76: How to Use Social Media to Grow Your Podcast in 2022

This is Grow the Show, the podcast that helps you grow your podcast. My name is Kevin Schmidland, I am your podcast growth coach and I am excited today to share with you a training on how to use social media to grow your podcast in 2022. Now this is going to be a doozy of a training because we cover a lot. We go over how many social media platforms you should be on as a podcaster and which one is the most important today in today's social media landscape. We also go over a three-step framework for creating social media content that goes viral and helps your audience grow and will go over the three different types of social content that you can create for the purpose of growing your podcast and much more. I'm telling you this thing is chock full of knowledge. We also have some Q&A at the end as well because this training was done live in our free Grow the Show Facebook group just last week. We had several attendees, we had somewhere around 200 comments during the live and by the way the recording of the live training is still available in the Grow the Show Facebook group. So if you're not in there, hit the link in the show notes to join us because as you'll hear, there are some visual components of this training as well. But fear not, you still will get massive, massive value from this training here on the Grow the Show audio feed. And so without further ado, I am pleased to present to you how to use social media to grow your podcast in 2022. Enjoy the training. This episode of Grow the Show is sponsored by Riverside.fm, the leading platform to record studio quality podcasts. More than 70,000 other podcasters use Riverside, including myself, GuyRaz, GaryVee, Spotify, and even the New York Times. Riverside is not only great because it has unbelievably high recording quality regardless of your or your guest's internet quality, but it also gives you separate audio and video tracks for each person speaking. It's high tech but easy to use. Unlike Zoom, you don't have to have anything installed on your computer and your guests don't either. Did I mention that the audio quality is way better? If you're recording your interviews remotely, get off of Zoom now and hop into Riverside for your next interview. Your listeners will thank you. Head over to Riverside.fm and use code Grow that's GROW to get 60 free minutes of recording and 15% off a membership plan. The link is in the show notes. Hello, everybody. Welcome to our second ever Grow the Show live training. We are so excited to have everybody here for those of you who don't know me. My name is Catherine Nails. I'm the Grow the Show content manager, so I produce the podcasts. I send out all the emails a lot of times when you're hearing a message is coming from me. So I just kind of want to set a few ground rules before we get going. Kevin and I are going to have an awesome discussion about your podcast social media, specifically the types of posts that you should be making. And we are also going to be answering your questions throughout this training. So feel free to hop into the comments, ask any questions you want. I'll be in the comments as well as the Grow the Show team member, John, who is very knowledgeable, very awesome. So definitely give him a shout out. If you have any questions, any comments, let us know. So without further ado, here's Kevin. Kevin wanted to tell everybody a little bit more about what we're going to be talking about today. Absolutely. Thank you, Catherine. We are so pumped to be back here. Thank you everybody so much for joining. And yes, so today we're going to address something that we get questions about in this group in the Grow the Show accelerator coaching sessions pretty much everywhere I go. We get questions about social media. So how can podcasters use social media to grow their audience to get more people to listen to their podcasts, but without spending all of your time on social media? And in a way that actually works, right? So one of the most common questions that we get. And also one of the most common answers that I get when I ask podcasters, what are you currently doing to get more listeners to your podcast? One of the most common answers that I get is posting on social media. And generally those people that I'm talking to are not getting any downloads growth, which is why they're talking to me. And so clearly the way that most podcasters are trying to use social media to grow their audience is not effective. So that is what we are here to help with today with this live training. Now, Catherine is indeed here in the comments, John Ball as well, both of them super, super knowledgeable. So feel free to fire away your questions at the end of this session where with the extra time that we have, we're happy to do some Q&A. And Catherine also, as you are so good at doing, be sure to keep you on track and pipe in. If you have anything to add as I go here, because I do have a lot to go through. And so we are going to fire away and we are going to hop right in. So I'm going to go ahead and share my screen and start going at it here. So social media for podcasters, all right? So by the end of this conversation, you're going to know exactly number one, what platforms you should be on, number two, what content to post, what types of content to post on those platforms so that you can get the maximum audience growth and maximum listenership growth. And then number three, how to fit that all into your schedule as a podcaster, as a business owner, et cetera, et cetera. So let's dive in. Before we talk about, we're going to talk about a lot of stuff before we talk about what content to make, right? Because before we dive into the nitty gritty of what your content should look like in order to be successful, we first have to discuss. Okay, why are we even on social media? What role should this play in a podcaster's life? And how should we think about social media? And more specifically, I'm hoping to change the way that you think about social media so that you can have more success with social media. So overall, fundamentally, what does social media do for podcasters? It actually does three things. Now a lot of podcasters would answer that question and say, it should promote my podcast. Wrong. It should do three things for you. Number one, it allows you to interact with your audience that you already have. Number two, it allows you to remind audience members that you already have that you have new episodes. And number three, yes, it allows you to get new audience members via two things. The first thing is targeted daily engagement, which is our framework here at Grow the Show for how to grow an audience on a one to one manner, really efficiently, really effectively. And if you're doing it right in a really fun way, TDE, if you haven't heard of it before, it is our flagship. The episode nine of the Grow the Show podcast dives deep into exactly what that looks like and how to do that. And if this is the first time you're hearing about that, welcome aboard because clearly you're new here because I talk about TDE all the time, which is awesome. We're happy. Yeah. And the second way that is particularly now in the current social media landscape, the second way that social media can help you get new podcast listeners is via organic reach, aka, virality, right? So that's going to be the bulk of today's training when we talk about exactly what content to produce is going to talk about how you can do this. Now before we do that, a word of caution, specifically for podcasters. Number one, it is a lot of work to reach new people via social media, right? To reach specifically new listeners via social media because this strategy of audience of listeners should grow poses two challenges. Number one, the first challenge is that 50% of the people are roughly that you reach via social media, don't listen to podcasts on a regular basis, right? They are people who don't have podcasts listening as a regular part of their weekly routine. You are not going to convince them, I mean, you might, but I wouldn't try as a podcaster to convince somebody to listen to a podcast for the very first time. You can do that, but it's going to be, it's going to take a lot more energy than by getting people who already listen to podcasts to check out your show. So that's the first challenge is that half the people that you're going to reach don't listen to podcasts on a regular basis. And the second challenge is that for the 50% of people that you reach who do listen to podcasts on a regular basis, the challenge is when you reach them on social media, you're reaching them in a different context than when they are a podcast listener. And so think about yourself. When you're listening to podcasts, you're doing something, right? You're in a different part of your life. You might be commuting or working out or doing chores or cleaning or going for a walk or just putting it around the house, whatever it might be. You're in a different zone. You're in a different mental vibe, very different, in fact, then when you're scrolling on social media, on TikTok, on Instagram, on Twitter, on any of the social media platforms, in that case, you're usually on your phone and you're usually like killing time or you're waiting for something, right? And you're just looking for like little bite size pieces of dopamine of entertainment. And you're not really in the mood to stop what you're doing and go listen to a podcast. So you want to keep in mind that when you reach people on social media, you're reaching them then when they're in a different context than when they are in the context of being a podcast listener, the steps that they need to take between seeing your social media content. And then later, when they listen to podcasts, which is a regular part of their routine, you might be at the end of the day or maybe tomorrow morning, they have to remember that they saw your content. They have to hopefully have clicked around and subscribed to your show and their favorite podcasting app. There's just so many steps from the moment they see your content to the moment that they are actually listening to your podcast when they normally listen to podcasts. And so for that reason, I recommend that you don't expect people to look at a piece of content and then go listen to your podcast. It virtually never ever happens. So those are two challenges that you're going to face. And I know what you're thinking, my God, then why are we even using social media at all if it's that hard to get people to get more listeners via social media? It does pose these challenges. The benefit of social media is that it has changed the world and it has made it so that we can reach literally anybody at any time, anywhere in the world. So yes, it does have some challenges, but there's a reason why it is such a viable and valuable way to grow your online audience and to get more listeners to your podcasts. So given these couple challenges, I highly recommend two general principles. Number one, that you manage the amount of time that you spend on social media, right? So it's really, this is something that we all need work on, right? If you pull out the screen time app on your phone and you look at how much time you spent on social media, it's true for me. It's true for everyone. You're like, God, right? So I was looking at that. Uh-huh. Yeah. And so I encourage everyone to look at it today and see how much time you're spending on social media, which by the way, if you, if you tell me that you don't have time to make social media for your podcast, I'm going to make you show me your screen time app and I'll show you, you've got eight hours a week already on social media. You've got time or more, right? In a lot of cases, but either way, you want to manage the amount of time that you spend on social media for your podcast and ideally try to continuously manage it so that you hit the sweet spot between a, you're spending enough time on your social media presence so that it's effective and it's getting your audience to grow. I say a lot of people who are spending some time on social media, but not enough to get good at it and to get it to work. And so all that time is wasted. They're better off spending no time on social media, right? So there is a minimum effective amount of