Hey podcaster! – I officially put down a deposit to get a summer house builtin my garden. It will be my official office/studio or as my wife calls it the Pod-Pod. ANd when I start recording my podcasting podcast it can be the Pod-Pod-Pod.
Affiliate Partner of the Week
Overwhelmed by editing? Let Next Day Podcast take care of it.
Keeping up with editing is perhaps the most tedious part of podcast production. You don’t have a ton of time, you don’t have the energy, and too many late nights are spent in front of the laptop screen.
Having worked with over 1,000 podcasts, Next Day Podcast can turn around your podcast edit in 24 hours with excellent prices on hobby packages.
Let someone else do the heavy lifting and get back to the fun of recording your podcast
Hook Them In or Growth Will Suffer
Podcasting is wonderful because you don’t have to play games with algorithms to get your podcast heard.
But you do have to play games with people. And there are a bunch of physiological principles that govern people and the way they think. But one of my favorites is curiosity.
People are naturally curious. If you can open up a train of thought in a person’s brain they will naturally want to close it again. That’s where hooks come in. They open up these curiosity loops and draw people into your episode.
Understand hooks and your podcast can become a powerhouse of growth.
The Cycle of New Listeners
Podcasts are very organic when it comes to growth. You listen for a few months, love what you hear, and you tell someone else to listen. But without proper use of hooks, the growth stops there.
If someone then lands on your podcast profile and doesn’t see anything interesting, they’ll simply click away.
Only by aligning these can you experience organic growth of your podcast. Look at Call Her Daddy:
How can you not want to know more?
I have specific guides and fill-in-the-blank Templates for doing this inside the Template Vault for those interested. $10 off for email subscribers.
How To Think About Hooks
I thought about opening this newsletter with the sentence:
This newsletter will change the way you think about podcasts forever.
While an effective hook, that statement isn’t one I could follow up on with any real benefit. Clickbait is when you make a promise but don’t see it through.
Clickbait is saying “12 secrets your doctor doesn’t want you to know. You’ll never believe number 7!” And then you read number 7 and it says eating vegetables is good for you.
You don’t build an audience for a podcast with this. Because you leave everyone who listens disappointed and so they don’t listen to more episodes.
But, in the words of YouTuber Ali Abdaal, “you have to make your titles just click baity enough.” That is you have to create enough curiosity for your potential listener that they want to find out more. But then you must deliver on the promise.
Create tension.
Make a promise.
Deliver on that promise.
Where To Use Hooks
Your podcast has plenty of opportunity to use hooks. Here are the main ones where you can write a great hook:
- Podcast description
- Episode title
- Episode description
- Introduction and show hook
- Episode tease
Your artwork and episode artwork are also places for hooks, but I’m sticking to writing hooks for now.
If you align all of these hooks together you will have the chance to massively increase the number of people you convert from browsers into listeners. It’s not spam. It’s psychology. Create curiosity in your listener’s mind, and they’ll enjoy it more when you answer that curiosity.
If you want an outside opinion on the effectiveness of your hooks, check out my Podcast Audit. I can help you out.
Community Wins
Ookie Bookcast just crossed 100 episodes
Socially Anxious Life reached 3,500 downloads
One Minutes Forty Three Seconds reached 1,000 YouTube subs!
If you have a win you want to share, hit reply!
How I Can Help You
1) Free 5-day Podcast Marketing Fundamentals Course – Learn the basics of what it takes to grow a popular show, get more listeners, and earn more money from your podcast. The five day email course is totally free
2) The Template Vault – Learn how to grow your podcast on autopilot. Get fill-in-the-blank templates to set up your podcast’s foundation for growth, success, and making money.
3) Podcast Marketing Coaching– I am an experienced podcast coach, and I want to help you master your podcast marketing. Check out my full list of services and discover how we can work together.
4) Recommended Tools– These are the tools I use to grow my podcast. I focus on tools that improve quality and save time.
Leave a Reply