← Podcasting Business School: Podcasting Tips for Content Entrepreneurs
Podcasting Business School: Podcasting Tips for Content Entrepreneurs
633: Minimalist social media for faster podcast growth.
00:31:30
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Hi, this is Ruby Williams from the Sober and Lit Podcast. I joined Adam's group coaching because I had a growing podcast but needed help turning listeners into actual clients and building a clear business strategy around my show. With Adam's help, I simplified my offers and learned how to use each episode as a marketing asset with CTAs that feel authentic and not pushy. My favorite part is how practical everything is. You leave every session with Adam knowing exactly what to do next and he truly cares about your success. So if you want your podcast to support your business instead of just having it be a hobby, Adam's your guy. I highly recommend him.
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What's up pod pals? It's your buddy Adam and you are listening to Podcasting Business School. It's the show where I teach podcasters simple strategies to help you grow your audience and turn your podcast content into into new clients. Hot Topic Today we're talking about how I'm growing my podcast so fast, but actually being on the minimum amount of social media platforms, so many podcasters think it's gotta be the opposite. I gotta be everywhere or I won't grow. And many of you are burning out because of that strategy. So we're gonna totally unpack this today, do a deep dive on it. Before we get going. I wanted to remind you that if podcast growth, podcast monetization, even podcast launch are issues that you're, you're struggling with or something that you could, you know, want to push that fast forward button on a little bit. Check out the link in the episode notes here. Today I've got my discovery call button on there. I got my one to one coaching consulting button on there. I'm doing a ton of consulting right now. It's really fun. I've got brand new launching podcasters that have no idea what they're doing. I've got a couple clients with millions and millions of downloads, which is, it's really neat to work on both edges of that spectrum and I'm learning at both of those edges as well. Like there are a few things, a few techniques I've developed with brand new podcasters that I bring to the table. With people that have 20 plus million downloads, I go, hey, why don't you try this? It's something a little bit different and then vice versa. So it's pretty cool. It's sharpening my saw as a coach consultant. These new two week speed to result programs are doing great. It's a one to one coaching program where we hunker down on one specific thing for two weeks. And these are going extremely well. So I'll put all that info in the episode notes. Check it out. All right. The problem that we are going to address in this episode, podcasters are giving up because they aren't seeing any growth. They aren't seeing that ROI with earning some money, and that's disheartening. And do I think podcasters are giving up too early? Yes, but it's still happening. So let's address the issue. I think that most podcasters are trying to solve this problem again by using kind of a be everywhere strategy. So to quickly define that a be everywhere strategy is I put out a podcast, and I also need to be, you know, not just audio only. I also need to be video on Spotify and video on YouTube, and I also need to be on LinkedIn, and I gotta have a Facebook presence and a Facebook group, and I gotta be on Pinterest because people are talking about that now. And I gotta be on Substack and I have to have a newsletter and I have to, you know, be doing IG lives and IG reels. And don't forget about TikTok. Like, this is a lot of stuff. That's a lot. So when you sit back and think about most podcasters, like me in 2015, that's kind of where I was at. And, you know, Adam, in 2015, my God, I had no idea what I was doing just as a podcaster, as an audio podcaster, I had no idea what I was doing. I was on zero social media platforms. Think about it in terms of languages. Like, we're trying to learn 17 different languages at the same time. That's really hard. Those people are called geniuses that can do things like that. And most of us are not at that, like, academic level. Myself for sure. So why are we trying to learn so many languages and not really mastering any of them? I think that's a big part of this. And really think about it in that terms. Like, you're trying. You're a native English speaker, you're trying to learn Spanish and French and Italian and whatever else all at the same time. That's really freaking hard. Nearly impossible. So why are we doing that with our business? Why are we doing that with our social media and our marketing? So I think that we're spreading ourselves too thin. We're trying to be everywhere, which, ironically enough, tends to lead to not really seeing growth or engagement anywhere. I see this happening to all of you. You're like, oh, I'm everywhere. We think that the box we need to Check is being everywhere. But really the box we need to check is people are finding our content. That's what's important. The goal supposedly of being on all the platforms all at once is for people to find our content. The