E74 Leveraging Friends and Family: Boosting Your Podcast's Launch and Growth

Welcome to Help Me Podcast, a show designed to help you

launch and grow your podcast. I am your host, Gino, and twice

a week I will release a new episode with different tips and tricks

for launching and growing your podcast. From audio engineering to planning

intentionally to growth tactics, each episode will be a bite sized

tip to help you podcast.

Hey. Welcome back to help me. Podcast. Thank you all for tuning in.

Today we're going to talk about how you can leverage your friends and

your family when you're launching a new podcast. Sometimes you

might not want help from your family, and maybe if you're starting a new podcast,

you might feel a little uneasy or unsure about it and maybe

you want to hide it from your friends. But in this episode, I want to

talk about why, if you can push past that,

using your family and friends could help you launch your podcast. I'll share

with you my experience and why I believe that this to be

true. So at the beginning of 2023, I started two

podcast. One of them was this one called Help Me Podcast,

which is obviously to help you guys podcast. And the other one

called working towards our purpose. When I first started these

podcast, I didn't want to share them with the people that I

knew. I didn't want to be judged, certainly didn't tell my family. And

I kind of just launched them quietly. And to my surprise,

hardly anybody listened. But then the working towards my

purpose podcast. I started interviewing people. So eventually word

got out through the people that I was interviewing that the show was

existing and I had a podcast. And I actually remember the first time

I interviewed somebody and they shared it on social media. It was

like very early on, maybe like episode three.

And at first you get that sort of like, oh, no, they're

sharing it with all the people that I know. Now they're going to know and

I'm out there, right, and people can judge me. And

at first it was like, I didn't really want that. But in the back of

my head, I knew this is what I needed to be doing all along,

because that episode had way more downloads than any of the

other ones. And it's no surprise because people

knew about it and people who knew me wanted to support me and wanted

to listen to what I was doing. And that's kind of what this idea in

this episode is about, is simply just telling

the people that you like and the people that care about you that you're doing

something. It can definitely be a little overwhelming,

and maybe you feel like you can't tell them,

and I certainly understand that because I've been there. But if you could push past

that, you can actually help your show to launch with

a bang, right? You can launch your show and you can actually have people

listen and tune into it and leave reviews

and give you feedback and all that sort of good thing that's going to

help you grow. So let's talk about even before launching your

podcast, if you can entrust a couple of people, maybe they're

close friends or maybe they're family members and maybe they

have skills like graphic design or audio

engineering or journalism or something that could be useful to a

podcast. You could imagine how it would be very helpful to get their

opinions and feedback on specific things that you're doing for your

show. For example, your cover art, right? You can design your cover art

on Canva like we've talked about in previous episodes, and

maybe you design two or three of them and you try to figure out which

one's the best. If you have a cousin, for example, that

is a graphic designer, or maybe they do some work in design,

you can show them the covers and be like, hey, can I get your opinion

on them? Now, that doesn't mean that you have to take their advice,

but you can hear what they have to say and they could offer you some

helpful advice that can make your cover art look a little better or

translate your message a little bit better. So, I mean, that can be one reason

why you want to leverage your family and friends is that they may have skills

that you don't have or maybe you're not as good at. And

this could help your show in many different ways. The

second reason why you want to get your family and friends involved right at the

beginning is because when you go to launch your show, you'll actually have people

waiting to listen to it, right? Like you could tell them, hey, I got this

podcast coming out. It's coming out on X Date. Here's the link when

it comes out. And now you have, let's just say, 1015

people who are waiting for the episode to drop because they support the

things that you do. Now you have 15 listeners right off the

bat. You can possibly have 15 people reviewing your

show, and now you have a bunch of good reviews, you got some

listens, and that's just a way better way to launch your podcast, is

to get some reviews and to give you that momentum of

people listening to your show right off the bat. Whereas when I did

it, I kind of launched in silence and slowly

people started listening to it and it wasn't exactly

the best that it could have been. So let your friends and family know that

you got a show coming out and you want them to listen to it, and

you'd appreciate if they listen to it. Of course, always be

thankful for whatever feedback or whatever listens or whatever reviews

they give you, and you'll be well on your way to

getting a community of listeners and a community of people that enjoy your

podcast. And just think about how that's a much

better way to launch a new podcast into the world than it is

to kind of quietly go into the world and just hope that people

come after you release it. Having a group of people

who are ready and waiting to listen to your show and going to

consume the content as soon as it's out there, is a much better way to

go about it. And that brings me to my third point building a support

system around your podcast. A lot of times people are podcasting on their own,

and if you are podcasting on your own, that's fine, there's nothing wrong

with it. But it's also great to have a support system around you

to where maybe you have a friend or your sister

or brother who knows about your podcast and follows along,

so you kind of feel like you owe them the episode, right? If

you're releasing an episode once a week and you

don't release an episode a week, you know that that person is listening and they're

going to ask you, hey, what happened? Where was the episode this week?

And it kind of just gives you some accountability. So it's always

good to have a good support system around you and even somebody to

talk to when it gets difficult, because as we know, podcasting is a

lot of work and sometimes you need somebody there

to help you get through the tougher situations. This is

why it's all a great idea to let people know that you're podcasting

and to don't just podcast in silence like I did when I first

started launch your podcast and tell all of your friends and family and

everybody that you know that you are launching a brand new podcast. And you

would love their input and help and feedback and support. And to

recap those three reasons why it's so important, first is

because you can leverage your friends and your family's technical and

creative skills that they may have that can help you launch your

podcast. Second is getting people to listen

and to review your show right when you launch it is a great

way to get some momentum behind your podcast and to get some

listeners right off the bat. And thirdly, to create a

supportive network of people that can help be your support system

for your podcast. Even just one of these reasons is enough to tell

everybody that you know and to try to push past that fear of being judged

and that fear of doing something new because

people are around you to help you and to support you. And

I think it's always a message we have to remind ourselves is that you

can't do it alone. And when you do things with

people and community, it makes the final product better.

It helps you to not be so hard on yourself, and

it just makes it more fun. So when you go to launch your podcast.

Make sure you tell all your friends and family, that's all I got for you

today. Thank you everybody for listening and I will see you next time.

We've reached the end of the episode and if you enjoyed this podcast

or you got something from it, you might be interested in my

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notes and click the link. Thanks for listening and happy

podcasting.

E74 Leveraging Friends and Family: Boosting Your Podcast's Launch and Growth
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