Does social media marketing have you feeling stumped? You’re not alone. If you want to do more with your social media for your podcast and summit, then get ready because this snippet of a session from Sell With a Summit: Podcaster Edition is going to show you some simple steps to do that. Meet Andréa Jones, social media strategist, host of the Social Savvy Podcast, founder of the Social Savvy School, and if that wasn’t enough, one of Social Report’s top marketers to follow!
Andréa Jones: Thank you so much for having me.
Jenn: Alright, so before we dive in to the details of how to best use social media as a podcaster and summit host, can you give us kind of a quick overview of your thoughts around that?
Andréa Jones: Yeah. So social media is such a powerful way to market our podcasts and now summits. And so I think when we think about it, though, sometimes we get too excited about creating the thing that we forget about posting it on social media, and so that’s where I like to come in – I like to help simplify things, I love a good formula, I love a good analogy – and really how people actually use social media in a way that impacts and actually gets you more listeners and attendees and that sort of thing. So it’s kinda my philosophy around social media.
Jenn: So let’s really go ahead and dive in now and talk about how to make the most of social media for podcasts and eventually a summit. So what would be the first step – especially in terms of a formula – that a podcaster-turned-summit-host needs to take in order to effectively share their podcast and virtual summit on social media?
Andréa Jones: Yeah. So I like to consider this as if you were launching anything. Like, if you’re launching your podcast, launching a summit, it’s the same as launching a product or anything like that. And so there’s three different stages of awareness that your followers are going through – or potential followers.
So the first stage is that they are unaware of you and your show, and they are unaware that they even need it. So you kind of have to introduce them to the concept in that first stage of awareness. Like, this is this thing, and here’s why you need it.
Now, if they don’t sign up at that point, now they’re in the second stage of awareness in that they know who you are, they kind of know about your podcasts and your summit, but they don’t really know why it matters to them specifically. So now you’re addressing those problems, helping them become more aware of how does this help them, entertain them? How is it informative? Who’s speaking? You know, what is it like? What does the experience feel like?
And then if that person doesn’t make a decision to join you, then we’ve got the last stage of awareness, which is, they know you, they know about your summit, they know why it matters, and now you have to compare it to other options out there in the industry to help them understand why it matters in the larger context of what they’re doing. So for instance, with podcasts, you can listen to them on the go, you can listen to them anywhere. Really helping add more context into like, they know why it matters, they know why it matters to them; why aren’t they making that decision? Now they need some other kind of encouraging information to help them take an action.
And so if you can speak to those three stages of awareness very regularly as you’re promoting your new thing, that could really help that decision-making process. And sometimes we assume people are in that last stage, so we assume that they know who we are. We know what the podcast is about or the summit, and we’re just kind of sharing the reason why like, “Hey, you can listen to it on the go,” but if they’re coming into that spot, they may be like, “what even is this podcast about? Why does it even matter to me?” And so it’s kind of having regular posts that reframe that when you’re leading into the launch.
And then you do want to post regularly. There’s always someone who hasn’t heard of you; even if they’ve been following you, that doesn’t mean they know what you do. So sometimes we feel uncomfortable, especially as introverted people. Like I’m pretty introverted. I don’t like talking about myself. It feels like bragging, especially on social media. So in the early days, I would just say it once and be like “I said it, it’s out there in the world,” but we have to keep repeating it because like I said, those posts are mixed into all of those other posts and you really want to give that listener, that potential listener, a reason to opt into what you’re doing and regular reminders do that.
Jenn: Yeah. I know that for a lot of folks that whether you’re introverted or extroverted, like even for me as an extrovert, I still am like, “I don’t really want to bug people and keep poking them with stuff.” But that is really important, ’cause like we talked about, social media is overwhelming and not everybody’s going to see it anyway. So yeah, I completely agree.
And speaking of podcasts, building that awareness, podcasts and summits have some really unique content creation opportunities. So what are some ways that you would say that podcasters can make the most of the content that they generate through their podcast and their summit to use it on social media with less effort, hopefully, and build more buzz that way?
Andréa Jones: Oh, yes, this is the power of repurposing that we’re going to talk about here, because I love working with podcasters for this reason. We have so much content; like, we’re drowning in content. So there’s so many different ways you can repurpose it right now. Video is the most powerful way to communicate on social media. We’re seeing things like TikTok becoming insanely popular. We’re seeing things like Instagram Reels kind of creeping up there. And so if you could take some of that content and repurpose it in those new formats, you’re a step ahead of some of the other folks in your industry.
Even better is you can repeat yourself and create new content in that format. So here’s what I mean by this: you can take a video that you recorded with your summit guest and chop it up and post it on Tiktok. That’s totally fine. There’s a 30 minute – er, 30-second limit, so you can take that over to TikTok. But what we found works even better is to hop on your camera and say, “I just got done recording a video with this summit host. We talked about this, this, and this, make sure you sign up to our summit or make sure you listen to the podcast,” and, you know, give them a call to action. And we’re seeing those types of videos work really well. And it takes an extra 30 seconds, sure, but you’re basically saying the same thing, just in a new format and in a different way.
I’ll give one other example here for repurposing content, which is with one of the newer platforms like Clubhouse. So Clubhouse is an audio focused social networking platform. And so as podcasters and summit hosts, it makes perfect sense to use that platform to get people to listen to your podcasts and to participate in your summit.