goal isn't to be everywhere, it's to be heard. Hopefully everywhere or as many places as possible. So I think we've got our goals and priorities misconstrued a little bit there. So really think about that. Like what is actually happening when you post on LinkedIn or YouTube. I put up a post on Threads the other day. I was like, listen, if you're spending six hours editing a video for YouTube and you get four views and you aren't making any money and this is happening week after week after week, I personally give you permission to stop creating video content on that platform. I think that's a good idea. All right. I mean, there's something to be said about putting effort in and trying and not giving up early, but there's also something to be said about this isn't working. Let's try something different and see if that works better. So that's a big part of the problem. We're spreading ourselves too thin. And for me personally, like I mentioned at the beginning of the episode here, it's in the title. I've actually noticed faster audience growth by being on the minimum amount of social media platforms. It's been the complete opposite as far as what people think needs to happen to what is actually happening. For me, the end of 2025, no, the beginning of 2025, I really thinned down to Instagram and Threads. And then by the end of 2025 it was like pretty much only threads. I rarely post on Instagram. I'm going to start doing a few IG Live experiments here in the next few weeks. But like, I have no set strategy for any social media platform outside of Threads. That's my one Focus platform. And I like, normally this show will take a little dip in June, July, August, and we are ripping. I've had several. I've been documenting this on social media as well on Threads. I've had several 1000 plus download days. I had one that was almost 4000 downloads in one day from this in July, which is normally the dip month. So this is working. I'm not doing any video content. I'm not putting video on Spotify, YouTube, anywhere. I have an audio only podcast and I promote it on Threads. That is it. And I've got a newsletter. All right, so there is a different path. We're Going to explore that today. And I really want to give you two focus points, like two things that I really want you to run through your content strategy as far as a filter goes. Number one, our goal is we want to be on the minimum effective dose of platforms. Minimum effective dose. All right, so you know, I'm a mid-40s year old man. My 46th birthday is coming up, my wife is in her 40s, like we are on that 40 year old, you know, anti aging kick. And when you talk about like supplementation, like, do I want to take every single vitamin? No. I want to take the minimum amount of supplements and vitamins to get the desired result. So I don't want to take 17 things if I only have to take three things to get the desired result. Same thing when it comes to our platforms and my business. So the minimum effect or dose, maybe for some of you that's three or four. I doubt for many of you it's like the everywhere. I really, really doubt that maybe there's 1% or less than 1% of podcasters that actually need to be everywhere and will get traction everywhere. A lot of these big influencers that you see have large audiences everywhere. They started with one platform and then leverage that million person Instagram following to create a large Pinterest following or TikTok following. It started with one and then they leverage it to grow the other ones. That's different than let's be everywhere and grow everywhere all at once. That rarely happens. All right, so that's the first thing that I really want to focus on and is finding the minimum effective dose of social media platforms that you need to be on. Number two, this is the missing link for so many of you. You're not even thinking about this at all. Number two, we must become obsessed about finding organic discovery opportunities on every platform that we're gonna be active on. This is a big question, like, is there an organic discovery discovery opportunity? I put out content, the right people consume that content and it happens without me having to run a paid ad or to like run a big promotional campaign. All right, so those are the two things that I really want you to focus on and really, really think about your platforms. Number one, minimum effective dose of platforms. Number two, obsession with organic discovery opportunities. The right people are just finding your content when you post that content. And we're gonna dive into that a little bit here in a second. All right, next, let's, let's dial in on this, this minimalist social media. And I wanna tell you my, my single social media Platform advantages. So I'm only on one social media platform, Threads. A lot of you don't even know what the heck threads is. It's like the, the little stepchild of social media, but there are millions of followers. It's growing really quickly. It's one of the fastest growing social media platforms, by the way. But you know, a lot of you would never think like, ooh, threads, I can grow like crazy. So let me just give you six advantages of me only focusing on one social media platform instead of trying to be everywhere. Number one, I can put out more content each day on that platform. My