Upping Your Podcast Game, And Listener Questions

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• Listener personas and popular podcast topics
• Gear, microphones, and setup recommendations
• Audio recording and editing software recommendations
• How to achieve professional sounding audio for your final episodes
• Writing SEO-friendly show notes for your website
• Setting up a podcast hosting platform account and website
• Submitting your podcast to popular listening apps
• Launching your show with style
• Growing your audience and approaches to monetization

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Questions From Our Facebook Group

In this episode, we discuss a handful of questions from our Podcast Hackers group on Facebook. This is a place where we have lively discussions around what’s working well in people’s shows and what they’re struggling with. As a community, we share our knowledge to succeed as a group.

What can I do to help get my show into the New and Noteworthy section in Apple Podcasts?

Great question here, and one that is asked a lot. Getting into the New and Noteworthy section of Apple Podcasts can do a lot to increase your reach, especially as a show is launching.

There are two parts to the New and Noteworthy section: The New and The Noteworthy. Let’s examine each of these individually.

The “New” aspect refers to a podcast that was approved by Apple within the last 8 weeks. So the clock is ticking once the show has been approved to make a splash in those first few weeks.

During these 8 weeks, there are two Calls To Action (CTA) that you want to encourage.

For your broader audience members, the goal is to get them to subscribe so they receive each episode as soon as it’s published. This will ensure download numbers stay steady and there less one-off listens.

For those who subscribed (we like to refer to this as your Tribe), take things a step further and ask them to leave a rating and review in Apple Podcasts. These go a long way towards increasing the social proof for your show, which in turn will bring in more listeners and subscribers.

The Noteworthy aspect of New and Noteworthy is more subjective and is driven by a team at Apple directly. These are shows that might be following a recent trend (like COVID-19 right now), a show about a political campaign, or maybe a show about a TV series that’s just started. There’s not much that any of us can do to influence this decision, other than creating great content and empowering our listeners to spread the word as much as possible.

I want to create great sound, but don’t know where to start (on a budget preferably)?

This may be is the single biggest hurdle that folks have when starting a podcast. And for good reason. Many podcasters don’t have a background in audio engineering but strive for a professional sound. There are a few pieces to this equation, so let’s examine...