Are you a first-time author looking to grow your audience?
A really effective way to do this is to become a guest on other people’s podcasts.It’s not only a great way to build your confidence and talk about your book and overall brand, but it’s also a golden opportunity to reach out to other people’s audiences in order to grow your own.
3 years ago I launched my book Job Escape Plan and at the time it was published, I didn’t have a following at all. To put things into context, I didn’t have a website, people didn’t really know who I was, and my couple of hundred followers were mostly made up of my supportive friends and family!
I wanted as many people as possible to read my book, and I found appearing on podcasts to really help with this.
Why podcasts?
Podcasts have been growing in popularity more and more in recent years.
Podcasters are content creators who are often experts and influencers in their niche.
I realized that if I could be a guest on podcasts that are directly related to my book audience, this would provide a very efficient and effective way for me to put myself in front of my ideal audience to grow my profile – and of course, find people to buy my book.
Guest appearances on podcasts is a marketing technique that can be a lot less time consuming than trying to create your own fresh new content. When you are starting out from scratch, it’s also a guaranteed way to reach the audience you desire.
How to become a podcast guest
The approach that I recommend for becoming a podcast guest starts with searching in the iTunes store to find podcasts that are relevant to your book topic. There are plenty of other podcast applications out there, so if not iTunes, just pick the platform that you find the easiest to use.
Next is to reach out and directly contact the hosts of the podcasts that you’d like to appear as a guest on.
To do this, I firstly listened to episodes of more than 20 podcasts that really resonated with my book’s topic.
I then sent emails to each of the hosts to congratulate them on their wonderful work on serving their audiences and I explained the particular episodes that I loved. After this, I told them about the launch of my new book and about how I felt that my book would be really relevant to their audience.
Be clear on what you can offer
In the emails, I explained the topic of my book and the particular problem that it addressed.
I provided a bullet-pointed summary of what I could speak about. This demonstrated my areas of expertise and that I not only understood my audience but also clearly understood theirs.
When I was initially approaching the podcasters, I didn’t have an Amazon link for my book, so instead, I attached my book cover and explained that my book was coming out in a couple of weeks.
I was absolutely overjoyed that most of the podcast hosts replied to my emails to say how they’d love to have me on their show and, even more importantly, a lot of them allowed me to be part of their shows in my book launch week.
Either directly or indirectly, these guest appearances helped my book to hit the bestseller charts!
Seize the opportunity
I would highly recommend for any author, especially first-time authors with a limited audience, to reach out to podcasters who are already doing a great job in your chosen industry and ask to be a guest on their show.
The same rule applies to blogs – whereby you can ask to write a guest blog post on the site of an expert/influencer in your industry. Although, I personally feel that talking on a podcast is much easier than writing a lengthy blog post. That’s why I chose the medium of podcasting to promote myself and my book.
I continue to be featured in podcasts to talk about Happy Self-Publishing, I really love talking about my work and helping to inspire others to do the same.
The financial benefits
Steve Scott is an amazing author and client of ours, and he was kind enough to invite me onto his show a year ago. To this day we continue to have people still listening to that podcast episode and approaching us interested in our services. We’ve made around $25,000- $30,000 in revenue from this one podcast episode alone.
By committing just 30 minutes of your time to appear as a guest on a podcast, you have the potential to receive a wealth of qualified leads. Isn’t that amazing?!
A podcast tour
If you’re an author or entrepreneur who is creating content, I highly recommend that you follow my approach and include guest appearances on podcasts as an integral part of your marketing plan.
Every month choose three or four shows to approach. This will help you to reach out to new audiences that would otherwise never have heard of you.
We call this a podcast tour.
Because this is a marketing tool that is so successful, we have included it as a package here at Happy Self Publishing.
We feel that new authors really need a promotion boost because they can often lack the credentials to be invited onto a show as a guest. Our podcast tour package solves this problem as we book authors onto 3 podcasts, which allows them to start their podcast marketing journey.
We’re able to do this because requests from book publishing companies like ours are looked upon more favorably than taking a chance on an unknown author. It means that the chances of an author appearing on a podcast show are hugely increased by going through our qualified program.
Get a copy of our podcast tour guide
If you’re interested in finding out more about how podcast tours can help your book and brand, please go to http://www.askjyotsna.com and the type‘podcast tour’. This will take you to a link with all the information you’re going to need to get yourself booked in for a podcast.
I hope this information as really useful in helping you to market yourself and your book. If it’s something that you’d like to discuss further, please go ahead and schedule a call at http://www.happyselfpublishing.com/scheduler I look forward to speaking with you.