volume of content on that platform. I can easily put out six different posts per day on threads. Easily, very easily. Like, it's gonna take me 10 minutes or less to do 6 posts on threads because it's a text only platform. I have a content flywheel and it's just, it's very, very easy. I don't have to film any videos, I don't have to do any imagery on Canva. I don't have to use AI for anything. So anyway, number one, I can put out more content each day because of number one. Number two, happens, I can improve my content strategy faster. I have more trial and error. I have more arrows that I can fire out of my quiver. I have more darts that I can throw at that dartboard and improve my craft, improve my aim, and get better as a content creator on that platform. More reps, more trips to the gym. You know, the more when I own my gym, I used to tell people the most important exercise you could do is walk through that door every day or however many times a week. Do that and you'll get better. Same thing with your content strategy. So I show up on threads, I'm learning one language, the language of threads. How does this algorithm work? How does commenting work? What format works best? What words, what hooks? I'm learning one single language at a time, all right? And I can improve that much faster because I'm getting lots of reps each day on this specific platform. And let me tell you, for those of you that think, oh, I can cut and paste threads to LinkedIn, to Pinterest, every language, every algorithm, every platform operates a little differently, all right? You can feel free to repost, copy and paste, you know, multi, multi purpose, re. You know, I see people trying to repurpose content from IG to threads, Bombs people, giant accounts they're repurposing and it's like, ugh, that was a flop. That didn't work. That doesn't speak the language of this platform. That's a problem. All right, the lazy, I'll use that word. The kind of lazy minded. I'm gonna have AI produce 45 things. I'm take those and post them on all the platforms. How's that working for you? Other than checking the box of you are everywhere, what is actually happening? All right, I'm gonna kind of put that out there so you really have to think about it. All right, number three, on my single social media platform, advantages number one, again, I can put out more content each day. Number two, I can improve my content strategy faster. Number three, this is a big one. I actually have time to leave high value comments on other people's posts. I get more followers and more of that organic discovery happening by leaving high value comments on other people's posts. I search through my feed and I have my feed highly curated and I see people going podcasting, question about growth, podcasting, question about launch, podcasting, growth about making money. I can dive in there and add real value. Not thumbs up, clappy clap emoji. All right, not good job. Congrats. Actual tips, strategies. I'm like, I left one earlier today. I was like, listen, I've been a full time podcaster since 2019. I think an issue that you need to be working on is xyz and I unpack a few tips. I get an immediate comment back and I've already got five new people following me from that post, including the original question asker. And that's happened in the last 45 minutes. All right. Those posts tend to go viral sometimes. My comments on other people's posts, so many of you aren't doing this at all. You don't have time to because you're trying to be everywhere and you're trying to look. It's like you're trying to run surveillance. You've got all those TV screens everywhere. Or what if you just had one TV screen to watch, one room? You can really understand what's happening there. All right, you're spreading yourself too thin. And I at least 15 to 20 minutes a day, I just focus on leaving comments on threads. That's it. That's it. High value comments. How much value can I add in other people's feeds? And it works like a charm. So that is advantage number three. Advantage number four, I can respond to comments quickly. Some of y' all are blown away and you think I'm using AI or a VA or an autoresponder. I'll tell you the truth again, I. I don't I don't use any of that stuff. I don't. I'm not smart enough to learn how to set up any of that stuff anyway. So, you know, just being honest, y', all, if somebody uses the word y', all, they're probably not smart enough to. To run all this, like, tech stuff with autoresponders and all that. And I use the word y' all a lot. I'll just put it that way. All right, So I can respond to comments quickly. You, I put up a post, somebody comments on it. I'm diving right in there. I get that notification. Bam, here we go. Let's comment on this. Let's start a conversation. And people are blown away by that and that. Create that. The algorithm really likes that. All right, again, watching one TV screen, not 12 at the same time. I can monitor this one platform and really max it out. Advantage number five, I can easily manage DMs, people DM me. I get the notification. They're getting a response from me quick. So a lot of times in the DMs, it's somebody asking about working with me and the fact that I can respond in minutes and set up a discovery call. Get that discovery call for the next couple of days. Like, we