In the process of promoting my podcast She’s In Russia, I’ve discovered a few tricks and tools that are small but non-obvious. And so, I will share them here, as I have not seen them listed in any traditional how-to-promote-your-podcast article.
1. Getting on the infamous New & Noteworthy on iTunes:
A lot of people on the internet suggest to get on N&N you have to have a strong first 8 weeks post launch, with a lot of downloads, subscriptions, reviews, etc. Though this probably helps, iTunes Podcasts are actually curated by and editorial team. To get your podcast featured, email PodcastSupport@apple.com with the following information and ask them to pass it along to the editorial team:
- Podcast Title
- iTunes Link
- Country Requested
- Marketing and Promotional Plan
- Upcoming Episode Date
- Upcoming Episode Details
- Category
Make sure your podcast fulfills the requirements on this Feature Your Podcast page before you send the email.
2. Booking fellow podcasters as guests:
If there’s another podcaster you want to book on your show, or just want to find their contact details, the solution is simple. Open up their RSS feed -- for example here is our RSS for She’s In Russia -- then command+f and search for “email” and you’re in business.
3. Making waveform videos for social media:
New York public radio developed a really nice open source program for making waveform videos called Audiogram. SpareMin hosts a pretty customizable version of it here. You can pick your own image background, color, text, and waveform look. Just upload the audio. If you’re a developer and want to run the program locally, here is the GitHub repo.
4. Podcast reviewers list:
As part of promoting our podcast, I’ve written to every person I could find who reviews podcasts, has a newsletter, or just runs a Twitter handle where they promote different shows. I’ve compiled a list of these people and accounts on Twitter, it’s a public list that you can subscribe to here.
Wrap-up:
Indie podcast promotion is definitely a slog, but I do hope these tricks make it a bit easier. If you've come up with other cool tricks, let me know on Twitter.
About the author: Smith Freeman is the co-host and producer of She's In Russia, a podcast that aims to lessen the resurgence of Cold War rhetoric by having nuanced and joyful conversations about Russia and Russian people. Smith lives in Brooklyn and her co-host lives in St. Petersburg.
Smith Freeman (on the right), with her cohost (left).
