Are You Making These 4 Social Media Mistakes with Your Podcast?
Do you have a love hate relationship with social media? Join the club. A lot of podcasters wonder if it’s worth spending time on social media to market their podcasts.
For a long time I felt completely burned out by the screaming and negativity found on some of the platforms. But social media does have some tremendous benefits, including the ability to attract a global audience. But we have to avoid some common mistakes.
On episode 30 of Podcasting Step by Step, I talk about four of the biggest mistakes podcasters make when it comes to social media.
Most of us know that social media can help us grow our podcast audience, but we don’t post consistently for a number of reasons. Here are four of the most common social media mistakes podcasters make:
Not knowing why you’re showing up
Social media feels like drudgery when we think of it as an obligation. We know we’re supposed to market our podcast, but we forget about ‘why,’ and we need to get in that mindset.
Why do you want to promote your show? Why do you care about it?
Who are you talking to?
Where is your audience right now? What do they want to achieve? What do they need to learn to achieve that end goal?
These are questions you want to answer when writing your social media posts. Also, be clear on what you want to be known for on social media. What are the core values that guide your life? What do you want to talk about? What do you stand for?
It takes work to create content, and if you’re not driven by purpose, you’ll quit. You are showing up because you care about what you’re doing, and about your listeners.
Being obsessed with followers
‘How can I get more followers’ is the same question as ‘how can I get more downloads?’ These are vanity metrics that everyone gets obsessed with now and again (human nature). But these numbers don’t mean anything.
Someone might buy 100,000 followers on Instagram. Does that make them an influencer?
When Instagram Influencers first became a thing, brands thought so. They looked at the numbers and assumed these people had a passionate following. But now they’re looking at audience engagement, and micro-influencers are the people/brands really interesting sponsors.
A small audience that loves you is so much more valuable than a huge audience that doesn’t pay attention to you.
Promoting episodes with no context
The easy and ineffective way to share on social media is to write a caption that says, “I have a new episode out today. Check it out!”
Your existing audience might like this heads up, but people who aren’t as familiar with your work won’t pay much attention to posts like this. Instead, write your captions so they focus on what the audience will get out of the episode.
Not planning content ahead of time
Has this ever happened to you? You look at the clock and think, “Oh, I never posted anything on social media today. I guess I should do that now. What should I post about?”
When we do this, we’re not thinking strategically, we’re slapping something together so we can get it out the door. We’re not being mindful of who our audience is or what we want to communicate to the world.
We should be planning our posts ahead of time and tying them back to our podcasts and businesses and other things we want to be known for.
You might be thinking, “I don’t want to spend my life mapping out social media posts.” I hear you. Which is why I’m so excited about next week’s episode of Podcasting Step by Step.
I’ll be speaking with Andrea Jones from the Savvy Social podcast. She is my new best friend thanks to the power of podcasting, and she is going to teach us how to design a social media strategy so we only have to spend two-three hours a week on social media, and how we can make that time meaningful and well spent.