time for you to spend, but you also have to be careful that you don't spend so much time creating social media content and engaging with other people and worse, consuming social media content that it completely usurps your mission, critical podcast work, which includes number one, staying consistent, publishing your podcast content. That is the reason why you're here, right? So you don't want to forget that. Number two, prioritizing podcast listenership growth strategies that make it so that listeners discover you, number one, people who already listen to podcasts discover you and they discover you at the moment that they're already listening to a podcast or that they're about to. So you want to get that discovery moment to happen as close to that person already listening to a podcast as possible. So it's insanely easy for them to just flip over and start listening to yours. So for that, I recommend our framework targeted podcast pitching. Last month's Facebook live went deep into how to do that. Well, we've got episodes on the grow the show podcasts on how to do that. And so if that is not a part of your podcast growth strategy, I recommend starting that first before you optimize your social media presence. So I already said, you know, don't expect people to see one post and jump to downloading your podcast. It's a longer game than that. Ideally, the goal for your social media content that you post is to get them to follow you on that platform, not to jump all the way to listening to your 45 minute podcast episode. It's too big of a jump. That's like asking somebody on the first day to get married. Maybe somebody watching this did that and it worked, but it's really, really, really unlikely. And you don't want to bank your whole strategy off of it, right? So really quickly, just for anybody who might be interested in listening to that targeted podcast pitching, grow the show episode, that is episode six days, so that'll just make it a little easier for you to find it. Thank you, Catherine. Episode six, they will dive into TPP. So in summary, make sure that above all else, you are prioritizing podcast growth strategies that reach people who are number one, guaranteed to be podcast listeners. And number two, as close to the moment of being a podcast listener as possible, the best way to do that is by getting yourself and your show featured on other podcast feeds. But in addition to that, a great supplement and a great way to nurture your audience and stay in tune with your audience and grow your audience, blah, blah, blah, is social media. So let's dive. And the rest of this presentation is going to dive into how to make that work effectively and efficiently. So before we go into that, I keep saying before, before, before the first 40 minutes of this is just all the pre-work. But it's important for you to understand this stuff for the actual content to work. Right now, the social media landscape in 2022 is currently undergoing massive change. So for those of you who are on social media between 2016 and 2020, which is all of us, you know that in that time, we call that the social media winter because between 2016 and 2020, there wasn't really a lot of change in the social media landscape. Instagram was on top, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn were kind of below it. And that was that. And since Instagram was the top dog, it was really hard to get any organic growth. It was really hard to grow an audience organically on social media because Instagram was on top. There was no challengers. Everybody was spending all their time on Instagram. And Instagram had no reason to give you free audience without you paying for Instagram ads. Right. And so that's what they did. And that's why they were top dog. Enter TikTok around 2020. TikTok has started disrupting the entire social media presence, which is good for us creators. Why is that good? Well, the key difference that TikTok has made in the social media landscape is that TikTok has made it so that when you log on to TikTok and you start consuming content, the default view, the first thing that you see is your for you page, which means the first thing that you see when opening the app is content that is posted by people who you don't already follow. This is the first social media platform that did it that way. Every other social media platform in the past would only, you know, the default view was the content that people that you already follow posted, your Twitter timeline, your Facebook wall or whatever timeline, I think it was also timeline. Your Instagram feed, right. And so when you signed up for a Twitter account until recently, you would sign up. And if you didn't follow anybody, your feed was blank, they didn't show you anything. They said, you got to follow people, right? So what TikTok did was it flipped it on its head and said, Hey, we are going to show you content from creators that you don't already follow. And so now that's what everyone spends 400 hours a day doing is scrolling the for you page and seeing content from creators that they don't already follow. Actually, they flipped it where on TikTok, if you want to see content from people that you follow, you have to go to a different view. Whereas with Instagram, it used to be the other way around where you log in, you see your feed, which is content that you follow. And if you want to see content from accounts that you don't already follow, you had to go to the discover paint, right? So you had to go somewhere else and nobody ever went there. The same thing is true on TikTok. People really go to the following tab. They just stick on the for you page. So why is that so revolutionary for us? Well, if content is being showed to people on that platform that is posted by people that they don't follow, that means as a creator, if you post a piece of content, it's going to be shown to tons of people who don't already follow you and who as such, when seeing that content, we'll discover you for the first time. This is why 16 year olds can start posting TikToks of themselves dancing and have three million followers in a month, right? It's crazy. So that we can take advantage of that. And what's even better about this change that TikTok has made in the social media landscape is that because TikTok is eating up everyone's attention and very soon is going to be the most popular social media app, all the other platforms, Instagram and Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn and even YouTube are all scrambling to compete with TikTok so that they can hold on to the amount of attention that they already have. So what are they doing in order to make that happen? They are giving users organic reach. They are giving creators organic reach. All these platforms now in 2022, they weren't doing this in 2019 and even the beginning of 2020, they are now saying, come post your content on our platform and we will bring you audience. That is good for us. And the rest of this presentation is going to teach you how you can take advantage of that. So of all those platforms that I just mentioned, the big question that I can hear in your head is there's so many of those platforms, right? You're just named like six of them really quickly. Which social media platform should I be on? Do I need to be on all of them? And my answer to you is no. And that's a big mistake that I see podcasters make early on is trying to be everywhere all at once. And you would be forgiven for making that mistake because there's a lot of other gurus like me. We're saying, repurpose your content and put it everywhere. You want to be omnipresent. You have to be everywhere. It's totally not true. The only people who are saying that have gotten to an audience side where they can afford to be everywhere and be good on all of those platforms. For us, as we're still just building out our audience ourselves, what I recommend is the one to 10k rule, meaning if you're audience, not your followership, but your audience is below 10k, it would benefit you to focus all of your social media energy on one platform rather than trying to be on all of them at the same time. That's right. Avoid trying to be everywhere. You do not need to be omnipresent. You do not need to be on all platforms. And then yet, right? Yet, you can get to that point in the future. But a lot of times when podcasters are trying to be on all of the platforms, they've only got so much social media juice, right? You only have so much time and energy and ability to create social media content. So if you take that little time that you have and energy that you have and you split it among 10 different platforms, do you really think that your presence on that platform is going to be really good and really solid and effective where people are going to be like, this is great. I want to follow you. Oh, instead, it's the minimum amount of energy that you can put into it. And so the content all sucks, it's inconvenient and you don't have any followers on any platform. So yes, you have a profile on every platform, but you don't have a strong presence or any followers on that platform. So if you want to get followers on social media from the start, if you focus on one platform, doing it well, getting to know it and just being consistent with it, that platform will grow to 10K, even beyond that. And then you'll have the ability to invest in being on other platforms. So if you take one thing away from this training, let it be the one to 10K rule, focus on one platform until your audience surpasses 10,000 people, then you can worry about being omnipresent. But cool. I get that. That feels good. That's a relief. I don't have to try to be on every platform anymore, but which is the best one, though. How do I choose which one to be on? Well, to decide what your primary social media platform is as a podcaster, I recommend you choose the best combination of three things. Number one, a platform that your audience is actively using. Now, beware, this is this area is ripe with assumptions, right? Everyone's like, oh, my audience is on TikTok. Oh, my audience is on Facebook. How many people in your audience have you asked what platform they use on a regular basis? For most people, the answer is zero. It's just entirely an assumption and a generalization that you're making about your audience. The most common ones that I hear are generational thing. TikTok is just for kids. TikTok is kids dancing. No, it is not. Everyone is on TikTok. Facebook is just boomers. Nobody on Facebook anymore. Not true. Lots and lots of people are on Facebook. So beware. Don't make total assumptions pulling out of your, you know what about who's on what platform? You really ought to actually have conversations with people who are your specific target audience to see what platforms they consume on a regular basis, ask them, what, are you on Twitter? Are you on TikTok? What do you consume? Who are your favorite creators? And you will be surprised at how the assumptions that you're making about who's on what platform are totally based on nothing, right? So that's number one. Really quickly we have a great question about the one to 10k rule, I believe is what you called it. Jennifer was asking why is 10k people the magic number versus any other one? Because what I found is that it's, it's something where if you're able to get to 10k, most people who, who take that advice and heat it, don't try to get omnipresent after 10k. It's just a target that's far enough away for most people where they really do have to focus on that platform to get to that point. By the way, for TikTok, it's more like 100k. But if you have a goal of 10k, you're really going to have to do what I just recommended and focus on one platform in order to get to that point. And by getting to that 10k, you're going to be really, really, really good at that platform. And it's at that point in my experience that I see people are skilled enough with social media to be able to decide whether to continue to just go all in on that platform, which is what many people do or at that point to, you know, diversify. It's more of just a benchmark where 10k is difficult enough that you're going to have to work and you're going to have to challenge your understanding to get to that point. And once you do, then you're in better shape to decide whether to go omnipresent or