Even if you already have an active podcast audience, most podcast hosts are consistently looking for new growth strategies to find more listeners. Taking the time to expand your audience feels daunting when you already spend so much time creating, editing, and producing, so which strategies are worth the effort?
While advertising and social media marketing are excellent ways to find a new audience, word of mouth is much more effective at bringing on those lifelong listeners. Really nothing beats word of mouth!
Collaboration takes this ‘word of mouth’ a step further. By working together with your fellow podcasters, a local business, or even online magazines, you’re boosting your profile and showing you’ve got the chops to be an expert in your field. Regardless of what your podcast is about, you can always benefit from collaborations.
It can be intimidating to put yourself out there, but you’ve got to be your podcast’s biggest fan if you want to get the attention of others. And remember, you’re already getting your name out there. Only by reaching out to other creators.
Types of collaboration
The main ways podcasters collaborate are through cross-promotion, creating content for each other, and guesting on each others’ shows. One of the easiest and most straightforward ways to collaborate with another podcast is to ‘shout out’ one another. We’ve all listened to a podcast in which the hosts chime in to say, “If you love our podcast, then you will definitely like X podcast, so check them out!”
One of the best ways to bring on new listeners is to be a guest on another podcast. You don’t have to stick solely to podcasts in your field, and you can get creative. Whenever podcasts feature guests that they are genuinely excited about, the audience can tell, and they are more likely to check out the guest’s work.
Stronger together
No matter how niche or specific your podcast topic is, there will be podcasts that you can collaborate with. The key is finding the best way to approach your fellow podcasters and showing them that you’re stronger working together.
As you start conducting outreach for collaborations, be mindful of how much time you want to spend working on content for other podcasts rather than your own. Remember, your podcast and its content always come first.
Podcasts related to yours
One of the easiest ways to find new podcasters in your niche is to see which podcast podcatchers define as being related to your podcast. These podcasts already share a certain number of listeners with you.
Think of this as a Venn diagram; you may share some listeners, but there’s a proportion of their listeners who don’t yet know about you! There are also potential collaborators within your social media circles. If you have built a social media community around your podcast, check out what other podcasts your audience is following.
Find a partner on Audry
We know that finding collaborators takes time and effort, and sometimes we just want to spend our energy making our podcast rather than conducting ongoing partner outreach campaigns. Audry streamlines the process of finding new collaborators and enables you to hone in on the podcasters that not only have an investment in collaboration but are excited to network with other podcasters around the world.
Started as a journalist for a newspaper, followed her heart into the world of audio and content, fell in love with podcasts. Davine Vleerbos is a Content & Community Manager at Audry, a start-up empowering podcasters to own their success story. She creates content for and about this community to inspire podcast creators from around the world to grow their show.
