Each podcast gets created in a vacuum. It isn't like producing a new article for a website where you have a loyal following already. For a new podcast you produce the content, get it ready and then it goes out on to its lonely RSS feed and there is a feeling that it may sit there and no one will ever find it.
Tip 1# - Promoting your work
I have been lucky enough to get promotion deals with South African news portal News24. A large amount of the traction that we got for the series was from putting the episodes (in full) on YouTube. This is a way to gather a younger audience and people that don't usually consume podcasts in the regular way.
One of the best ways to promote your podcast is for the host or producer to be a guest on another podcast. This cannibalistic nature of the business helps to build hype. I recently went on a podcast (based in the US) promoting the second season of Alibi and, in return, we will feature him on this newsletter so he can give out some of his insights.
What's important about promoting your podcast is that social media largely doesn't work (in terms of people clicking through from Twitter and listening to your show). So you may get a selection of likes and retweets, but this isn't going to translate into many listens. You have to think of social media as the equivalent to putting up advertising billboards: if a potential listener comes across one enough times then they may go to their podcasting app and subscribe.
Tip 2# - The First Episode Is Crucial
Be honest with where your interest waned when you listened to other investigative podcasts and what would have kept you on board. Lots of people will try out your first episode and move on.
I did a full script rewrite of the first season of Alibi and re-recorded all the voiceover when I realized that the first episode was heavy on exposition and scene-setting of the crime, but didn’t go deep enough into Anthony’s character to be intriguing.
Initially I only told the audience at the end of episode two how the police who had tortured him while he was in high school were the same officers involved in the case that got him convicted. This is a major plot twist of the series. In the final edit, I moved all of that into the first episode.
An example that bucked this rule was S-Town which launched all at once, with the biggest twist only occurring after two episodes. This allowed the creators to ignore this first episode rule and structure their seven episodes more like a novel.
The next plotting challenge is around cliffhangers. Constructing the ending of each episode so the listener hungers for more becomes frustrating once you are so close to your story that you are unsure as to which story beats will pull them along. These were the hardest parts to write and plot, and also where I felt like I was being disingenuous. At one point I wanted an episode to end when we discover that Anthony may have lied to us about the cause of an injury. He tells us it was a bottle, while someone else says he was hurt by a bullet. But that meant I needed to withhold an important piece of information (until the next episode) in order to have maximum impact. These sorts of “gimmicks” keep the reader hooked and are the nature of the format.
This has been adapted from an article I originally wrote for GIJN.