not. It's not like, you know, if you have 9000 people in your audience, it's not going to work to go omnipresent. You can. It's just that is that magic number that I've found people if you shoot for that and you really focus on that. It gives you the ability to block out all of the noise of every, all these other people telling you. No, you got to be on Twitter and just like, nope, I'm just focusing on this till 10k. And then when you get to 10k, you are a social media servant where all those people are now asking you for advice and you can decide what to do from there, whether to go omnipresent or to stay on one platform. So hopefully that makes sense. That's a great, great, great question. So what platform should you choose? Number one, a platform that your audience is actively using. Number two, this is the fun one, a platform that you actually consume on a regular basis, right? You know, when you, let's say, I don't know, you're waiting in line at the grocery store. What platforms do you open first to scroll on? Is it Instagram? Is it TikTok? Is it Twitter? Right? Which platform do you spend the most time on as a consumer today? The reason why that is should play a role in what, and what platform you choose to be present on is that number one, it's just, it's going to be easier and more fun for you to be a creator on that platform because you consume it. You're going to be naturally better at making content that works on that platform because you will have spent so much time seeing what content works on that platform. And there are little subtleties on each platform, little subtleties that the user on that platform expects, right? So TikToks are a little bit different than Reels and Reels are a little bit different than shorts. And if you're not somebody who consumes one of those on a regular basis, you're not going to know what those differences are. So again, it's just going to be more fun because, you know, you consume that platform on a regular basis. It's going to be fun to make content on that platform. And so this is one that I see creators or podcasters really under index on. You know, they think I want to go where my audience is, which is good. But then they'll be like, okay, that means I got to be on LinkedIn. And it's somebody who has never, ever, ever been on LinkedIn before. And so if you've never spent any time consuming on LinkedIn, then you're probably not going to know what kind of content works and people enjoy, right? Because you're not a LinkedIn consumer. So I would actually worry more about this piece than the first piece because here's the truth about what platform your audience is actively using. No matter how niche your audience is, there are people in that audience that use TikTok. There are people in that audience that use Twitter or Instagram or Facebook or LinkedIn. So it's not like your audience is not on any of the other platforms. It's just, you know, they might skew towards one platform or the other, but the reality is they're on all of them. So and that's another reason why I recommend people go to 10k because whatever your niche audiences, I promise you, there are 10,000 people on that platform on every platform, right? And that you can reach 10,000 people on every platform. So yes, see what platform your audience is actively using, but more importantly, think of what platforms you consume on a regular basis and you'll have fun producing for. And then the third piece, those are the two most important pieces. The third piece to consider is if you're truly starting totally from scratch, I would recommend going for a platform that is growing where eyes are cheaper. So Instagram is shrinking. Eyes are very expensive on Instagram and Facebook right now. Eyes are very cheap on TikTok, on LinkedIn, on YouTube shorts. And so all other things equal. If I was starting totally from scratch, I would not pick Instagram today, but Instagram is not bad. Don't worry. If you're on Instagram, if that's your primary platform, that's okay. I'm not saying that you need to get off Instagram and Instagram is bad. What I'm saying is if you're starting totally from scratch, I would pick a platform that's kind of on the rise, but I will say that I know personally, people who I Travis Brown, a previous guest on Grow the Show, he's the founder of Poddex. He was featured on Grow the Show earlier this spring. And the week that he was featured, he had reached 10,000 followers on Instagram. He's been on Instagram for years. If you look at his profile now, he has surpassed I think 110K. So he's absolutely blown up on Instagram this summer. Likewise, I have another friend who's gone from 2,000 followers to 25,000 followers on Instagram in the past three months. I'm not saying Instagram is bad. There's still tons of organic reach on there, but all things equal. If I were starting completely from scratch today and building an audience, I would not try to build it on Instagram. I would build it on another platform that's a little bit cheaper and a little bit newer. Really quickly, we actually had a great question from somebody. What happens when you reach that 10K, should you then expand and focus on more platforms? Should you continue to go all in on the one? Good question. So we're still on the 10K thing. All good. Yeah. So when you reach that 10K, you have the option of what to do. And again, I give you that goal because when you do that, when you get to that point and you get yourself to 10,000 followers on a given platform, you're going to be in a really good chance. You're going to be in a good place where you'll know what to do. You're going to have so much experience with social media and it's no longer going to be this like, ooh, gender, say, wow, like, oh, this person gets social media. I don't get social media. If you focus on getting to 10K on one platform, by the time you get there, you will get it. So my answer to you is you'll know what to do. You will know whether to keep going past 10K and just continue focusing on that one platform or to diversify off of other platforms. If you want more concrete tactical advice, if, let's say, you know, you are a growth show accelerator student and you come onto coaching and you're like, Kevin, I reach 10K. What do I do next? In most cases, I'm going to recommend that you just stick with that one platform because it's almost always better to do more of something that you know. And that's working and that you're good at than to start doing brand new things. And as entrepreneurs, we tend to love brand new shiny things and we're always starting, you know, oh, I'm going to get on Instagram now. I'm going to get on TikTok now. Whereas if you took that energy and just put it back into the thing that's already working, you'll have more, you will amplify your reach even further because you get that platform. So the, you know, the, the non complicated or the complicated answer is you will be in a good place aside at that point. But in most cases, the simple answer is I would usually recommend just sticking with that one sticking with with what's working and keeping your whole thing simple. As far as when you do get to omnipresent, it's that level where you really have started to tap out what you can do on one platform. And usually at that point, you can afford to hire team members who can help you be on other platforms. So I really, I mean, I don't know if I've seen a solo creator, solo printer that hasn't hired any help be omnipresent in a way that's effective. The people who are truly omnipresent almost always have some sort of vendor that's helping them on another platform or at least they've hired, you know, some sort of freelancer or something to help them take content everywhere. So if you really, really, really want tactical advice, I would stick with one platform until you can hire somebody to help you be on other platforms because there's just, it's next to impossible for one person to do a great job on every platform. So use that as your benchmark. But again, I highly recommend you just focus on 10k. And when you get to that 10k point, then you can decide and shoot, come ask me, tag me here in the Facebook group and I'll, I'll let you know where you should go. So which social media platform should we choose 30 minutes in yet? And we haven't even talked about the content, but hopefully you understand that this foundational knowledge is going to make you way more effective and efficient with the content that you're actually producing. And it's going to make it work way better so that the stuff that we're about to talk about is going to be way easier. Focusing on all this foundational stuff, although it can be a bit tedious to pays off and dividends at the end and ultimately make all of your content much more effective. If you're on the right platform, I've really taken some time to think about that. It's true. And if you're somebody who can really dig into the fundamentals of something and is not one of those people that's just like, give me the hack, give me the strategy. I don't have time. Those people are never successful because they don't put the time and energy into understanding the fundamentals of things you, on the other hand, are going to be successful because you now know this. So you've picked one platform. You said, okay, Kev, I'm in. I'm going to go all in on Instagram or TikTok or Twitter or whatever it is. You understand that time management is important with social media. What content do I make? Here we come to the meat and potatoes. So before we get to the meat and potatoes, I understand that what the purpose of each individual piece of social media content is, right? So let's say, let's talk Instagram reels. So if you're making a reel this week to promote your podcast, right? And if I said to you, hey, what is the purpose of that reel that you're about to post this week? If you say to get people to listen to my podcast, the reel is probably not going to be effective, right? It's probably not going to work. The purpose of that reel should be to delight the viewer who sees the reel, right? It should be good. It should be entertaining. If you are on social media to strictly promote, it is not going to work. It's going to be ineffective, right? If you are instead on social media to participate in social media, then it'll work. Participate in the platform, right? So better said, you promote by participating. You don't promote by promoting, right? A fun, a fundamental piece. This is the biggest mistake podcasters make with social media. So I can't tell you how many times I see a headshot of the guest, right? So I'm on social, I follow a podcaster and they post a square headshot of the guest and say, new episode with so and so available now. I don't know who that person is. So I just have a picture of a random person. I don't know in my social media feed. I don't want that. You don't want that, right? I'm like, ah, get that out of here. I don't know who that is, right? So it doesn't work. Likewise, if you tweet something that says, I am so honored to have interviewed Joe Shmo, it was an incredible conversation and I'm so excited to share it with everybody. Now available on all platforms, you've talked about yourself the whole time and you haven't said anything about what the listener is going to get out of that episode and why they should take 30, 45, 60 minutes of their day to listen to you and Joe Shmo talk, right? So if that's how you're promoting, that's why nobody's seeing it and it's not working, right? Because that doesn't delight the listener because they don't give a crap about that you're honored to talk about Joe Shmo, they want to know what's in it for them. The reason, like I said, these types of posts don't work and the reason most podcasters posts don't work because they don't know this foundational stuff that we've been talking about is that people who are on social media are there to be entertained. They are not there. They did not follow you so that you can spam them with about your podcast. That's not why they followed you. That's not why they're on social media. They are on social media scientifically for a dopamine hit. Really, really recommend the book called Dopamine Nation. We were just having a conversation about that this morning in the Grow the Show Company Slack channel about how it really, really shows you how we