Welcome to Help Me Podcast, a show designed to help you
launch and grow your podcast. I am your host, Gino, and twice
a week I will release a new episode with different tips and tricks
for launching and growing your podcast. From audio engineering to planning
intentionally to growth tactics, each episode will be a bite sized
tip to help you podcast.
Hey. Welcome back to help me. Podcast. Thank you all for tuning in.
Today we're going to talk about how you can leverage your friends and
your family when you're launching a new podcast. Sometimes you
might not want help from your family, and maybe if you're starting a new podcast,
you might feel a little uneasy or unsure about it and maybe
you want to hide it from your friends. But in this episode, I want to
talk about why, if you can push past that,
using your family and friends could help you launch your podcast. I'll share
with you my experience and why I believe that this to be
true. So at the beginning of 2023, I started two
podcast. One of them was this one called Help Me Podcast,
which is obviously to help you guys podcast. And the other one
called working towards our purpose. When I first started these
podcast, I didn't want to share them with the people that I
knew. I didn't want to be judged, certainly didn't tell my family. And
I kind of just launched them quietly. And to my surprise,
hardly anybody listened. But then the working towards my
purpose podcast. I started interviewing people. So eventually word
got out through the people that I was interviewing that the show was
existing and I had a podcast. And I actually remember the first time
I interviewed somebody and they shared it on social media. It was
like very early on, maybe like episode three.
And at first you get that sort of like, oh, no, they're
sharing it with all the people that I know. Now they're going to know and
I'm out there, right, and people can judge me. And
at first it was like, I didn't really want that. But in the back of
my head, I knew this is what I needed to be doing all along,
because that episode had way more downloads than any of the
other ones. And it's no surprise because people
knew about it and people who knew me wanted to support me and wanted
to listen to what I was doing. And that's kind of what this idea in
this episode is about, is simply just telling
the people that you like and the people that care about you that you're doing
something. It can definitely be a little overwhelming,
and maybe you feel like you can't tell them,
and I certainly understand that because I've been there. But if you could push past
that, you can actually help your show to launch with
a bang, right? You can launch your show and you can actually have people
listen and tune into it and leave reviews
and give you feedback and all that sort of good thing that's going to
help you grow. So let's talk about even before launching your
podcast, if you can entrust a couple of people, maybe they're
close friends or maybe they're family members and maybe they
have skills like graphic design or audio
engineering or journalism or something that could be useful to a
podcast. You could imagine how it would be very helpful to get their
opinions and feedback on specific things that you're doing for your
show. For example, your cover art, right? You can design your cover art
on Canva like we've talked about in previous episodes, and
maybe you design two or three of them and you try to figure out which
one's the best. If you have a cousin, for example, that
is a graphic designer, or maybe they do some work in design,
you can show them the covers and be like, hey, can I get your opinion
on them? Now, that doesn't mean that you have to take their advice,
but you can hear what they have to say and they could offer you some
helpful advice that can make your cover art look a little better or
translate your message a little bit better. So, I mean, that can be one reason
why you want to leverage your family and friends is that they may have skills
that you don't have or maybe you're not as good at. And
this could help your show in many different ways. The
second reason why you want to get your family and friends involved right at the
beginning is because when you go to launch your show, you'll actually have people
waiting to listen to it, right? Like you could tell them, hey, I got this
podcast coming out. It's coming out on X Date. Here's the link when
it comes out. And now you have, let's just say, 1015
people who are waiting for the episode to drop because they support the
things that you do. Now you have 15 listeners right off the
bat. You can possibly have 15 people reviewing your
show, and now you have a bunch of good reviews, you got some
listens, and that's just a way better way to launch your podcast, is
to get some reviews and to give you that momentum of
people listening to your show right off the bat. Whereas when I did
it, I kind of launched in silence and slowly
people started listening to it and it wasn't exactly
the best that it could have been. So let your friends and family know that
you got a show coming out and you want them to listen to it, and
you'd appreciate if they listen to it. Of course, always be
thankful for whatever feedback or whatever listens or whatever reviews
they give you, and you'll be well on your way to
getting a community of listeners and a community of people that enjoy your
podcast. And just think about how that's a much
better way to launch a new podcast into the world than it is
to kind of quietly go into the world and just hope that people
come after you release it. Having a group of people
who are ready and waiting to listen to your show and going to
consume the content as soon as it's out there, is a much better way to
go about it. And that brings me to my third point building a support
system around your podcast. A lot of times people are podcasting on their own,
and if you are podcasting on your own, that's fine, there's nothing wrong
with it. But it's also great to have a support system around you
to where maybe you have a friend or your sister
or brother who knows about your podcast and follows along,
so you kind of feel like you owe them the episode, right? If
you're releasing an episode once a week and you
don't release an episode a week, you know that that person is listening and they're
going to ask you, hey, what happened? Where was the episode this week?
And it kind of just gives you some accountability. So it's always
good to have a good support system around you and even somebody to
talk to when it gets difficult, because as we know, podcasting is a
lot of work and sometimes you need somebody there
to help you get through the tougher situations. This is
why it's all a great idea to let people know that you're podcasting
and to don't just podcast in silence like I did when I first
started launch your podcast and tell all of your friends and family and
everybody that you know that you are launching a brand new podcast. And you
would love their input and help and feedback and support. And to
recap those three reasons why it's so important, first is
because you can leverage your friends and your family's technical and
creative skills that they may have that can help you launch your
podcast. Second is getting people to listen
and to review your show right when you launch it is a great
way to get some momentum behind your podcast and to get some
listeners right off the bat. And thirdly, to create a
supportive network of people that can help be your support system
for your podcast. Even just one of these reasons is enough to tell
everybody that you know and to try to push past that fear of being judged
and that fear of doing something new because
people are around you to help you and to support you. And
I think it's always a message we have to remind ourselves is that you
can't do it alone. And when you do things with
people and community, it makes the final product better.
It helps you to not be so hard on yourself, and
it just makes it more fun. So when you go to launch your podcast.
Make sure you tell all your friends and family, that's all I got for you
today. Thank you everybody for listening and I will see you next time.
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