are striking while the iron is hot. I'm not juggling 12 different platforms. I'm really connecting and going deep with one. All right, final advantage number six here. I'm becoming kind of like a podcasting niche influencer on that platform that I'm focusing on. So what I mean by that is I get tagged daily by other threads users. When people are posting podcasting questions, you will see somebody post a podcasting question of any type. I will get tagged multiple times per day, and I can dive in there. Like, I would probably find that during my 15 to 20 minutes of replying to other people's posts. But the fact that other people are going, hey, podcasting business school responds to these type of things. I've gotten value from him. Let's tag him in. Like, that happens multiple times per day. I'm being known as an expert on this niche on that platform. That would not be happening if I'm trying to post on 12 different platforms, guaranteed. So those are six single social media platform advantages for you to think about. And let me just say this. I'm not, like, promoting and saying all podcasters need to focus on threads. Not saying that, like, for some of you, it might be LinkedIn, it might be Pinterest. It could be anything. Anything. All right, so let me just Say that now. In that vein, let's talk about finding a focus social media platform. I've got five things that we want to look for, and the first two are non negotiable for me. So let's say I've kind of got you to come to the dark side a little bit and you're like, okay, I've been posting everywhere. I'm gonna just start narrowing this down. How do we do that? I'm gonna give you a checklist and you have to be able to check the first two boxes, at least the first one. If you can't check the first box, you got to get rid of the social media platform. Make that promise to me right now as POD pals, before I even tell you what it is. All right, Focus platform checklist. I got five things. The number one thing that is a non negotiable is that you must love creating the content. If you go to create an Instagram reel and you throw up in your mouth and you hate it, guess what? It's gonna suck. No matter how much AI you use or whatever, it's not gonna connect if you're not passionate about it, if you don't like, if you don't enjoy the process of content creation, it's not gonna be good content, period. That's non negotiable for me. I love communicating on threads, creating my content on threads. I love it. It's recess to me, not detention. I love it. And that comes through. I love, I love creating these podcast episodes. I hope that comes through. I love writing my newsletter. I hope that comes through. I love it. That's a rule of my business. I don't create content that I don't love creating, period. That's number one when you're looking for that focus platform. The first thing we can easily get rid of is any platform you don't enjoy creating content for. Number two, to me, this is also a non negotiable. Organic discovery must be happening. What I mean by that is when I post on threads or when I comment on other people's posts on threads, I get followers. People are organically discovering and not just that person again, that I commented on. It's. The algorithm is feeding me ideal people and they are building my audience full of ideal fit podcast listeners and potential clients. Organic discovery must be happening. We're gonna dive into some organic discovery opportunities here in a second. That's what we're gonna close out with here today. But Those, those first two are non negotiables. So let's say you're posted on TikTok every day. You hate creating the videos, and organic growth is not happening. It's like one new person a month. I would stop personally posting on TikTok. Okay, just my advice. Just some friendly advice from your pod pal, Adam. Now, if you love the content and you are seeing some growth, okay, this is. This is a potential focus point. Let's. Let's hunker down on that one a little bit. So those are the first two I got. I got three more that are, like, signs of you. You've got a focus platform if these next three are happening. So, again, the first one, I love creating the content. Number two, organic discovery is happening. Number three, I'm getting new podcast listeners. Number four, I'm getting new newsletter subscribers. And number five, I'm getting new clients. Now when I look at threads, I can check all five boxes. That's a home run. Why in the world would I go, oh, well, let's start posting on LinkedIn also, because, I mean, you guys send me emails. I get one or two emails a week when people are like, adam, you're really missing out by not being on LinkedIn. Same thing about YouTube, same thing about Pinterest. Same thing about Substack. Why aren't you repurposing your newsletter substack? I don't. I feel like I've stayed in my case here. This other strategy is working much better for me. Could I get a few people per month, maybe even clients per month, by being on Substack, by being on TikTok, by being more active on IG? Yes. But I feel like I'm getting more benefits above and beyond that with my singular focus platform strategy. It is beautiful and it is working. All right? So focus platform checklist. I love creating the content on that platform. Number two, organic