value that my podcast provides. So that's why I say you need to get really clear behind who is your show for and what is it going to do for people? Not oh, I interview successful people on the show. It's oh, I have a podcast that uncovers the moments where successful people became successful so that the people who hear it can find that moment in their own life. Again, people are going to be like, whoa, I want to do that. What is the show called? Do you see the difference? The next question is from Ralph who asks, how can I get people to download my free action guide from my podcast? It is the same answer, Ralph. You have to talk about what the action guide will do for them. So what you want to say is if you are somebody who is struggling with pain and you would rather finally start taking action on where you want to be, I created an action guide for you that's going to make it really easy in three steps. All you're going to have to do is this, this and this. And so if that sounds interesting to you and you're looking to finally take action in a way that isn't as grindy as what you've been trying so far, then just go to link this link in the show notes and you'll be able to download my free action guide. It's a simple PDF that you'll be able to read in just a couple of minutes and you'll finally have the plan that you've been waiting for. So if that sounds interesting to you, go ahead and grab my free action guide. The link is in the show notes. So do you see how I talked about the benefits? I talk about what they got. I talk about how easy it was. So if you're asking, how can I get people to download my free action guide? That sounds so foresee. How can I get people to do this? They're not doing it because you haven't made them want to do it. A better question to ask is how can I get people to want to download my free action guide? That is the key Ralph. All right. So the last question I'm going to address today is from Raj who asks for the cover artwork. Is it better to have my picture or just a design with no picture? And what's funny about this is if you've ever consumed my content in the past, I have said don't include your picture on it. Don't include your picture. It looks bad. Well, the tides have turned a little bit. And if you go to the podcast charts, you'll see that a lot of the shows have people's pictures on it. And the reason behind that is because now more so than ever, we live in a personal brand world. There's a lot of reasons behind that. Maybe I'll make another episode in the future that explains that. But people are looking to connect with other people. There's a lot of AI slop out there. And so what is really growing online is when a person is attached to a brand. So I do generally now recommend including a picture of yourself on your podcast artwork. However, the key is that it is a professional well-lit picture of yourself that goes well with the background. The mistake that people make here is they grab a random Facebook profile picture of themselves. They use the Canva Magic Eraser tool to Photoshop them out and they just drop this horribly photoshopped not so great headshot of themselves onto podcast artwork with clip art text. And the whole thing looks like it was put together for five dollars by a VA from Upwork. It looks cheap. It looks really amateur. And so in the past, the reason why I generally recommend people don't add a picture of themselves is because they're not good designers. And a lot of times their designers are not good designers. Their cover artwork looks really bad. And so it's hard to grow their show. So if you can get a great well-lit professional photo of yourself that matches the tone of your show and yes, use it on your cover artwork. But if you're not, if you don't have that, it is okay. You can still rock and roll with a really, really good podcast logo. Above all else, you want to keep your podcast artwork simple and really easy to read if it's small. Because remember, it's going to be a thumbnail. People are going to see it really small in their apps and you want them to be able to get what they need out of it from that. So this was a rapid fire Q&A episode of Grow the Show audio only. This is just for you. This was not for the YouTube feed. If you have any more questions that you would like me to address in a future Q&A episode, just send them along to podcast at Grow the Show.com and you may have your question answered in a future episode. So that's going to do it. My name is Kev Michael. I am your podcast growth coach and I will see you in the next one real quick before you go. If you're a podcaster trying to grow on YouTube and you're still spending hours editing or you're working with a team that just cleans up the audio and calls it a day, you need to check out podcast boutique. They've been my go to production team for over five years. And now they've built something that's tailor made for YouTube first podcasters. It's called record and forget and it's exactly what it sounds like. You record your episode, send them the raw files and they take it from there. High quality audio and video editing, titles, thumbnails, descriptions, show notes, uploads, clips, everything. But here's what makes them different. They don't just polish the content. They help you script your content, cut the fluff out, shorten your episodes and increase viewer retention. They help you script your content, trim the fat, shorten your episodes and increase viewer retention, which is the number one factor in YouTube growth right now. And because they're in lockstep with me, anytime I uncover a tactic that helps podcasts grow and monetize, especially on YouTube, they implement it for their other clients too. So if you're still DIYing post production or you're not seeing results from your current team, go to podcastboutique.com and tell them that I send you. All right, I'll see you next time.