Why is my podcast not growing

Apr 20

Why isn’t my podcast growing?

Tempted to just give it up and shut down the whole thing?

This is a very common thought and a vast number of podcasts never make it past the first 7 episodes!

I want to change the thinking that it’s not worth doing if you don’t have thousands of downloads. You don’t need a big audience to have a successful podcast!

In this episode, I’m going to share why your podcast isn’t growing and what you can do about it. I’ll explore how your guest choice, collaboration and episode frequency all have a big impact on your listenership and are points to consider.

Perhaps your content is getting repetitive. Your audience will most likely jump ship if they’re hearing the same thing every week. So keep your content engaging, exciting and fun!

Examine how you speak to see if you’re monotone and super boring to listen to.

Or maybe your audio quality is just not up to scratch. People don’t want to listen to episodes that have poor production quality and will move over to a show that is more pleasing to the ears.

The MAIN reason why your podcast is not growing is that you’re not giving your strategy time to work. Downloads don’t all come in within the first few days, they continue throughout the month and even longer. You need to give your strategy time to filter through to your audience.

If you want to learn more about growing your show effectively, join the waitlist for The Pod Lovers Plus!

Transcript:

00:00
Welcome to Pump Up Your Pod my podcast isn't growing where I hate it, it sucks. It's a bag of butts, and I'm just gonna quit. I'm quitting the whole thing. I hate it. It's not growing. Have you had that thought yourself, and then just been like, you know what this is too much? Well, I'm here to say that yes, this is definitely a thing that happens. In fact, it's quite common, I can't remember the percentage of podcasts, but a vast, vast number of them never get past the first seven episodes. And it's called pod fade. So it's a very real thing. And I can see how it would happen, you know, you get into the swing of things, you get all excited, and you release one a week for a while, and then you get into it, and you're like, Oh, God, this is a lot of work. And I'm not getting the traction, things aren't happening quick enough. So I'm just going to quit. It's all well, and good. You know, yeah, you can quit at any time, do whatever you need to do. But I'm going to tell you a few things today as to why perhaps you aren't growing. And I have a big kind of takeaway, I guess, from this information that I'm sharing with you today.

So firstly, if you have a podcast and you feel like it's not growing, it can very well be that your content is getting boring, or repetitive. That's the main thing there are so many podcasts, there are almost 4 million podcasts I believe about a little bit less than a million of them release very frequently. So you're up against, you know, a lot of competition. And if you're an independent podcast, and you're not on a network, and you're just doing it yourself, it's even harder to get noticed. But you can still have a niche, you can still have people supporting you, if you have all these things in place to actually keep the momentum going. You don't need a big audience, I'm going to tell you that again, you do not need a big audience to have a successful podcast. If you have the right audience, for you for what you're trying to sell, spread the message about talk about all that sort of thing. So if your content is getting repetitive or boring, that's the main reason that people will go jump ship and go listen to something else. Because there is probably a podcast that someone else does that is the same sort of topics as you perhaps, and maybe they deliver it a bit better than maybe you're just getting a bit slack. Sorry to say, it is easy for someone to go, you know, I think I've heard enough from this woman now. And I'm getting out of here, they will go and find something else, same information from someone else.

So you've got to keep your content interesting, and fun, engaging, exciting, do you speak in a boring way? And I've covered this in another episode as well. You know, do you talk too fast? Are you too monotone, there are ways that you can improve the quality of your speech that will make you sound and help you sound more engaging, and just more fun to listen to.

Another thing and reason that I see that podcasts don't grow, or I have perhaps, like become a bit stale, or they've plateaued is that your audio quality isn't improving. Or in fact, it's going backwards. So you start with really good quality audio, maybe you've had a podcast production company like us help you launch it, maybe you've got five episodes to begin with that had been really good, really well edited and got good production value mixed, mastered all the things, and then you go okay, I think I'll handle it from here. From now on, which is totally fine. Like, that is awesome, if you want to handle it yourself, but the quality of the actual audio drops. So the editing is a bit sloppy, or just how you've recorded gets a bit relaxed. So instead of you going to the normal place that you record in the same location, you've got the pillows and the acoustics and everything kind of set up and you got your mic and everything you go, Oh, I don't have time for that today. I'm just going to use my headphones or I'm just going to sit here in this location because that's where I am for the day. And those sorts of things. If you do that consistently, then the listener starts to go oh man, like this used to sound good. And now it kind of sucks. And if you've had solo episodes that have really good production value, you've got nice microphone, that sort of thing. And then you start interviewing guests as well and you're using Zoom, and it's pretty crappy then people don't tolerate that for very long. They'll tolerate it for a new show, but they won't tolerate it for a show that is continuing. So you have to think about how am I getting like how does my audio sound? Has it gone backwards? or has it improved or has it just stayed the same.

