Morgan Franklin: Social media is changing. And I know that's the
most obvious thing I could ever possibly say, but it's true,
social media is changing every day, especially for podcasters,
and if you are still sharing the same graphic you made on Canva
three years ago that says New episode or listen now and you're
wondering why you're not growing your listenership through social
media. I have a few ideas for you. I see almost every
podcaster making a few of the same mistakes, and I'll break
those down for you too. In this episode, we're gonna talk about
the new era of short form content, how to properly use
your legacy social medias like Instagram and Facebook, paid
social media ads and the non traditional social medias that
are bringing more listeners to my podcast than any other
advertising. Hello and welcome to podcast for profit. My name
is Morgan Franklin. I'm a Podcast Producer, strategist and
educator. This podcast will help you create and grow a podcast
that cuts through the noise of social media and speaks directly
to your target audience. If you're ready to create a podcast
that will align you with the experts in your industry,
position yourself as a trusted leader and create another source
of revenue for your business, you're in the right place. I'd
say it was about two years ago I started hearing every Podcast
Producer and strategist and expert saying, we all have to
make video content. If you are making video content, you might
as well not even have a podcast. Tiktok is everything. Tiktok is
gonna make or break your podcast. If you don't have short
form video content, you aren't even a serious podcaster. It
felt like I couldn't escape the video podcast propaganda. You
probably know exactly what I mean, and if I'm being honest, I
let it influence me. At the end of 2022 I was launching a new
podcast with a client at that the last minute, we switched it
from audio only to audio video, so it could also be a YouTube
podcast out of my original shows from Morgan Franklin media, my
production company, this is the only podcast so far that has
ended production. And you know, this was for several reasons,
unrelated to the format itself, but this was a factor of it. It
is hard to have an audio video podcast, especially if you want
to give both the audio listener and the video watcher the same
quality and experience. It takes a lot of time and effort, and if
you're doing it remotely, it takes a lot of time and effort
to coordinate with your guests. So I'm gonna give you the advice
that I give every single podcaster. Take podcasting one
step at a time. You can build onto every show but master one
thing at a time. I'm gonna make an entire episode on whether or
not you should have a video component of your podcast, and
I'm sorry for going down this rabbit hole, but if you wanna
hear that episode, make sure that you're subscribed to this
show so that you can hear that episode when it drops. But back
to short form content. For anybody that doesn't know what I
mean by that, I'm generally talking about a video clip
that's gonna last anywhere from 30 seconds to two minutes,
that's posted, usually on Tiktok, on Instagram reels or
YouTube shorts, that is short form content. So what do I mean
when I say that we as podcasters are in a new era of short form
content? I mean that chopping up your podcast into highlight
clips to post on these various social medias that used to be
enough. Podcasts were enough of a novelty that when you saw
someone sitting there with a microphone, talking to a guest,
or talking off camera or doing whatever you're doing, that
would be intriguing enough to draw in a listener or a viewer.
I think the thought process was kind of like, wow, this person
has a podcast. Let me see what they're saying. Like, I am
hooked in. This worked. This worked for years, but I think
the honeymoon stage for just chopping up your podcast into
highlight reels is ending. I started seeing this with myself
and my own clients. First, we were putting in so much time and
effort and money to be working in a studio or with professional
equipment to record this podcast, to chop it up and post
it, and the numbers were tanking, a post that used to get
easily 10,000 views is now getting 200 and the podcast
community is growing, and that's incredible, but it's more
saturated than it's ever been. And now, just having a podcast
and having that microphone in front of you, it used to be
enough to pique someone's interest, but now it isn't
enough. I was talking about this last week on threads, but I made
a post with a side by side of two screenshots from videos by
Mel Robbins, short form videos. Now Mel Robbins is one of the
most famous podcasters in the world. She's incredible, and
this is not to pick apart her content. It's just to say she.
She had one very professional, polished, beautiful clip from
her podcast episode that was clearly shot in a studio, and
that, like I said, was just a chopped up video of this podcast
with 3000 likes. And on that same day, she posted another
short, casual clip about the same episode, and honestly, it
was saying about the exact same thing, but just her holding the
phone and talking to the camera, it had 100,000 likes. Now
imagine, just think about this, how much more time and effort
and money went into creating that clip of her for her podcast
in her studio than that quick video she recorded on her phone.
