Wonder

Research Outline

Prepared for Rachel S. | Delivered March 17, 2020

Podcast Social Media Marketing

Goals

To outline 2-3 social media platforms that are effective to advertise a new podcast, including information about why the platforms were chosen and any success metrics associated with using them. The overall aim of the research is to guide the launch of a new medical podcast by cosmetic surgeons.

Early Findings

 Creating posts on social media that promote your podcast helps to build brand awareness and drive traffic to your new episodes, through an engaged community and content sharing.
Depending on the focus of a podcast, different social media platforms make more sense. For example, a business podcast would be suited to marketing on LinkedIn whereas a comedy podcast should use Facebook and Twitter. 
The most important step in using social media to market a podcast is to determine where your listeners spend their time online by researching the target audience.

RedditMultiple sites offering best practices for marketing a podcast and growing its audience, such as Buzzsprout, Single Grain and Life-long Learner (host of The Competitive Edge which earned the #1 spot on New & Noteworthy for both Business and Health on iTunes), recommend using Reddit for promoting a podcast.
When using Reddit to market a podcast, it is important to post in niche subreddits that are representative of the target audience.
Scott Britton of "The Competitive Edge" podcast explicitly states that in order to make the most of Reddit marketing, podcast hosts need to be sure to indicate that the content is audio and provide direct links to listening mediums since Reddit does not allow direct links to audio files. 

FacebookFacebook is one of the best social media platforms for promoting a podcast because it is the social networking site with the highest number of active accounts worldwide. Additionally, studies have shown that on average, Facebook users spend 35 minutes per day on the site, checking it an average of eight times per day.
One of the main marketing strategies used by podcasters is Facebook ads. Facebook ads will show on the news feeds of people whose interests align with the ad's targeting. However, Facebook ads are a form of paid advertisement. 
Another way to leverage Facebook for podcast promotion is to find, join and post in Facebook groups where the podcast topic is very relevant.
For more organic Facebook marketing, podcasts can create their own pages that contains a mix of 80% non-promotional and 20% promotional content. Using image and video content is important since Facebook is a highly visual platform. Examples include graphics of guest quotes or short clips recorded during a session.