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As a podcaster, it is important to know how to grow not just your audience, but your entire podcast as well. We had Matt Wolfe of the Hustle and Flowchart Podcast share his insights on this topic. Hustle and Flowchart is one of the worlds leading podcasts about business.
In this episode, Matt shares his top three strategies on growing your podcast. He also shared some of the effective methods they use for monetizing their podcast. We talk about paid ads, what podcast notes can do, and more, so sit back and enjoy the podcast.
Matt’s Podcasting Growth Strategies
Leverage and Compound Interest
- Podcasting has good leverage and pays with compound interest. You could turn it into different forms of media and post it into different platforms. You can also continue earning from podcasts you created long ago.
- Audiences have different preferences in media. Some prefer short podcasts. Some may like it long. There are even others who prefer just the notes from the podcast
- People would listen to older podcasts even if you have new content available. They also occasionally binge your podcast just like they do for TV podcasts.
Go Broad or Be Niche?
- Matt and Joe describe themselves as “unapologetically generalists.” They cover diverse topics and never really had a specific niche.
- Going for a more general audience has more significant growth potential, but it is also harder to start. On the other hand, going niche makes it easy to create a fanbase, but ultimately has a narrow market.
- Starting the Hustle and Flowchart podcast was easy despite going broad because they made use of their existing following and promoted the new podcast in all their channels.
Having a Co-Host
- Having a co-host is like having two brains focused on the same goal.
- Matt and Joe play different roles in their podcast, and these roles balance each other out and make better quality content.
- Creative differences are typical. What keeps the podcast together is the hosts’ mutual understanding of the vision of their podcast.
Determining Who to Have as Guests
- They have a customer support representative who does a background check on the emails they receive each day from people requesting to appear as guests on their podcast.
- From these cold emails, only about two to three guests appear in their podcast. Most cold emails get rejected because they don’t fit into the podcast.
- Most of their guests come from their own networks.
- Matt and Joe keep a Dream 100 list of people they want as guests. They attach this to their emails, hoping their recipients could introduce them to anyone he or she would know in that list.
- They try to keep the podcast’s topics varied. Since there’s only space for eight guests in a month, they try to create space between guests who specialize in the same things.
Grow the Show and Maintain Your Audience
- Matt and Joe would try everything they’d hear that helps grow a podcast.
- There are three things that Matt says are the most effective ways to grow your podcast.
- The first strategy is to have more contests and giveaways that involve subscribing to the podcast and putting up a review.
- The second tactic is to make Facebook Ads using three-minute clips of their podcast videos, optimized for views with a call-to-action to listen to their full podcasts.
- The third technique is to get quality guests with strong followings and use their guests’ follower base to their advantage and increase the podcast’s reach.
Utilize Google Ads
- Using the name of guests in Google Ads results in bad bids and ends up being unprofitable.
- To get better bids, create your own blog post on a specific topic, and then target questions and search terms related to the blog post.
- Another way is to ask the guests that do appear organically on Google Search to include you on their lists.
Monetize Your Podcast
- Their first and most common way is through affiliate marketing.
- Monetize your newsletters by selling content upgrades to your email list, like notes of your old episodes.
- CPM deals are heavily in favour of advertisers. Renegotiate the terms into a fixed rate pricing in return for shoutouts, banner placements on your website, and including sponsors in email newsletter as inserts.
Looking at the Future of Podcasting
- The younger generation may switch from terrestrial radio to podcasts.
- As podcasts are cheaper to produce than traditional radio, there might be a shift in radio content towards licensing of podcast episodes.
- Significant movements in Silicon Valley favour podcasting platforms, companies, and services, which is a good indicator of the industry’s future.
About Our Guest:
Matt Wolfe is the co-founder of Evergreen Profits and co-host of the Hustle and Flowchart podcast alongside Joe Fier. His expertise includes data analysis, split-testing, SEO, and conversion optimization. Matt is also well-versed with systems and software development. Before the birth of Evergreen Profits, he helped run successful businesses assisting many entrepreneurs with smart and ethical marketing tactics and growing their skills on WordPress.
Grab your copy of The Evergreen Traffic Playbook here. Listen to the Hustle & Flowchart podcast here.