discovery is happening. Number three, I'm getting new podcast listeners. Number four, I'm getting new newsletter subscribers. Number five, I'm getting new clients. If you can check all five boxes, you got yourself a focus platform. If you've got at least the first two checked off, that's a potential focus platform. That's how we pare this thing down. And here's the other thing, y'. All. If you're posting everywhere and you start to, you know, vote a few platforms off the island, like Survivor, you can always put them back in. It's not like you're permanently divorcing TikTok, all right? It's not like you're permanently divorcing YouTube videos. You're just gonna go I'm gonna put this on pause and narrow down my list a little bit. Put more effort into this one or two platforms that do. Check the first two boxes. Let's see what happens. I think you're setting yourself up for success there. All right, we're going to close out strong and talk about organic discovery opportunities. Again, being obsessed with organic discovery opportunities, these organic discovery mechanisms within platforms, you've got to be finding that. I mean, if you aren't getting organic discovery, I feel like that's where most content entrepreneurs go to die. They're like, oh, I'm just. It's just all effort based marketing. That's why we wear out. If you don't have any organic discovery happening on any platforms, it's all your growth, all your monetization is based off of paid marketing and effort based marketing. And guess what? That's hard and it sucks and most of us won't make it. If you have to like, oh, I've got to keep posting everywhere and get very few new followers because of all this effort. I got to run paid ads or even like podcast guessing. That's effort, you know, that takes a lot of effort. Organic discovery happens while we sleep and it is beautiful. So I'm gonna give you four examples of organic discovery opportunities that I'm aware of. Three of the four I'm using myself. But you gotta have at least one. So number one is your podcast SEO anchor point. If you've never listened to episode 608, 608 of this show podcast in business school, listen to it. That's your next one. That's where I talk about SEO and how it helped me get over a million downloads. All right, sound. Sound good. Hopefully that that caught you that spicy headline. If you want a million downloads, you better master SEO with podcast SEO, which is different than website or Google or blog or whatever. Any other SEO. Podcast SEO is different. Okay? So we have to have that there. We got to leverage our SEO with the name of our show, with our podcast host description and our individual episode titles. And if we are choosing not to do that, you're making a huge mistake. It's really gonna hurt. I got in a full on, not an argument, full on, heated debate on threads with a person that was into like personal branding. Like, she's like, I really want my show. She had kind of a creative name and there were no keywords. And she kind of took offense to my perfect podcast naming formula. I'm like, listen, you're leaving audience growth on the table by not having any keywords the name of your show and the whole thing. I was like, if you aren't famous, the main post was, if you're not famous, don't name the show after yourself. And they took offense to that. She's like, I'm about personal branding. I'm like, yeah, you can build a personal brand, but nobody is searching your name. And that's a huge disadvantage. And especially in the audio podcasting space. So you can still build a personal brand where you go, you know, keyword, keyword tips. With Adam, Scheibly, I could build a personal brand, but we gotta have some keywords in there. And so leveraging podcast SEO as an anchor point is, number one, as a podcaster, we gotta have that. That is a, a unique organic discovery opportunity for audio based podcasters. Especially number two, organic discovery opportunity. You've gotta have a social media anchor point. So if you're posting on TikTok, that algorithm should be feeding you ideal audience members. All right? And if you're a content entrepreneur and you're building an email list selling programs, products and services, that algorithm should be feeding you ideal fit podcast listeners. That should be feeding you ideal newsletters subscribers, ideal potential clients. If that's not happening, that's a big, you know, that's a warning sign of let's put that platform on pause. So for me, that's threads as my social media organic discovery anchor point. When I put, put up my own content, the algorithm serves me up ideal fit audience members. When I comment on other people's posts, that algorithm serves me up ideal fit audience members. All right? It is beautiful and it works and it's awesome. All I have to do is just put up content. All right, Number three, organic discovery opportunity. Certain monetization platforms have organic discovery anchor points. And this is new to me. This is exciting. And the one that I've been noticing the most is school. Like, I'm, I'm obsessed with building my school community. Shout out to everybody that's in the podcasting business. School, school community. It's the fastest school community for podcasters, the fastest growing. At the time of recording, we're approaching 250 plus members. Very