When you're looking at 3000 likes versus 100,000 likes, it
should tell you something about what the audience wants to see,
especially if it's almost the exact same content shared on the
exact same day it's had, like I went back a couple of weeks just
to make sure, like, this wasn't a fluke. I went back and looked
at a lot of her content, and almost all of it was like this,
the very casual content where she's just talking about an
episode or talking about an idea in an episode, would have
100,000 likes. The studio content would be lucky to get
5000 likes. And obviously, for Mel, she has a huge team. This
is what she does. She uses this video and content for so many
different things, and it's probably worth it for her to
spend all that time and money and effort to create this
content, because she's not just posting it on Tiktok and making
Instagram real. She's posting it on YouTube, she's posting it on
her website. She's doing all different kinds of stuff with
it. But what about you? Because if you're paying for a studio
and an editor and even a social media manager to post all of it,
is it really worth it when you could just be making that more
organic content that people actually want to see? Almost all
the short form content that I create is in my car, and while
that makes me feel so incredibly lazy and just question
everything about myself as a professional creator, people
love it. It works, and like so many people said on that thread
post, you have to make the content people actually want to
see, because otherwise, what's the point? And I know it's
really hard to break that habit and desire to want everything to
be perfect. I am right there with you. I love a beautifully
curated post, and to me, it looks more professional. To me
when I'm throwing something together in the car. I'm
thinking, anybody could do this. I want to prove that I'm not
just anyone. But that's not what people want. People on social
media have been burnt out by these brands and influencers and
creators giving them the most perfect, beautiful, buttoned up
content. They are craving, the authenticity, they crave
connection. They crave the casualness of just filming a
video in your car because they know that it's coming from you,
or at least that's how they perceive it, which gives me a
great transition to talk about legacy social media like
Instagram and Facebook. I started all new social media
accounts for every single platform in January of this
year, 2024 and in my experience, the two hardest to grow have
been Facebook and Instagram, organic reach for new accounts.
Just it. At least for me, it isn't there. When I look at the
analytics for Instagram, my past five posts are pretty much only
being shown to the people that follow me. It's an average of
95% followers, 5% non followers, and I paid to be verified. I
paid to have a verified account. And of course, it could just be
my content. It could, but I post almost the exact same content on
all my other platforms, and it's doing very well. So yes, it
might be a little bit of that, but also when you're not getting
shown to anyone else, and you have no organic reach that makes
it really hard for you to get new followers. So I think that
Facebook and Instagram are really falling behind on this
algorithmic way that all the other social medias are working
to show people new content. For me, if we're talking about
Facebook, let's take a second to talk about Facebook groups,
because this has helped me grow my podcast tremendously. And I
know that that's not exactly posting traditionally, but it is
engaging and finding people in those groups to tell about
specific episodes. So I want to encourage you to spend some time
looking for Facebook groups in your niche, or even just groups
about podcasting. I'm in several podcast specific groups that
every week, they post something like share your latest episode,
and you absolutely should be doing that, just to be
presenting this to other podcasters. So tell them about
your podcast episode and share a link. And also ask for feedback.
When you get to know some of the people in these groups and
you're posting your episodes, ask them for feedback about it.
Spend some time looking for the groups that are exactly the
people who would benefit from hearing about your podcast, and
don't be afraid to directly send them a specific episode. I think
that it's the most impactful that if you get into a group and
you're able to share these specific episodes, that you take
just that extra minute to write out one sentence about what this
episode is about and send them a link to it. Because I'm telling
you, people are never going to spend the time to look up your
podcast and look up that episode, please. You've already
lost me. Just take a minute to write down, hey, this is what
this episode is about. I think that you would love it. Here's
the link. That's all you have to say. And honestly, that is
what's been the most impactful for me. Using Facebook as a
podcaster is just connecting with people in groups. Because,
like I said, my organic reach on Facebook and Instagram is
terrible, but actually being able to talk to people that I
know might benefit from the information I'm trying to give
them, that is everything. Since we're talking about meta and
Facebook and Instagram, we have to talk about paid ads, because
this might just be my conspiracy theory, and you know, the Mark
Zuckerberg mystery of it all, but I think a lot of the new
accounts aren't getting beyond their audience because they're
not paying. So should you pay? Who should you hire? Should you
do it yourself as someone that's worked in digital marketing for
the past decade? Let me answer that last question first, should
you do it yourself? And the answer is no, you are going to
waste so much money and time and effort by putting $10 or $15
behind this post and doing what meta is trying to trick you into
doing. And yes, I mean trick in the harshest sense of the word,
because it is a trick to get your money and to give you a
false sense of authority. There is a reason that paid
professionals do this for a living, and if it was easy
enough to just click an age range and $1 amount, those
people would not have a job. There's so much strategy and
programming and intricacies that goes into doing paid ads for
meta that even I truly do not understand. And if you have the
money, I think that you should consider it absolutely it's a
great way to grow your podcast. There are agencies and companies
that do this specifically for podcasts, and I would talk to
one of those companies first, but please don't hire an ad
agency if you don't have a way to recoup the money that you're
spending on this ad, but let's say that you are looking for a
paid ad specialist to work with for your podcast. Here is a few
things I would ask them again, as someone that has worked in
digital marketing for 10 years, this is what I would be looking
for. The number one thing is, what is your average CPC? That
means cost per click or cost per conversion. And just in layman's
terms, that means, what does the average podcaster pay to have a
person click on this ad? Because, again, part of hiring
this company to do this is that they should be getting the
lowest CPC or cost per click. They're experts at this, and
having some general idea of what one click or one potential
listener will cost you is good information for you to know.
