Leesa Barnes - Grow Your Podcast Audience

In my presentation, I used each letter in the word PODCAST to show 7 ways to grow your podcast audience. I made sure that my presentation was as interactive as possible, although I ran out of time near the end. That meant that I had to rush through a couple of points.

There were a few people blogging from the conference, so I hope to find some comments from others and include the links here. I stayed away from the obvious - submit your podcast to podcatchers, send out a press release, do interviews in other podcasters' podcasts, etc. Instead, my points were:

• Serve your podcast up from a blog, not a website.
  
  
• It will be difficult to make money directly from your podcast. Instead, use it as a lead generating tool.
  
  
• Optimize your post for search engines. Put keywords in the title and description of your podcast post in your blog.
  
  
• Create a community for your listeners. Encourage commenting on your blog and launch a forum.
  
  
• Actively support other podcasters. Use tags, trackbacks, bookmarks and other social media to drive traffic to your website.
  

I must admit, my presentation was heavily focused on business podcasting, so I know that I alienated those whose podcasts are more entertainment or spoken-word based. However, there are some lessons that all could learn whether they're podcasting for fun or for profit.

Technorati Tags: PAB2006