Charles Hodgson: Building an Audience
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The following was posted to the Yahoo! list today by Charles Hodgson of Podictionary. I’m reprinting it here with his permission. At two minutes a day, I’ve said many times that Podictionary offers the highest quality-per-minute ratio of any podcast in my subscriptions list.1 Listen to what the man says about his experiences getting the word out on his show. And then subscribe.
Similar writeups from others, BTW, will be more than welcome here. They’ll be trumpeted.
I am offering this up so that other podcasters can evaluate their
own efforts to build audience.
My listenership at www.podictionary.com is in the 3,500 range for each episode. The bulk of these daily (I also have a weekly feed that airs the same material). I just posted episode # 227 and will hit the first anniversary on June 3.
Early on I was lucky enough to get mentioned on several other podcasts. I attribute my biggest early gains to exposure throughwww.thewordnerds.org (thanks guys) and clearly the overlap in subject matter is very important here. I did get some exposure on very large circulation venues but although each of these helped, they never amounted to more than a minor boost (tens to a hundred or so). The exception was a weeklong exposure on iTunes which likely moved me from about 1500 to 2500.
Here is a list of other exposure that has had less impact:
- Several spots on Adam Curry’s Daily Source Code
- Featured on Yahoo beta podcast directory within a few weeks of it going up
- Guest (with podcast mentioned and linked from their website) on the NPR radio program and podcast “A Way With Words” (subject related and major listenership—why didn’t this one work?)
- Two local newspaper articles (Ottawa Citizen)
- Interview on local University Radio & weekly rebroadcast of one of my episodes
- Caller on an Ontario-Canada wide phone in (subject related)
- Small spot in JANE magazine.
- Numerous blogs and other podcast mentions (thanks all).
Other measures I have taken are to attend the local writers festival (my podcast is on words) and hand out cards. I have helped both this festival and some local poets begin their own podcast. I also set up a mailing list, thinking that not everyone is ready for podcasting, but most people understand email. It has attracted only a small following. For my anniversary I have set up a listener drive contest with an ipod nano as a prize and have been fairly surprised at the small number of entries. It’s not over yet, but so far seems like an experiment not worth repeating.
The podcast is a project all on its own, but it dovetails well with a book I have coming out and I have linked the two in my promotion efforts including mentioning the podcast in the Amazon page for my book.
I hope this little story will help others in planning their audience building. The biggest issue is just being there. Keep on pumping out your good quality stuff. Plus, if you have an idea that might work, try it. If it doesn’t work, then try the next one too. Eventually something will work!
- The runner-up would be Ask a Ninja. Go figure. ↩
This is excellent! As someone who started in October 2005, I have grown to an audience of between 1000 and 1200, and as I start to plan how to continue to improve the quality of my program and expand, this is timely.
I’m also curious about the growth chart/trends. For example, is growth steady, or does it come in fits and starts? Was there a “critical” mass number that once reached, the growth really took off?
Does promotion outside of current listeners help? For example, I used to spend time posting notices about my program around the net. I think it may have helped initially, but then I decided to stop, since that’s not how I learn about new programs. I haven’t noticed that helping or hurting me.
What are other people doing?
I’ll try to make some time to write about my experiences, but given my current workload, I don’t suggest anyone hold their breath.
Comment by Michael — April 12, 2006 @ 3:35 pm