are wired and social media wires us for dopamine. But you need to understand that social media is there to like people are on there for their daily drip of dopamine. They want every single piece of content that they consume to give them a happiness hit, like a little, ooh, I really like that. You know what that feels like when you see good content, you're like, ah, I really like that. That's a dopamine hit. So you saying new episode available now does not give them any dopamine, right? What does entertaining them, making them laugh, right, educating them, teaching them something, right? How to content on social media, I'm always amazed at how really, really pervasive, how to content is everyone's just all step one, do this, step two, do that. And I'm like, man, people really love learning stuff. It's cool. It's actually pretty encouraging. We're getting into content. I actually want to make sure we adjust this question because it's asked pretty early on. And I feel like you might talk about this later, but I want to make sure this person gets their question asked before they get to head out. What do we feel about audiograms? This is always a contentious subject. That's a good, that's a good question. And I actually don't have it in, in this piece. So audiograms are no longer effective. So they were really effective in like 2018, 2019 when nobody had seen anything. It was, I mean, in 2018 or 2017 is when Instagram introduced video on the feed, right? There were no videos on Instagram for the longest time. It's hard for us to imagine now, but back in 2018, I believe it was, Instagram introduced video. And so if you posted an audiogram with like the little thing moving and the captions, like that was new, people were like, whoa, what is this? And so that worked for the summer of 2018. It killed. And then everyone that just got cemented in podcasters minds, audiograms, audiograms. And there's all these tools. Make audiograms. They're not effective. They haven't been effective for years. And so if you're making them, I would actually recommend that you stop. The only thing that I've seen effective today for repurposing podcast content and using the audio from the podcast when you don't have video is when I've seen people include like B-roll, right? So they have a video editor put together B-roll into a video of what the person's talking about. And let's be honest, that's complicated and pretty expensive. So I would actually recommend doing just some sort of text or image post over an audiogram and I would recommend stopping to doing audiograms. If you're somebody who is crushing it with audiograms right now, let me know because I would love to see it. I just have not seen a single case of somebody being really successful in audiograms being really effective in a long time. So hopefully that's not discouraging. And I give you permission to stop making them and make, instead, what I'm about to tell you how to make. Great question, Catherine, because I was not going to address that. So I really, really, really advise you ask. And actually we had another really great one that I want to make sure we had addressed before continuing on. So we're just sort of asking if we could address YouTube or should we be treating that like a social media platform should be not or is a subscriber a follower? How are we, how are we looking at that? So the thing about YouTube is it is in a state of flux right now. You remember how before I said there's a couple, there's a couple purposes, a couple things that social media does for you, interaction, reminders and get new audience, right? So YouTube doesn't really, like, people do comment on YouTube, but you can't DM anybody. So it's really hard to interact. So YouTube doesn't give you this. YouTube certainly can remind your audience of new episodes because you can post the episodes fully on YouTube, although people don't really watch full episodes of podcasts. I shouldn't say that. A lot of people do, but it's less than people who listen to them on listening apps. So you can do that. YouTube can do, particularly the YouTube shorts, is help you get new audience via organic reach, specifically via search terms. So that's a little bit complicated. We're not going to go into the scope of that. I generally recommend if you're going to pick a social media platform that you pick not YouTube that you pick TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, groups or LinkedIn, generally my recommendation. YouTube can be a really, really effective growth strategy, but it's a little bit outside the scope of what we're talking about. For the rest of this conversation, we're going to talk about those other platforms and then maybe a training in the future we can talk because YouTube has just got some nuance and it's this thing that like straddles all these different lines a little bit different. So it's a good question. It's a good question. YouTube is indeed the elephant in the room when it comes to podcasting. So for the rest of this conversation, we're talking the other, the truly social media platforms because YouTube, I wouldn't really consider it to be social media. I'm sure somebody will argue with me, but I don't care. So what type of content on social media gives people a dopamine hit? Being entertained, laughing, right? This was really entertaining, right? Being educated, how to content, being empowered. So motivational content is really good. Controversy, right? So anything that either is strongly against someone's views or strongly for someone's views, they like both of them. And so don't be afraid to stir it up and also surprise and like shock and all, like oh my gosh. I was just saying, yeah, there have been like actual like universities and studies that show kind of exactly what you said, where sort of the more emotional or polarized the caption or headline or whatever is, the more people are going to interact with it and the more people are going to watch what you're you're putting out there. Yep. And is it true that we're as polarized as ever? Yep. Is that scary? Like is that probably bad? Yep. We're not going to change. So we might as well just own it, right? So if your content doesn't do all of the one of these things, educate them, entertain them, empower them, spark some controversy, surprise or shock and all, it will be suppressed by the algorithm, the stuff that you post. So a headshot of somebody, some stranger that nobody knows is going to be suppressed by the algorithm because it doesn't do these things. Usually an audiogram is not engaging enough visually. So people scroll past it and so the algorithm suppresses it. The algorithm is not this bugaboo thing that is there to ruin your life. It is simply there and people are like, how do I please the algorithm? The algorithm is simply there to detect whether content delights people, whether people like it, whether they consume it and whether they engage with it. So the algorithm is just a proxy for what human beings like. So if the algorithm is holding you back, it's not because it hates you. It's because your content does not delight the viewers of the platform, right? It's that simple, right? These platforms, they are incentivized against showing content that is not really good because if the content isn't good, people leave and they stop consuming stuff. That's why TikTok is so addicting because it just shows you the stuff that's like so, so, so does all of these things. And that's why it's so hard to put the darn platform down. So instead, if your social media posts, right, in relation to your podcast is delightful in a vacuum, it will be effective, right? People are going to be like, oh my gosh, that was great. Follow, right? So how will you know if it's delightful? Well, you want to make it so that your post is valuable in a vacuum, which is what that term I just used, which basically just means by itself. So think about it. If somebody for whatever your social media content is promoting your podcast, if somebody were to see that piece of content and literally nothing else from you ever again, it's the only piece of content that they ever see, will they have been entertained? Will they have a positive view of you? Or will it just be like, they just want me to listen to their podcast, right? So how can you make delightful social media posts? Well, there's a three step framework to think about called hook story call to action. I've adapted this from, I think it was Russell Branson hook story offer, but the three chunks of really good social media content are the hook, the actual content itself. So the story that you tell in the content and then the call to action at the end. And so if you can get good at those three pieces, you're going to be that person in your life where people are like, oh, can you teach me how you get social media? You must have just always gotten it, right? It's like, no, I just, I just understand now how it works. So the hook is the first part and is honestly the most important part. The hook of your content needs to be juicy and something that compels the user to stick around for the whole piece of content. This is true for video and for text, right? So we're going to show examples in a little bit of reels, of TikToks, of Twitter threads, and they all have compelling hooks, right? That convinces people to consume the rest of the content. And if you have ever listened to me before, you've heard me say the same thing is required for your podcast episode. The first 10% of your podcast episode needs to convince the listener to listen to the rest of it, right? The same thing is true for your social media content, although on a much more compressed scale, the first 10% of your content must convince them to listen to the rest. So for a video, that's the first like three seconds. For a Twitter thread, it's the first tweet, right? For video content in particular, the number of views that your content gets is directly correlated to the success of the hook. So you might have the best video that's ever been created. But if you have a week hook, nobody will see it. And the algorithm will suppress it. Why? Because think about when you consume short-form video. You see it for like a split second and then you scroll past. And if someone said, why does you scroll past that? You wouldn't even be able to say because it's such an automatic thing in your brain. And so in order to have a compelling hook, you need your content to hook them people automatically, right? So yes, and I was going to say, yeah, we discovered that really recently. I think you got to talk about it that way. Sure we found. Yeah, so we found that I think Kevin went we did an audit on our Instagram reels and forgive me if I'm getting the details incorrect. But Kevin found that if he used the word podcast or podcasters within the first two or three seconds, our views were way higher than if he didn't literally. It was the difference between several hundred views on reels and several thousand. Just if I use the word podcast or podcaster in the first three seconds, regardless of the rest of the content. If I said that word within the first three seconds, we got five to eight thousand views. If I didn't, we got five hundred to a thousand. That's how important the hook is, right? So it should tug on the listener by or sorry, not the listener. The viewer, I'm used to talking about podcasts. It should tug on the viewer by calling out a pain point that they have, a fear that they have, a hope or a dream that they have. Just an identity of their selves, right? So like podcasters and identity that they hold. A celebrity person or brand that they already know about. So that's why you'll see people in short-term videos like show the McDonald's logo or like a celebrity space in their hook. And ideally that's someone that the viewer loves or hates. Again, it doesn't matter on which side of the extremities it is. If they feel strongly about it, they're going to tune in any controversial opinion that you have that they may strongly agree or strongly disagree with or just anything that's like shock or awe. So those things, if they are in your hook, at that point, if you hook them with that, you got them. And at that point, the rest of it is just your content. And mediocre content can do well with a great hook, but really great content will not do well if it