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An Adventure in Podcast Guesting
These past few months, I’ve been guesting on dozens of podcasts and while it’s been a ton of fun, I’ve learned a few things along the way, too.
I love talking entrepreneurship and could chat all day with my hosts about my adventures — and missteps — in entrepreneurship, lessons learned, success stories, challenges, and more.
But being a guest on a podcast is about far more than just storytelling.
Here are a few of the things I’ve learned:
Audience Sizes are BS
There. I said it.
Podcast hosts will boast about their audiences of hundreds of thousands to millions of listeners / subscribers / downloads / etc or how they’re a globally top ranked podcast, but… that doesn’t amount to anything.
The quality and engagement of the audience is really what matters.
Go check out the YouTube channels of some of your prospective hosts and see for yourself how engaged their gigantic audience is. What good are 2 million subscribers on YouTube if the videos they publish get less than 10 views… ?
How impressive are their supposed zillion podcast downloads if the podcast has only 3 reviews on iTunes?
This doesn’t mean you should pass on a podcast if it’s a good fit, but set your expectations for what results may come of it.
A Third of your Hosts Want to Sell You Something
Ask yourself why podcast hosts have their podcasts?
For some, it’s so they can prospect. And you are the prospect.
Something I didn’t realize until I started enjoying the “green room” conversations with my hosts before and after our recording is that many of them view their time with you as a 1:1 sales meeting.
Sometimes this is very subtle and soft. Other times it’s an aggressive hard sell and they want you to buy their products and services.
There’s an element of reciprocity at play here in that they’re providing you a platform so it’s not an unreasonable ask for them to pitch you what they have to offer. And maybe there’s a good fit for you!
