10 Easy Ways to Grow Your Podcast Audience Organically (Without Ads)

Starting a podcast can be difficult, but the real challenge is in building it and growing your audience.

Every podcaster hopes to reach that stage of having a large, engaged audience that eagerly anticipates each new episode. But attaining such achievement can be frustrating most times, especially after putting so much work into content creation. The best way to go about doing this the right way is by having the right guide and plan to put you through, which is why this content is for you.

In this article, we’ll discuss the simple yet practical steps to take to grow your podcast audience without ads.

10 Ways to Grow Your Podcast Audience

1. Produce Quality Content Consistently

Podcasting has evolved a lot and stayed long enough for the audience to know a bad podcast easily. If we were still in the early stages of podcasting evolution, the audience could still overlook low quality such as bad audio, annoying word fillers like "ums" and "ahs," and lack of research. These days, they can’t tolerate such mistakes and errors and as a result, it’s not advisable to create such types of content. You need to up your content production game, review your production setup and make your video and audio editing topnotch if you want to attract new listeners.

2. Create a Website For Your Podcast

One disadvantage of podcasting platforms like Spotify and Apple Podcasts is their tendency to close up at any time—don’t panic, there are no signs of that yet. But if you have a website that serves as a home base for your podcast, you’ll have absolute control over your content. Also, your podcast website can be a base for your marketing. You can refer people to your it to check a few episodes, sign up to your newsletter, or buy your e-course or merchs‌. You can also repurpose your content, set up your blog, work out an SEO strategy and add transcriptions for every podcast episode.

3. Submit Your Podcast To Every Directory

If you really want to put your podcast in front of your audience, then don’t skip this step. Podcast directories are platforms that list and categorise podcasts for users to discover, search, and subscribe to their favourite shows easily. Popular examples are Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts. Submitting your podcast to these directories will help you reach more audience on different platforms and also increase exposure for new listeners.

4. Invite Guests for Interviews

Interviews are one of the most common forms of podcasting today. For podcast shows, it is an avenue for free marketing. Every guest you bring to your show has an audience. Therefore, inviting the guest is similar to directing the attention of their audience to your podcast. The audience discovers your podcast and gradually becomes a loyal listener or viewers of your shows.

All you have to do is encourage your guests to push and grow your show’s reach easily and comfortably. To achieve this, you can give your guest a short segment of your show to anchor. It could be the introductory or outro section in which your guest gets to mimic you.

You can also give them promotional packages, which include:

• Your podcast logo, merch and artwork
• Notable quotes they said during the show
• Social media post ideas and content with images, videos, hashtags and tags.

Tip: You can create short-form videos for promotional packages using SoundMadeSeen. With SoundMadeSeen, you can convert audio and videos into short-form videos that you can use for TikTok, YouTube shorts, and Instagram reels as you prefer. You have absolute control of the video editing process with features like automatic caption and image generation, content repurposing and management, all available for you. Add these shorts and videos to your promotional package to grow your reach and podcast audience.

5. Nail Your Podcast SEO

Something you might not know is that SEO cuts across several forms of content rather than blogs and written content alone. Podcast SEO is another amazing way to grow your podcast audience organically. It makes your podcast easily discoverable for search engines to display your website and podcast to your audience on search engines.

Your podcast SEO should start with creating the best podcast description and episode titles. While doing that, make sure to perform strategic keyword research to identify the most suitable keywords for your podcast. You should add these keywords naturally to your descriptions and other necessary information. Avoid using generic words and statements—like Marketing Podcast #91—in your podcast titles and descriptions. Use specific words that people will search for.

Building high-quality backlinks is another podcast SEO strategy that works well. Don’t use manipulative techniques or buy backlinks from freelancers. Acquire backlinks from reputable sources and push for high-quality ones.

6. Repurpose your Content into a Video

It’s no longer news that videos are the most consumed content on the internet today. If you have a video podcast show, you can repurpose your content into several short-form videos for TikTok, YouTube shorts and Instagram reels. If you own an audio-only podcast, you convert it to audiograms or videos easily.

Tip: Whether you want to create short-form videos or you want to convert your audio podcast to audiograms and videos, SoundMadeSeen is an amazing tool to use. Sign up to access the free version and see for yourself.

7. Cross-promote your Podcast with Other Podcasts

After your podcast growth has gone up the chart with more audience trooping to your podcast, consider cross-promoting your podcast. It involves featuring on another’s podcast and meeting a whole new audience. If this new audience loves your style of conversation and becomes interested, then that’s a win for you—you’ll get a larger audience coming right in.

However, both parties must provide value for cross-promotion to work effectively. You must share great value with the podcaster’s audience and also give the other podcaster an avenue to promote themself on your podcast.

8. Encourage Listener Engagement

Another way you can grow your podcast audience is by encouraging and giving your audience room to engage. Ask them for feedback and opinions, encourage them to tell you who they want as the next guest and ensure you reiterate your calls-to-action more. Include surveys for feedback and forms for them to ask questions for the guest, after which you share the answers in the next episode.

9. Leverage Social Media

Social media is an amazing tool for leverage because of its wide audience and reach. You can post podcast snippets (short-form videos), quotes and excerpts from guests and some behind-the-scene footage to attract the audience and build a community from social media. You can also invite your guests to engage and share your content for more reach. On Instagram, use the “Invite collaborator” feature to share your content with the guest or inform the guest to retweet and quote-tweet your post on X (formerly Twitter).

10. Track your Progress

Once you’ve started your strategy, track your progress to know what’s working and not working. Tweak and re-tweak your strategy to aim for perfection, keep learning and most importantly, reward yourself for every new feat.

Final Thoughts

Growing your podcast audience is a straightforward process and there are no shortcuts for it. Start by setting an achievable goal and a timeframe for it. Plan and create a well-detailed strategy from the simple ways we’ve discussed and stick to it consistently. It may take a while to get to that goal you think of, but it’s worth the time, energy and patience.

Happy Podcasting!!!!

FAQs on How to Grow a Podcast

How do I get to 1000 listeners for my podcast?

• Produce high-quality content
• Create a podcast website
• Leverage social media
• Submit your podcast to podcast directories and apps
• Nail your podcast SEO
• Invite guests for interviews
• Cross-promote your podcast on other podcasts

How can I make my podcast more popular?

Making your podcast popular is a continuous process that you must consistently keep working on. All the steps in this article can help you achieve that but you need to keep doing them. Create quality content, edit them, publish, market, make changes when necessary and keep the cycle going.

Good luck and happy creating!