doesn't have a great hook. Text hooks are particularly effective in short-form video as well, right? So like a text that appears on the screen, I'm going to show you examples in a minute of what that looks like. A lot of people are consuming content on mute and also it's way faster to read something than to listen to it. And sometimes the difference between reading a hook and hearing it is enough of a difference for them to scroll past it. So if you've got a hook locked in again, I'm going to show you specific examples in a moment. Then you move on to the story. This is going to be the main part of the content itself. It should be ideally fairly heavily edited. The not a microsecond of time is wasted or fluffy. It's just we don't have time. People will scroll past it if they're slough. And ideally, it is complete. It adds value on its own. You don't rely on them to go listen to your podcasts for that piece to be valuable. And it either entertains, it educates or empowers the viewer. Once the content is complete, then you want to have a call to action. And this is something that a lot of content creators miss and skip. Having a concise, clear call to action at the end of your content is what's going to get the person to take that next step. And so in most cases for short from video, I recommend just saying, follow me for more, whatever you do. So you'll see me at the end of real estate, follow me for more podcast growth and monetization tips, right? It's a call to action. People go, oh, and they follow me, right? If you don't tell them, they're not going to do it. They just scroll past. In Twitter threads, the CTA happens in the last tweet of the thread. And LinkedIn text posts, it's the last line. So really, if you think about the framework for all your social media content, whether it's image or text or video, is first 10% is a hook to get them hooked. The middle 80% is your content. The last 10% is your call to action. And again, it's the same thing with your podcast episodes as well. So ideally, you already know how to use that framework. So as I go, and we get now finally, 47 minutes in, to the three types of social media content for you to publish to be successful as a podcaster, or I shouldn't say, you don't have to publish this stuff to be successful as a podcaster. I'm trying to speak in fewer absolutes, but it'll make it a better chance of being successful as a podcaster, in my opinion. So look for this hook story CTA shape in the examples that we're about to dive into. So what are those three types of podcast social media content that you can publish to grow your audience on social media? Well, the first type is what I call summary content. The second is repurpose content. This is the one that I'm sure everybody's been jammed down your throat that you need to do. You don't need to do it. You can do it. You don't have to do it. And personal content that has nothing to do with your podcast. So the first one, summary content, is where you make social media content that is native to the platform, right? So it is not repurposed, but it summarizes the value that your podcast episode provides to its listenership, right? And so the way that you do that is when you have a full episode, you outline the value that that episode provides, right? So what did you say in it? Like what value did you provide? What did you talk about? What did you teach? What controversial opinion did you discuss? Whatever it might be, then make a post on that platform that provides the same value, right? So if you had a podcast episode where you talked about how much your local quarterback for your NFL team sucks, and you have your three points as to why that is, then make a quick short form video of you outlining those three points. And then at the end in the call to action, you can say, check out this episode of the So-and-So podcast for more or something like that, right? At the end, like I said, you call to action, you shout out that the viewer can get more by listening to your podcast episode. This type of social media podcast content is more time-consuming, actually, arguably than repurposing. I see a lot of people wasting their time trying to repurpose content in the name of saving time. But this can be time-consuming, but is by far the most effective. And here's the key. It's going to give you the highest time ROI, right? So it'll take more time for sure, but it's going to give you a much bigger return on that time. Whereas taking a little bit of time to repurpose is going to get you a little return, a little bit more time to create native content is going to give you a outsized, massive return. So if you can do it, I highly recommend doing it. And so it's also good, by the way, you're going to get you the most followers on that social media platform. So. And as we're going through this, I know we had a couple of questions regarding Instagram posts versus Instagram Reels. And really quickly, Eli Kulp just asked what we mean by repurpose content. And by repurpose content, we mean, for example, Kevin and I usually film when Kevin is recording our podcast. And then we'll take a little clip from what we filmed from the podcast recording and publish that as a reel. So essentially taking one piece of content that you recorded for one platform and turning it into a piece of content for another platform. Exactly. Great point. I made the mistake of assuming here that people would know what that is. And not everybody does. So it's totally fine. So I'm going to show you two examples of summary content. So the first one is my own. And so I interviewed Ariel, this in black, on the Grow the Show podcast. She is an incredible, incredible follow on Twitter. She is a podcast influencer who is really, really good at growing shows. So if you're on Twitter and you don't follow Ariel, I highly recommend that you do. She came on to the Grow the Show podcast to discuss a lot of the stuff that we're talking about today, how to be really effective on social media. And a lot of what I'm teaching you today, I heard from her. And so when I published that episode, instead of making a tweet that said, I was really honored today to interview at Ariel, listen to that episode. Link is here to listen, which nobody would have clicked on. I did this instead and made an entire Twitter thread summarizing the stuff that we talked about on the show. And so the first tweet is a hook, right? I'm regularly inspired by Ariel's social media presence is informative, entertaining, and consistent. So I wanted to know how can other podcasters emulate her and also have killer socials? To my surprise, she didn't share what to do. She shared what not to do. You're hooked, right? You want to read the rest of that thread. You're like, oh, whoa, what do I, what should I not do? So I map out what she shared on the podcast episode, right? And then in the last tweet, it's a call to action. She maps them out with me this, she actually, so that the second last tweet I say, she actually has more don'ts and some do's to share. She maps them out with me this week on Grow the Show. Listen if you'd like to completely revamp your podcast social media presence and then it calls to action people to the show. This was one of the most successful and effective pieces of social media content to get new listeners that I have ever posted and it took me less time. Then it just took me like 10 minutes to write this out. We had a question regarding incentives for call to action. So is the incentive simply that they're learning from the episode? I know somebody was asking, you know, if you could watch this episode and enter to win a prize or submit your question and get a shout out for an episode or do we need all those incentives or are people just going to? Yeah, so I think that's a great question. I think it's much better to, so look at how I incentivize people here. Listen if you'd like to completely revamp your podcast social media presence and grow more spending less time. To me, that's a much stronger incentive by listen and you'll enter a chance to win a $100 Amazon gift card, right? That's like, you know, like if you have to bribe people to listen to the show, they're not going to listen, right? So the incentive should ideally be the value of the content. Like the incentive is what the listener is going to get. It's the what's in it for me, W-I-F-M factor. That's the incentive. That's why people will actually spend time listening to your show. So you can, like, you know, if you want to hear how to make a contest, like a one-time contest work where you give away something to your audience, listen to our episode of Grow the Show with Luis Diaz. He talks about how you can use contests to get to yourself featured in the top 100 on Apple podcasts. But, you know, like I said, I have never done an incentive based thing like that or like a giveaway because I just feel like I would rather learn how to incentivize somebody to listen to the podcast because they want what the podcast is going to give them more so than they're listening so that they can get some other thing, you know? I would argue that getting good at that and learning how to incentivize people to listen to the show and having the show be the incentive. Like it's not about getting people to listen to your show. Your, that's not what your goal is here. Your goal is to get people to want to listen to your show. It's a subtle difference, but it is the difference between struggling forever and then eventually giving up on podcasting and then or growing and becoming a successful podcast with that grows and monetized. So I'm going to pause on no more questions. So let me get through the rest of this because we're coming up on time and then afterwards I can take the rest of the questions but gathering your new and great job because like I said at the beginning, I tend to just go so it's good that I'm so glad that you have interrupted me along the way. But for the rest of the way, let's stick with this piece here so I can show everybody what's going on. And so that is a Twitter thread that's really effective again, it's native. By the way, REL retweeted this to her audience, which was, she retweeted it. It got tons and tons and tons of views. Like it was funny because I interviewed her for the show and I was like, all right, I'm going to do what she said and did what she said for her episode and it absolutely exploded. So it was really, really, really cool. And you can check out this thread. It's linked here in this document, which at the end of this piece, I'm going to tell you how you can get this document. So stick around for that. The other one that I want to show you is a TikTok, it's a short form video by a fellow named Adam Connevers. So he had a TV show called Adam Ruins Everything. Please, please, please, if you disagree with Adam on his stances, please see past that because I'm not here to spark a debate. But what I am here to show you is how effective it can be to create native content to promote an episode of something. So Adam is not doing it here for the purposes of a podcast. He's doing it to promote a specific episode of his new Netflix show. But watch number one, the hook, the story and the CTA and watch how in this two minute video, which I'll skip through it a little bit, but watch how in this video, Adam provides to you the content of the episode in a little bit of it, just like I did in this thread. And then at the end, calls to action you to watch the episode. And this is what you want to emulate if you are making short form video that is summary content. So let's first, and I go watch your volume. I've noticed that tech companies like Apple and Google love to take credit for all of the incredible inventions that have transformed our lives. But you know what? They didn't invent a lot of that shit. The truth is that the re- Sorry about the cursing. I'm sorry, I forgot to worry me at this cursing. Hopefully there's not kids around. My apologies, I missed that. So he just hooked you. And he said all the tech companies say that they invented all these things, but it was actually someone else. So they've, he sparked your curiosity here. Then he goes through and explains that in actuality, you know, a lot of that stuff was invented by the military and not these tech companies and that these tech companies take credit for it. And