Should You Use Your Personal Social Media Account for TDE?

Today, I want to quickly answer a question that I get all the time about TDE targeted daily engagement, which is our framework for how to grow your online presence and grow your podcast totally for free, 15 minutes a day via social media. Now right now, I'm not going to explain how to do TDE, how that works, you can refer to either episode eight of the Grow the Show podcast or our YouTube video about that if you want to learn how to do TDE, but I am going to answer a question that I get all the time from podcasters doing targeted daily engagement, which is this, should you engage with potential and future listeners of your podcast via a personal social media account or a brand social media account? And so if you don't know me, my name is Kevin Schmittland, I'm a seven figure podcaster, I've got more than 250 podcasters in my coaching program and more than 15,000 podcasters in my audience. And so what I have learned through helping literally thousands of podcasters to grow their audience via social media is that the answer is this, in most cases, most, not all, in most cases, it is more beneficial to use a personal account when engaging with potential and current and future listeners via social media. And here's why. On social media, people are very, very, very attuned to and wary of being promoted to, right? You see social media ads all the time. And just in general, people are wary of engaging with brands because they know that there is some sort of ulterior motive, right? So if your social media is coming at somebody and messaging them and it says, the Grow your business podcast as the handle, that person's going to know, well, this person is probably using this social media account in order to get me to listen to a podcast, right? Now they may or may not be actually interested in that, but just the fact that you trip their self-promotion alarm is enough for some people to not engage with you. Now this is especially true on Twitter and Facebook Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. I highly, highly, highly recommend that you use a personal person account to participate and to promote your podcast on Instagram. I really, highly recommend you use a personal account unless your podcast is about a topic that is really, really recognizable. That is a brand name in itself, like a city or Marvel or Disney or sports team or something like that. In that case, you can make the Instagram account the brand of the podcast name and people will, you know, are likely to engage with it. But especially on Facebook, above all else, I do not at all recommend that you try to get new podcast listeners via a Facebook business page, not through engagement, not through posting, Facebook business pages, unless you are paying for Facebook ads are going to do nothing to grow your podcast. So steer clear of them. So that is my overall advice on whether to engage via a personal or business account on social media when and doubt personal account. And by the way, you also don't need to use the personal account that you have been using to post pictures of your family and your interests and your hobbies for the past 10 years. You can start a new personal account, but as the host of the podcast, right? And that account only posts about the topic that your podcast is about. This is different than a personal account that posts pictures of your kids and pictures of you with the brewery on Saturdays, your podcast listeners may find that interesting. But especially when you're initially building an audience, that's just going to clutter up the feed. So overall, I recommend that you go with a personal account to do targeted engagement and to promote your podcast on social media. Now I am not saying that you cannot grow a podcast via a brand account on social media. It's possible. Sure, I'm not saying it doesn't work. I'm just saying that in my experience, helping more than 15,000 podcasters via targeted daily engagement, I see folks have better results with personal accounts. So for best results, use a personal account. And while we're here talking about how to maximize the throughput of your social media, bringing how to maximize the amount of people who discover you and then become podcast listeners. Remember that the purpose of your social media profile should not appear to a stranger to be to promote your podcast. So I don't recommend having podcast in your handle. And I also don't recommend making the content that you posted that account only. Go listen to the podcast. New episode now, link in bio. So while we're talking about what to engage with, I also want to remind you that I don't recommend that you make your social media account appear to people who see it for the first time as it existing to promote a podcast. Remember, participate, don't promote and when in doubt, personal account. That is it today. We will be back next week with more podcast growth and monetization tips, tricks and strategies. Definitely, if you have any questions about TDE and about using personal or business accounts, join us in the free Grow the Show Facebook group. Ask the questions that community there is very well versed in TDE and they'll be happy to help you. Until then, definitely like this video. Subscribe to the channel to get more podcast tips, tricks, actual advice and strategies in your Facebook feed and I will see you in the next video. Until then, definitely join us in the Grow the Show Facebook group. And if you haven't already, please, if you're on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, rate and review this show to let me know that I am providing you the value. And please, if you're listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, give us a rating or review, letting us know what you thought of this episode so we can make more episodes that answer the questions you have. My name is Kevin Schmitland. That is it for this quick hit episode of Grow the Show. We'll see you next week.