Now, if you’re thinking about what’s the difference between the two, like, oftentimes we think, okay, if I’m putting on a summit, what do I then say in a Clubhouse room? Wouldn’t it be the same thing? And that’s not necessarily the case. I want you to think about that Clubhouse room as like, you know, the samples at Costco and how you like, walk up to someone – like pre-pandemic – you’d walk up and you like, get a little sample and you’re like, “Oh, this is good,” and then you end up buying three boxes, right?
Okay, so that’s what Clubhouse is to your summit. Think about how you can give them a sample, an appetizer, a teaser, a taste of what your summit is like. Same thing with the podcast: how can you give an example of what your show is like? And if you can gather up some of your podcast guests, or some of your summit speakers into a Clubhouse room, even better way to start promoting your summit. So any, you can take this strategy and apply it to any platform. But those are just some of the trending ways that you can do that right now.
Jenn: I love it. I love that idea of bringing all the summit speakers into your room – or your podcasts guests – and just kind of doing an Ask Me Anything style, ’cause that’s definitely something that I love doing for the summit and then if they’re already on board for that, that’s a great way to kind of repurpose it that too.
So I do have a question about how to promote it without bragging, too, because you talked about that a second ago. So for a lot of folks, it’s hard to figure out where that line is between like, “Oh my gosh, I’m so awesome,” and, “I’m just not going to post because I don’t want people to think that I’m boasting or whatever.” What would be some of your tips to find that line for yourself?
Andréa Jones: Yeah, ’cause that is tough. We want to talk about this thing that we created, but we don’t also want to be like, “look at me. I’m dope.” Like, it feels a little awkward.
So here’s what I recommend doing: first, sit down and brainstorm some ways that your podcast or your summit is transformational. And I want you to focus on the feelings of transformation. So sometimes we focus on like, “there’s this guest and that guest, and this is the format of the show and blah, blah, blah.”
But we want to focus on the feeling. So I’ll use an example of like, an audio drama. When you’re listening to one, let’s say it’s about ghost hunting and you’re finding… you’re going into a spooky house and you’re recording the whole session and it turns into a podcast. You wouldn’t… you could talk about like the technical aspects of the house or the ghost, but if you say instead, “you’ll want to listen to about halfway through because the hair on your arm will raise.” That’s a feeling. And now you’re like, “Ooh, what is that? I want to listen.”
So that’s a feeling instead of the fact of this is the house, this is the ghost, this is the ghost hunter. So when you’re thinking about your podcast or your summit, you want to think about the feeling that people have. So will they walk away feeling relieved that they finally have a plan for something, or will they walk away feeling super clear on what step they should take next? Yes, you could talk about we’re going to teach you Instagram Stories or Instagram Reels, or we’re gonna teach you how to do this, that, and the other thing.
But if you said something like you’re finally gonna have a plan in place for X, Y, Z, then that is a feeling that is really what people want. When you start listing out the facts, sometimes it sounds like work, like, “Oh, I have to take notes and I have to do all this work.” So you want to focus on the feeling, so brainstorm out those transformational feelings.
Then when you start writing your captions, you start plugging those in. We’re going to use what I call the ABC’s of writing and promotional caption. And it really isn’t about you; it’s about your potential listener or your potential attendee. So you want to capture their attention in some way. And on a lot of social media platforms, that very first sentence gets cut off a little bit -they have to click read more or see more – so you really want to have something that reels them into the conversation. Questions work really great here. Impact statements work really great. Facts and statistics work really great here, but think about what would get someone to tap read more or see more.
Then you want to add in the benefits of what you’re talking about, whether it’s a podcast episode or a summit you’re promoting. And again, those benefits are feeling-based. So that’s where that brainstorming will come in and start pulling in some of those feelings so that people will know exactly what they’ll get at the end of that either podcast episode or summit session.
And then finally you want to add a call to action, and I do find that as podcast hosts, sometimes we assume a lot about our podcast and how people see it, because we tend to listen to a lot of podcasts, so we just get it, but it’s still relatively new, so you want to explain it, everyone else who gets it, they’ll get it anyways. It’s really for the people who are new and they’re like, what’s a podcast? How do I listen to it? Is it free? Where do I find it? Do I have to download it? Those sorts of things.
So typically in the call to action section, I’m putting things like “you can listen to this podcast for free on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, just search for Savvy Social Podcast and you’ll find it.” so really making it like super clear. And if you’re on a platform that does allow links, I do like to put links in that section as well. So attentions, benefits, calls to action, and the benefit is really focusing in on that transformation.
Jenn: So I know that you also have a resource to kind of help us take this idea of lifting weights on social media even further, so can you tell us a bit about that?
Andréa Jones: Yes. So I have my free course. You can find it onlinedrea.com/free and it really goes through this framework of building a social media strategy that works for you. There’s a workbook as well. It goes farther from posting – we talk about that – but into like, creating graphics and even networking on social media, like, how do we like pull people into this process? So yeah, that’s a really good place to start for a lot of us and building those foundational elements.
Jenn: Thank you so much. I’m so excited to go and share that with everybody and see all the new social media that pops up because of that. So thank you so much for being here and sharing all of that – I’m sure mind-blowing for everybody – wisdom and tips.
So thank you again so much for being here.
Andréa Jones: Thanks for having me. This was fun.
Want more strategies for growing and monetizing your podcast – without sponsors? Get the rest of the Sell With a Summit: Podcaster Edition sessions for free!
Get Andréa’s Social Media Rockstar Framework Mini-Course: https://onlinedrea.com/free
Learn more about Andréa at https://onlinedrea.com