then at the end of the piece, again, the last 10%. We the taxpayers and Uncle Sam. But look, we're just scratching the surface here. If you want to learn more about all of the incredible ways that the government affects our lives, both good and bad, check out my new show, The G word on Netflix. It's airing now. Go watch it. Now, I don't want to hear that you don't have time to do this. This guy makes millions of dollars and has tons of people on a team. And he's got a Netflix show and he still took the time to do this himself, right? Still took the time to do it himself. So hook, he goes through a lot of information and then calls the action you to watch the episode of the show. If you're able to implement that with your short video, it'll be really effective. So that's already good. We're going over time. So Catherine, tell the team, we're going to miss our 11 o'clock meeting. Because this is super good. Yeah, they're all here anyway. So we'll stick around more than an hour and answer questions for sure, because now I'm cooking. So that is an example of summary content where you take the content that you go over in your episode and you actually summarize it in a native way on your social media platform of choice, right? The second option is to repurpose your content. And that's where you actually use recorded content from the podcast episode itself as your social media content. Now, you can absolutely do that and it could work. However, I see a couple of things that people generally miss when trying to do this in a way that makes it totally not work. So the way that I recommend repurposing your content is this. I'm going to stop sharing and share a different app for a minute. But while you're editing your podcast episode, or even you can do this while you're recording, but it's hard to think about it all at the same time, when your guest says something that's really juicy, really good and something that will probably do well on social media, take note of it, right? And note, okay, this is the piece that we want to share that we want to repurpose about this episode. And then what you'll do is you'll take that bit, you'll edit it separately for social media. So you'll trim it up so it's really, really choppy and is really, really concise. There's no fluff. And then ideally craft a hook for that piece that is custom to the platform that you're posting on. I'm going to show you an example in just a minute. You want that hook to ideally tee up the content so that when people start consuming it, they actually don't know that it's repurposed yet. And that's so that if you just take a clip from your interview and just publish that clip, then and you put it on say, you know, Instagram Reels, then what's happens is people are going to see that real and they're just going to be flopped into the middle of an interview that they don't know what it's about. They might know you the creator or they might not if it's organic. So it might be just being thrown into a conversation with two complete strangers and they have no idea what those strangers are talking about. So they're not going to watch that video. They're like, what is this? And they scroll past, right? But if you take an extra couple minutes, just to record what I call a native hook, then people will actually stick around. And so first I'm going to show you an example of that. Now I'm going to show you how we made this real in Descript, which is if you haven't heard of Descript, I highly, highly recommend it. But this is the real that I'm going to show you real quick, how we made and this is what it looks like. Caster who wants to grow your audience quickly, the quickest way to do that is to get yourself featured on other podcasts. Here's why. Conversation and that long form content, the ability for you to engage with someone they already trust just gives you a little bit more credibility in their eyes. So they can quickly decide whether or not you are for them or not for them. And so for me, so as you can see, this is repurposed, right? So this is content from the podcast interview that I have repurposed into a real. But if I had just plopped this onto my feed and just this is Angie Trueblood, an incredible, incredible podcast, gasting expert, Angie's great. But if I just threw a video of Angie into my social feed and all my followers don't know who Angie is or what she looks like, they're like, who is this person and they scroll past, right? But instead I recorded that quick hook at the beginning that's native. Notice I said, if you're a podcaster who wants to grow an audience quickly, the quickest way to do that is to get yourself featured on other podcasts. Here's why. You're hooked, right? You're like, how? Why? Oh my gosh. And then you actually consume that piece of repurposed content. And so here's how we actually produce that. Here's how we actually did that here at Grow the Show. So whenever we do a podcast interview, this is the first time you're seeing this, we've got plenty of materials on what Descript is and how it can totally, totally revamp your production process. But this is what a final episode of Grow the Show looks like before I record voiceovers. So all this blue text is the voiceover text that Catherine and I have collaborated on, mostly Catherine. And then you can actually see my voiceover recordings in here as well. But if you scroll down, you'll see a piece that's highlighted. And so when we highlight something in our Descript composition for the Grow the Show podcast, that means this is something that's probably going to do really well on social media. So while Catherine was editing this episode after I recorded it with Angie, and here you can see the raw video of Angie talking. She highlighted this, then pulled it out into a separate Descript composition that said Angie real. So we pulled that piece out. Here's that piece that she highlighted. And then I went in and recorded that really, really quick hook, right? And so here's that recording. If you're a podcaster who wants to grow your audience quickly, the quick editing team managed to edit out that I was ridiculously sunburned in this video, this way to do that is to get yourself featured on other podcasts. Here's why. You're literally getting in front of someone who is already a podcaster. We then took this and sent it over to a video editor who's on the Grow the Show team who turned that into this final piece of content. If you like added the captions and edited up and made it 916, if you don't have an editor, that's okay, you can totally and absolutely do the same thing here in Descript. It's really, really easy to do so. It takes maybe 20 minutes to make a real. So that is how you can repurpose into short form video. If you add that native hook, it'll work really well. Here's two other examples. Here's another way. So Halataha is a mentor of mine, really, really, really, incredibly strong podcaster who's got an unbelievable social media presence. And so here's a reel that she made that's repurposed with a native hook that's a little different. It's not her talking like mine was where I said, you're a podcaster, you need to listen to this. Watch how it's all visual. All right, you see that? So real quick, it was just her, like, I don't know, smiling and then putting her hand on the camera and the text said, why you need a theme song? And then it goes into the repurposed content from the episode. If she had just dropped this video, it might not perform as well. However, there is a way, I'm gonna let you in on a secret. There is a way that you can just drop interview content into repurposed video and it do well. The key is you need to have your guests say something that works as a hook. And here's an example of Halat doing that. I'll show you the first one. This is the one that Halat had as a native hook. And so there you go, boom, why you need a theme song? She didn't even have to talk in that. In fact, she probably recorded that little thing where she puts her hand on and then sends it to the team and the team put why you need a theme song. If you're so low, you can do that yourself really easily. But if I refresh, watch it real quick. Remember, this is a native hook, boom. Now we're into the repurposed content. Justin are the ones that are going to impact you in a positive or a negative. Now, so that's an example of a native hook with no talking text only, which can work really, really well. Here is a ninja example of having a great hook without having to add a native hook, right? Where you actually have what the guest says as the hook. This is a little bit harder to do because you need the guest to say like one sentence that will hook people really well. But if they do, you can absolutely use that as the hook. And here's the hack that Halat taught me. You can actually have them when a guest like has a really great response to something. You can have them repeat the response. And you just say, wait a minute, so what are the three steps or like, wait, can you say that again? They'll be like, yes. And they'll say it again. And the second time they say it, it'll be way more concise. And usually the first thing they say will be a great hook. So here's an example of where Halat did that. She had a guest actually repeat something. The repeat version was edited out of the final episode, but she used this as the social media content. I think it's going to replace hard work. It would be beautiful if something could and there was a magic wand, but there isn't. You've got to immerse yourself in the suck. And it sucks. I did not. Right, so it's all about that hook. Nothing's going to replace hard work, right? So that's something that's not that controversial, but it's something that clearly works because this piece of content got like 25,000 views. So the last piece real quickly before we get the questions, so really the two ways to create social media content that's based on your podcast episode, number one, summary content is going to be the most effective because it's going to be completely native to the platform that you're on. Repurpose content can be really, really effective and efficient. If you do make sure that you have that custom hook and a custom call to action at the end, and then last, one thing that I slept on for a long time is personal content. Content that has nothing to do with your podcast, right? So like I said, something that I slept on for a while, we recently started doing that on my social media feed. So I started posting about things that I like in life, like my dog and electronic music, me DJing, my life when I was in the corporate nine to five before I became a full-time podcaster and my fitness journey, acapella music. And like I said, I slept on this for a long time that it might be obvious to you guys, but what I found is that when you provide those extra dimensions of yourself outside of what you talk about on your podcast, it just makes you more well-rounded as a person and it makes your audience just want to associate themselves with you more, like it just makes you more of a human and makes you stronger as like a person in their eyes. So this one, like I said, I just wanted to include it. It's simple, just make content that's about your life. And the message here is not everything you post has to promote your podcast or to be about your podcast. And if you post, if less of a percentage, if less than 100% of the stuff that you post is in relation to your podcast, then you'll actually get more results than if 100% of the stuff that you post is about in relation to your podcast. So I know this was a lot. And there's a hundred comments on the live. This is crazy. So number one, if you want this document, if you want this outline with all of these links, comment, grow on this post now and John or someone else from the Grow the Show team, but likely John will reach out to you and send you the link to this outline. So if you want this outline for your own notes and you want all these links and examples, comment, grow on this post, and we will DM that link to you. And with that, I can take, let's take questions for 10 more minutes. I know we're way over time, so what the heck? Let's do 10 minutes of Q&A. So I'm going to start with one and I kind of answered this in the chat already, but I think you could probably answer a little bit more eloquently. And it was