In case you haven’t heard, telling listeners to rate and review your podcast won’t help new people discover your show. And now get ready for some more podcast myth-busting with Rob Walch, Vice President of Podcaster Relations at Libsyn. Fun fact: Rob hosted the first podcast about podcasting (Podcast411) and has been podcasting for 15 years. He also co-hosts Libsyn’s podcast The Feed.

Rob joined me on Podcasting Step by Step to answer burning questions, including:

• How many episodes should I launch with?

• How long should my episodes be?

• How do I get into New and Noteworthy?

Subscribe to Podcasting Step by Step for free to hear all of Rob's insider advice

If you haven’t launched your show yet and are looking for a podcast media host, I recommend Rob’s company, Libsyn. If you’d like to get the rest of this month free AND next month free, use my promo code POSTCARD when you sign up with Libsyn. 

The truth about only having eight weeks to get into New and Noteworthy

“Ask for your refund from that webinar because you spent money on something that has just been BS from day one. And New and Noteworthy sections are gone in the subcategories, so you can't even game it anymore for the subcategories.

And even when you could game it for the subcategories, it had absolutely no bearing on lifting your show up. We looked at shows that got featured by trying to game it, and it didn't help them at all. The front page of Apple Podcasts/iTunes, that's where it actually matters and that's 100% hand-curated. It always has been.

So yeah, don't worry about New and Noteworthy. New and noteworthy has no bearing unless you get on that front page, where, again, Apple is doing the hand-curating.”

The truth on how many episodes podcasters should launch with

“The other bad piece of advice people say is ‘launch with 10 shows.’ If you look at the shows that launch with one three, five, and 10, and you look six months out, the shows that launch with 10 do the worst. Most of them aren’t even podcasting.

People that launch with 10, they get 10 shows out the door and there's no listener feedback. So you’ve made your show very cold and antiseptic.

Whereas, the show that launches with one [episode] right away goes from day one saying, ‘Hey, give us some feedback. Tell us what you think about the show. Here's our call-in number. Here’s our email address. Be involved.’

And in podcasting, it’s your audience that grows your show. You have to have good content, but your audience is the one that’s going to tell people about it. And when you launch with 10 with no listener feedback, you've trained this audience not to be invested emotionally in your show.”

The truth about how to rank in podcast categories and subcategories

“Each main category has a top 200 list and to get in the ranking of the top 200 categories and in the subcategories, that’s all based on how many new subscribers you have in the last seven days. So the rankings in Apple Podcasts in those top 200 lists are all based on new subscribers.”