excited about that. And so this is a monetization platform. But what Skool is actually doing is there's organic discovery. So people that are in other school groups via search are able to find. They can, you can put podcasting in there and podcasting business school is going to pop up. So school is sending new members. I get new members from the school discovery every single week. The other New thing that school's doing is they're actually running Facebook ads to individual groups. Like they're running ads. They are paying for ads to my community. They are not me. Now they, they do take a 30% affiliate commission when that happens. So you have to kind of opt into it, but they're paying for it. I'll. I'll take, you know, brand new clients at a 30%. Like that's my affiliate rate anyway. If a current school member in my community refers somebody and they sign up for a paid tier, I give them 30%. So why not? I mean, it's the same thing. So that is a monetization platform. That's an example of a monetization platform, Anchor Point. Like, I'm, I'm always looking for organic discovery opportunities. If we can get in that vein and work that. I'm like, oh, this is, this is a place to focus on. Right? This is one of the reasons why I'm obsessed with building that school community. Now, the fourth one that I'm not using yet, but I know is out there. I know that some of you are using. This is a newsletter platform, Anchor Point, or an email marketing platform, Anchor Point, where I know that there's a platform called Beehive. And of course they spell it weird. I think it's B E E H I I V Beehive. And then I think Kit also does this. There's organic discovery and like people referring other people's newsletters within those platforms. And that's really neat. And I'm definitely kicking the tires of moving everything. I've been on Kajabi for over 10 years and I'm now a school. And, you know, I'm really kicking the tires. I'm moving off that platform and maybe moving my email marketing to Kit or Beehive. Beehive, just because of this organic discovery. It's everything to me. Kajabi doesn't give me that. They're trying to do it and it seems like they're. I don't know, I'm not real happy with them. Shame on you, Kajabi. So Anyway, those are four organic discovery opportunities. You got to have at least one. Like, the easiest one to me is that podcast SEO anchor point again. If you haven't listened to episode 608, please just do it, I'm begging you. And please apply it. Rebrand your show, use the principles, get more listeners. It happens every single time. All right. I've never had anybody that actually followed those suggestions in that episode that hasn't grown their show many people have doubled, tripled, 5x10x100x through downloads. And it's awesome. I love hearing that. So podcast SEO anchor point, a social media anchor point for organic discovery. If your monetization platform has those opportunities, great. If your email marketing or newsletter platform has those, great. But podcast SEO and social media anchor point for organic discovery, those are musts. Those are must haves. And that's again, how we narrow down that list a little bit and go, okay, LinkedIn. That's really not happening for me. Or even threads for some people. Threads. It won't happen for you for various reasons. Okay, so let's bring it home. I am a big fan of less but better. That's been my theme for the last two years. Less but better. How can I do better work by doing fewer things? My business mentor, Dan Sullivan used to say, simplify before you multiply, Adam, you gotta simplify. No, simplify so that you can multiply. That's what he said. Direct quote. So that's something I've become obsessed with and it's really, really served me well when it comes to you all. I want to see more of you succeeding in terms of growing your show, getting that ROI from growth and monetization. I want to see more of you building an audience and earning meaningful income. That is why this show exists. That's why I've got my school community. That's why I'm doing one on one coaching consulting. All right, so this is an issue that you feel like you could use some help with. Check out the link in the show notes. I got my, my one on one coaching consulting info up up there this week. Dive into that. Would love to have the opportunity to earn the opportunity to, to work with you and help you out. All right, pod pals, this is an important one. Hopefully this, this soaked in hit home. And again, I just want to see more of you succeeding. That's why I put out episodes like this. I know it's a little bit of a tough lovey vibe when I, I get on my soapbox and get preachy about this stuff, but it's just because I want to see more of you succeeding. So with that pod pals, I'm going to send you out into the world. Wishing you health, happiness and many downloads. I will see you on the next episode. Hey, Kevin here, host of Grit, Grace and inspiration. If you've had a podcast for more than the past five minutes, chances are at some point in time you've thought about starting over, doing a refresh, maybe a rebrand. Well, I got a podcast episode recommendation for you. You need to go check out episode 295 here on podcasting Business School is Adam walks you through his strategies for successfully rebranding your show.