back when you were repurposing our podcast episode into a Twitter thread, where you had this long thread that went through the podcast episode. And we had a question from someone that said, you're giving away that much information, are people actually going to want to go and listen to the podcast then? Wonderful, wonderful question. I'm so glad it was asked. Ideally, you're giving away, like you should give so much away that you feel nervous, that you feel nervous, that people are not going to listen to the podcast, right? And if you don't, then people are not going to get enough value from the post itself to trust that listening to your podcast is worth their time. So think of it as free samples outside of a bakery, right? So if you had a bakery and let's say your podcast is, like someone listening to your podcast is someone going inside to the bakery, you know, buy in a dozen cookies, have in a coffee, spend it some time with you, that's what you want. And so there's people walking out on the street all the time. So what do you do? You bring out some free samples. Now let me ask you this, are you going to give them free samples that doesn't of a cookie that doesn't have all the ingredients? Are you going to say like, I'm not going to put any sugar or chocolate chips in this cookie because I want them to go inside to get the full thing, right? Or are you going to give them free samples of your mediocre cookie or your worst cookie? Do you think that's going to make them want to go inside and spend time with you? No, you're going to give free samples of the app of your just flagship recipe best cookie that blows their mind. They'll take a bite and be like, whoa, and then they go immediately inside and buy a dozen. It's the same thing here. So if you hold back on your free stuff, and if you hold back on your content, people are going to think that that's how good your stuff is. So that's why with your free stuff, and this is true for you, coaches out there, give away as much as you possibly can and give away your best stuff to the point where you feel nervous. You're like, man, I'm really giving away the farm here. That is the point where people are like, whoa, this is good. I want more from you. So wonderful question. And I'm going to push you to give away so much from the episode that you have that fear. The thing that you can do within that content to actually make sure that you get people to listen is by just like sparking curiosity. So I'll dive into the thread example real quick. Note how in this thread, I gave away so much information. And just follow me at Kevin Schmidland. You can find this thread. The link is in this document. So just comment, grow, and you can get the link to dive into this thread. Notice that incentive that I say at the end. So big thanks to Ari for sharing her podcast social media don'ts. In summary, and so I give all the information, I summarize it. Number one, don't try to be everywhere. Number two, don't try to make your profile about your show. Number three, don't publish content that isn't valuable by itself. And then I say she actually has more don'ts and some do's to share in addition to what I just shared. And she maps them out with me on this episode. So if you want more, if you'd like to completely revamp your social presence and grow more, listen to this episode. And what happens here is people read this huge, incredibly valuable thread. It is the best cookie that I can bake. And they're like, whoa. So you've got more cookies inside. And I say, yes, there's more in this episode. They're like, cool, show me the door. Here's my credit card, right? In this example, it's cool. I'm going to see that episode up tonight so I can get more of this incredible value. Absolutely fantastic question. Yes, exactly. I love that answer. And I think that's such a great analogy. We have a ton of great questions coming in. So I am going to get going. I know we had one. And I think we kind of talked about this about the difference between Instagram Reels and posts and sort of when you should be using each one. Yeah, so this is something where Instagram is panicking right now. So if you notice, Instagram is making crazy changes to the platform each and every week because TikTok is eating up their share of our attention so much. So like at this, if you asked me in 2019 or 2020, like what type of content works the best on Instagram, I could confidently tell you the answer to that because it didn't change much for a long time. These days, it changes seemingly week to week, which is, I know what you're thinking. I'm going to have to keep up with this. So the answer is right now, like the posts that get by far the most organic reach and what Instagram is prioritizing is Reels. Reels is the thing that's getting shown to tons and tons of new people and it's Instagram's answer to try to compete with TikTok and pull back the share of our attention that TikTok is taking from them. That doesn't mean that posts don't work anymore, like image posts. But the CEO of Instagram recently put out a video that basically straight up said, we are prioritizing video for now on. Reels is where this platform is going. And so while we just had a conversation literally yesterday with my social media team where we expressed that we were kind of surprised to see that my feed posts were doing well as well as they were. So feed posts can definitely work, but it actually totally pales in comparison to what Reels are doing. And feed posts from my understanding, again, I'm a podcast expert. So there are people who definitely know more about social media than I do. But from my understanding right now, Reels are the types of content that are being shown to the most new people. And so the Reels would be the content to post if you want new people to discover you and posts, grid posts are what you post when you want your current audience to hear from you. So for us, a lot of my personal content goes in the form of posts and images because the people who see that are more likely to be people who already follow me. And so they kind of want that. Whereas the Reels where I'm spitting value and I'm like, again, afraid of how much I'm giving away are the ones that get shown to the most new people who then discover me and follow me. It doesn't make sense. Yeah, exactly. That was a great answer. We have two more questions. I think queued up that are about social media and we actually have one or two that aren't. But I'm going to prioritize the social media ones for now. And I'm sorry. Can you guys hear? There's somebody drilling like right outside my window. Can't hear it at all. Thanks to your short M7. The mic that we recommend here at Grow the Show. Oh, yeah. So I'm happy because I can barely hear myself. So fabulous. Yeah, sure is amazing. Our next question is how you would suggest going about including personal content when you have a separate account for your podcast. So this person has an account for their business and then an account for their podcast. And is there a different way that they should go about posting their personal content or what? The thing is, if you make a social media account that's about a podcast, they're generally less effective because people are going to know why that account exists. Unless your account, like for example, if I was still making my original podcast called Philly Ho, I had a separate account for that, right? Because it wouldn't make sense for the show it was about Philadelphia, right? It was about the doers thinkers and performers of Philadelphia, basically the movers and shakers. And so I did have a separate account for that. But what I learned in the tail end of my time is I still put personal content on the Philly Ho Instagram. Like I still had posts about me and like I'll share my screen again real quick and show you like this post here was an image of me preparing to do to actually film a commercial for a live Philly Ho event that I was gonna do in a couple of weeks, this was back in 2019. And you know, after spending all of my social media juice promoting the Philly Ho podcast on the Philly Ho Instagram, I started posting stuff like this about me and it started crushing on the podcast specific Instagram. So you still want to include that because people don't just listen to your podcasts for your content, they also listen for you, the host, like they listen because they like you. So if you separate and the other thing that I'll add is like, if your podcast like if you have a business account and then that business runs your podcast, I would take the podcast and fold it into the business account and not have a separate account specifically for the podcast because ideally, the social media account isn't there for the podcast, it's there for the content, right? So like if I had, let's say I had a podcast that's about meal prep, right? So let's say I owned a meal prep company and I had a podcast where on the podcast, I talked through recipes on how you can do meal prep and have healthy meals in a short amount of time and that was my podcast or I interviewed people about that. My social media presence would be I would have the social media account for that meal prepping business and I would make the posts about how to meal prep, tips and tricks on meal prep, things like that and they would go and some of them will be repurposed from my podcast that has audio content about it. Some of them would be totally native but they would all go on that one account and when people follow that account, they're gonna sit. The account is there, it exists to provide meal prep content not to get people to listen to my meal prep podcast. So I throw that out there, I don't know if the question asker has that type of thing but I just wanna say I do recommend simplifying putting your content all under one umbrella on social media and regardless of whether it's your business, your podcast or a personal account, including personal content to you. Somebody was asking how or if you would recommend using paid ads and socials, I know I kinda directed them toward the Marine Nicole episode because she is so cool. She did all of the paid ads on Facebook for the Canadian Olympic Committee or something like that. So she has a ton of experience and I would recommend listening to that episode but Kevin, I was wondering if you had anything quick, you could add. So if you do decide that you want to use paid social media ads to grow your podcast, then you can definitely get learn from that episode with Murray. However, in almost all cases, I don't recommend that for podcasters. If you have budget to spend on growing your audience, I would not buy social media ads, I would buy ads on other podcasts or in the podcast listening apps. So your paid spend ideally is within the podcasting world because remember what I said at the beginning of this training that when you reach people on social media, half the people you reach don't listen to podcasts and are never gonna listen to your podcasts, even if they are within your target audience. And the other half of the people that you reach who do listen to podcasts, they are not, they're like scrolling social media and the steps that it would take for them to see a social media piece of content or even a social media ad. And then they have to remember the name of your show, open up their podcast listening app, search the name of your show, hit subscribe, close it all, wait six hours until they listen to podcasts when they're on their commute, then remember that they saw your ad earlier, click on your episode, find one that they like, press play and listen. The odds that they're gonna do that, the odds that they're gonna remember in six hours when they're commuting or working out or doing chores, when they actually listen to podcasts as a part of their routine is low. And the odds are even lower that they're gonna seek out your episode, even if they do remember seeing your ad, they're gonna seek out your episode and listen to that instead of listening to one of their favorite shows when the Joe Rogan show pops up and they're like, right, instead of going to find a podcast that they learned about six hours earlier, like it just, it doesn't work. And so you have to be really, really, really, really savvy with social media ads to make it work to grow podcast listenership. And here's the thing, those