Next thing is, if you've not been releasing with the same or better frequency, so if you've dropped off a little bit, you've started releasing a little bit less frequent Lee, then people forget about you very easily. And I've already spoken about for a solo episode, perhaps you're not engaging enough or you're a bit boring and those sorts of things or the contents not that good. But from a guest point of view, if you have guests on your show that aren't sharing from their side, so when they're on your show, they don't promote it. We really don't want that to happen. We want them to share it, because otherwise, what's the point like that's not a collaboration, that's just them being on your show, and then not giving you anything in return, like to help. So part of having guests on the show is to really feel that collaboration and to make it feel like everyone's helping each other and you're having a great conversation, and you're letting people know about each other shows. And if they're not doing that, then they're not great guests on the show. The other thing is that if they're just not strong enough guests generally as in the way they talk, that would be something that I would definitely be looking at before you say yes to having someone on your show or before you invite someone on your show, then I would be looking at their socials to see how they talk on their socials on their Insta, on their you know, any lives they do if they have a YouTube see how engaging they are on those channels. And then also, if they've been on any other podcast episodes, I would go and listen to a few doesn't have to be the whole episode. But I would go listen to a few to get a sense of how do they sound? Like, are they a good guest? Or are they just a guest, because you're scrounging around trying to find a guest. There's a big difference between a good guest and a guest.

The main thing, that main issue that I want to really harp on about here is the reason why your show isn't growing, is because you're not doing anything for long enough to see how it goes. And I have seen this certainly firsthand where whatever strategy you decide to try. So let's say for this month, you want to focus on getting a bunch of guests on your show or being on a bunch of shows yourself to help that growth, you do that. You get them locked in, and you start doing them. But then like a month later, you're not getting the growth that you hoped for. So you go, Oh, that mustn't be working. So I'm not going to keep doing that because it's hard. Well, it takes a long time. Any strategy that you try with podcasting, it's going to take a while for you to see the result of it. Because just from a download numbers, you don't get all your downloads for one episode within the first few days, absolutely not.

From what I see from all our clients across the board, within the month, that episode will get a lot of downloads within the first 24 hours. And then they'll get some the next few days and then some more than some more than some more. And they'll continue to get them throughout the month and longer. So if you're doing anything, and you're like after a month, well, I'm not seeing a growth, it's because you haven't kept with that strategy for long enough to see if that strategy that you've put in place is actually working. It's just the same way as if you're trying to eat healthy. Or if you're trying to get buff, and you're not committing to that for a longer period of time, you won't see the results because you haven't done it for a long enough time to actually see the results. You will not get the six pack in six weeks, maybe it will. I mean, I guess it depends on what your base is that you're working with. But the same thing goes for podcasting, if you are trying a strategy where you're going to update the titles on all your episodes to be more key phrased to have better key phrases in them keywords and those sorts of things. And then you're like, cool, sweet, all done, I've done all these, that should work now. That might take six months to actually see that actually feeding through. People will listen to a show and then they might listen to another one. And they might not subscribe to you yet. And it might not happen for a while.

All the things take time. And what I would say is if you're really trying to get to the crux of what strategy is working for you, then I would do each thing I would focus on each thing for like two months and go okay, for the next two months. I'm going to focus on updating all my titles. Cool, and I'm gonna get my descriptions on all my episodes. Really key phrase so just my titles and my episode descriptions. That's what I'm going to work on. You do that and you wait If you wait two months, and you see, okay, I didn't change anything else. So I'm still releasing the same kind of content I'm still releasing with the same microphone, the same frequency or the things. All I've changed is this. How has that gone? And you should be writing this down, have a spreadsheet somewhere just like we do. For every single one of our clients. We have a spreadsheet that we can see how they're going over time. You should have that for your own show. If you're doing it all by yourself, try a strategy, stick with it for a couple of months, change nothing else and see how it goes. And then if that does nothing, if you get no growth, then go. Okay, cool. Let's try the next thing. What else? What's the next strategy that I can try here to improve the growth of my show?

I hope that helps. If you want to know more about how to grow your show effectively, then I would absolutely suggest putting your name down for the waitlist for the pod lovers. Plus, that is coming very soon. It is a group that exists to help you grow your show. So once every month, I run a masterclass where I talk about a particular strategy, particular growth things, something that's happening in the podcasting industry that has been proven to work. I'll break down that thing. It'll be delivered as a masterclass. And then there'll be time for q&a is on that and troubleshooting and anything like that. There is a group discussion board. There's also curated information that I provide within there as well for stats and all sorts of things. I'll share articles once a fortnight with more information on there. And then there's also a fun little like podcast speed dating type situation that will be going on in the pod lovers plus as well, which is really, really cool.

So if this is the kind of thing that you feel like man, yes, I need this. This would be really fun and good. Then go to Bamby media.com/pod Lovers Plus, you'll see some info there joining the waitlist, go in there and do that and then as soon as it's open, I will send it through to you so that you can join it. That's it for today, everybody. I hope it was helpful. Have a great day. Bye