Also, I would ask for a few examples of their most
successful campaigns and ads, they'll know exactly what you
mean if you ask for that, and they will also think that you
know what you're talking about. But again, this will give you an
idea of what kind of content they're running for clients, how
much it's costing those clients, and what the results are and
what you can expect, because before you start writing them a
check, I want you to know how have they helped other
podcasters grow their podcast, and how will they be able to
help you? I want to see the numbers, because numbers don't
lie. So what are the results of the campaigns that they've done
before, and do they have a good understanding of what kind of ad
is converting again? Are they just using chopped up videos of
your podcast that probably aren't going to convert because
that would be a major red flag you want to see. Okay, what kind
of content are they using to promote these podcasts? Look for
examples. But again, if your podcast isn't part of marketing
your business or your product or your services, or you don't have
a viable, straightforward path to monetize this podcast, please
don't go investing a ton of money into advertising it just
yet, because if you're not planning on making money, this
is just a hobby. It's just a passion project, and that is
just not the best. Use of your money when you're getting
started podcasting. All that being said, before we wrap up
this episode, let's talk about the non traditional, organic,
social media podcast promotion that we can all do for free by
posting content on various platforms. So we're all on
Instagram and Facebook. We've seen that. It's kind of old
news. But what about the other places we can advertise our
podcasts that, in my opinion, are way better first of all, and
if you're a longtime listener of this show, you know exactly what
I'm about to say, Pinterest. Pinterest is truly incredible.
It's brought the most traffic to my website and podcast, and the
best thing is, is that you can make a post and just forget
about it, that content will keep going for years, not like
Instagram, not like Facebook, not like LinkedIn, where it's
gonna go away after two days. This keeps repopulating for
years and finding the people that it needs to find. So if you
are a podcaster I mean, you haven't looked into Pinterest
yet. I have a past episode. I'll link it in the show notes, but
please just think about it for your own sanity, so you don't
feel like every week you're just trying to catch up with posting
about your own podcast LinkedIn. LinkedIn is perfect for
podcasters, and depending on what niche you're in, it might
be a lot more of the people who want to listen to your show that
are hanging out on LinkedIn instead of Instagram or
Facebook, because really, at the end of the day, it's all about
finding where your listener is growing. Your podcast is all
about finding where that listener is. And I think so many
podcasters want to post where they feel comfortable and where
they spend the most time, but you need to think about where
your listener will actually be. So if you have a B to B podcast,
if you have any kind of professional podcast, you need
to be on LinkedIn, and you need to be posting about your
episodes every week. Another social media that I use to
promote my podcast every week with so much success is threads.
I love threads. And in full transparency, I never had a
Twitter, and I'm not on X, mostly just because I felt like
I kind of missed the boat. So when threads came around, I was
all in. And I feel like I'm saying an ad for threads right
now, but I promise I did not get paid to say this, but it just
truly is some of the most genuine and active communities
to engage with content that I've seen in a very, very long time.
I love the discoverability, and unlike other platforms like
Instagram and Facebook, like we were talking about, my content
is actually getting to the correct people. The algorithm is
working, and overall, I've just loved sharing my podcast and
building a community on threads. Not only is it pushing out
content to the right people, but it's bringing me the right
content. And I think that that is so valuable. If you aren't
paying attention to the way that algorithms are working in 2024
and you're just kind of throwing stuff out there and hoping that
it will stick. You need to get on a platform where the
algorithm is working for you, so that you personally can see how
this works for other people, because social media is not just
a feed of your followers anymore. I think that's where
Instagram and Facebook are gonna kind of get left behind, because
they are again, not reaching new people. And if you're just
posting like you're posting to a list of followers like you would
in the past, that is what is going to stop you from growing
online. My last piece of advice for you today is pay attention
to what is working. We said this earlier, but numbers don't lie.
The algorithm does not hate you. Social media isn't dead. You
might just need to change your strategy or the way that you're
posting. Like I said at the beginning of the episode, social
media is changing, and if you're not changing with it, you're
gonna keep falling further and further behind for the month of
September, I'm running a special on social media audits for
podcasters. It's a full analysis of all social media platforms
and a one hour virtual call. I'll look through all your
social medias. I'll break down what's working for your podcast
and what I'd suggest you work on how you can better utilize
social media to grow your podcast. And finally, if there's
any platforms I think that you should be on that would help you
reach a wider audience, and what kind of content you should be
serving them on those platforms. This will be 299, for the rest
of September, 2024 it's normally 499, you can find out more
information about the audit and how to schedule a time with me
in the show notes, I'll also attach my email. If you have any
questions, please feel free to email me. I'd be happy to help.
And as always, I can't wait to listen to your podcast. Hey,
thank you so much for joining me on this episode. If you enjoyed
the podcast and you'd like to hear more episodes like this
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