who do that aren't actually getting people from a social media ad to a podcast listener. They are getting people to join an email list from the social media ad. And then on the email list, they're getting people to listen to your podcast. So it's a complicated thing. Social media ads can be an absolute money pit, Facebook ads are as expensive as ever. And so if you've got money to spend as a podcaster, I almost categorically don't recommend boosting posts or using social media advertisements to do that because I have yet to find somebody who actually got an ROI on that and didn't just lose all of that money. First of all, the first thing I recommend you doing is targeted podcast pitching, right? Getting you and yourself featured on other podcasts, do that first, then the ones that work really well, you can go to them and say, hey, podcaster, how much would it cost for me to advertise on your show for a month? And they'll be like 50 bucks and you're like, great. And you can get 5,000 listeners for 50 bucks instead of getting no listeners for who knows how many hundreds of thousands of dollars make, trying to figure out how to get social media ads to work. So I almost categorically don't recommend doing that because it's so complicated. And while it's a little less defined how to spend money within the podcast world, it's just way, way more bang for your buck. Absolutely, that is fantastic. Answer is always and really quickly, Kevin, just so I can moderate and decide which questions we're gonna really address here about how much time do I think we're gonna hang out? Well, let's do till 11.30, we can do seven more minutes. All right, cool, we have some time. All right, all right. So we did have a question about creating a Facebook group or a social media group for your podcasts and how to grow up because this person is having some trouble getting engagement in the group. So I know I mentioned in the comments, making sure you're in the right, you know, it doesn't necessarily have to be a Facebook group, but we do recommend the online community thing. So I was wanting to speak a little bit more about that. Totally, so it sounds like someone has a community already and they're struggling to get engagement with it. Yes, cool. Yeah, and I think they specifically have a Facebook group. So I'm not sure though who their audience is or if that would be the better option. So for this, I'm going to recommend, of course, an episode of my own podcast, right? So it's called how to build a community around your podcast with Yuval Yarden. We published it June 3rd of last year, it's episode number 17. Yuval is an absolute community subant. So she is, I believe the CEO of a startup around building community. And so she joined and by the way, this blog post fantastically written by the one and only Catherine Nails who's here on the call, walks through how to do that. And this image here is the one that I usually recommend for people who are not getting engagement in their Facebook group. Usually those people are doing this. They're trying to do this. They're posting, post, post, post, post. And they use the Facebook group as their personal feed. And they imagine that the Facebook group is them on stage giving content, posting and posting and posting and nobody interacts. In order for you to have a successful growing Facebook group, you want more of this where people are interacting with each other. Now in the early days of the Facebook group, that's, it's admittedly hard to make that happen. And you do have to work a little bit harder to make that happen. And for that, like just imagine your Facebook group is like throwing a party, right? So if you've ever thrown a party before, let's say you invite 50 people to your Halloween party. Well, what happens when you throw that party? Well, you say, okay, the party's going to start at 8 p.m. 8 p.m. rolls around. You're ready to go. Your house is empty. It's all clean. It's decorated for the party. And people start showing up. What's it like in those first 15 minutes when like three people have showed up and all three of those people don't know each other? It's like super awkward, right? And they're there and they're just kind of standing around waiting for the party to start. That's when you have to work the hardest as the host of the party. You start conversations. Let me take your code. Jim, have you met Katie, right? Oh, Jim, you guys would so get along. Jim, you were just telling you earlier about blah, blah, blah. Katie, what do you think about that? As the host, you're like getting these people to talk to be friends, they start talking. You run out of the other person. You get them to start talking to each other. But then eventually a magical thing happens. More people join the party. More people join the party. And suddenly you look around and your house is full with people who are a vibe and the music is loud. People are having a great time. Everyone's chattering. And you as the host kind of just sit back and let the party do its job. It's the same thing with your Facebook group. So the reason why people generally don't have engagement early on is because of that. It's because you have a few people in there. They really don't know each other. They're kind of feeling awkward. It's quiet. They don't want to be the first person to step up and speak. And so as the host of the party, as the leader of the Facebook group, you want to post content. Yes, yes, but not like this. You want every once in a while, maybe post a piece of content, but then tag the people that are in it. Katie, what do you think about this post? Or you might even go, I might even DM Katie and be like, hey, I just found this really great article. Could you post this in the Facebook group? And then other people will see somebody other than you posting, you tag them to bring them into the conversation. Don't tag everyone in the group in the comments, but just tag a few people, say, hey, I really want to get your take on this and start the conversation. So if you want to dive deep into more of a framework of how to make that happen, episode 17 of the Grow the Show podcast is what's going to help with that because you've all is the one who taught me all of this stuff. I believe she created this graphic, but that's usually why a Facebook group isn't growing. And so, like I said, you want to, in the early stages, just like throwing a party, it's more work. It's a pain in the neck and everyone has talked to each other. But eventually, the kite starts to go into the air and you can kind of sit back. And everyone starts talking to each other, which is exactly what you want. Two more things to wrap this up. Number one, and this one's going to be quick. I'll start the quick one. Do you have just wrap and fire off the top of your head? Any podcasters you think have social media that people can go to inspiration? So I think Halataha is the first one that comes to mind. If you want to see a really over-the-top example of native content to promote a podcast, look at the planet money feed. They make incredible like TikToks and videos. It's just totally overkill. But it's a good, extreme example of taking content and putting it online and that's native to that platform. Even though the podcast feed is there to promote a podcast, right? So that's another one off the top of my head. I think regardless of how you feel about what he says, Gary Vaynerchuk is somebody who has an army of like 20-year-olds who all understands social media really well. And so whenever I'm trying to see what's working currently in social media, I just look at what he's doing. I don't necessarily copy what he's doing because he's at a much higher level than I am. But by looking at how he shapes his content, I take a lot from that and I'm able to emulate the shape of the content and how repurpose it is versus how native it is. If I'm, there's another one I think, Amy. I mean, Arielle, to that list, especially for Twitter. Arielle's really good for Twitter, yeah. That's a good point. Yeah, I mean, I think that's a good list. That's a fun one. Yeah, if I remember any, I'll post them in the group. Exactly, all right. One final question and it was, should you use, and I've actually never seen this done, so I'd be interested to see your response. Should you use your social media to put out a post saying you are open to sponsorships? Should you interact with sponsors or your social media at all? You can. I mean, I'm not going to say you shouldn't. You can. I would say the most. So if you're ready to get sponsors, I would first put a call on your actual podcast, more so than your social media, because for most podcasters, their social media audience is actually smaller than their podcasting audience, not everyone. There's actually a lot of social media influencers who have the exact opposite problem. But wherever your audience is strongest, that's where I would do the call for sponsors. And so in most cases, like if I was a podcaster, I would put a little ad, like you never drive past the billboard, and it says advertise on this billboard. Call this number, right? So the billboard used the billboard to say advertise here, right? So I would do the same thing with my podcast, and instead have an ad on my podcast that advertises advertising on my podcast, because your first advertisers almost always come from either your audience or past guests of the show. So really, if I was trying to get my first sponsor, I think it'd be more efficient for me to first reach out to either past guests of the show, or people who I know know me, or in my audience, who have businesses and might want to sponsor for my specific audience, I would go there first before posting on social media. Again, I'm not saying you shouldn't do that, but I think it would be more effective to put an ad on your podcast, or reach out individually to past guests or your audience to solicit your first sponsors. Yeah, and don't we have, I know I keep promoting these, rather the show episodes in the comments, but your questions are so amazing, because they're aligning with some of our previous episodes. So you have an episode and forgive me, Kevin, I forget who's with that talks all about Billy Thor. Yeah, it talks all about creating relationships with sponsors, how to do it, how to handle it. So I think Aaron asked that, if Aaron you want to check it out, I'll find the number and put it in the comments, because that one, if you're looking to make sponsor relationships or create sponsor relationships, that is the episode for you. So I've given you guys a lot of homework today. Well, that is going to do it for today. So once again, if you want the outline that we just shared, comment, if you haven't already, comment, grow in the comments, you're gonna hear from our team member, John Ball. Absolute, amazing podcaster who will reach out to you and get you the link to this document, just to refresh here's what it looks like. We've already got tons of podcasters in here getting value. There are links to examples, and also you have all of my notes here as well. If you have any other questions about this, feel free also to stick them in the comments here on this, if you're watching us after the fact, if you're watching the replay, you can still comment, grow, and you can still ask questions in the comments, and myself and the team will be here in the Grow the Show Facebook group, answering questions as much as you want. And then finally, if there's another training that you want us to do, because we're doing these monthly now here in the Grow the Show Facebook group. If there's another training you want to see, let us know as well, because the next one will be in October, and we would love to know what you want to be trained on. So let us know of that. And finally, finally, listen to the Grow the Show podcast, because it's gonna answer all these questions for you before you even have the chance to ask me. So here's a huge, huge thanks to Catherine Catherine. Thank you so much for doing an incredible job. I'm seeing an answering question. Thank you, Kevin. So there's I want to have flew by. I know, right? We went over by 30 minutes. That's just what we do here at Grow the Show. So hope everybody got value. Thank you so freaking much. Have a great weekend, and we will see you in the next one. Bye everyone. Bye.